Poland’s lower house of parliament,
the Sejm, has voted to declare World War II-era killings committed by Ukrainian
nationalists against Polish civilians “genocide” in a move that could provoke
tensions between the two neighbors.
Kyiv, which rejects the genocide
label for the crimes, reacted cautiously, with President Petro Poroshenko
expressing "regret" over Warsaw's move.
Poroshenko cautioned that the
resolution could be used against his country. Ukraine has been embroiled in a
conflict with Russia-backed separatists that has claimed more than 9,400 lives
since April 2014.
Poroshenko also called for
reconciliation and forgiveness between the two nations.
The move by the right-wing-dominated
Sejm reverses a 2013 decision led by liberal lawmakers that stopped short of
calling the killings of tens of thousands Poles by Ukrainian nationalists a
genocide.
“The victims of the crimes committed
in the 1940s by Ukrainian nationalists were not duly commemorated, and the mass
murder was not defined as genocide in accordance with the historical
truth," reads the Sejm resolution, which was adopted by a 432-1 vote with
one abstention.
Historians say that in 1943-44
members of the paramilitary Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) massacred between
35,000-60,000 Polish civilians, including many children, women, and elderly in
the Volyn region of what is now northwest Ukraine, known in Polish as Wolyn.
The UPA's main objective was said to
have been to win Ukrainian independence by ousting Nazi and later Soviet
occupiers and to clear Poles from territories that were historically Ukrainian
land.
The killings provoked bloody
reprisals by Polish partisans grouped in the anti-Nazi and anti-Soviet Home
Army (AK). They killed an estimated 20,000 Ukrainians.
None of the massacres was officially
acknowledged under communism, but they have remained a painful part of Poland’s
national consciousness.
The Sejm resolution also recognizes
Polish crimes, saying: "Nor can one dismiss or downplay acts of Polish
revenge on Ukrainian villages, during which civilian populations also
perished."
"I'm sorry to hear about the
decision of the Polish Sejm. I know that many will seek to use it for political
speculations,” Poroshenko wrote on Facebook.
“However, we must return to the
commandments of [Pope] John Paul II -- forgive and ask for forgiveness. Only by
joint steps can we achieve Christian reconciliation and unity. Only together
can we clarify all the facts of the tragic pages of our common history."
Andriy Deshchytsia, Ukraine’s
ambassador to Poland, also said he regrets that "preference was given to a
unilateral assessment of political events, rather than professional or even
international Ukrainian-Polish expert research and relevant legal conclusions
about what happened."
Poland has been a strong backer of
Ukraine’s independence and democracy, and has been a Western counterbalance to
Russia’s influence.
Warsaw has also supported closer
ties between the European Union and Kyiv.
Occasionally, controversies from
their shared history have resurfaced between the two neighbors, who share a 500
kilometer border, though without a major impact on bilateral relations.
In 2013, the liberal government
adopted a softer version of the resolution to maintain amicable relations with
Ukraine, which was moving closer to the European Union.
The 2013 referred to the war-time
mass-murders as "ethnic cleansing characterized by signs of genocide.”
But Jaroslaw Kaczynski, Poland's
powerful leader of the governing right-wing Law and Justice Party (PiS), has
long pushed for the killings to be labeled genocide.
Kaczynski holds no government post
but is widely regarded as Poland’s real powerbroker.
The PiS gained won a clear victory
in October’s parliamentary elections on an antimigrant populist platform,
handing a heavy defeat to the liberal Civic Platform.
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