UWC
BOARD OF DIRECTORS MEETS IN KHARKIV
The UWC annual
Board of Directors meeting convened
in Kharkiv from August 17-18, 2005. In addition to members of the
Executive
Committee, representatives from the UWC’s various councils and
commissions as well
as the World Federation of Ukrainian Women’s Organizations, the
European
Congress of Ukrainians and other international member organizations,
the
meeting was participated in by representatives from some twenty
countries which
submitted reports either in person or in writing: Armenia, Australia,
Belgium,
Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Hungary, Italy,
Lithuania,
Kazakhstan, Poland, Portugal, Romania,
Russian Federation, Slovak Republic, Spain and the United States.
The UWC Directors adopted a budget for 2006,
amended English language By-laws to conform with action taken on the
Ukrainian
language By-Laws at the VIII Congress in 2003, accepted for membership
the
Association of Rusyns/ Ukrainians in the Slovak Republic as the central
representative
organization of Ukrainians in the Slovak Republic and the Federation of
Ukrainian Associations in Spain as a national organization.
Additionally, a
separate Council on Aid to Ukrainian Citizens Abroad was formed and
composed
primarily of representatives from Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece.
The meeting
was held at the Kharkiv Philharmonic, the site seventy-five years ago
of the
notorious Kharkiv trial where some forty Ukrainian intellectuals with
Serhiy
Yefremov at the head, were tried for anti-Soviet activity. The trial
marked the
beginning of a decade of repressions which included the liquidation of
the
Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, additional arrests of
Ukrainian
intellectuals commonly referred to as “the executed renaissance,” the
Great
Famine of 1932-33, followed by Yezhovshchyna and the extermination of
Ukrainian
political prisoners from the Solovky islands, recently (only in 1997)
unearthed
in the forests of Sandarmoch in the northwest region of the Russian
Federation.
A requiem service was held at the site of the Kharkiv trial and a
commemorative
plague was installed and consecrated several blocks away where the late
Patriarch Josyp Slipyj of the Ukrainian Catholic Church was interned in
1961.
Archbishop Ihor Isichenko of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox
Church
assisted by Ukrainian Catholic and Orthodox clergy carried out the
Requiem and
Consecration. Metropolitan Adrian of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church Kyiv
Patriarchy was present.
The UWC convocation
was greeted by the aforesaid Archbishop Ihor Isichenko and several
representatives of the Kharkiv oblast and municipal administrations
including
deputy chair of the Kharkiv oblast,
Jaroslaw Yuschenko, a nephew of Ukraine’s President. Two press
conferences
were widely attended by the Kharkiv press and UWC representatives
appeared at
various media outlets. The event concluded with a meeting open to the
Kharkiv
general populace and a concert choreographed by the Kharkiv
Philharmonic’s
director.
A. Lozynskyj
V.Pedenko
President
Secretary General
Pictures of Kharkiv
events
The three
pictures taken at the Board
of Directors meeting.
V.
P.Treteckyj and
A. Lozynskyj are opening the commemorative plague to the Patriarch Josyph Slipyj of the Ukrainian
Catholic Church .
At the
opening of the commemorative plague to the Patriarch Josyph Slipyj of the Ukrainian
Catholic Church.
At the monument to the
kobzars who became the victims of Stalinist extermination.
V. Pedenko and A. Lozynskyj at the reception given by
deputy chair
of the Kharkiv oblast Yaroslav Yushchenko.
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