Ukraine is a multiethnic and multicultural nation where
racism and ethnic discrimination are arguably
largely a fringe issue . However, there have been recorded
incidents of violence where the victim's
race is widely thought
to have played a role. Those incidents receive an extensive media
coverage and are usually condemned by all mainstream political
forces.
Human Rights Watch
reported that "Racism and xenophobia remain entrenched problems in
Ukraine".
Race discrimination
Racially motivated attacks occur in Ukraine while police and courts
do little to intervene, the
Council of
Europe said in a report made public February 2008 in
Strasbourg. The report also expressed concern about attacks against
rabbis and Jewish students, as well as the vandalism of synagogues,
cemeteries and cultural centres. "However, criminal legislation
against racially-motivated crimes has not been strengthened and the
authorities have not yet adopted a comprehensive body of civil and
administrative anti-discrimination laws", the body said. "There
have been very few prosecutions against people who make
anti-Semiticstatements or publish anti-Semitic literature."
Discrimination against the Roma community, continuing
anti-Semitism, violence in Crimea and other acts of intolerance
against various ethnic groups in Ukraine were singled out in the
report by the Council of Europe's racism-monitoring body, the
European Commission against Racism and Intolerance.
Skinhead violence against Tatars and Jews is also frequent and
police have offered little protection to the different communities,
it said. And ECRI asked Ukrainian authorities to step up efforts to
fight violence by skinheads against Africans, Asians, and people
from the Caucasus and the Middle East For instance: in December
2006
racist attacks on foreign students have
been reported by the
Council of
Europe. The council stated that students where reluctant to
report attacks because of
police
response to these attacks seemed to be inadequate.
Many of these
incidents are conducted by "skinheads" or neo-Nazis in Kiev
, but similar
crimes have also been reported throughout the country. In
addition to incidents of assault, persons of African or Asian
heritage may be subject to various types of harassment, such as
being stopped on the street by both civilians and law enforcement
officials. Individuals belonging to religious minorities have also
been harassed and assaulted in Kiev and throughout Ukraine
Ukraine does not currently have well established movements against
illegal immigration or certain ethnic groups that are common in
other former Soviet states. As a European country Ukraine is prone
to outside influence from the neo-nazi and supremacist movements
beyond its borders. For example, in areas of Southern Ukraine that
have closer cultural and linguistic ties with Russia a number of
neo-nazi groups resemble those in neighbouring Russia.
Since 2005, nongovernmental (
NGO) monitors in
Ukraine have documented a dramatic rise in violent crimes with a
suspected bias motivation.
While incidents occurring in Kiev have been
most accurately documented, there is evidence that incidents of
violence are taking place throughout the country, including the
cities of Cherkasy
, Chernivtsi
, Kharkiv
, Luhansk
, Lutsk
, Lviv
, Mykolaiv
, Odessa
, Sevastopol
, Simferopol
, Ternopil
, Vinnytsia
, and Zhytomyr
.
Representatives of the Ministry of Justice and Members of Ukrainian
parliament stated that discrimination views and antisocial
attitudes are practiced by a minority of the population, by fringe
organizations, and by younger generation of Ukrainians; they say
they are most alarmed by the younger Ukrainian's attitudes. The
fact that, during the 2007 parliamentary elections, the right wing
parties espousing xenophobic and racist ideology received very
little support from the electorate, also points to the unpopularity
of such ideas among the general population.
Bias-motivated violence has been largely committed against people
of African and Asian origin, as well as people from the
Caucasus and the
Middle
East.
Discrimination against foreigners
According to a Western human rights organization, asylum seekers,
refugees, and labour migrants are among the victims of
bias-motivated violence, which have also included diplomats,
expatriate employees of foreign companies, members of visible
minorities in Ukraine, and Ukrainians who have assisted hate crime
victims. Foreign students, of which there are some forty thousand,
have been among the principal victims of hate crimes.Small
populations of citizens and immigrants of African origin are highly
visible and particularly vulnerable targets of racism and
xenophobia. Although relatively few people of African origin reside
in Ukraine, the rate of violence against this group has been
extraordinary. African refugees, students, visitors, and the
handful of citizens and permanent residents of African origin have
lived under constant threat of harassment and violence. During the
2009 flu pandemic in
Ukraine in November 2009 the police of
Transcarpathia asked the local population
to report every instance of meeting or communicating with
foreigners, especially those from
South-East Asia or
Middle East. The police explains that the reason
for such a request was "the worsening of the epidemiological
situation in Transcarpathian Region and the increasing risk of
getting ill."
The Uzhhorod
police removed the request from their website after
media drew attention to it.
