News from Ukraine, Colombia and Hungary

Tuesday's World Events   —   Posted on October 4, 2016

UKRAINE – Ukraine marks infamous Babi Yar massacre of 34,000 Jews by Nazis on 75th anniversary

(Japan Times) KIEV — Ukraine on Thursday marked the 75th anniversary of the Babi Yar massacre, one of the most infamous mass slaughters of World War II.

Babi Yar, a ravine in Kiev, is where nearly 34,000 Jews were killed within 48 hours in 1941 when the city was under Nazi occupation. The killing was carried out by SS troops along with local collaborators.

President Petro Poroshenko visited the Babi Yar monument on Thursday in a small commemoration that included people laying flowers. A larger ceremony was scheduled for the evening.

Poroshenko tweeted that “we Ukrainians very well understand the grief of the Jews and take it as our own.”

World Jewish Congress President Ronald S. Lauder described Babi Yar as “one of the most infamous pieces of ground in the entire world.”  He also noted that some Ukrainians had collaborated with the Nazis in the massacre. “While Babi Yar was organized by the Nazis, there were willing helpers in the Ukrainian militia,” he said, praising others who had helped save Jews. “There were Ukrainians who risked their lives to save their Jewish neighbors.”

Lauder also hailed the Jewish revival that Ukraine has seen in recent years. “We are here in Kiev for one more important reason: We are here to celebrate the rebirth of a strong Jewish community here in Ukraine,” he said. “This rebirth is nothing short of a miracle.”

Kiev resident Volodymyr Pogrilchuk said the tragedy of Babi Yar has haunted him ever since. “I was almost 6 years old at that time and it was something horrible,” he said “It was a nightmare. And I come here every year.”

The slaughter was one of the worst single massacres of the Holocaust. …

President Poroshenko spoke at the commemoration, saying…“No Ukrainian has the right to forget this tragedy. The lesson of Babi Yar is a reminder of the frightening price of political and moral nearsightedness.” Poroshenko made his remarks to a largely Jewish audience at a temporary stadium in Kiev’s Babi Yar park where the commemoration was held. The site encompasses a ravine on the city’s outskirts, where German SS troops systematically killed assembled Jews with machine guns on Sept. 29 and 30, 1941. “It’s a reminder that indulging an aggressor simply builds his appetite,” the president said.

…Members of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) initially collaborated with Hitler’s generals because they felt the Nazis could help them win independence from the Soviet Union’s even-more-hated Stalin. …

The Nazis and local auxiliaries exterminated the Jews between Sept. 29 and 30 of 1941 as they blitzed their way toward Moscow and captured major cities on the western Soviet flank.

The last survivor of that tragedy still alive in Kiev told AFP that Jews comprised about a quarter of the city’s 800,000-strong population at the time. About 100,000 Jewish people live in the city today out of a population of around 2.8 million

…Babi Yar is also rarely mentioned by locals. But the horror of those 48 hours are still vividly etched in the memories of survivors such as Raisa Maistrenko, who was only 3 years old when her 18 relatives failed to return from the ravine. Just 29 people managed to escape execution by either falling into the mass grave before being shot in the back or by wearing crosses to hide their true religion.

“All the Jews decided to go because they thought they would be evacuated by train as the railway station was nearby. Nobody could possibly assume there would be a mass execution,” she recalled in hushed tones. “We heard the shooting behind us, but (my) granny — she kept holding me — did not look back and kept running until she fell exhausted among the graves in a nearby cemetery.”

Maistrenko said they were hiding there until sunset before finding their way back home under the cover of darkness. There — to their relief — no one reported them to the Nazis.

COLOMBIA – Voters Reject What They See As Bad Peace Deal With FARC Rebels

(The Wall Street Journal) BOGOTÁ, Colombia — On Sunday, voters narrowly rejected a peace accord between President Juan Manuel Santos and a Marxist rebel group that would have ended 52 years of conflict, a startling outcome that thrusts this country into uncertainty.

…The vote in Colombia came barely a month after the government and the Marxist Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia, or FARC, concluded four years of peace negotiations in Cuba. Polls had earlier shown the “Yes” vote comfortably winning the referendum.

Colombian voters reject peace deal between the government and FARC rebels (LA Times)

“I am the first to recognize this result,” Mr. Santos said in a short televised address on Sunday evening, flanked by his peace negotiators. Of his policy toward the rebels, though, he reiterated, “I won’t surrender. I will continue to look for peace until the last minute of my term.”

