The Foreign Relations Committee approved on Tuesday a motion for a resolution which recognizes as genocide the famine suffered by the Ukrainian people in 1932-33 and which was caused by the Stalin regime, better known as the Holodomor. . The text received unanimous support minus the abstention of the PTB.
Nicknamed “the breadbasket of Europe“for the fertility of its black lands, Ukraine lost four to eight million inhabitants in the great famine of 1932-1933, against a backdrop of land collectivization, orchestrated according to historians by Stalin to repress any nationalist and independentist desire of this country, then a Soviet republic.
Ukraine has been campaigning for years to have the Holodomor officially recognized as genocide, a concept coined during World War II. Several parliaments of European countries have recognized these facts as genocide, as well as the European Parliament on December 15.
“Political Recognition”
The Vlaams Belang tabled a text along these lines in 2020. Deputy Georges Dallemand (Les Engagés) took this initiative in February last year, joined by DéFI and the N-VA. The Vivaldi majority introduced its resolution last month.
It’s about a “political recognition“, specified the deputy Michel De Maegd (MR). The text also endeavors to commemorate the victims of this famine, condemns the “current manipulation of historical memory by the Russian regime in an effort to ensure its own survival” and recalls the presence of the Prime Minister and the Minister of Foreign Affairs on November 26 in Ukraine for the commemoration of the Holodomor. The war in Ukraine gave a particular echo to this historical fact.