81 years later,
on May 2 2014, Trade Union House in Odessa was Burnt to the Ground – Over
100 People Were Murdered by the Fascists and the AWL's Allies in
Ukraine
Hitler proclaimed May 1 1933, as a national holiday. He told the workers:
“You will see how untrue and unjust is the statement that the revolution is directed against the German workers.”
The next day, Hitler ordered the Sturm Abteilung (SA) to
destroy the trade union movement. Their headquarters were occupied, union funds
confiscated, the unions were dissolved and their leaders arrested. Many ended
their lives in Dachau. 169 different trade unions were put under Nazi control
as the Nazis established the Labour Front under
Robert Ley as a means of controlling the German working class.
Memorial lights in memory of the murdered anti-fascists
On May 2 2014
after an attack by neo-Nazis and fascists of the Right Sector, armed with weapons,
on peaceful protestors in Odessa, many retreated to Odessa’s Trade Union
Centre.
Dmitry
Rogovsky of the Right Sector was clear:
"The aim is to completely clear
Odessa [of pro-Russians]. They are all paid Russian separatists."
burying bodies secretly
The 'liberal' Guardian reduced a fascist atrocity to 'clashes' between opposing sides
What happened was
covered up from the start. To the Guardian
it was merely a question of “violent and chaotic clashes” between pro-Russian separatists and “pro-Ukraine activists” (i.e. not
fascists or neo-Nazis). The Guardian’s Howard Amos told how ‘The seizure of the trade union building was
the violent culmination of a day of street battles in this Black Sea resort
city.’ Amos reversed what happened.
The clashes began after protesters
gathering for a rally in support of a unified Ukraine were attacked by
pro-Russia activists armed with clubs and pistols.
The Police stood
by and watched as the fascists set light to the building and then entered by
side entrances to finish off those who were still alive. Many of the photos in
this blog are extremely disturbing but I have made the decision that it's better to tell the truth about these fascist barbarities than to
obscure it. It is also best to make it clear just who the friends of some on the British left - in particular the AWL, ACR and RS21 - are.
What is
happening today is a direct result of the events surrounding the burning alive
and murder of ordinary trade unionist and protesters in Odessa in 2014. Yet
there are some sections of the Left in Britain, who refuse to see it that way
and seriously believe that the real issue is one of Ukrainian self-determination
rather than an attempt to suppress ethnic Russian Ukrainians and their national and
linguistic rights within a Ukrainian federation. To say nothing of the continuous expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe.
We can expect no
better of the pro-imperialist Alliance
for Workers Liberty which has a 40 year old record of backing US wars,
whether it is in Iraq, Afghanistan or Israel. Despite its concern over ‘anti-Semitism’
in the Labour Party the AWL has no problem covering for Ukraine’s neo-Nazi battalions.
British Military Commanders are training the Azov Battalion who are integrated into the National Guard
What is surprising is that Anti-Capitalist
Resistance, the British section of the 4th International under
Gilbert Achcar, a Professor at SOAS, London University, has taken a similar
position. An article by AWL’s Sacha Ismail Using
"anti-imperialism" to avoid siding with Ukraine sides with Achcar
in his debate
with the SWP’s Alex Callinicos. That fact alone should tell ACR that something
has clearly gone wrong with their politics as they end up cheerleading NATO’s
proxy war in Ukraine.
Despite the SWP’s wrong
characterisation of what is a civil war in Ukraine as ‘inter-imperialist’,
Callinicos at least understands that US and NATO expansion is the cause of the
war.
Fascist Militia on the march in Odessa
The same does not apply to Achcar
whose article Contemptuous
Denial of Agency in the Name of Geopolitics and/or Peace positively
delights in supporting NATO’s war mongering. Not a word about the fascist
militias leading Ukrainian resistance.
Today we
have the neo-Nazi Azov battalion integrated into the Ukrainian National Guard, armed
and trained
by the United States and British military as well as Israel. See Why
is Israel arming Ukraine’s neo-Nazi militias?
