 The final item of business is a member's business debate on motion 11228, in the name of Colin Beattie, on Holodomor Memorial Day 2023. This debate will be concluded without any questions being put, and I would ask those members who would wish to speak in the debate to please press the request to speak buttons, and I call on Colin Beattie to open the debate. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. Firstly, my thanks to all members who supported my motion for today's debate, and I look forward to hearing tonight's contributions. The term Holodomor is not a familiar one in Scotland. In Ukraine, it is all too familiar. As we approached the 98th anniversary of the Holodomor on 25 November, we also observed the actions of the Russian state, which invaded Ukraine nearly two years ago. It's difficult to resist the idea that we are witnessing history repeat itself. The barbaric acts against Ukrainian civilians and indeed anyone who falls into Russian hands has shocked most of us. The appropriation of Ukrainian grain and agricultural equipment reinforces the impression. But what is the Holodomor? In Ukraine, it translates as hunger extermination. During 1932 and 1933, between 3.5 million and 7 million Ukrainians died of artificially created starvation, artificially created by the Soviet state and Joseph Stalin, its dictator. We will probably never know the exact figures of all who died. There are those who argue whether that was in fact genocide, but I would ask them this, how many millions must die for the term to be accepted? Leading historians who have devoted time to studying the Holodomor have all concluded that it was genocide. 34 nations have agreed that this was genocide. The United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide in 1948 defined genocide as acts having intent to destroy in whole or in part a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, so I will be referring to this event as genocide. As we commemorate this act of genocide, we should look at the causes and consequences of this act by the Soviet state, a lesson perhaps in history. In the aftermath of the First World War, Ukraine established an independent Ukrainian People's Republic in January 1918. For three years, the European Republic fought the Bolshevik Red Army, but ultimately lost the struggle. It was subordinated to become part of the Soviet Union. Under Vladimir Lenin, Ukraine gained some small degree of economic freedom following resistance from local farmers to the forcible requisitioning of their crops and equipment. However, by the end of the 1920s, Stalin was dictator in the Soviet Union, and Stalin feared Ukrainian cultural autonomy and the possibility of an independence movement arising. So began a crackdown on Ukrainian peasants, intellectuals and cultural elites. Widespread intimidation arrests and imprisonment followed. Thousands of intellectuals, church leaders and communist party members were executed. Stalin then declared a new five-year plan, which included collectivisation of agriculture, which gave the state control over grain supplies for export and for local distribution. Grain exports were supposed to fund the Soviet Union to become a massive industrial power. History records some 4,000 local rebellions against collectivisation and against the terror now unleashed. Tens of thousands of farmers were arrested. They were either shot or sent to labour camps. The wealthier and more successful farmers, the Kulaks, were stripped of everything they owned and eliminated as a class. They were either executed or deported far away. This horror, unleashed by Stalin, set the stage for the ultimate horror of the Hallodomor. Unrealistically high grain quotas were set. These were accompanied by measures to wipe out significant numbers of the Ukrainian nation. In August 1932, a decree said that anyone, even a child, taking any produce from a collective field could be shot or imprisoned. Famine escalated and the borders of Ukraine were sealed by the Soviets. Over one-third of the villages were blacklisted. That was effectively a death sentence since those villages were surrounded by troops. Residents were prevented from leaving or receiving food supplies. In fact, that was a collective death sentence. People ate anything that might be edible, grass, acorns, cats, dogs, even in too many cases cannibalism. At the height of the Hallodomor in June 1933, 28,000 Ukrainians were dying every day. Yet, while this was going on, the Soviet Union removed 4.27 million tonnes of grain from Ukraine, enough to feed 12 million people for a year. Make no error, this was a carefully calculated and methodical extermination of millions of people by a ruthless and blurry-handed Soviet Government. It was not done in ignorance or in any kind of administrative confusion or by local officials without the knowledge and instruction of the central Government. The Soviet secret police, the GRU and the Red Army were fully deployed. At the time of this genocide, the Soviet Union denied that there was a famine and rejected fornade. In fact, it was in the 1980s before people could speak openly about this terrible period of history. Few journals