Watchdog

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has thanked the German parliament for recognizing the 1932-33 famine in Ukraine, known as the Holodomor, as a genocide of the Ukrainian people.

"Germany recognized the 1932-1933 Holodomor as a genocide. I thank the members of the Bundestag for this historic decision. The truth always wins," Zelenskiy said on Twitter.

The Bundestag voted on November 30 in favor of the resolution, which was submitted by three parties of the ruling coalition and the main opposition bloc. It passed with their support in a show of hands, while the two other opposition parties abstained.

The vote took place after a debate attended by Ukraine’s ambassador to Germany and comes days after Ukrainians marked the 90th anniversary of the start of the famine, which is believed to have killed millions of Ukrainians.

Historians say the failure to properly harvest crops in Ukraine in 1932 under Soviet mismanagement was the main cause of the famine.

Zelenskiy said on November 26 as he marked the anniversary that Ukraine “cannot be broken” in its current fight against Russia's ongoing unprovoked invasion.

"Ukrainians went through very terrible things.... Once they wanted to destroy us with hunger -- now, with darkness and cold," Zelenskiy said.

The resolution states that “the mass deaths from hunger were not a result of failed harvests; the political leadership of the Soviet Union under Josef Stalin was responsible for them." It adds that all things Ukrainian were “deeply suspect” to Stalin and notes that “the whole of Ukraine was affected by hunger and repression, not just its grain-producing areas.”

The resolution says that from today's perspective, “a historical and political classification as genocide is obvious. The German Bundestag shares such a classification.”

Such resolutions aren't binding and don't mandate government action, but Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has thanked lawmakers who championed it.

Lawmaker Robin Wagener of the Green party told the Bundestag that the “horror” of the Holodomor “had its cause in the Kremlin,” where “the dictator took the cruel decision to push through collectivization by force and cause hunger.”

He said that “the parallels with today are unmissable.”

According to the Holodomor Museum in Kyiv, in addition to Ukraine and Germany the states that so far have recognized the famine as genocide are Australia, Ecuador, Estonia, Canada, Colombia, Georgia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Poland, Portugal, the United States, and the Vatican. Some other countries, including Argentina, Chile, and Spain, have condemned it as “an act of extermination.”

The resolution calls on the German government to work against “any attempts to spread one-sided Russian historical narratives” and to keep supporting Ukraine as a victim of the current war.

It notes that the famine in Ukraine happened in a period of massive crimes against humanity in Europe, which included the Holocaust “in its historical singularity,” the war crimes of the German military, and the systematic murder of millions of civilians as part of the “the racist German war of annihilation in the east.”

With reporting by AP

Maryya Kalesnikava, a leading opposition activist in Belarus who was sentenced to 11 years in prison in September last year, remains in the hospital after surgery, her father said on November 30.

Alyaksandr Kalesnikau also said he was not allowed to see his daughter due to the "absence of Kalesnikava's request." He is allowed to talk to the medical facility's personnel only in presence of law enforcement officers, who are permanently in the hospital, he said, according to Viktar Babaryka, an excluded presidential aspirant in the 2020 race whose campaign Kalesnikava coordinated.

Doctors told Kalesnikau that his daughter’s condition remains grave but stable. According to unconfirmed information provided by sources close to the medical personnel, Kalesnikava was diagnosed with a ruptured ulcer.

Kalesnikava’s lawyer, Uladzimer Pylchanka, has not been able to see his client either due to "the absence of the convict's request."

Kalesnikava joined forces with Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya and Veranika Tsapkala to form a trio of women who led historic demonstrations against Belarusian authoritarian ruler Alyaksandr Lukashenka in 2020.

Kalesnikava, 40, is the only one of the three still in the country but has been imprisoned over her role in the mass protests that lasted for more than two years.

Tsikhanouskaya, who moved to Lithuania after Lukashenka claimed victory in the presidential election that many people in Belarus believe she won, expressed her concerns about the situation faced by her colleague.

"We know that political prisoners in Belarus are being denied proper medical care. It is impossible to imagine what...Kalesnikava has been going through in the punishment cell. Without more information & access to her, we can't be sure she is getting the proper treatment," she tweeted on November 30.

Kalesnikava, and another opposition figure, Maksim Znak, were sentenced to prison terms of 11 and 10 years respectively on September 6, 2021, after being found guilty on charges of conspiracy to seize power, calls for action to damage national security, and calls for actions damaging national security by trying to create an extremist group. Both had pleaded not guilty and rejected the charges.

Kalesnikava has been in custody since masked men snatched her and two male colleagues from the streets of Minsk on September 7, 2020. The three were driven early the next day to the border, where authorities told them to cross into Ukraine.

Security officers reportedly failed to deport Kalesnikava because she tore up her passport after they arrived in the no-man’s land between Belarus and Ukraine. Her two associates entered Ukraine but with no valid passport, Kalesnikava remained in the country and was subsequently arrested.

Human rights watchdogs in Belarus have recognized Kalesnikava and two other associates also being detained as political prisoners and have demanded their immediate release.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has called her prosecution a "politically motivated conviction and shameful sentencing" on "bogus" charges.

Kalesnikava last year won the Vaclav Havel Human Rights Prize awarded annually by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) to honor outstanding civil society action in the defense of human rights.