If you want to understand the background to what is
happening in Ukraine I highly recommend John Pilger’s The rise of fascism is again the issue.
Written in March 2015 Pilger
presciently predicted what is now taking place. He wrote of the attack on the ethnic
Russians in the East and
If Putin can
be provoked into coming to their aid, his pre-ordained “pariah” role in the West will justify the lie that Russia is
invading Ukraine.
The Kiev regime turned on
the ethnic Russian population in the east with the ferocity of ethnic
cleansing. Deploying neo-Nazi militias in the manner of the Waffen-SS, they
bombed and laid to siege cities and towns. They used mass starvation as a
weapon, cutting off electricity, freezing bank accounts, stopping social
security and pensions.
More than a million refugees
fled across the border into Russia. In the western media, they became unpeople
escaping "the violence" caused by the "Russian invasion".
The Nato commander, General Breedlove - whose name and actions might have been
inspired by Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove - announced that 40,000 Russian
troops were "massing". In the age of forensic satellite evidence, he
offered none.
I found this the most shocking of all the pictures
reproduced here
These Russian-speaking and
bilingual people of Ukraine - a third of the population - have long sought a federation
that reflects the country's ethnic diversity and is both autonomous and
independent of Moscow. Most are not "separatists" but citizens who
want to live securely in their homeland and oppose the power grab in Kiev.
Their revolt and establishment of autonomous "states" are a reaction
to Kiev's attacks on them. Little of this has been explained to western
audiences.
On May 2, 2014, in Odessa,
41 ethnic Russians were burned alive in the trade union headquarters with
police standing by. The Right Sector leader Dmytro Yarosh hailed the massacre
as “another bright day in our national
history”. In the American and British media, this was reported as a “murky tragedy” resulting from “clashes” between “nationalists” (neo-Nazis) and “separatists”
(people collecting signatures for a referendum on a federal Ukraine).
The New York Times buried the
story, having dismissed as Russian propaganda warnings about the fascist and
anti-Semitic policies of Washington's new clients. The Wall Street Journal
damned the victims – “Deadly Ukraine Fire
Likely Sparked by Rebels, Government Says”. Obama congratulated the junta
for its “restraint”.
Below are two excellent articles from the World Socialist Web Site. The first article
shows the lengths to which the New York Times and the western media went to
cover up the atrocity. The second article What took
place in Odessa on May 2? describes in harrowing detail the fascist attack
on protesters in Odessa, aided and abetted by the Ukrainian state.
New York Times
covers up fascist atrocity in Odessa
5 May 2014
The criminal character of the US-European Union intervention
in Ukraine was tragically exposed for all to see Friday when supporters of the
US-installed regime in Kiev, led by neo-Nazi Right Sector thugs, set fire to
the Trade Unions House in the Black Sea port of Odessa, killing 38 pro-Russian
demonstrators who had taken refuge in the building.
The anti-Kiev regime protesters had retreated into the building
after the Ukrainian nationalist mob set fire to their nearby tent encampment.
Authorities say 30 people died from smoke inhalation and another eight were
killed when they jumped from windows and balconies in an attempt to escape the
blaze.
According to eyewitness accounts, those who dropped from the
building and survived were surrounded and beaten by Right Sector fascists. Video
footage shows bloodied survivors being attacked.
RT Footage of the Attack on the Trade Union Centre in Odessa and the Massacre of its Occupants by Fascists of the Right Sector
This massacre occurred on the same day that government
military forces, including armored personnel vehicles and helicopter gunships,
attacked towns in the southeast of the country under the control of pro-Russian
opponents of the regime, which was illegally installed last February in a coup
led by Right Sector paramilitaries and backed by Washington and the EU.
The far-Right Svobada party on the march with a picture of Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera
The Obama administration, along with the governments of
Germany, France, Britain and the other European imperialist powers, bears
political responsibility for Friday’s atrocity. They have sponsored the Right
Sector, as well as the neo-fascist Svoboda party, and seen to it that they were
integrated into the new anti-Russian regime in Kiev.
