NEWSLETTER

UKRAINIAN WORLD CONGRESS

№ 7 (23) – July, 2005

LETTER TO UKRAINE’S PARLIAMENT ADDRESSES ELECTION ISSUES

The UWC forwarded a letter to Verkhovna Rada speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn concerning the draft 2006 election legislation. Copies of the UWC’s letter were remitted to Ukraine’s Minister for Foreign Affairs and the Central Elections Commission Chair. In its missive, the UWC addressed incongruities in the election process involving Ukrainian citizens abroad, which appear inevitable under the 2006 election legislation passed in March 2004 as well. The Ukrainian parliament is scheduled to revisit the 2006 election legislation draft by October 1, 2005. The UWC position addresses the geographic and logistical issues involved in compelling personal registration for inclusion on voters’ lists and voting itself in view of distances of several thousand kilometers between concentrated communities and the nearest polling precinct. During the hotly contested presidential elections of 2004, some one hundred thousand Ukrainian citizens abroad participated, which while triple the next largest turnout abroad in the history of Ukraine, still represented less than one third of one percent of the eligible voters abroad. In essence, the UWC questions the constitutionality of voting abroad procedures under past and current draft legislation. The UWC Secretary General participated in a special conference convened by Ukraine’s Central Elections Commission in Kyiv, June 9-10, 2005, raising these issues. Similarly this matter was addressed at the same conference by a representative of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America. 

UWC BOARD MEETING TO BE ATTENDED BY MORE THAN TWENTY COUNTRIES

To date representatives from the following countries have announced their participation in the upcoming Board of Directors’ meeting in Kharkiv on August 17-18, 2005: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Poland, Russian Federation, Spain, United States. It is anticipated that more than twenty Ukrainian national communities will be represented at the Kharkiv meeting. Inasmuch as the UWC representatives in Kharkiv are attempting to arrange suitable accommodations for all participants, those who plan to attend are urged to advise the UWC office in Toronto as soon as possible.

UKRAINIAN FORUM WILL NOT CONVENE IN AUGUST 2005

The World Ukrainian Coordinating Council has informed us that the Forum originally planned for August 20-22, 2005 will not take place as scheduled. The WUCC is considering rescheduling the Forum for November 2005. The UWC has urged and will insist that the Forum be adjourned to August 2006, which would coincide with the observance of the 15^th anniversary of Ukraine’s independence.

UWC PRESIDENT SCHEDULES VISIT TO COMMUNITY IN SLOVAK REPUBLIC

Acting upon the invitation of the Association of Rusyns and Ukrainians in the Slovak Republic (ARUSR), the UWC President has scheduled a visit to the communities in the Slovak Republic for August 11-13. 2005. The UWC visit is on the eve of the UWC Board of Directors’ meeting in Kharkiv, which will consider an application for membership in the UWC submitted by the ARUSR. The UWC Executive Board will recommend membership pursuant to its decision of June 4, 2005.

UNVEILING OF MEMORIAL CROSS TO UKRAINIAN VICTIMS IN SANDERMOCH

In 1997 some 60 years after the mass execution of more than one thousand political prisoners (five hundred Ukrainian) from the Solovky islands in the swamp and forests of Sandermoch, this tragedy was unearthed literally by the Russian “Memorial” organization. Several memorials have been erected to the victims on site. Since Ukrainians represented the largest percentage of victims, the Ukrainian community in Karelia deemed it would be appropriate to erect a separate memorial Cross to Ukrainian victims. Acting in concert with former Ukrainian political prisoners, Wasyl Ovsienko and Nadia Svitlychna, the UWC has raised a substantial portion of the memorial expenses. The memorial has been erected and on August 6, 2005 it will be unveiled. Anyone interested in attending the commemorative ceremony should contact Larissa Skrypnykova at her e-mail address: valpol@onego.ru.