Appeal of the External Representation of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group (11/09/86)

10th ANNIVERSARY OF THE UKRAINIAN HELSINKI GROUP

Appeal of the External Representation of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group

To: The heads of state of the signatories of the Helsinki Accords, participants of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, Vienna, 1986.

The opening of this conference in Vienna coincides with the 10th anniversary of the formation of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group - one of the most tragic victims of the Helsinki movement.

When it was established on November 9, 1976, the Ukrainian Helsinki Group defined its goals as follows:

"1. To assist in making familiar wide circles of the Ukrainian public with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. To demand that this international legal document serve as the regulating principle of relations between the individual and the state.

"2. In the belief that peace among nations cannot be assured without freedom of contacts between individuals, as well as without a free exchange of information and ideas, it is the purpose of the group to promote the implementation of the humanitarian provisions of the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe.

"3. To work toward ensuring that Ukraine, as a sovereign European state and as a member of the United Nations, is represented by a separate delegation at all international conferences where compliance with the Helsinki Accords is reviewed.

"4. To demand with a view to encouraging a free exchange of information and ideas the accreditation to Ukraine of representatives of the foreign press, the establishment of independent press agencies and such.

"The group considers its principal purpose to be to inform the governments of the signatory states of the Final Act and the world public at large of instances of violations on the territory of Ukraine of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and of the humanitarian provisions adopted at the Helsinki Conference."

The Ukrainian Helsinki Group did not have time to report even a small percentage of human-rights abuses in Ukraine. From the very first day of its existence the group itself became the object of harsh repressions and human-rights violations.

In the 10 years that the Ukrainian Helsinki Group has existed in Ukraine and beyond its borders, 40 persons have announced their membership in this group. Of this number, as of this date, four have died in imprisonment or have committed suicide. The four are: Yuriy Lytvyn, 50 years old, who committed suicide in a Perm concentration camp; Mykhailo Melnyk, 35 years old, who committed suicide following a KGB search; Vasyl Stus, 47, and Oleksa Tykhy, 57, both of whom died in camp VS-389/36-1 as a direct result of their conditions of imprisonment and a lack of medical care.

Sixteen members of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group are currently incarcerated and serving hopelessly long prison terms. Moreover, many of them have had their terms extended without ever having been released. As a result, they regard themselves as doomed and are similarly perceived by their families and friends. "They have been buried alive," wrote Lidia Ruban earlier this year about her husband and his fellow prisoners Mykola Horbal, Levko Lukianenko and others.

The fate of the following members and sympathizers of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group is especially precarious: Mykola Horbal, Mykhailo Horyn, Vitaliy Kalynychenko, Pavlo Kampov, Ivan Kandyba, Anatoly Koryagin, Yaroslav Lesiv, Levko Lukianenko, Anatoliy Lupynis, Hanna Mykhailenko, Mart Niklus, Vasyl Ovsiyenko, Viktoras Petkus, Zorian Popadiuk, Viktor Rafalsky, Petro Ruban, Yuriy Shukhevych, Danylo Shumuk, Ivan Sokulsky, Vasyl Striltsiv and Yosyp Terelia.

Eager for a relaxation of tensions in international relations, the Ukrainian Helsinki Group urged the governments of signatory states of the Helsinki Accords to implement the provisions of the Final Act and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights without allowing bureaucratic distortions and arbitrary restrictions by officials or government institutions. The group's members stressed that when discussing questions of détente and disarmament it is necessary to remember that any agreement on these vital issues will remain nothing more than a formality if the states that sign any such agreement continue to conduct a policy of suppression of liberties inside their borders and if these states continue to treat the demand that human rights be respected as interference in their national affairs.

In their appeal to the Madrid Conference in 1981, the imprisoned human-rights activists Yuriy Badzio and Robert Nazaryan stressed that "today everyone must realize that a relaxation of tensions is inseparable from the question of human rights." It is on this conviction that the public Helsinki monitoring groups in the Soviet Union base their activities

Ten years of experience with the Helsinki process has shown that the signing of joint agreements not only has not removed, but has in fact increased the disparity that exists in the manner in which various states interpret such concepts as human rights, democracy, openness, publicity and so forth. These words, until recently semi-banned in the Soviet Union, have become very fashionable today. But only the words have come into vogue; the concepts that they convey remain proscribed.

No matter how you juggle the term "openness," the concept remains a sham as long as people are held in prison specifically for attempting to avail themselves of openness.

How can there be serious discussion of safeguarding human rights when, even after death, Ukrainian political prisoners remain the property of the KGB and are held far from their families? In response to all their appeals to transfer the bodies of Vasyl Stus and Yuriy Lytvyn to Ukraine, their families receive refusals that are unfounded or give no grounds whatsoever. Thus on one occasion, Yuriy Lytvyn's mother was informed by the prison camp director (doc. No. 42/2 II-12) that the body of her son could not be released because an epidemic was raging in the area. On May 13, 1985, the chief of the VS-389/36 colony, Horkov, wrote to Lytvyn's mother (doc. No. 44/6-82, vkh. 148s): "This is to inform you that the question of transferring the remains of your son will not be considered."

It is not only in the Soviet regime's emigration policy - a policy best described as that of a mousetrap - that the true essence of the new "openness" of the Soviet system is revealed. The litmus test of Soviet-style openness and publicity for Ukrainians and for the world community at large was the recent tragedy of Chornobyl.

A totalitarian regime will not become more benevolent by calling itself the most democratic system in the world. Call the Soviet aggression in Afghanistan what you will, but war remains war and occupation is still occupation.

Taking into account the experience of the last 10 years of the Helsinki process and the tragic fate of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, the External Representation of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group makes the following demands as a minimum:

1. That a thorough review of human-rights abuses be conducted, beginning with those reported in the documents of the public Helsinki monitoring groups. That the Soviet public be enabled to participate in the Helsinki process.

2. That the demands of the members of the religious movement (in particular, the Action Group of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, the Council of Churches of the Evangelical Christians and Baptists, the Group for the Right to Emigrate of the Christians of the Evangelical Faith - Pentecostals and others) be reviewed and that freedom of religion be guaranteed.

3. That censorship and other ideological restrictions be abolished. That Ukrainians and other Soviet nations and nationalities be guaranteed the right to information, the right to study their past and to develop their culture freely.

4. That Ukraine be included as a full and equal participant in the Helsinki process.

5. Insofar as a large number of Soviet missiles is deployed in Ukraine and insofar as many of the Soviet Union's nuclear power plants are located in Ukraine, that Ukraine as a founding member of the United Nations be included as an independent party in the work of all international bodies concerned with questions of disarmament and nuclear energy. The need for this has been dramatically illustrated by the bitter experience of Chornobyl.

6. That embassies and consulates of the signatory states of the Helsinki Accords be opened in Ukraine and that foreign journalists and press agencies be accredited to Ukraine.

Many today are skeptical of the future of the Helsinki movement, asking whether such great sacrifices are worth the relatively modest results in totalitarian societies. We, however, subscribe to the view expressed in answer to this question by Yuriy Lytvyn, a member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group who paid for his convictions with his life: "We are convinced that it is precisely in societies like ours that islands of the human-rights movement can become a major force and provide the impetus for the moral renewal of these societies."

Gen. Petro Grigorenko
Leonid Plyushch
Nadia Svitlychna

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