The US media, led by the so-called “newspaper of record,” the
New York Times, shares political responsibility, having brazenly
promulgated government propaganda and lies since the Ukraine crisis began last
November. The Times, in particular, both in nominal “news” stories and
in columns by State Department mouthpieces such as Andrew Higgins, C.J.
Chivers, Roger Cohen, Nicholas Kristof and Thomas Friedman, has promoted the
line that the incipient civil war in Ukraine is the result of Russian
aggression, not US-European subversion.
In order to promote this grossly distorted version of events,
the Times has gone so far as to publish
an article with fabricated “evidence” and doctored photos supposedly
proving that the rebellion in southeast Ukraine is the work of Russian military
and intelligence forces—a story the newspaper was forced to retract—and
dismissed as Russian propaganda, warnings about the fascist and anti-Semitic
politics of Washington’s ultra-right allies in Kiev. Chivers
has also penned on-the-spot reports on the right-wing Maidan protests in Kiev
sympathetically painting the ultra-nationalist paramilitaries as honest
patriots and obscuring their fascist politics and pedigree.
Thus it is not surprising that the Times responded
to the fascist murder of 38 people in Odessa on Friday by burying the story and
deliberately obscuring the identity of the perpetrators. The only mention of
the torching of the Trade Unions House and murder of 38 people holed up inside
occurred in a story on page A7 of the Saturday edition of the newspaper—on the
fourth page of the International section.
The reference to the massacre,
moreover, was a fleeting mention well down in the article, carefully formulated
to avoid attributing blame. The authors, C.J. Chivers (Who else?) and Noah
Sneider, wrote:
Violence also erupted Friday in the previously
calmer port city of Odessa, on the Black Sea, where dozens of people died in a
fire related to clashes that broke out between protesters holding a march for
Ukrainian unity and pro-Russian activists.
The Sunday Times
published a front-page on-the-spot report by Chivers and Sneider from Slavyansk
on the anti-Kiev government insurgents. Despite being unable to produce any
evidence of the presence of Russian spies or troops, the authors wrote that “one persistent mystery has been the identity
and affiliations of the militiamen.”
To further bolster the US State Department line they wrote,
in relation to a rebel leader named Yuri, whom they described as “an ordinary eastern Ukrainian of this
generation,” that his background as a former Soviet special forces
commander in Afghanistan “could make him
authentically local and a capable Kremlin proxy.”
Mention of the torching of the Trade Unions House and murder
of dozens of pro-Russian protesters in Odessa was once again relegated to the
back pages. The article falsely stated that “it
was not immediately clear who had started the blaze.”
The cover-up by the Times is consistent with the
dishonest treatment provided by the rest of the so-called “mainstream” press in
the US—only more crude than most. The Washington Post had a front-page
article that featured the deaths in Odessa and acknowledged that the fire was
set by supporters of the Kiev regime, but omitted any mention of the Right
Sector.
The Wall Street Journal in a news report attributed
the fire to “a clash between
pro-government and anti-government mobs.” In an editorial published
Saturday, the Journal actually implied that Russia was responsible for
the mass murder. The editorial stated: “Pro-Ukraine
demonstrations in the southeast are large, and the Russians have tried to beat
them into silence. Some three dozen people died on Friday during clashes in
Odessa.”
In downplaying the mass killing in Odessa and concealing the
identity, politics and US connections of the perpetrators, the American media
is not simply covering up for the fascists and the regime in Kiev, it is
concealing the criminal responsibility of the Obama administration and American
imperialism.
Even as Ukrainian military forces were attacking protesters
in the east and fascist mobs allied to the government were burning and killing
in Odessa, President Barack Obama was giving his unconditional support to the
actions of the regime at a joint White House press conference with German
Chancellor Angela Merkel. “The Ukrainian
government has the right and responsibility to uphold law and order within its
territory,” he declared, and went on to praise Kiev for its “remarkable restraint.”
At a meeting Friday of the United Nations Security Council,
US Ambassador Samantha Power put the entire blame for the violence on Moscow
and called the military crackdown in the east “proportionate and reasonable.”
