UCCA President's Remarks Delivered at St. Patrick's Cathedral on November 19, 2011 to Commemorate the 78th Anniversary of Ukraine's Genocide of 1932-1933

23 November 2011

I would like to ask each of you to concentrate for a moment, and picture yourself as a child … a child whose day dreams should be filled with joy and laughter, but instead your only thought is of the gnawing hunger pain in your stomach that will not cease...Imagine seeing hostile armed units, forcefully entering your homestead in search of food and confiscating your family’s every last morsel - every grain of wheat, every kernel of corn, every chicken, every pig, every cow…. Envision watching members of your family, those closest and most dear to you,  slowly and painfully wasting away from hunger – wasting away to mere skin and bones in a slow and miserable death…imagine your  sorrow, your helplessness, your fear…

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Open Letter of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America to the President of Ukraine

21 September 2011

Dear Mr. President!

In September of 2010 the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA), the umbrella organization representing over one million Americans of Ukrainian decent, addressed our concerns to you in an Open Letter. To date, the Ukrainian government, under your leadership, has done very little to address the issues and concerns brought up in the letter.  Rather, the situation with regard to human and national rights has only deteriorated, as evidenced not only by the recent arrests and incarcerations of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and former Minister of Internal Affairs Yuriy Lytsenko, but also by recent political repressions within the country.

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REMEMBERING 9/11

09 September 2011

This Sunday, people around the world will solemnly commemorate the tenth anniversary of September 11^th.  On this day a decade ago, the United States became the target of a massive terrorist attack which threatened to shatter the peace and security of our nation, and brutally ended the lives of nearly 3,000 innocent victims at New York City’s World Trade Center, Washington, DC’s Pentagon, and in the fields of Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

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UCCA Calls for Immediate Release of Tymoshenko

05 August 2011

The Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, the umbrella organization of the over one million Americans of Ukrainian descent, is deeply concerned about the condition of Ukraine’s former Prime Minister, Yulia Tymoshenko. As reported in the press, Kyiv’s Pechersky District court ordered her arrest and detention today.

The UCCA calls upon Ukrainian authorities to immediately release her from prison. Furthermore, as the representative body of Ukrainian Americans, the UCCA urges the United States government to publicly condemn her political imprisonment and utilize all diplomatic efforts to ensure the safety of her life and her release.  The Yanukovych regime’s selective use of law enforcement, which has resulted in probes of political opposition leaders and the arrest of Yulia Tymoshenko and others, is one in a series of anti-democratic policies of political persecution.  The world’s democracies cannot remain silent while basic human rights are being violated and the rule of law is nothing more than a command system.