wrote about this at that time and even now it is poorly reported. Significantly, the current Russian Federation has admitted famines in the 1930s but not the deliberate nature of the manufactured and artificial 1932-1933 famine in Ukraine. That is a very brief history of the Hallodomor. I believe that it is truly important that we remember these atrocities. Humanity forgets all too quickly such events, particularly if they did not happen close to home. Early in the speech, I mentioned the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. In this, Russia seems to have learned nothing. The barbarism that they inflicted in 1932-1933 does not seem to have changed. Evidence of the atrocities that armed forces have perpetrated and civilians and POWs alike seem to be well documented and well evidenced. It is difficult to see how it is possible that, after 90 years, there has been no civilising growth in Russia, no development of a better level of humanity and respect for people's lives, in particular those of their neighbouring nations. As we stand at the moment, it seems that Russia is prepared to not only sacrifice the people of Ukraine for the desires of their new czar, but there seems no limit on the number of their own people who must also pay the price. This is an utterly pointless war with no clear endgame and aggression must not be allowed to pay. Here in Scotland, the long-standing links between the people of Ukraine and the people of Scotland were shown in 2017 with the installation of the eternal memory stone on Calton Hill, Edinburgh. This was dedicated by the Ukrainian community in Scotland to commemorate the genocide of the forced famine in Ukraine in 1932-33. Those links were further enhanced with the recent formation of the parliamentary cross-party group on Ukraine. I am honoured to be the convener of that group and look forward to seeing further strengthening of the relationship between the two countries. In November 2015, there is a debate on which we should all reflect on the atrocities that have gone before and the atrocities that we see now. Let me end with a simple call that we join with the people of Ukraine and particularly those who have made their homes among us as a result of the current war in commemorating the genocide, which is the Holodomor, and in working together to ensure that this can never happen again. I congratulate my colleague Colin Beattie for bringing this timely debate to the chamber. Just over nine years ago, in 2014, near Russia illegally annexed Crimea, we debated this topic. In my speech then, I said that 25 countries officially recognise the Holodomor as a deliberate act of genocide against Ukrainian people. The list of countries has now grown to 34, including Germany, France and the United States. The United Kingdom Government said that it would only refer to the event as genocide following a determination by a competent court. Recently, Welsh Council General and Minister for Constitution, Mick Anton of MS, unequivocally declared the called Holodomor an act of genocide and urged the Scottish Government to follow suit. Genocide can refer to a range of acts committed with intent to destroy a national ethnic racial or religious group. There is no doubt that the Ukrainian Holodomor was such a case. During the Russian Revolution, Ukrainians declared an independent Ukrainian people's republic in January 1918. In 1921, that was forcibly incorporated as a Soviet republic, bar a few provinces that were taken over by Poland. That did not stop nascent movements of cultural liberalisation, nationalism and intellectualism. In fact, Ukrainian language use and education, mass media and government were actively promoted by Soviet authorities in the 1920s. However, in the late 1920s, Joseph Stalin's Bolshevik sought to eradicate Ukraine's perceived intellectual and cultural elites and its very national identity. Stalin initiated mass-scale political repression through widespread arrests, imprisonment and execution. Thousands of Ukrainian intellectuals, church leaders and Ukrainian Communist Party functionaries who supported pro-Ukrainian policies, were shot and indeed their replacements, who did not support pro-Ukrainian policies, were shot subsequently in the great purge also. Concurrently, Stalin proceeded with a collectivisation of agriculture to fund Soviet industrialisation. Self-sufficient land-owning peasants resisted collectivisation but had their belongings seized and were then executed or deported to Siberia in appalling conditions. In Ukraine, a famine was engineered by setting grain quotas so high that it was impossible to achieve. When the devastating effects of the famine became clear, the regime intensified rather than reversed its policy. The five stocks of grain decree declared that anyone, as Colin Beattie pointed out, even a child caught taking produce from a collective field could be shot and imprisoned for stealing socialist property. Flinging the country was impossible with the border effectively sealed. No-one knows how many died from three and a half to seven million from a population of just over 31 million in 1930 with some provinces losing more than a third of