Holodomor - Murder By Hunger

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In December of 1948, the United Nations passed the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Within it, one of the articles clearly defines genocide as:

Article II.
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: a) Killing members of the group; b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; e) Forcibly transfering children of the group to another group.

Many of us are not naive about the Nazi atrocities leading up to and during World War II. We also have come to acknowledge the genocide in Rwanda and the massacres under Pol Pot.

But many, like Darfur aren't being treated the same way. While people dye due to wide spread genocide, the world isn't acknowledging that it is truly genocide and won't take action.

Even in the case of a large massacre, very few have acknowledged it as genocide.

Stumped? I'm talking of course about Stalin's Forced Famine in which 7-10 million Urkranians died due to being stripped of their produced and forced to send their produce to motherland Russia.

This happened between 1932-1933.

Stalin's Forced Famine 1932-1933

Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union, set in motion events designed to cause a famine in the Ukraine to destroy the people there seeking independence from his rule. As a result, an estimated 7,000,000 persons perished in this farming area, known as the breadbasket of Europe, with the people deprived of the food they had grown with their own hands.

There, a nice summary of the 'genocide' (and in quotes because it hasn't been given the UN designation of genocide yet).

And it wasn't like the world didn't know, and didn't care. Many tried to help...

By the spring of 1933, the height of the famine, an estimated 25,000 persons died every day in the Ukraine. Entire villages were perishing. In Europe, America and Canada, persons of Ukrainian descent and others responded to news reports of the famine by sending in food supplies. But Soviet authorities halted all food shipments at the border. It was the official policy of the Soviet Union to deny the existence of a famine and thus to refuse any outside assistance. Anyone claiming that there was in fact a famine was accused of spreading anti-Soviet propaganda. Inside the Soviet Union, a person could be arrested for even using the word 'famine' or 'hunger' or 'starvation' in a sentence.

And not even 1 million have died in Darfur and we're rushing to get it designated as genocide, and yet, in one day, about 25,000 people were killed in Ukraine. There are towns in Canada that aren't even a third that size! That would almost be entire towns. And yet, even now, it's still not called genocide.

Though, who can really blame the west and Europe? The Soviets did a damn good job covering their asses during those years. Just like with Bush's photo opts, the Soviets staged events that disguised what was going on.

The Soviets bolstered their famine denial by duping members of the foreign press and international celebrities through carefully staged photo opportunities in the Soviet Union and the Ukraine. The writer George Bernard Shaw, along with a group of British socialites, visited the Soviet Union and came away with a favorable impression, which he disseminated, to the world. Former French Premier Edouard Herriot was given a five-day stage-managed tour of the Ukraine, viewing spruced-up streets in Kiev and inspecting a 'model' collective farm. He also came away with a favorable impression and even declared there was indeed no famine.

This happens quite a bit doesn't it? Just when things start to look bad, the country in question holds a staged event to redeem its good name. Many modern countries still use this practice to cover up what is really happening. If it doesn't work, then they use heavy handed tactics like embargos and sanctions to make a point. Such as with the Iranians. They have their nuclear intentions but they aren't going to deny most of it; instead, they chose to let the UN's Nuclear Task Force take a look at the facilities (what are the odds that they weren't deceived).

Now, this brings me to my favourite question...

Why is it when 6+ million Jews died or were massacred under the watch of the Nazi regime, between 1933-1945 was the subsequent Holocaust called genocide, whereas when the 7+million Ukranians were massacred in the year span of 1932-1933, it isn't genocide, but rather a nation tragedy?

Nevertheless, a UN declaration - while recognising the famine as Ukraine's national tragedy - did not include the word "genocide" - to the great dismay of Ukraine which lobbied hard for the inclusion of the term.

Ukraine demands 'genocide' marked