The deep antipathy [hatred] Colombians hold toward the FARC propelled the “No” vote, with [those who opposed] the accord warning that Mr. Santos was selling out to the guerrillas. …

With 99.9% of votes counted, “No” votes (totaling more than 6.4 million) outnumbered “Yes” votes by fewer than 54,000.

The “No” vote won throughout most of central Colombia, including heavily populated Antioquia, an economic engine for Colombia, and other interior states deeply affected by guerrilla violence. Bogotá, with eight million people, voted “Yes” and so did other states in the southwest where conflict once raged. But the size of the vote in those regions wasn’t enough to turn back seething anger against FARC and Mr. Santos’s accord. After the results of the vote were released, half the country was stunned, while the other half celebrated, with drivers honking horns on city streets.

President Santos said the vote wouldn’t affect a cease-fire that has been in place with FARC, and that on Monday (Oct. 3) he would convene a meeting with all political forces in Colombia to discuss how to proceed. Although he had said he wouldn’t renegotiate should “No” win, Mr. Santos sounded [as if he might not hold to his position] on Sunday night. …

President Santos’s loss is a victory for his predecessor, former President Álvaro Uribe, who marshaled his followers by asserting that the accord would permit FARC to install a communist system in this country of 49 million.

Mr. Uribe, whose father was murdered by the FARC rebels, said in a late-night televised speech that his movement wants to “be part of a grand national pact, so that they hear our reasons,” adding, “We know that our compatriots who said yes will receive our message, that they’ll hear us and we’ll hear them.”

The Santos administration had touted the development and economic-growth potential that peace would bring in a country ravaged by a drug-fueled war, noting that one of the points in the accord amounted to a Marshall Plan [whereby Colombia would be given money from allies]. This year, the Obama administration had pledged $450 million to aid the postconflict process, one of several commitments made by Colombia’s allies. Mr. Santos’s accord also had the support of Latin America, the EU and the Vatican.

FARC, which spent more than five decades trying to topple the Colombian state, had in the negotiations abandoned many of the demands it had long fought for, such as changing the country’s capitalist system, barring foreign ownership of land and implanting radical land overhauls.

But benefits for ex-combatants stipulated in the peace accord—including seats in Congress for guerrilla commanders and leniency in tribunals for those accused of atrocities—prompted many Colombians to reject the deal.

“After all of the damage and violence that the guerrillas have caused, they wanted us to treat them like prizewinners,” said 46-year-old maintenance worker Dairo Aguilar, whose family was forced to the capital from their village in southern Colombia by the conflict. He voted against the deal.

Likewise, Patricia Alarcon said she voted “No” because she remembers how her family had to flee their home in Colombia’s east, fearing that her six brothers would be forcibly recruited by the rebels. “Even having too many boys in the family was a risk,” the 35-year-old homemaker recalled, holding her toddler son outside a voting center. “What kind of example would we be setting for the future if we just let these people go unpunished?”

Mr. Santos banked his presidency on ending a conflict that since 1964 left more than 220,000 dead and forced millions of poor farmers off their land. A victory for the “No” campaign would lead to a resurgence in conflict, Mr. Santos had warned, irking many in Colombia who said the warnings amounted to a scare tactic.

FARC leaders have been more ambivalent in public comments. In a recent interview, a guerrilla who used the name Paula Saenz said the rejection of the accord wouldn’t mean war, at least not yet. “It’s not like we will begin to blow up bridges,” she said, although she shook her head when asked just what the guerrillas might do.

HUNGARY – Hungary voters reject EU migrant-resettlement plan, but low turnout invalidates results

Voter turnout was 43.7%,  short of the 50% participation required to make the referendum valid under Hungarian law.

Members of a local election commission start counting votes after the polling station closed in the first district of Budapest, Hungary, Sunday, Oct. 2, 2016. Hungarians voted Sunday in a referendum called by Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government to bolster its opposition to any future, mandatory European Union quotas for accepting relocated asylum seekers. (Zsolt Szigetvary/MTI via AP)

Gulyás Gergely, the Vice-President of Hungary’s ruling party, FIDESZ, … said that more than 90% of those who voted supported Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s “No” position.

(The news briefs above are from wire reports and staff reports posted at Japan Times on Sept. 30, The Wall Street Journal and CNN on October 3.)