OUR MISSION
OWING TO OUR INITIATIVES MORE THAN 700,000 RUSYNS LIVING IN UKRAINIAN ZAKARPATTIA WILL GET A CHANCE FOR RECOGNITION AND SELF-DETERMINATION
CHRONOLOGY OF DISCRIMINATION
December 1, 1991, Rusyns and other Zakarpattia residents voted for autonomy of the region as part of Ukraine. Since then several thousand strong Rusyn community has been regularly discriminated on a national basis. As opposed to Hungary, Slovakia, the Check Republic, Serbia, Poland and other countries where Rusyns have officially been recognized as a national minority, Ukraine doesn’t consider them to be one contrary to the UN request of August 17, 2006 on elimination of “discrimination by the Ukrainian authorities of Rusyns”.
As a result of a frame-up of the 2001 Ukrainian Census, the official number of Rusyns was intentionally counted 70 times lower. Referring to the fake data Kyiv refused to invest in preservation of the Rusyn culture.
March 7, 2007, the Zakarpattia Oblast Council recognized on the local level the existence of the Rusyn nationality. That provoked an extremely negative reaction of Kyiv.
Adoption on December 15, 2007, of the declaration demanding to create for Rusyns “an administratively self-governing territory under international control” by the Rusyn organizations of Zakarpattia triggered further ethnocide of Rusyns in the form of criminal persecution of the Rusyn movement leaders, withdrawal of the community’s real estate, and the ban of its interaction with international organizations.
THE HARD TRUTH
ONLY 40 OUT OF 2000 SCHOOLS IN ZAKARPATTIA LIMITEDLY STUDY THE RUSYN HISTORY, LANGUAGE, AND CULTURE.
78% OF ZAKARPATTIA RESIDENTS INCLUDING MORE THAN 800,000 RUSYNS VOTED FOR A SPECIAL STATUS FOR THE REGION ON THE REFERENDUM BUT THEY WERE IGNORED
300,000 RUSYNS BECAME LABOR MIGRANTS AND LEFT THEIR HOME BECAUSE OF IMPOSSIBILITY TO GET A JOB ON THE TERRITORY OF UKRAINE
Realization of the Rusyns’ legal rights is still impossible in conditions of legalization of radical nationalist groups in Ukraine.
We call upon European politicians and human rights activists to push on Ukrainian authorities to follow democratic values and recognize Rusyns as a national minority with correspondent social protection. Together with Rusyn organizations we are working on collective appeals to the EU, OSCE, PACE, ECHR, UN. We will keep acting until Kyiv makes a decision that guarantees the right for national identification and self-determination for the Zakarpattia Rusyns.