their people. At the height of the Lodomar, 28,000 Ukrainians were dying every day. People resorted to eating wild animals, pets and, in some cases, cannibalism. Meanwhile, Moscow rejected aid from abroad and grain rotted in warehouses and the repercussions became especially bad in rural Ukraine, and Cuba and other areas of high Ukrainian ethnicity, as well as in Kazakhstan. In the 1926 census, a Cuban population was 3.4 million, of whom almost half 49.2 per cent were Ukrainian and about 1.4 million were Russian. Other figures from the same census state that Ukrainian speakers made up 55 per cent of the population, yet, by 2002, the Russian census, only 2 per cent of the population spoke Ukrainian and less than 1 per cent were marked as definitely Ukrainian. After the famine subsided, settlers were brought in to Ukraine from Russia. In 1953, Polish Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term genocide to provide a legal concept for the Nazi Holocaust, asserted that Lodomar was, and I quote, perhaps a classic example of Soviet genocide, its longest and broadest experiment in Russification, the destruction of the Ukrainian nation. Lemkin said that because there were so many Ukrainians, the Soviets couldn't kill them all. Instead, the genocide consisted of four steps. One, extermination of the Ukrainian national elite. Two, liquidation of the Ukrainian Autosephalos Orthodox Church. Three, destruction of a significant part of Ukraine's peasantry as custodians of traditions, folklore and music, national language and literature, populating the territory with Russians to eventually resolve Ukrainian national identity. Genocide is therefore a complex process, target and institutions culture and economic existence and not necessarily immediate destruction. In the context of the on-going illegal invasion of Ukraine by the Soviet Union's de facto successor, Russia, which Colin Beatty's motion mentions, Ukrainians in Scotland and compatriots and relatives in Ukraine would welcome this Parliament and the Scottish Government unequivocally declaring that Lohdomar was indeed genocide. It seems quite extraordinary in terms of scheduling that we move from events in the Middle East, which so terrify us and so appall us, to the commemoration of events in Ukraine visited currently by fresh conflict from Russia, which intimidate and terrify us all over again. It is extraordinary that some seven, maybe million people died long before the events of the Holocaust a decade later. Two Holocausts, if you like, genocides of respective peoples, one by fascists, one by Bolsheviks. Both sides claiming to have been on the right side of history, what I call a lazy phrase, because only history can judge these things. Ultimately, I'm afraid history didn't favour either the Bolsheviks or the fascists at all. Seven million people, quite extraordinary. Differently too, the Holocaust that was visited upon the Jewish population was of Jews the continent over, beyond indeed. This was visited on the population of a single country, the working agricultural rural workforce who were effectively starved to death by a kind of collectivist nonsense promogated by Soviet kind of blinkered mentality of how an agriculture agrarian comm community should operate, which simply led by greater and greater degrees to the death of so many higher and higher quotas that couldn't be fulfilled, the repatriation to the land of anybody who sought to leave, the confiscation of the very seeds that was needed to establish and achieve a higher grain in a subsequent year, so that it was effectively a death sentence to be left to try and meet the theoretical nonsense of the Bolshevik Soviets in these ghastly years with so many just starved to death. For decades afterwards, just a denial of these things, there still is, whilst there is an absolute condemnation of Hitler and Nazism across the world, albeit unfortunately there are those somewhere on the extreme far right who will still look to them, there's still a wider sympathy sometimes for Stalin, there's an effort to rehabilitate him slightly in Putin's Russia, some of the statues are going back up and yet this man was responsible for the deaths of tens of millions across what was his own country, never mind anyone else's, and this appalling atrocity visited on the people there. Now, the Prime Minister visited last year and the run-up to this year commemorating the Holodomor, and I know there's been some debate about whether it's a genocide or not. My colleague David Mundell in the debate that took place in the House of Commons said, how would the UK standing be diminished in any way by recognising the Holodomor as a genocide? I completely associate myself with those sentiments. So I think we can quite, well not happily but quite collectively agree that this was a genocide visited on the people of Ukraine and with this ghastly symbolism and symmetry that we see this shocking conflict visited upon them yet again. President Zelensky said once they wanted to destroy us with hunger, now with darkness and cold and with bombs and weapons but they will not forget and the world will not forget their actions and references made in the