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Love and Hatred in Kiev

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  • Love and Hatred in Kiev

    The New York Times
    January 30, 2014 Thursday

    Love and Hatred in Kiev

    By YURI ANDRUKHOVYCH



    KIEV, Ukraine -- It has been severely cold here lately, with
    temperatures dipping below freezing night after night. What sustains
    the protesters at Independence Square in weather this bleak can only
    come from inside: an exceptionally hot mix of despair, hope,
    self-sacrifice and hatred.

    Yes, hatred. Morality does not forbid hating murderers. Especially if
    the murderers are in power or in direct service of those in power --
    with batons, tear gas, water cannons, rubber bullets, and, starting
    Jan. 22, live ammunition.

    That day, the news came about the first two protesters to be shot and
    killed by the police since the protests began in November. One of
    them, Serhiy Nihoyan, a 20-year-old Ukrainian of Armenian heritage,
    dreamed of becoming an actor. The other, Mikhail Zhiznevsky, a citizen
    of Belarus, was also young, just 25 years old. An ethnic Armenian and
    a Belarusian, giving their lives for the freedom of Ukrainians -- this
    gives the lie to the fears, held by some in the West, that the
    democracy movement here is being hijacked by Ukrainian nationalists.

    If anyone is promoting hatred it is the government. My friend Josef
    Zissels, chairman of the Association of Jewish Organizations and
    Communities of Ukraine, and vice president of the World Jewish
    Congress, wrote a few days ago that the website of Berkut, the special
    police force (and a final line of defense for the powers that be) had
    been ''flooded with anti-Semitic materials that allege that the Jews
    are to blame for organizing at Maidan,'' the central square, which has
    become synonymous with the protests.

    Mr. Zissels wrote: ''This is completely absurd, but those who are
    armed with batons and shields, now facing the protesters, believe
    this. They are brainwashed into believing that the Maidan is a Jewish
    project, and thus there is no need to take pity on anyone -- you can
    beat them all.''

    Beat them all. The police have beaten women and children, and even
    priests trying to intervene to stop the bloodshed. Berkut not only
    beats; it maims, tortures and kills. Its members like to pounce on
    individuals who have gotten separated from the crowd of protesters.
    Some have even posed for the cameras, their boots on the heads of
    victims lying on the ground. They proudly upload these photos and
    videos to their personal pages at social networking sites.

    Article 21 of our Constitution states that ''human rights and freedoms
    shall be inalienable and inviolable.''

    The abuses by the ruling authorities, and their escalating use of
    violence, have threatened to make the Constitution a joke.

    On Jan. 16, the government of President Viktor F. Yanukovych pushed
    through Parliament a package of laws severely curtailing freedom of
    speech and assembly. This week, the prime minister resigned, and the
    majority of the repressive laws were repealed, partly because of the
    wave of international condemnation.

    It is precisely for their rights and freedoms -- long and brazenly
    violated by the Yanukovych regime -- that the Ukrainian people are now
    fighting. They have been given no other choice. Our national anthem
    says, ''We will lay down our body and soul for our freedom.'' On Jan.
    19, the protests turned violent. But if no one resists the riot
    police, the thinking goes, Ukraine will be turned into one large
    prison in a matter of weeks.

    This is why an acquaintance of mine, a translator of Kierkegaard and
    Ibsen, now spends her time making Molotov cocktails, and her young
    sons, classics majors, aged 17 and 19, throw their mother's products
    in the direction of the wall of smoke on Hrushevsky Street, which runs
    past major government buildings.

    This is why an 80-year-old Kiev grandmother brought her knitting
    needles to the protest headquarters and gave them to the first
    protester she saw with the words, ''Take them, son. If you don't kill
    the monster, maybe you'll at least stop it.''

    This is why even the Hare Krishnas in Kiev now carry baseball bats.

    We are defending ourselves, our country, our future, Europe's future
    -- some with Molotov cocktails, some with knitting needles, some with
    paving stones, some with baseball bats, some with texts published on
    the Internet, some with photos documenting the atrocities.

    The police have been targeting journalists as rabidly as they have
    targeted medics taking the wounded out of the scene of clashes. Berkut
    has been treating journalists with cameras and notebooks as the enemy.
    Several dozen journalists have been wounded, hit by stun grenades,
    tear gas or rubber bullets.

    Recently, coordinators of the protest made an appeal across online
    social networks for medicine and diapers --which are excellent at
    absorbing blood. The people of Kiev began bringing drugs and nappies
    to the protest headquarters at such a scale that in just a few hours a
    new message went up online: ''Enough medication for now! We don't have
    enough storage space! But we urgently need warm clothes, bread, tea
    and coffee!'' And again, people from all over Kiev brought everything
    they could to help.

    The authorities can't understand this. Recently, some unknown thugs in
    civilian clothes kidnapped an activist and spent the night torturing
    him, demanding: Who is funding the Maidan? Which Western sources? Is
    it the State Department, or someone else?

    The regime's mental system of coordinates cannot fit one simple fact:
    The Maidan funds itself, through its own love and its own hatred.

    I have never loved my homeland as much as I love it now. Before, I had
    always been skeptical and restrained toward it. I am 53 years old, and
    had long put sentimentality behind me.

    But these days I see our women, young and old, sorting with amazing
    efficiency the donated medications and food supplies, I see hipster
    students in hockey masks and camouflage pants fearlessly going onto
    the frontline barricades, I see our workers and farmers providing
    security for the Maidan protesters, our grannies and grandpas who keep
    bringing more and more hot food to Independence Square, and I feel a
    lump in my throat.

    Yuri Andrukhovych is a poet, essayist, translator and the author of
    the novels ''Perverzion'' and ''The Moscoviad.'' This article was
    translated by Vitaly Chernetsky from the Ukrainian.



    URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/30/opinion/love-and-hatred-in-kiev.html

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