Robert Parry: Burning Ukraine's Protesters Alive
If it happens more than once, it's a tactic
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/23596-burning-ukraines-protesters-alive
In Ukraine, a grisly new strategy – bringing in neo-Nazi paramilitary forces to set fire to occupied buildings in the country’s rebellious southeast – appears to be emerging as a favored tactic as the coup-installed regime in Kiev seeks to put down resistance from ethnic Russians and other opponents.
The technique first emerged on May 2 in the port city of Odessa when pro-regime militants chased dissidents into the Trade Unions Building and then set it on fire. As some 40 or more ethnic Russians were burned alive or died of smoke inhalation, the crowd outside mocked them as red-and-black Colorado potato beetles, with the chant of “Burn, Colorado, burn.” Afterwards, reporters spotted graffiti on the building’s walls containing Swastika-like symbols and honoring the “Galician SS,” the Ukrainian adjunct to the German SS in World War II.
This tactic of torching an occupied building occurred again on May 9 in Mariupol, another port city, as neo-Nazi paramilitaries – organized now as the regime’s “National Guard” – were dispatched to a police station that had been seized by dissidents, possibly including police officers who rejected a new Kiev-appointed chief. Again, the deployment of the “National Guard” was followed by burning the building and killing a significant but still-undetermined number of people inside. (Early estimates of the dead range from seven to 20.)
<snip>
However, as resistance to Kiev’s right-wing regime expanded in the ethnic Russian east and south, the coup regime found itself unable to count on regular Ukrainian troops to fire on civilians. Thus, its national security chief Andriy Parubiy, himself a neo-Nazi, turned to the intensely motivated neo-Nazi shock troops who had been battle-tested during the coup.
These extremists were reorganized as special units of the National Guard and dispatched to the east and south to do the dirty work that the regular Ukrainian military was unwilling to do. Many of these extreme Ukrainian nationalists lionize World War II Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera and – like Bandera – dream of a racially pure Ukraine, free of Jews, ethnic Russians and other “inferior” beings. The slur of calling the Odessa protesters Colorado beetles — as they were being burned alive — was a reference to the black-and-red colors used by the ethnic Russian resistance in the east.
Though the mainstream U.S. press either describes Parubiy simply as the interim government’s chief of national security (with no further context) or possibly as a “nationalist,” his fuller background includes his founding of the Social-National Party of Ukraine in 1991, blending radical Ukrainian nationalism with neo-Nazi symbols. Last year, he became commandant of the Maidan’s “self-defense forces.”
= new reply since forum marked as read
The thugs went into the building, shot everyone in the head then burned only their heads to try to disguise that they were shot and put the heads of fire out with fire extinguishers. One woman (the janitorial and plants service woman) was strangled with a cord around her neck but not burned. The only people that likely did burn alive was the fire at one door that people used to try to escape the building. Some of these completely burned bodies were moved to other locations in the building to try to disguise that they only burned over their whole bodies at that one door.
There's video all over YouTube about what went on, and you can clearly see the thugs wearing red armbands with their faces masked doing the dirty work outside the building as well as a large group that goes through a side entrance carrying what looks like wooden bats into the building just before the gun fire starts. You can even hear the janitor woman screaming for help just before she was murdered and see the masked murderer in that room through the broken window of the room she was in from outside the building.
There is REALLY REALLY GRAPHIC photos of what was discovered inside the building afterwards here...
http://nsnbc.me/2014/05/10/odessa-massacre-detail-investigation/
There's another thread all about this here with a lot of links and videos...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024934769
Honestly, even though I'm just about the most squeamish person alive I really didn't have that kind of problem with the photos since with the heads of the people burned they didn't really look like real humans to me. Though it disgusted me and horrified me beyond measure and broke my heart it wasn't like looking at what looks like a real person with all the blood and innards visible.
This has really shaken me up. Most of those thugs look like teenage kids, and where I get that a couple of people can be so cruel and just evil like this I'm really shocked that there are so MANY of them not only doing this but so obviously ENJOYING it. My God, you'd think they were at an unruly fan football game!
There is something terribly wrong with our species.
