By New Cold War.org editors, Feb. 20, 2015
The 057.ua news service reports that in the city of Kharkiv alone last year, Ukrainian police and secret service arrested 700 people accused of being ‘separatists’. That term refers to people favoring some form of decentralization of government authority in Ukraine or opposing the war being waged by the Kyiv regime in the east of the country.
Acting Deputy Chief of the Department of Internal Affairs of Ukraine in Kharkiv region, Yuri Hladík, told 057.ua that of the 700 people arrested, some 160 cases were sent to court. The agency does not report what happened to those cases.
Kharkiv is the second largest city in Ukraine. It was the capital of Soviet Ukraine for a time during the early 1920s.
These arrests by a government that touts ‘European values’ sound a lot like ‘Canadian values’, too. In October 1970, the Canadian government declared martial law in Canada in order to combat the Quebec ‘separatist’ movement of the time. Close to 500 people were arrested and thrown in jail. They included newspaper writers and editors, prisoner rights advocates, trade union leaders and advocates for the independence of Quebec from Canada. Of those arrested, only 18 were ever convicted of a wrongdoing.
The War Measures Act was applied two other times in Canadian history–during World War One and World War Two. On both occasions, it was used to deprive targeted citizens of their rights and property. That included Ukrainian Canadians during World War One. According to ‘Canadian values’ at the time, Ukrainians looked and sounded a lot like Germans, so they were rounded up and placed in concentration camps, along with Italian-Canadians, German-Canadians and other people deemed enemies and threats.
The most notorious use of the War Measures Act was during World War Two when some 22,000 Canadians of Japanense origin were placed in concentration camps. They never recovered the homes and other properties that were confiscated.
In 1976, sx years after the War Measures Act was declared in Canada, a pro-independence party was elected to the government of the province of Quebec. There have been two independence referendums in Quebec since that time. In 1980, the ‘yes’ side won 44 per cent. In 1995, the ‘yes’ side fell just short, winning 49.4 per cent.