motion to events across our own country in terms of support and I want to pay tribute to those communities in Clarkston and Gifnick in my own constituency that have worked so hard to make Ukrainian refugees here feel welcome and that will be the story I think of every member across the chamber. It is so depressing that in a single day, in a single day in this Parliament, we have had in this era all these years later to debate two conflicts, two conflicts which have caused so much pain in the past and continue to cause so much pain and suffering today. It was a genocide and 90 years on we should recognise and remember it as such. I am very grateful, Deputy Presiding Officer, to open with an echo of what Jackson Carlaw has just contributed. It is an astonishing day in this Parliament to be talking about events that are literally happening as we stand here and speak and events that are not far shy of 100 years ago that are happening so close to us on this continent and can I extend my compliments and indeed my thanks to Colin Beattie for bringing both this debate this evening but also for his huge work in the cross-party group about Ukraine to show the support that exists in this chamber and indeed across Scotland for Ukraine. I pause to wonder if it is needed to rehearse the true atrocity of the instance that we are talking about tonight, which has been so perfectly, graphically and importantly reminded to this chamber. If I have one slight contradiction with Colin Beattie, I am not sure that it is unknown in Scotland. I think the Ukrainians who reside here both because of being forced to over current events but going back in history rightly remind the communities that they live in of the importance of this matter. If we go back to 2017 and the importance of what happened on the hill as a remembrance here, it should be more widely known, I absolutely agree with that. I think steps like this debate tonight, steps like members of this Parliament going out and speaking to their communities about it and being present when Ukrainians in their communities speak about it is a very powerful message by why this should be remembered and remembered for what it was, an attempt to destroy a nation, remembered for what it was as an individual, a small group of individuals taking decisions about millions of people's lives and I think that we can just remember what is happening today in Ukraine going back to 2014 has been mentioned with the invasion of Crimea. I would say that I don't think it is the Russians, I don't think it is Russia, I think it is appalling leaders of that nation particularly now with Putin and the way that he wants to destroy Ukraine for some misguided appalling belief in some historic greater Soviet Union. These are individuals that reside in a country that has a right to govern itself and it speaks of a pride of the Ukrainians that they are standing up to Putin and his appalling leaders that are forcing the deaths of thousands of people and it is right that on the 25th of this month we do remember a lot more and how it echoes today all of these years later and perhaps it is something that those who seek to lead, who seek to be politicians, who seek to speak for communities, indeed listening to the debate earlier today that we remember that we need to address these things now, we cannot expect people in the future to put it right and it is our responsibility be it in the simplicity of our own tiny communities in our own country, in our own continent and across the world to do better and it is sad that it takes events like this perhaps to remind us of that but perhaps the hope of it is that it should force us not to turn away from really difficult decisions that we need to take going forward decisions that require discussions to happen because in this case upwards of seven maybe more million people paid the price since then millions of people have paid the price and perhaps it's time for politicians to remember that what they do they should do for their communities and that we do have to echo the words of Joe Cox more in common and remember that. I'm grateful Deputy Presiding Officer. Thank you Mr Whitfield and I now call Clare Adamson. Thank you very much Presiding Officer and I thank Colin Beattie for his work on the cross party group and for bringing this important debate to the Parliament this evening and for all the contributions across the chamber this evening. I first learned about the Hlodomor from my good friend and former MSP Stephen Timkevich. To the best of my knowledge at that time Steph was my only Ukrainian friend but I now have many Ukrainian friends and I want to thank the diaspora of the Ukrainian people many of whom who are in the gallery this evening for about six years ago bringing the Hlodomor to the Parliament in an exhibition at one of our exhibition spaces in the Parliament and to inform and help MSPs understand about what had happened to their family and what had happened to their country and given some of the comments about raising awareness I think maybe it's time we had that exhibition back and I would be more than happy to work with them in ensuring that that happens sometime