WHEREAS, 2017 marks the 84th anniversary of the Holodomor, or "murder by starvation," the tragic famine in Ukraine that resulted in the deaths of at least five million men, women, and children; and

WHEREAS, The man-made famine was deliberately caused by the Soviet regime through the confiscation of land, grain, and animals; the blockade of food shipments into the affected areas; and by forcibly preventing the starving population from leaving the region, for the purposes of breaking the resistance of Ukrainian farmers to Soviet authority and destroying Ukraine's national identity; and

WHEREAS, The Holodomor was a genocide committed by Joseph Stalin and the Soviet regime against the people of Ukraine; and

WHEREAS, Until the collapse of the Soviet Union, many denied the existence of the famine because the Soviet Union forbade foreigners from traveling to the Ukrainian countryside during that time and later barred access to government records from the era, and many official records were falsified, lost, or destroyed; and

WHEREAS, The Western journalists and scholars who witnessed the mass starvation and wrote about it were subjected to disparagement and criticism in the West for their reporting of the famine; and

WHEREAS, In 1988, the U.S. Commission on the Ukraine Famine reported to Congress that the victims were "starved to death in a man-made famine" and that "Joseph Stalin and those around him committed genocide against Ukrainians in 1932-1933"; and

WHEREAS, Although the Ukraine famine was one of the most horrific massacres in the 20th century, it remains largely underreported and unknown in the United States and throughout the world; and

WHEREAS, Washington State is now home to the fifth largest Ukrainian-American population in the United States, and Americans with Ukrainian heritage living in Washington State have enriched our state through their leadership and contributions in agriculture, business, academia, government, and the arts; and

WHEREAS, In August 2015, a memorial to the millions who perished in the Ukrainian man-made famine of 1932-33, known as the Holodomor, was erected in Washington D.C., and its dedication ceremony took place on November 7, 2015;

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, That the Washington State Senate remember and honor the millions of victims of the tragic famine that occurred in Ukraine in 1932-1933; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, That the Washington State Senate encourage individual citizens, educators, businesses, groups, organizations, and public institutions to remember the Holodomor on November 26, 2017, with appropriate activities designed to honor the victims and educate residents of Washington State about this tragedy; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, That copies of this resolution be immediately transmitted by the Secretary of the Senate to the U.S. Committee for Ukrainian Holodomor-Genocide Awareness 1932-33, and to the Consulate of Ukraine in Seattle for appropriate distribution.