BRAINWASHING OF KIDS IN CRIMEA

Crimean children are being targeted by the Ukrainian nationalistic propaganda. This academic year which started on September, 1 the Crimean school students will be brainwashed by new history books. They depict Russians as occupiers who mistreated, killed and exterminated Ukrainians by an artificially created famine. This hatred of Russia is being force-fed a region where the majority of the population claim Russian ancestry. Moreover, on the eve of the back-to-school day, a local children library in Sevastopol opened an exhibition of Ukrainian nationalistic literature. In Soviet times, the Gaidar Library had been a centre for Communist propaganda among school students. Under the new regime it changed its political orientation. The Tavrichesky Kurier (on-line edition of the Crimean Committee, http://www.freecrimea.org/) reports that the exhibition hall at the Gaidar Library is now full of portraits of Yushchenko and Timoshenko (president and prime minister of the Ukraine). Some books displayed at the exhibition were published by Ukrainian Catholic organisations. In Evpatoria (a resort city on the Western coast of the Crimea) the only well equipped and sufficiently funded school is the Ukrainian one, though the overwhelming majority of the evpatorian residents speak Russian. Sources report that in summer students from this school are regularly sent to the Western nationalistic regions of the Ukraine to stay with NGOs for additional brain-washing.