Discrimination against Roma
It is alleged that the country's estimated 400,000
Roma people (government figures were
47,600) faces both governmental and societal discrimination. In
October 2006 the
European
Roma Rights Center complained to the
UN Human Rights Committee about
violence against Roma in the country, racial targeting and
profiling by police against Roma, discrimination in social programs
and employment against Roma, and the widespread lack of necessary
documentation for Roma to enjoy access to social services and
protections. In many areas of the country, poverty often forced
Romani families to withdraw their children from school. There were
numerous reports of Roma being evicted from housing, removed from
public transportation, denied public assistance, kicked out of
stores, and denied proper medical treatment. According to the
Roma Congress of Ukraine,
the findings of the 2003 national study on social integration of
Roma remain current: only 38 percent of Roma are economically
active, 21 percent have permanent employment, and 5 percent have
temporary employment, mainly seasonal jobs. Representatives of
Romani and other minority groups claimed that police officials
routinely ignored, and sometimes abetted, violence against
them.
There were some reports that the government was addressing the
longstanding problems faced by the Romani community.
For example, the
Chirikli fund reported in fall 2006
that a court in Odessa reviewed its
complaint against a school director who refused to admit a Romani
child to school. The court refused to review claims of
discrimination but the case was still under review for possible
administrative violations as of December.
A court in Donetsk
refused to
accept a similar complaint.
Discrimination against Jews
As of April 2008, in total, 100 hate crimes were committed since
January 2007. One of every five hate crimes in Ukraine since the
start of last year was against the Jewish community, the country's
security police reported. However, not known how much of those
attacks were on a racial base.
Attacks on ethnic minorities are occurring in Ukraine at a record pace, according to the Union of Councils for the Jews in the Former Soviet Union. Ukrainian Jews have been the object of some of the worst government-led persecutions in history, including Tsarist pogroms, Nazi genocide, and Stalin's antisemitic campaigns. The problem of antisemitism has remained despite massive immigration of Jews to Israel, Europe, and the United States following the disintegration of the Soviet Union. In recent years, Ukraine has seen a revival of anti-Jewish prejudice in the form of an increase of antisemitic attacks and incidents.
Discrimination against Tatars
In
Crimea
, native Tatars feel
discriminated due to lack of lands. Conflicts between Tatars
and their
Slavic neighbors in recent
years has led to massed fist fights, vandalizing graveyards and
even murders. The Ukrainian government is slow in acknowledging the
tensions. Crimean Tatars asserted that discrimination by mainly
ethnic Russian
officials in Crimea deprived them of employment in local
administrations and that propaganda campaigns, particularly by
Russian Cossacks, promoted
hostility against them among other inhabitants of
Crimea.
More than 250,000 Crimean Tatars have
returned to their homeland following Ukrainian independence,
shifting the ethnic composition of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea. The return of Tatars, who belong to a
different ethnicity, speak a separate language, and are
predominantly Muslim, has resulted in increased ethnic and
religious tensions in the Crimea and contributed to an increase in
bias-motivated attacks against Crimean Tatars and their
property.
Discrimination against LGBT persons
The breakdown of the Soviet Union—during which time homosexuality
was criminalized—has allowed lesbian, gay, bisexual, and
transgender/transsexual people (
LGBT) to be
more open about their identity. However, the Ukrainian constitution
does not explicitly include protections against discrimination
based on sexual orientation; laws concerning bias-motivated
violence do not cover incidents involving bias on the basis of
sexual orientation or gender identity. Many Ukrainians remain
intolerant toward LGBT lifestyle. According to one recent poll by
the Institute of Sociology, almost 35 percent of Ukrainians
disagreed strongly or disagreed with the statement that "gay men
and lesbians should be free to live their own life as they
wish."
Latest developments
A report released by
Amnesty
International in July 2008 warned of an "alarming rise" in
racist attacks in Ukraine. According to the report, more than 60
people were targeted in racist violence in 2007, six of them
killed; More than 30 people were victims of racist attacks since
the beginning of 2008 and at least four had been killed at the time
of the report. Rights advocates are puzzled by the rise in hate
crimes but they claim government inaction is partly to blame. They
also claim the government aggravates the problem by denying that
racism is growing and only acknowledging isolated incidents. Rights
groups claim Ukrainian hate groups are inspired by their
counterparts in Russia, where minorities are assaulted almost every
day. Russian skinheads help the local groups, they say, sharing
tips and video clips on how to attack and torture their victims and
how to safely leave the crime scene.
Government response
The government's response to the recent surge in hate crimes has
been insufficient and inconsistent. President
Yushchenko and some other senior government
officials have spoken out against racist and xenophobic violence.
However, these statements have been undermined by other
declarations by some key law enforcement officials whose remarks
suggested a denial of the problem. On March 30, 2007, former
Interior Minister
Vasyl Tsushko
condemned acts of xenophobia and racism at a meeting of
representatives of embassies and international organizations.
Tsushko denied any massive instances of xenophobic incidents in
Ukraine, but recognized that single incidents could lead to an
overall negative tendency.
