Dear Editor:
Re: Remains of 190 people found in monastery in Ukraine
Sudbury Star, July 19, 2002

Shocking as this and other Soviet crimes may be, our federal Canadian authorities are continuing to turn a blind eye to the NKVD and KGB perpetrators in our midst.

Since its inception, the Soviet "experiment" has killed more people than everyone else put together, including the Nazis. Deliberately starving 7 million Ukrainians in 1933 was but a drop in the bucket for them.

These communists betrayed their socialist principles and committed crimes against humanity and yet this federal government does nothing. Despite numerous requests by Canadians from across this land, Canada's Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Section has not taken any discernible action against alleged communist war criminals in Canada.

I urge the federal government to establish a Commission of Inquiry on Soviet and Communist War Criminals in Canada. The ethnic, religious or racial origins of those who may have committed crimes against humanity and war crimes should not matter. They ought be given the same opportunity to explain their behaviour as were those accused of collaborating with the Nazi occupation in eastern Europe during the Second World War - no favouritism.

This request comes in light of recent evidence of individuals now living and publishing in Canada who were members of SMERSH, a special Soviet division responsible for the executions of Red Army soldiers and of thousands of anti-Communist civilians in eastern Europe. One of the most well known victims of SMERSH was Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat who saved Hungarian Jews during the Second World War.

Is it too much to ask that all Canadian citizens be treated equally before the law?

V. Walter Halchuk, Director
Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association
Sudbury Ontario