President of Ukraine calling on international community to commemorate Holodomor victims

Addressing Ukrainians the world over, and the whole of the international community on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the 1932 - 1933 Great Famine (Holodomor) in Ukraine, President Viktor Yushchenko called on everybody to join in the mourning events and light a candle of memory on November 22.

In Yushchenko's words, truth about the Holodomor is becoming known to the broad public in the whole of the world. "It cannot be concealed any longer. The darkness of the Stalin-time night of 1932 - 1933 is at last being dissipated. The Holodomor has already been recognized a crime, and condemned by many states and international organizations, regional governments and parliaments, municipal councils all over the world," the President emphasized. The parliaments of 14 countries of the world have already acknowledged Holodomor as genocide.

The head of state expressed confidence that the international community must realize that it will be impossible to prevent crimes against humanity in the future before crimes of the past are condemned.

President Yuschenko addressed letters to the Vatican and Istanbul to ask Pope Benedict XVI and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I to remind in their prayers of the innocent people who perished during the Great Famine in Ukraine.