soon. Around that time I visited Canada and the United States and I was lucky enough to go with the Presiding Officer, Kim McIntosh, at that time to the Ukrainian Museum of Human Rights. It's the first museum in the world that's solely dedicated to evolution, celebration and the future of human rights and it's a profound experience. It has a gallery called the Breaking the Silence gallery and it has exhibitions commemorating and remembering and informing people about the genocides of the world and the Hlodomor was included there because of course Canada recognises the Hlodomor as a genocide as the UK should. So we mentioned it's been a very impactful day in the Parliament today with thinking about Palestine and Gaza and I'm praying that they don't end up on that floor on that gallery and that something can be done to bring peace there too. The Breaking the Silence gallery includes a 10 minute film showing footage from the Ukraine at the time including some of the propaganda posters from the Soviets denying there was any problem in the Ukraine. Colin Beattie has laid out the situation around that very well this evening but I think we must thank journalists such as Malcolm Muggridge who then worked for the Manchester Guardian who at great risk to himself defied the Soviets, went into the Ukraine and brought back real reports about what was happening on the ground there. It was a real testament to what was happening in the Ukraine. Unfortunately that didn't suit some of the political systems here at the time and the Soviets were still moving towards being considered allies after World War II. Many many people here denied what happened in the Hlodomor but we should not today. I mentioned my friends from the Ukrainian diaspora. I know many of Stephens family now and I was very pleased to host a Ukrainian Institute exhibition showing how the current conflict is trying to destroy every part of Ukrainian culture from theatres, from churches and from trying to stop the language being spoken. I also took part in the culture summit a few years ago with Jonathan Mills on a special Ukrainian day and it was funnily enough dropping into the inbox of friends from the Ukrainian Institute inviting me to a conference on cultural diplomacy in early December. I want to ask the minister this evening, we talked a lot at that time about what Scotland could do to preserve and help Ukrainian culture and I would ask it this evening to consider and talk with me about how we might take our culture to the Ukraine and bring more of it here. I have many friends in the displaced Ukrainian community here too, some from the Ukrainian Freedom Valley, some who we met when our committee was doing work with the displaced Ukrainians and those who are settled and very welcome in my constitution at home. It is really nearly two years since the Russian authorities atrocities started but tonight I just want to say to our friends in the gallery that Ukrainian's glory has not yet perished nor her freedom. Upon us, brother Ukrainians, fate shall smile once more. Our enemies will vanish like dew in the morning sun and we too shall rule brothers in a free land of our own. I thank Colin Beattie for bringing this debate to the chamber. We must always remember and continue to learn the lessons from one of the cruelest and most horrifying human rights violations in history. Unlike Jackson Carlaw, it has not been lost on me of the afternoon that we have had in our Parliament today, and it always makes me feel proud of this Parliament when we join in the way we join in situations like this. There have been many points made by many members and I want to pick up on all of them, if I can, and pick up on the point on genocide at the end of those comments. Colin Beattie very eloquently described the situation with Halodomor and what happened. Everybody has given such meaningful contributions and given us all an opportunity to acknowledge and remember the victims of Halodomor. He talked about grain, which grain is such a basic in any need. Maslow's hierarchy of need would have that grain sitting there as a key platform for food and what people need. Grain, enough to feed £12 million for a year, was removed resulting in famine. He mentioned the cross-party group, and I'm really delighted to hear about the cross-party group. I know that they're meeting soon on 5 December, and I really look forward to how that cross-party group will work together. Not just to recognise Ukrainians in Scotland but also to live up to that oath that we've all taken here today to remember what happened in the Halodomor, and I wish the cross-party group and Colin Beattie and everyone involved my best in that. One aspect of remembering, and since that memorial stone at Calton Hill, and if you've not been up to see it, I would urge people to go up and see it, take a moment of quiet reflection and understand what happened. In Kenneth Gibson's contribution he said that Stalin was erasing the very culture of the Ukrainian people and a hungry child could be shot for taking grain, grain that in some cases rotted away. In Jackson Carlaw's contribution he said that some 7 million people of a single country effectively