On May, 7 this year NGO «Common Goal» took part in the work of the round table of the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (European Council) devoted to the problem of racism, xenophobia and intolerance in Ukraine.
At the round table the representative of «Common Goal» Maria Semykoz expressed the deep concern of the public organization about growing level of xenophobia and racism in Ukraine during the recent years, increasing number of crimes on racial grounds and absence of the real fight from the side of law enforcement authorities against this disgraceful phenomenon.
The information of international, as well as Ukrainian NGOs evidences the growing wave of hatred crimes on the ethnic grounds since 2006. In particular, according to the monitoring of the Congress of National Communities of Ukraine 14 attacks on racial ground and 2 murders were registered in 2006, in 2007 there were 87 attacks and 6 murders, in 2008 – 83 attacks and 4 murders.
Surely, the leading role in the struggle against the cruelest demonstrations of racism and xenophobia must be executed by the law enforcement authorities. And many experts and representatives of these authorities talk about strengthening the work of the government and the Ministry of Internal Affairs in this direction, in particular, the foundation of the Interdepartmental working group for counteraction to xenophobia, ethnical and racial intolerance, intensification of international cooperation of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in this field, special trainings for the employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs conduction and other measures, about which authorities proudly report on their sites.
At the same time, official information that « Common Goal» succeeded to get from the Supreme Court of Ukraine, the State Legal Administration of Ukraine, the Ministry of Internal Affairs about the amount of the cases and condemned persons by the Article 161 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (Violation of equality of rights of citizens because of their racial, national belonging or attitude towards religion) testifies the lack of actual counteraction to the phenomena of racism and intolerance in Ukraine.
Namely, according to the information of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, only 22 crimes have been registered since 2004 by the Article 161 of the Criminal Code. Among them: 5 in 2004, 3 in 2005 , 3 in 2006, 2 in 2007, 3 in 2008, and 1 for the 3 months of 2009. Thus, according information of the highest judicial bodies of Ukraine, for the last 5 years only 12 cases were examined by this article in the courts of Ukraine (1 in 2004, 4 in 2005, 5 in 2006, 0 in 2007, 2 in 2008); sentences were passed only in 2 cases; 4 were halted, and just 3 men were condemned.
Confronting such information with numerous reports in mass media and data of public organizations, it becomes clear, that activity of Ukrainian law enforcement authorities in opposing crimes on the grounds of racism and intolerance appear after verification only the imitation of the fight and concealment of the real picture. And the primary purpose of the activity is not eradication of such crimes, but «window dressing» in front of public and international institutions.
We consider that it is the time to get rid of the illusions concerning the special tolerance of our society and that xenophobia and racism is unusual to it. Tens, and even hundreds evidences of people which recently became the victims of such crimes in Ukraine demonstrate extraordinary sharpness of this problem to Ukrainian society. The national awareness of the threat of intolerance and mobilization of all available resources of the society is needed to fight these forcible crimes, as well as of discrimination on ethno-racism grounds displays in public and political discourse, in work of state authorities, and at domestic level as well.
Thus, «Common Goal» would like to caution human rights fighters, mass media, public organizations from measuring the level of the racism problem seriousness in Ukraine only by murdered, or by official statistics. A value of human life is absolute. Every case of racism, xenophobia and intolerance, especially of forcible character is a tragedy of the whole society regardless the amount of victims. For this reason it is frightening to hear our ministries reporting that «at the moment there are no reasons to consider, that growth of violence on the grounds of ethnic or racial intolerance possesses a mass character». As history teaches, when such reasons appear, it is already too late to counteract.
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