This emotionally charged headline grabbed the attention of Ukraine-watchers worldwide after the Dec. 9 press conference by the university’s president, Serhiy Kvit. That day, Kvit declared that Ukraine’s Minister of Education, Dmytro Tabachnyk, had mounted a concerted administrative attack on Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (NaUKMA) by refusing to approve its statute, and by denying approval of NaUKMA student admission rules for 2011. All of this was being done in tandem with the tabling in parliament of a new draft Law on higher education that requires an institution to have a minimum of 10,000 students in order to be a university – NaUKMA’s student body counts just over 3,500. Although I have...

Mine was a Ukrainian neighbourhood until its gentrification, starting in the early 1990s with the arrival of middle-aged professionals toting toddlers. Still, Bloor Street West retains its old character with family-run delis, the annual Ukrainian street festival and such institutions as the Ukrainian Canadian Credit Union, Ukrainian Canadian Social Services and - steps from the Runnymede Public Library, which stocks Ukrainian books and newspapers - the venerable Ukrainian Canadian Art Foundation. Its gallery was packed last Thursday evening with about 150 people who had come to listen to a legendary figure. Mustafa Dzhemiliev, 66, is a survivor of the Soviet Gulag. He spent 17 years in dungeons and death camps, including in Siberia. He was released only after his name was (fifth) on the famous list of 23 dissidents that Ronald Reagan handed Mikhail Gorbachev at their 1986 summit in Reykjavik, Iceland, demanding their freedom...

The Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg is a taxpayer funded national Canadian museum. The recently released report of its Content Advisory Panel does not acknowledge the internment of Ukrainians during Canada's first national internment operations, nor does it intend to feature a permanent and prominent gallery on the Holodomor . The Ukrainian Canadian community demands both of the above in Canada’s publicly funded Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg. The Ukrainian Famine Genocide – Holodomor of 1932 -33, in which millions of Ukrainians perished, should be featured very clearly, distinctly and permanently, in no lesser or greater fashion than other genocides of the 20th century. The experience of Ukrainians and other Europeans unjustly imprisoned during Canada's first...

This year’s Holodomor Remembrance Day, the November 27th commemoration of the Stalin-engineered famine of 1932–33 that killed millions of Ukrainians, took place with some interesting background developments. Two days before, Israeli President Shimon Peres enjoined Ukrainians to “forget history.” One day before, Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovich called the Holodomor an “Armageddon” and asked Ukrainians not to forget it. And in the months preceding the commemoration, the chorus of distinguished scholars who consider the Holodomor genocide acquired two American members. Peres obviously knows that the creation of Israel would have been impossible without “history” — or, more precisely, historical memory. But he also knows that, just as remembering the past can be indispensable to forming nations...

The new authorities under President Victor Yanukowych have practically eliminated most civil liberties and free speech in Ukraine. Many in society in the east and south do not realize this fully yet, but a growing understanding is emerging, especially after the recent massive countrywide tax code protests. This may well lead to trade sanctions and restrictions against Ukraine in the near future. The point here is not the notion of the defense of the "principles of Western democracy" which the Ukrainian Diaspora likes to espouse. The West has absolutely no problem in buying oil from non democratic regimes such as Russia, Iran, and Hugo Chavez’s government. The problem is that Ukraine exports lower priced grains, refined oil products, metals, steel, pipes, arms, weapons, etc...

The new government of Ukraine follows the road of destruction of the national cultural heritage. The first step in this direction was the attempt to provide private ownership for the land with archeological monuments. According to the amendment of 09.09.2010 to the Act of Ukraine “On the Protection of the Cultural Heritage” (the asset 9¹) “physical persons” can privatize ground areas without any prior archaeological expert examination. Luckily, the other provisions of the Ukrainian legislation prevented the transfer of archaeological monuments into private ownership and their possible destruction. Then the authorities took the other step...

The Canadian Museum for Human Rights, scheduled to open in Winnipeg in 2013, is slighting the sufferings of Ukrainians here and in the former Soviet Union and needs a “reconstituted” board of trustees and content advisory committee to help set matters right, according to a report prepared by the Ukrainian Canadian Congress. Titled “Canadian Museum for Human Rights – A Call for Inclusiveness, Equity and Fairness,” the report was sent to The Globe and Mail after being submitted to Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore, Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Minister Jason Kenney and the Prime Minister’s Office. In 2007, the Harper government announced that the CMHR, originally a private initiative of the late media mogul Israel Asper, would be a national museum...

The Holodomor Commemoration Ceremony on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on November 30, 2010 formed the backdrop for a day of consultations with Ministers and Members of Parliament. Representatives of the League of Ukrainian Canadian Women (LUCW), Chrystyna Bidiak, Oksana Prociuk-Ciz and Lisa Shymko, and the League of Ukrainian Canadians (LUC), Orest Steciw and Borys Potapenko, informed MPs about their projects and programs in Canada and their concerns over the situation in Ukraine. Also, the President of the Canadian Friends of Ukraine (CFU), Margareta Shpir, joined the delegation for a number of visits during the day. It is to be recalled that Lisa Shymko, Borys Potapenko and Margareta Shpir accompanied Prime Minister Stephen Harper on his historic trip to Ukraine a month earlier. The Ukrainian Canadian NGO representatives met with...

The Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC) calls upon all Canadians to voice their concern over the content and layout proposed for the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. Specifically, we are concerned about the objectivity of the Museum's governance bodies and that neither Canada's first national internment operations nor the Holodomor have permanent and prominent galleries in the Museum. Background: The Canadian Museum of Human Rights, at the suggestion of its content advisory committee, is proceeding at present with only 2 permanent galleries, one on the Holocaust and one on Indigenous population. The Ukrainian Canadian Congress politically supported this government-funded Museum and...

Ukraine’s Ministry of Education recently proposed draft law on "reforming" higher education in Ukraine has provoked a strong response from Dr. Serhiy Kvit, president of National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy. At a press conference held in Kyiv on December 9th Dr. Kvit stated that, “the changes proposed by the draft law would effectively roll back the Academy's substantial achievements since its revival in 1992, returning higher education in Ukraine to the discredited Soviet era model of central government control”. The proposals of Minister of Education Dmytro Tabachnyk would remove university autonomy and the academic, financial and organizational freedoms of independent universities. In addition...