“I would probably be able to talk for hours, not 7 minutes about the contents of my report but I decided to take with me a little bit to explain how Russia is destroying our identity, ” declared Yevheniia Kravchuk, rapporteur on Countering the erasure of cultural identity in war and peace.
This is a book from Kharkiv from the publishing house VIVAT and the publishing house Faktor-Druk. They were attacked in May this year and I quote a witness, ‘Books were burning together with people who printed them. Seven people dead, 50 000 books burnt.‘ Of course, it is just a tiny example.
And if we talk about cultural identity, cultural rights, the right to access culture and enjoyment of one’s own cultural heritage, it forms part of international human rights law. And the Russian Federation is using cultural cleansing as a weapon of war, to deny the existence of Ukrainian culture, identity, to erase Ukrainian historical roots, values, heritage, literature, language and traditions,” continued Rapporteur Kravchuk.
