LETTERS TO THE EDITOR (12/30/84)

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Urges support for Shevchenko stamp

Dear Editor:

As you may recall, in early October I urged the U.S. Postal Service to issue a stamp commemorating Taras Shevchenko. I recently learned that the Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee rejected this proposal at its October 13 meeting. Knowing of the strong support for this stamp in the Ukrainian community, I have written once again to the chairman of the Stamp Advisory Committee, requesting that the committee reconsider the proposal at a future meeting.

I encourage members of the Ukrainian American community to continue working for approval of this worthy stamp proposal by organizing petitions and mailings and by soliciting the support of other elected officials. Letters can be sent directly to the chairman of the Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee, Belmont Faries, c/o United States Postal Service, Washington, D.C. 20260.

Taras Shevchenko was a great spokesman for freedom whose works have inspired many, and I believe it is appropriate to memorialize him with a commemorative stamp. I wish you success in your efforts.

Charles H. Percy
U.S. Senator
Washington

Aid victims of Ethiopia's famine

Dear Editor:

In the last two years the Ukrainian community in the West has succeeded in calling world attention to the artificial famine of 1932-33.

Today a devastating famine is affecting millions in Ethiopia. While it bears obvious differences from the famine in Ukraine, some aspects are chillingly familiar. Ethiopia's Marxist regime ignored timely warnings and proceeded with its ideological blueprint of economic centralization, which has contributed in no small measure to the present famine. It has cynically taken advantage of the people's desperate straits to crack down on an important source of potential resistance - the Churches. And it has used food as a weapon in its war on a national minority - the Eritreans.

Western governments and countless ordinary citizens have helped generously. Numerous individual Ukrainians have no doubt done the same. But have the Ukrainians as a people, collectively the victims of a similar famine, done anything? World relief organizations have indicated in the past that group gifts to famine-stricken countries could be made, and designated, in memory of the 7 million victims of the famine in Ukraine.

Granted, there are important Ukrainian causes to support. But a group donation for Ethiopia would - besides feeding the starving - serve a secondary yet vital purpose. It would demonstrate solidarity with our fellow-victims of famine - famine that is never altogether "natural."

Such a project may strike some Ukrainians as inappropriately exotic. After all, we have enough problems in our own country. Yet we frequently complain that other countries do not pay attention to us. Could it be that our issues strike them as inappropriately exotic as well?

Would it not behoove us, then, to take this initiative in reaching out to help? It is exemplary that in San Francisco, Ukrainian and Eritrean organizations are cooperating to send the proceeds from a showing of the film "Harvest of Despair" (about the famine in Ukraine) to Eritrea for famine relief. For the present, organized famine relief by the Ukrainian community would fulfill our Christian obligation as we near the millennium of our conversion. For the future, it would save us from another genocide.

Andrew Sorokowski
London