Nothing of any significance that the US puppet regime in Kiev
does is independent of its masters in Washington. That the US is calling the
shots in the mass repression of anti-government forces in eastern Ukraine was
highlighted by the separate visits to Kiev of Central Intelligence Agency
Director John Brennan and Vice President Joseph Biden, after each of which the
regime launched new attacks on the rebels in the east.
The United States has worked closely with the neo-fascist
Svoboda party as well as the Right Sector, and signed off on their
incorporation into the government it installed in Kiev after the February 22
putsch that overthrew the elected, pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych.
Initially, the head of Right Sector, Dmytro Yarosh, was offered the post of
deputy head of internal security, but he turned it down in order to operate
more freely while providing the regime with a pretense of separation from the
fascist militia.
Nevertheless, the Kiev government set up a new National
Guard, recruited largely from the Right Sector and other ultra-nationalists and
fascists, and has thrown it, as well as the Right Sector directly, against
pro-Russian oppositionists in the east to supplement the operations of the
Ukrainian military.
In an interview last month with the German publication Spiegel
Online, Yarosh boasted of state support for his forces, saying, “Our battalions are part of the new
territorial defense. We have close contact with the intelligence services and
the general staff.”
The handprints of Washington are all over the fascist
massacre in Odessa, and the New York Times, along with the rest of the
“mainstream” media, is exposed as an accomplice. The cover-up of this crime by
the Times is a guarantee that it will whitewash even greater crimes of
US imperialism in the days and weeks to come.
What took place in Odessa on
May 2?
13.5.14
New information, eyewitness testimony, photos and videos
reveal the extent of the massacre carried out by fascist forces in the
Ukrainian city of Odessa on May 2.
The day began when opponents of the Kiev regime assembled in
tents in the centre of Odessa to collect signatures in favor of a referendum
for a federal system in Ukraine. This peaceful gathering was then attacked by
groups of fascist thugs who had been bussed into the city from Kiev and
Kharkov. The storming of the tents is shown in this video, [removed
by Youtube] which shows hundreds of thugs armed with clubs, shields and pistols
marching into the middle of the city and attacking anti-government protesters.
To escape the fascist onslaught, the anti-Kiev activists
retreated to the city’s central Trades Union building, a massive stone
structure consisting of five storeys. The building was then surrounded by the
neo-Nazi mob who proceeded to blockade the doors. Bawling “burn them” the nationalist thugs then set fire to the front of the
building with Molotov cocktails. Photos show the fascists preparing Molotov
cocktails on the street.
During this entire period, the Ukrainian police watched on
and did nothing to restrain the fascists. Instead they arrested 130 of the
anti-Kiev protesters and survivors of the massacre. There are no reports of
arrests by the police of any of the neo-Nazis who stormed the trade union
building.
One video [removed by
Youtube] shows some of the reactions of the thugs surrounding the building. One
man, wearing a yellow-blue armband and identified as an activist in the Maidan
demonstrations in February, is seen shooting at people trying to escape from
the windows.
Four minutes into the video, one man calls for more Molotov
bombs to be tossed into the building: “Throw
them, throw them!” A few seconds later a grenade explodes at the front of
the building.
As the flames spread on the second floor, people began to
jump from the windows. On the ground, the ultra-nationalists shout: “Jump! Glory to the Ukraine!”
Shots aimed at those inside the burning building came from
behind police lines, indicating that the police supported the fascists. The
police also did nothing to prevent the mob from blocking the path of fire
engines attempting to reach the fire. This delay doubtless cost extra lives.
Initially the media reported that the total of around 40
victims of the masssacre died directly as a result of the blaze—from smoke inhalation,
or from injuries sustained when they jumped from windows.
The media have maintained a total silence on gruesome photos taken
inside the building after the fire that indicate that several victims were
murdered and did not die from the fire—suggesting that the fascists were able
to enter the building and systematically execute those inside. One photo shows
a pregnant woman bent backwards over a desk with a wire wound around her neck.