starved to death and then denied for decades. The deep generational hurt and trauma contained within that denial for decades is something that we all recognise, but something that we should never allow to go back into the shadows. And Martin Whitfield said that we should raise awareness. I'm pleased that all the speeches today did exactly that in this place, has a great record at doing that. We should always remember, we should always raise awareness and we should always take our words and our privileged position in order to do that and any opportunity that we can get. And one thing that struck me about Martin Whitfield's contribution was he said, hope. Hope of it should not allow us to turn away. And sometimes in the darkest of days there is a pinnacle of light and that's hope, and we should keep that alive and everything that we do. And my dear friend Claire Adamson, who I would never turn down in any invitation to take part in any of the work that she does, I will be more than happy to do that. Claire Adamson is saying that we have many, many Ukrainian friends, and I've made new friends from the families that we've looked after over the last year or so. That my thoughts every day is with one of my friends from my old council of Europe days, Alexander Sengkiewicz, who is the mayor of Nicolayev, who quite frankly has kept that city running. We will keep them all in our hearts and where they are now in the situation that they face now. Presiding Officer, on the situation about defining genocide, there is no doubt there's lots of requirements there and there is issues. I was glad to hear about David Mundell's challenge to the UK Government. I would also take that challenge, although we recognise that, a lot more, was an absolute horrific situation against the Ukrainian people. It remains the Scottish Government's position for a judicial body to make that determination not a Government. If the UK Government and its courts want to do that in international relations, we would be happy to look at that, but that in no way detracts in any way of our recognition of the Hallodomor and the Apollon tragedy for its importance to the history of Ukraine and the people of Ukraine. Presiding Officer, in this chamber today, of all days, we have expressed our solidarity with the people of Ukraine. We suffered and lost loved ones in this man-made famine. The Scottish Government recognises the pain and suffering the Hallodomor cause and its continued impact on Ukraine and the Ukrainian community, including those who have chosen to make Scotland their home. I hope that you felt our warm Scottish welcome. We welcome the tireless efforts of the Ukrainian Consulate, the Association of Ukrainians of Great Britain and all of those who keep alive the memory of those who lost their lives in the Hallodomor. It is deeply concerning that the 90th anniversary of the Hallodomor coincides with Russia's ongoing aggression towards Ukraine and its attack on Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity. The memories of this tragedy are all too vivid, with Russia once again choosing the path of terror and the current humanitarian crisis that the war has caused. I can say that Scotland condemns in the strongest possible terms Russia's illegal war against Ukraine, and we stand in solidarity with the people of Ukraine. We continue to stand for democracy, human rights, the rule of law at home and abroad, but we also continue to offer our on-going support to Ukrainians in Scotland. I am proud of the Scottish Government's work, including my own background as a qualities minister, to help to ensure that everyone in society can live with human dignity and enjoy their rights in full. Reflecting on the human tragedy of the Hallodomor reinforces why it is so important that the UK remains fully committed to the ECHR, not becoming an outlier with the likes of Russia and Belarus and leaving the 70-year-old treaty that protects our human rights and political freedoms. We know that support from the international community is vital to help Ukraine win the war and to secure longer-term peace and stability in Europe. We must continue to provide that support for as long as it is needed. Over a number of generations, Scotland has a well-deserved reputation of being a welcoming, tolerant and inclusive country. We defend vigorously the rights of our citizens. We also welcome citizens from Ukraine and beyond. They bring a rich diversity to our communities and create a vibrant and dynamic country. As part of our on-going solidarity with Ukraine, we will continue to support displaced people from Ukraine, to settle well in Scotland, doing what we can to provide that warm future and to support and build a new life here. In Scotland, just as in Ukraine, we seek to understand and learn from the past to help to shape a better future. I will close by paying tribute to the people who continue to work to keep alive the memory of those who died in the Hallodomor. Many of you are sitting in the public gallery in this room, but many others who are not here today. A horrific, man-made disaster of unimaginable scale. The Scottish Government stands with Ukraine today. Slava Ukraine.