2022-10 Ukraine peace rally in Belfast
Thursday, July 28, 2022 Sunday, 24th July. I said:
Mariupol. The name Mariupol has now entered the litany of cities that humankind has first created… and then destroyed, cities like Guernica, Warsaw and Grozny. How Russia can do to others, what it too has suffered, as in Leningrad, is difficult to comprehend. Sadly, however, there are still many people in this world who think problems can be solved by the threat or use of force, not least today’s, and yesterday’s leaders in the Kremlin.
In Red Square in Moscow, in 1968, when Soviet tanks went into Prague, seven individuals protested. Only seven. In stark contrast, today, with Russian tanks in Ukraine, the protesters in Russia are in their hundreds – not least the mothers of sons, soldiers, boys, who are now dead. Like the seven in 1968, these hundreds recognise that Putin has made a horrible mistake. So we should be doing everything possible to help them… and that includes asking our ambassadors and others to join them in their peaceful, non-violent demonstrations, not unlike what we are doing today. I’ll talk a little more on this in a moment.
Putin could hardly be more wrong. Mariupol is not a Russian word; if it were Russian or Slavic, it would be ‘Mariugrad’ or ‘Mariusky’. But it is Mariupol, like Sevastopol and Simferopol, in the Crimea. And the suffix ‘pol’ is Greek, which goes back 2,000 years or so, long before Russia was concocted, and long before even the `City State of Muscovy was founded. Putin distorts his history, and even his geography. Russia is not a Slav nation: the Federation includes Samis in Lapland, the Tartars near the Urals, the Dagestanis and North Ossetians in the Northern Caucasus, and over 50 different ethnic groups in Siberia, like the Buryats near Lake Baikal, and the Chukchis on the Pacific coast. Meanwhile, other nations or regions like Slovakia, Slovenia, Slavonia and Poland, for example, are Slav. And in the main, so too is Ukraine.
____________
But now, I want to go back, 100 years and more, to the beginning of the First World War, when Bertrand Russel sent a letter to The Times. If yesterday, I killed a German, he wrote, I would likely be arrested, charged, tried… and punished. But if tomorrow I kill a German, I might well be praised and be called a hero. And all because someone, or some fool, has declared war.
Putin has declared war, or a “special military operation,” and apparently, he thinks this gives him the right to maim and murder. So we who think he is wrong should ‘declare peace,’ and until Russia withdraws its forces, our ambassadors and others in Moscow should indeed ignore all the usual ‘peace-time’ niceties of diplomatic protocol, and they should join the indigenous protesters, on Pushkin Square or wherever they may be, and engage in any and every peaceful, non-violent act of civil disobedience against this war. Such a tactic may well put their liberties or even their lives in some danger, but better that, surely, than policies which put the lives of hundreds or thousands of Ukrainians at risk.
More than that. Maybe certain famous individuals, preferably old people, should go to Moscow, or Minsk, or at least the Belarus border, and protest. The Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury, a rabbi, an imam, Barack Obama, Mary Robinson, Joan Baez and others – anyone who is famous and old. Maybe they should even fast, as would perhaps, if he were still with us, Mahatma Gandhi, to demand the withdrawal of all Russian forces from Ukraine.
____________
In 2004, I was an OSCE election observer in Kharkiv, an election fought between just two candidates – Yushchenko and Yanukovich – so everything was very binary, and very divisive. Yushchenko was pro-EU, Yanukovich pro-Russia. And, as in many binary contests, lots of differences were highlighted: Yushchenko preferred the Ukrainian language, Yanukovich favoured Russian… but these two languages are very similar. Eastern Ukraine opts for the Orthodox Church, the West is more Catholic or Uniate… but these two denominations are both Christian. (Well, as here in Northern Ireland, we know all too well how little differences can divide and antagonise.) Needless to say, in the election, both candidates had their parties, and in the count, both had their party agents. They were sitting next to each other, and I asked them, what was it like to compete against each other. “Oh today, we are opponents, yes; но завтра опять таки будем друзьями – but tomorrow, we’ll be friends again.”
How dangerous it was, we may say if only in retrospect, to use such a divisive voting procedure.
Ten years later, in 2014, in the neighbouring county or oblast of Luhansk, there was a referendum. In the same year, you will remember, Scotland had its referendum. And it is sobering to recall that the word Shotlandiya, Scotland, was used by Russian separatists, in 2014, to ‘justify’ the unjustifiable.
____________
So what can we do, here, to help our fellow human beings there, in Ukraine? Yes, we can supply them with weapons; for me, that’s quite a difficult thing to say, for I am a pacifist… but there’s no contradiction: I believe in the principle of minimum force, I have myself used force here in Northern Ireland, and we should do everything we can to allow Ukraine to defend itself.
And generally speaking, we should not be resolving our disputes in the way Putin thinks he can resolve his. Accordingly, we here in Northern Ireland should not be using weapons of war, as we did throughout the Troubles, (albeit on a far smaller scale), and nor should we be using any ‘false flags’, provocations, excuses for violence. I refer in particular to binary referendums.
Donetsk is planning one. They had one already, in 1991, as did Luhansk… and Crimea of course, when they and every other ‘county’, oblast, in Ukraine voted in favour of Ukrainian independence. But in 2014, these three counties then had a second vote, to reverse that earlier decision. But referendum decisions can be reversed, apparently: it is what we cater for in the Belfast Agreement, it is what some in Scotland now want to do.
The history of conflicts is often all very similar. In 1920, when Ireland opted out of the UK, Northern Ireland opted out of opting out and opted back in again, (albeit without referendums). In like manner, when Bosnia opted out of Yugoslavia, Republika Srpska tried to opt out of Bosnia. And when Georgia opted out of the USSR, South Ossetia tried to opt out of Georgia. A similar fate befell Kiev: Ukraine opted out of USSR, in 1991; next, in 2014, Donetsk tried to opt out of Ukraine; and then, part of Donetsk – it’s called Dobropillia and Krasnoarmiisk – tried to opt out of opting out and to opt back into Ukraine. In this last referendum, 69%, i.e., some two million people – so that’s twice the electorate of NI – voted to go back into Ukraine. Alas, as in the Balkans, so too in Ukraine, the powers that be – the West in the Balkans, Putin in the Donbas – recognise only those referendums, the results of which they approve.
Crazy. It’s all a bit like those famous Russian dolls, the matryoshki. Inside every doll, there’s another little one; along with every majority, there’s another minority. But this is international law. It created havoc in Yugoslavia, where “all the wars… started with a referendum,” – that’s a quote from Sarajevo’s famous newspaper, Oslobodjenje. And it has now created havoc in Ukraine.
+ Everything is connected. “Всё связано,” to quote Vladimir Vernadsky, the founder of Ukraine’s Academy of Sciences. Binary referendums can be false flags.
+ No one is an island. In Bosnia, Republika Srpska is now rattling its sabres and ballot boxes, and so too in Georgia is South Ossetia.
Accordingly, here in Ireland (and Scotland), if only for the sake of peace in Ukraine and elsewhere, we should not be trying to resolve our own constitutional questions with (‘false-flag’) binary referendums.
Thank you. Dyakuyu. Дякую.
