Zakarpattya lawmakers spurn petition by their Lviv colleagues

The proposal to read the Lviv deputies statement was tabled by Zakarpattya lawmaker Volodymyr Pipash but was backed by only 30 deputies out of the total of 85.

Meanwhile, Batkivshchyna moloda, a youth NGO in Zakarpattya, has strongly opposed the construction of provocative monuments. “The young BYuT members are against fanning interethnic hostilities. Tolerance and respect for other nationalities has always been a trademark feature of Zakarpattya residents,” NGO members said. They demanded that Zakarpattya Governor Oleh Gavashi ban the monument construction.

Sadly, Oleh Gavashi has declined to ban the construction of a monument on the Veretsky mountain pass, arguing that the monument will signify the forced resettlement of Hungarians to Zakarpattya and enhance international links.

In Kyiv, the Svoboda Ukrainian Association, UNA-UNSO, Stepan Bandera Tryzub, Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and other patriotic organizations staged pickets outside the presidential secretariat demanding to stop humiliation of national feelings of Ukrainians and ban Hungarian symbols on the Veretsky mountain pass, at the site of mass murders in 1939 by Hungarians of 600 combatants of Karpatska Sich, a Ukrainian state set up in Zakarpattya in 1939.

The monument is to be unveiled on March 15. According to Svoboda leader Oleh Tyahnybok, the opening has been timed to coincide with the anniversary of resettlement of Hungarians to Zakarpattya.

The Lviv deputies statement stresses that the monument stands at the burial place of 600 Karpatska Sich defenders (still awaiting exhumation) who were the first to oppose the Fascist invaders in 1939.

Meanwhile, the Democratic Association of Hungarians in Ukraine has come up with a statement expressing concern over the “anti-Hungarian campaign launched by Ukraine’s mass media about the construction of monuments on the Veretsky pass and Mukacheve castle.” “The so far isolated cases [of anti-Hungarian attacks] have become regular,” the statement runs.