Austrian MPs call Holodomor in Ukraine a “terrible crime”

The Austrian Parliament’s National Council has adopted a resolution calling the 1932-1933 Holodomor in Ukraine a “terrible crime” of Stalin’s regime, Ukrinform reported on Saturday.

The document, adopted unanimously, also says that hunger is used as a weapon in the current Russian war of aggression against Ukraine.

The voting on the resolution was preceded by a discussion among Austrian lawmakers about whether to call the Holodomor of 1932-1933 a genocide. The liberal opposition party NEOS clearly supported the “genocide” definition, and so did the spokeswoman for the “Greens” party Ewa Ernst-Dziedzic, who said that “from a historical and political point of view,” this was a crime against humanity and genocide.

However, the right-wing populist and pro-Russian Freedom Party of Austria opposed this definition. The opposition Social Democratic Party of Austria also did not support the “genocide” definition.

Within the Austrian People’s Party headed by Chancellor Karl Nehammer, there was no consensus on the matter.

The Ukrainian World Congress urges Austria to follow the German example and hopes that calling the Holodomor a “terrible crime of Stalin’s regime” – an emotional expression rather than a legal term – is just a first step of Vienna toward recognizing it as what it actually was: a genocide of the Ukrainian people.