Subject: Extreme situation in Ukraine  

Folgende Nachricht unserer Freunde in der Ukraine erreichte uns letzte Woche. Wir sind entsetzt und hilflos angesichts dieser schlimmen Situation.

Wir möchten unseren Freunden unsere uneingeschränkte Solidarität versichern, wir werden uns, auch international, entsprechend positionieren.

 

Sent: Wednesday, January 22, 2014 4:40 PM
Subject: Extreme situation in Ukraine  
Dear Friends from Emmaus, This is a second address of (...) to you concerning the extremely bad situation in Ukraine. On the streets of our capital Kyiv there are violence, riots, explosions of Molotov cocktails, burning buses, and general chaos. Maidan protestants against the corruptional power of President Yanukovych are being murdered starting from the morning of January 22. Journalists and leaders of the protests are being kidnapped. Situation is terrible and no one knows what is the way out of it.
For two months hundreds of thousands of peaceful people from all over Ukraine were organizing protests against Ukrainian moves away from Association with European Union. People gathered at so called Euromaidan and were beaten. Than millions stood up against the violence and asked the Government and President to quit. The protests had democratic characteristics with songs and prayers for peace.
Instead of listening to the voice of his people the President by the support of his party in the Supreme Council signed unconstitutional “laws of January 16” that are killing democracy at all. The way how the laws were voted (with hands, without proper calculation of voters, with all possible violations of the procedure) proves that their aim is to bring the fear among people and establish dictatorship. These laws are restricting freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, they are against Euromaidan activists, non-governmental organizations, and the Ukrainian media.
We as an NGO have great concerns about the law on NGOs that sais, that all civic organizations that are receiving donations from abroad shall be considered as “foreign agents”, should go through a new procedure of registration (no one knows who will get the permission for activities after that), should pay 18% tax out of each donation, should go through a number of audits. We know that in such a corruption in the country as we have today it will be impossible for NGOs to exist and act at all.
And we think this is the aim of a dictatorship regime of Yanukovych. (...) members participated in Maidan actively. Our members were on protests in Kyiv and Lviv, twice we brought truck with warm clothes to Kyiv Maidan. Other NGOs are also actively participating in the protests. But we see that we can not cope ourselves. Because we need help from international community we are addressing Emmaus International as a strong and powerful force in the world to appeal to your governments that finally they make some moves of reaction and use sanctions against those that are responsible for this escalation of the violence and anti-democratic steps towards population of Ukraine.
Ukraine January 22, 2014