The deadly effect of the use of cereals as a ‘weapon’ in Ukraine 90 years ago, narrated in the book Red Hunger by historian Anne Aplebaum, is now revived, on a world scale, with the blockade of food exports from this invaded country. for Russia
“Despite the obvious differences, there are several similarities between the Holomodor, in 1932, and the Ukrainian grain blockade, in 2022. From the beginning, the understanding on the part of Moscow that Hunger is a terribly effective weapon to make the most fragile“, explained to Lusa James Bakewell, a historian at the University of Sussex, in Brighton, United Kingdom.
“And the most fragile are usually civilians. Or, in the current case, civilians from Ukrainian grain-dependent countries, from least developed countries,” he added.
Another similarity between the two periods detected by Bakewell was the strategy of controlling public opinion: in 1932, pitting Ukrainians against Ukrainians, creating divisions among the population; in 2022, pitting less developed countries against more developed countries, in the hope that the latter will be able to influence the governments of the great powers, “for example, lifting of economic sanctions in exchange for the unblocking of Ukrainian ports“.
However, several experts in international law consider that it will be very difficult to establish the blockade of cereals in Ukrainian ports as a “war crime”, insofar as Moscow is only exercising its right of territorial control conquered during the invasion that began at the end of February.
Even so, food is being used as a weapon of war, with results identical to those sought and obtained in 1932-33, when the forced requisition of grain quotas from Ukrainian farmers ended with the death of some four million people.
Resistance to the Soviet regime was persecuted, their crops were destroyed, their houses burned; and those who tried to denounce the situation, including foreign correspondent journalists, were persecuted and even deported.
In a 2017 book, published in Portugal last week, under the title Red Hunger, historian and journalist Anne Applebaum describes how the Soviet Union regime had already used the famine technique as a weapon of war in Ukraine, exactly 90 years, between 1932. and 1933.
At that time, the goal of the Politburo, the ruling elite of the Soviet Communist Party, was to try to prevent the Ukrainians from gaining autonomy from the Soviet Union, taking advantage of a wave of famine that was ravaging most of the territory. .
Today, many analysts believe that the Kremlin has used the blockade of grains in Ukrainian ports to seek to influence world public opinion, creating additional pressure on governments that have to deal with the famine that this embargo is causing in many countries, particularly in the less developed.
In late May, UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned that war-induced grain and fertilizer shortages in Ukraine “threaten to plunge tens of millions of people into food insecurity, followed by widespread malnutrition and hunger.” ”.
Anne Applebaum explains how, 90 years ago, the Soviet regime starved nearly four million Ukrainians to death, in an episode that became known as Holomodor, literally “extermination by hunger.”
In Red Hunger, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist describes how the regime’s strategy was contain the national consciousness of the Ukrainians, as well as their desire for political autonomyincreasing the part of the grain that they were forced to cede to the state, centered in Moscow.
And, in the decisions that the Politburo then took, the measure of terror went further, with the creation of a cordon that prevented Ukrainians from fleeing their territory, condemned to slowly die without access to food.
As a result of another work, from 1986, Harvest of Sorrow, by Robert Conquest, Applebaum explores another perverse side of this war strategy: the dissimulation of the Holomodor, through the control of information, that is, with elaborate schemes for the diffusion of misinformation. or what is it called now fake news.
Until its end, the Soviet regime never admitted the Holomodor and any discussion on the subject was suppressed, statistics were altered and access to information by foreign correspondents was always limited to the maximum.
In recent decades, there have been many examples of the use of the starving populations tactic to obtain military advantage, which led, in 2018, to the Security Council of the United Nations to approve a resolution condemning “food insecurity” and the “hunger”. tactic in conflicts, considering it a “war crime” that kills people every day.
This war tactic has been repeated in various stages of combatsuch as Somalia, Nigeria or the Lake Chad region, where warring parties deliberately destroy crops and burn grain stores to cause famine and hasten the surrender of enemies.
The situation in Syria or Central Africa, particularly in the Lake Chad region, shows that the tactic of directly inflicting starvation on civilians affected by the conflict is highly effective.with organizations like Global Rights Compliance or the World Food Program pointing to these “war crimes” as being responsible for tens of thousands of deaths a year.
These situations are happening, as we speak. But they do not open the news, nor do they occupy the front pages of the newspapers. But hunger as a weapon of war is killing people every day,” Bakewell recalled.
Therefore, months after the UN considered the deliberate imposition of hunger as a “war crime”, the assembly of countries present at the International Criminal Court approved a supplement to the Rome Statute, determining that this strategy in conflicts can be judged even when it is not proven that there were deaths by starvation.
Source: Observadora