The authorities did take some important steps in 2007, including
the creation of specialized units in key government agencies. Also,
in early 2008, there were several guilty verdicts handed down in
cases of violence in which incitement to hatred based on
nationality,
race, or
religion were among the charges. However, these
verdicts were exceptions to a pattern in which violent crimes with
an apparent bias motivation are more often treated as hooliganism.
Law enforcement officials
lack training and experience in recognizing and recording the bias
motivations behind attacks, limiting the ability of prosecutors to
pursue hate crime cases in court. An inadequate legal framework
also hinders the ability of criminal justice officials to prosecute
hate crimes as such.
In
November 2009 the Verkhovna
Rada
(the Ukrainian parliament) adopted a law that
raised the maximum sentences for crimes committed on the ground of
racial, national, or religious hostility.
Statistics on violent crime motivated by racism and
discrimination
There is no government data collection or regular public reporting
expressly on violent hate crimes. The most reliable information is
produced by
NGO and
IGO
monitoring. Thus, it is impossible to see the full extent of the
problem.
Human Rights First and
Amnesty International released
reports on the dramatic rise of hate-motivated violence in Ukraine.
Both organizations relied on the nongovernmental monitors and
closely collaborated with the Diversity Initiative, a coalition of
some 40 NGOs, which was created in April 2007 in response to the
unprecedented increase in the number of suspected
racially-motivated assaults. The Diversity Initiative is supported
by the
International
Organization for Migration (IOM) and the Office of the United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (
UNHCR).
References
- Andrew Wilson, "Ukrainian
Nationalism in the 1990s: A Minority Faith", Cambridge University Press, 1996,
ISBN 0521574579
- Andrew Wilson, "The Ukrainians:
Unexpected Nation", Yale University Press, 2002, ISBN
0300093098
- Serhii M. Plokhy, 'The History of a "Non-Historical" Nation:
Notes on the Nature and Current Problems of Ukrainian
Historiography', Slavic Review, Vol. 54, No. 3 (Autumn, 1995),
pp. 709-716
- Human Rights First Government Response to Racially Motivated Crime in
Ukraine
- Essential Background: Overview of human rights
issues in Ukraine (Human Rights Watch, 31-12-2005)
- Union of Councils for Soviet Jews: Bigotry Monitor:
Volume 7, Number 23
- Council of Europe Third report on Ukraine
adopted on 29 June 2007 and made public on 12 February 2008
- UNIAN - Dozens of Muslim gravestones defaced in
Ukraine`s Crimea
region
- Фото УНІАН - photo.unian.net - photos of politicians,
photos of celebrities, stage або production photos
- UNIAN - Council of Europe releases Report on racism
in Ukraine
- .Korrespondent ЄС
прагне подолати расизм і ксенофобію в Україні
- Police Arrest Suspected In Beating 5 Chinese
Students In Kyiv, Ukrainian News Agency, October 2, 2008
- [1] US department of state travel
information about Ukraine
- Zerkalo
Nedeli: У полоні чотирьох імперій, або Про корені расизму в Росії
і про небезпеку його сходів на Сході й Півдні України
- Human Rights First The Extent of Bias-Motivated Violence in
Ukraine
- Novinar: Світ
занепокоєний расовою нетерпимістю України
- Human Rights First The Victims of Intolerance and Violence
- Swine flu breeding racism?, Kyiv Post (November 6, 2009)
- [2] US department of state Country Report
on Human Rights Practices in Ukraine
- Breaking News - JTA, Jewish & Israel
News
- Human Rights First The Victims of Intolerance and Violence
- A Bittersweet Homecoming For Crimea's Tatars.
Volodymyr Prytula. September 5, 2007.
- UNIAN - Dozens of Muslim gravestones defaced in Ukraine`s
Crimea region
- Human Rights First The Victims of Intolerance and Violence
- [3]
- Human Rights First The Victims of Intolerance and Violence
- Evhen Golovakha, Andriy Gorbachyk, Natalia Panina, "Ukraine and
Europe: Outcomes of International Comparative Sociological Survey",
Kiev, Institute of Sociology of NAS of Ukraine, 2007, ISBN
978-966-02-4352-1, pp. 133-135 in Section: "9. Social
discrimination and migration" ( pdf)
- Ukraine grapples with alarming rise in hate crimes as it
pursues EU dreams Kyiv Post Retrieved on July 18, 2008
- Human Rights First Government Response to Hate Crimes in
Ukraine
- Rada toughens punishment for crimes on ground of
racial, national, or religious hostility, Kyiv Post (November 5, 2009)
- Human Rights First Bias-Motivated Violence in Ukraine
- Amnesty International Ukraine: Government must act to stop racial
discrimination
- Human Rights First The Extent of Bias-Motivated Violence in
Ukraine
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