| |
By Eve Zibart, Washington Post Staff Writer
The Washington Post, Sunday, May 22, 1983
|
Several hundred Ukrainian-Americans tried to carry their demonstration
to the doors of the Soviet Embassy yesterday afternoon to protest the
50th anniversary of what one demonstrator called "our Holocaust."
D.C. police said four persons were arrested and charged with disorderly
conduct; no injuries were reported. More than two dozen police officers,
including some from the Special Operations Division, halted protestors
years from the embassy on 16th Street NW between L and M streets.
D. C. law prohibits demonstrators closer then 500 feet from an
embassy.
|
|
The protest, which started at 22nd and P streets NW, commemorated
the 1933 famine during which, Ukrainians charge, Stalin deliberately
allowed 7 million Ukrainians to starve. Organized by the Ukrainian
Congress Committee and the Ukrainian American Youth Association,
the protest drew a dozen busloads of demonstrators from Pennsylvania,
New Jersey, New York, Maryland and Virginia.
For a half-hour, protesters sang Ukrainian hymns and jabbed at the
lowering sky with handpainted signs, "Freedom for the Ukraine,"
"Famine--Made in Moscow," and "Today El Salvador, Tomorrow
Mexico, The Day After?"
Several raised wrists ritually bound with black ribbon. Most of the
protesters wore black buttons, centered with a skull.
As a cordon of police officers holding wooden clubs gradually backed
the crowd down 16th Street to K Street, the demonstrators chanted,
"Put Moscow on trial!" and "Russian butchers go to hell!"
|
(Click on image to enlarge it)
|
"Thirty-seven years I live here; I work in sweat shops, grateful for a
piece of bread." said a woman, who would not give her name because
she said KGB agents were among the crowd.
The demonstration began peacefully with a rally in Dupont Circle in
midafternoon. Speakers at the rally read a proclamation by Mayor
Marian Barry, declaring May 21 "Ukraine Day of Remembrance,"
a statement by President Reagan and Vice President Bush, and a
commemorative resolution from the House of Representatives.
|
By Eve Zibart, Washington Post Staff Writer.
The Washington Post, Sunday, May 22, 1983
FOR PERSONAL AND ACADEMIC USE ONLY
|
|
back
)
