Ottawa, ON – The Hon. Pierre Poilievre, Leader of the Conservative Party of Canada and the Official Opposition, released the following statement on Holodomor Memorial Day:
“The Ukrainian people have long known the true face of communist ideology: that wherever the hammer and sickle are found, there is death and hunger. It was this murderous ideology that drove Joseph Stalin, and others like him, to commit atrocities that shocked the conscience of humanity.
“Today, freedom-loving people around the world pause to remember the victims of the Holodomor, Stalin’s man-made famine that murdered millions of Ukrainians between 1932 and 1933. In 2008, Canada recognized this horrific crime as a genocide that sought to ‘destroy the Ukrainian people’s aspirations for a free and independent Ukraine’.
“Inside the Soviet Union, this trauma was compounded by generations of enforced silence. Many families learned of relatives lost in the famine decades after the fact, some even only following the collapse of the USSR.
“In the end, even through deadly starvation, executions and prison camps, the Ukrainian spirit refused to be broken. In Soviet times and into our own, the Ukrainian people boldly preserved their native language and customs in the face of those who would see them erased.
“Conservatives stand in solidarity with the Ukrainian people as they mourn the victims of Stalinist brutality – and as they repel an enemy who seeks, yet again, to murder innocents and repress Ukrainian culture.
“As the criminal regime in Moscow continues to draw on its Soviet past, Conservatives will fight to ensure Ukrainians have the weapons and resources they need to resist.
“Vichna pamyat.”