She had evidently been strangled.
These reports expose the attempts of Western officials and
media to cover for the reactionary far-right regime in Kiev and blame the
massacre on the pro-Russian forces that were its victims. The Swedish foreign
minister, Carl Bildt, who has longstanding links to neo-conservative US think
tanks, posted on Twitter on the same day of the massacre, noting: “Horrible with at least 38 dead in Odessa.
Seems to have started with pro-Russian attempt to get control of buildings…..”
The aim of the provocation in Odessa on May 2, followed in
the past days by the latest Ukrainian military offensive in Mariupol, is to
intimidate all opposition to the putsch regime in Kiev, which has pledged to
implement the program of drastic austerity dictated by the IMF and EU. To this
end the governments of Washington and Berlin are prepared to collaborate with
the reactionary filth responsible for the atrocity of May 2 and even risk
military conflict with Russia.
Naturally the Guardian,
(2.5.14).which was so exercised about ‘anti-Semitism’ in the Labour Party, got
in on the act as it did its best to whitewash the neo-Nazi forces in Ukraine in
an article Ukraine
clashes: dozens dead after Odessa building fire
Still no justice: Ukraine
marks anniversary of deadly post-Euromaidan clashes in Odessa
Five years have passed since the deadly clashes in Odessa, Ukraine, but there is still no sense of justice. The constantly-delayed probe has only led to one conviction, while the courts have been harassed by far-right activists.
More than 1,000 people came on Thursday to Kulykove Pole in Odessa to lay flowers in memory of the victims of the fierce and chaotic clashes that rocked the city in 2014. The tragic events left 48 people dead. Most of them perished inside the Trade Unions House, which was set on fire during the standoff between pro-coup activists and their opponents.
The death toll, as well as the images of charred bodies lying on the stairs of the burnt-out building, shook the nation. Yet, as of today, only one person has been convicted in relation to the clashes, Deputy Interior Minister Sergey Yarovoy said. So what exactly happened in Odessa that day and who is responsible for the bloodshed?
From street battles to deadly inferno
Located on the Black Sea coast, Odessa was mostly known as a quiet, peaceful town, a popular tourist hub since Soviet times, with a nice climate and vibrant culture. The spring of 2014 divided its history into two parts. The tragedy unfolded on the heels of the Euromaidan protests and bloody coup in Kiev which inflamed tensions across the country. The tense atmosphere in the city reached a boiling point on May 2, when scores of football fans flocked there to watch a game.
Joined by Maidan Self-Defense (a pro-coup group) and far-right group Right Sector, they decided to hold a massive ‘unity of Ukraine’ rally downtown. They were met there by local anti-coup and pro-federalization activists. The standoff quickly escalated into brutal street fights. Six people were gunned down.
The anti-coup activists retreated, taking refuge inside a large five-story building known as the Trade Unions House. They were chased down by the pro-unity and coup supporters. Some of them were filmed hurling Molotov cocktails at the building and firing at the windows. Others cheered on as the fire rapidly spread.
The first floor was soon engulfed in flames, forcing people to seek refuge on the rooftop. Those less fortunate hid from the fire on narrow drip cups, while some jumped to the ground. People in the crowd outside reacted in different ways. Some tried to save people from the raging inferno, but others in the pro-unity camp attacked those who had just barely made it out alive.
5 years and no justice
As bereaved Ukrainians were laying wreaths at the steps of the building and carrying placards with photos of the dead on Thursday, many felt that the authorities have let the victims down.
“My husband and brother died. Both were burned right here,” a sobbing woman said, pointing at the refurbished Trade Unions Building.
“How is it even possible that, in a civilized country, people were burned alive at a city center just like that?” said another.
Many wonder why the case has taken the investigators so long, given the amount of publicly available footage of the clashes.
The UN seems to have similar thoughts. Five years have passed since the tragedy, but “no meaningful progress” has been made in the investigation and in bringing the perpetrators to justice, the organization’s mission in Ukraine noted in March.
