Gareth Jones -- A Profile in Courage

By Aussiegirl

Please read the following press release from the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association about a memorial erected to a little known and heralded hero of human rights, Gareth Jones. Gareth Jones is the anti-Duranty. While Duranty won a Pulitzer Prize for his deceptively glowing tales which denied the Ukrainian famine in l933, Gareth Jones risked his life to tell the truth.

MEMORIAL UNVEILED TO WELSH JOURNALIST WHO EXPOSED GENOCIDAL SOVIET
FAMINE

The first-ever trilingual (Welsh-English-Ukrainian) plaque was unveiled today at
the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, honouring Gareth Richard Vaughan Jones, a
journalist with The Western Mail. Traveling surreptitiously in Soviet Ukraine,
in March 1933, Jones, who spoke Russian fluently, soon thereafter wrote a number
of articles about the man-made famine orchestrated by the Stalinist government in
what had been the "breadbasket of Europe." He then himself fell prey to a determined effort to discredit his reporting. Many millions of Ukrainians perished even as the Soviet authorities denied that a famine was raging, and continued to export grain. They were joined in their cover up by some Western journalists, including the now notorious Walter Duranty of The New York Times.

Commenting on the plaque unveiling, the UCCLA's director of research, Dr. Lubomyr
Luciuk, said:

"Today we have hallowed the memory of the many millions of victims of a Stalinist crime against humanity, arguably the greatest example of genocide to befoul 20th century Europe. We have also paid tribute to a brave and honest journalist, Gareth Jones, who tried to expose the truth, only to fall victim to Stalin's men. He was, in some ways, the last victim of the Holodomor, the famine-genocide of 1932-33 in Soviet Ukraine. It is fitting that we could gather today in Wales, at the university where he studied, to honour a remarkable young man who paid such a heavy price for his commitment to being an honest reporter of the facts."

For more on Gareth Jones please go to this link.

For more on UCCLA please go to this link.