Bill Text: WV SCR20 | 2024 | Regular Session | Introduced

West Virginia Senate Concurrent Resolution 20

Introduced

Bill Title: Proclaiming fourth Saturday of November to be annually designated as Ukrainian Holodomor-Genocide Remembrance Day

Spectrum: Partisan Bill (Republican 3-0)

Status: (Engrossed) 2024-01-31 - To House Rules [SCR20 Detail]

Download: West_Virginia-2024-SCR20-Introduced.html

SENATE CONCURRENT RESOLUTION 20

(By Senator Weld)

[Introduced January 29, 2024]

Proclaiming the fourth Saturday of November to be designated annually in West Virginia as "Ukrainian Holodomor-Genocide Remembrance Day."

Whereas, Ninety-one years ago, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and his totalitarian regime committed an act of genocide through the implementation of an engineered famine by confiscating all foodstuffs from the Ukrainian people, resulting in a brutal and mass starvation that caused the deaths of 7 million to 10 million innocent men, women, and children; and

Whereas, This genocide, known as the Holodomor, translates to "murder by starvation," was specifically designed by the Soviet regime to punish independent-minded Ukrainians for their resistance to Stalin's political, economic, cultural, and social subjugation; and

Whereas, Even as the Soviets continued to export Ukraine's grain to the rest of the world, Ukrainian farmers who tended to the farms in the breadbasket of Europe, were purposefully starved in a slow and painful death; and

Whereas, At the height of the Holodomor in 1933, Ukrainians died at a rate of 28,000 people per day, with nearly one-third of its victims being children under 10 years of age; and

Whereas, Hundreds of archival KGB documents created during this genocide detailed and described the Soviet regime's intention and actions taken to destroy Ukraine's national identity by deporting and executing Ukraine's religious, intellectual, and cultural leaders and prosecuting or executing others who dared to speak of the Holodomor; and

Whereas, In 1988, the U.S. Commission on the Ukrainian Famine officially recognized the Holodomor as an act of genocide; and

Whereas, The official recognition of the Holodomor as a genocide by the Government of Ukraine represents a significant step in adjudicating Soviet crimes and in reaffirming Ukraine's national identity and the advancement of efforts to establish a democratic and free Ukraine that is fully integrated into the Western community of nations; and

Whereas, Once again, Ukraine finds itself assaulted by relentless Russian aggression designed to suppress a freedom-loving nation and its social, cultural, historical, economic, and national development; and