Court proceedings have stalled and are repeatedly delayed. As a result, some defendants have spent years in custody or under house arrest. Others, like the local police chief, accused of inaction during the clashes, fled the country.
The investigation was also accused of bias against pro-federalization activists. Out of more than two dozen defendants, only one was pro-unity. There were multiple reports of far-right groups pressuring the court to release the man. Two hearings were called off “due to the court’s failure to select a jury panel and disruption of the proceedings by ‘pro-unity’ supporters,” a UN report said.
In another incident, far-right activists clashed with police outside the court building in Odessa, injuring 35 officers.
Nationalists were outraged that two anti-Maidan activists were acquitted for their role in the May 2 clashes. Both were quickly arrested again, this time charged with “conspiracy to undermine the territorial integrity” of Ukraine, and remain in custody to this day.
The authorities could not prove the men were guilty, but did not dare let them walk free either, because “the radicals would come and start an intimidation campaign,” Kiev-based political analyst Mikhail Pogrebinsky told RT.
The judges are being intimidated. The authorities don’t want to face the nationalists because they are well-organized. As long as the authorities continue such policies, the situation won’t change.
I submitted the following comment to an article by Sacha Ismail’s article
on the Alliance for Workers' Liberty website Using "anti-imperialism" to
avoid siding with Ukraine. It doesn't seem to have appeared. It seems that like Anti-Communist Capitalist Resistance, they are afraid to debate their politics. I can't imagine why!!
We are not going to agree on the nature of the war in Ukraine which is essentially a civil war between the Ukrainian state and its neo-Nazi militias and its Russian speaking citizens in the Donbas and elsewhere to after the US funded fascist coup in 2014 found themselves under attack by the Azov Battalion and other fascists. The Ukrainian state found that up to 95% of its army didn't want to take part in the attacks on ethnic Russian Ukrainians and that was why the fascists were armed and co-opted to the fight.
It is interesting that nowhere in the above article does AWL's Sacha Ismael even mention the neo-Nazis at the heart of the Ukrainian state. For a group that was so hot on 'left antisemitism' I am bemused that you are so unconcerned by the genuine article. It is as if 'antisemitism' was always a pretext for your pro-imperialist politics of support for Zionism and the Israeli state.
It is the same with the Afghan 'resistance' against the Soviet Union, which was resistance to the Peoples Democratic Party of Afghanistan, a liberal regime which emancipated women but then came under attack from feudal reactionaries in the Mojahideen. The Soviet intervention in support of this regime was clearly not imperialist unlike the US support for the Islamic fundamentalists. In latter years the AWL, taking its league from British and US imperialism was second to none in attacking Islamic fundamentalism but at the time was quite happy to support anyone that the CIA supported.
So I was amused at Sacha Ismael's formulation regarding this:
'Any hesitation or qualifications to positive socialist support for the Afghan “resistance” concerned its extreme-right politics and sectarian characteristics, rooted in various ethnic-religious minorities in Afghanistan and murderously opposed to other minorities. Neither of those kind of problems is anywhere near decisive in Ukraine.'
Really? So the Azov and Adair Battalions don't exist do they? Fascists haven't been absorbed into the Ukrainian state itself as armed military formations? The Right Sector didn't burn out the Trade Union centre in Odessa in 2014 and murder probably over 100 protestors and trade unionists?
Who do you think occupied and 'defended' the city of Mariupol if not the Azov Battalion? who carried out the massacre at Bucha if not the Safari Battalion of the National Police, heavily populated by the fascists.
The fact is that in its determination to support Western imperialism the Alliance for Workers' Liberty is prepared even to cover for outright neo-Nazis. When I challenged Pete Radcliffe on this at a recent Not the Andrew Marr Show where he was debating Chris Williamson, he was noticeably reticent about Ukraine's neo-Nazi formations. I can't think why!
Yes it is a shame that the AWL was proscribed by Keir Starmer recently. Blatant sectarianism given that there is no disagreement between you on international issues and imperialism.
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