A journalist is facing prison time for allegedly defacing a memorial to Ukrainian Nazi collaborators at a cemetery in Alberta
Police and prosecutors in the Canadian province of Alberta have classed a monument to Ukrainian veterans who fought for Nazi Germany as a protected “war memorial” when charging a journalist who allegedly defaced it, according to Canadian news website The Maple.
The Canadian government has previously been accused by Russia of protecting Nazi war criminals who emigrated to the country after WWII.
Police in the city of Edmonton in the province of Alberta claim that journalist Duncan Kinney vandalized the structure in St. Michael’s Cemetery. The monument honoring Ukrainian veterans of the SS “1st Galician Division” was sprayed with the words “Nazi Monument 14th Waffen SS” in August 2021.
The 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS consisted mostly of Western Ukrainians, and was implicated in war crimes. Many of its members immigrated to Canada after WWII.
According to police, Kinney was also arrested and charged in October 2022 with one count of “mischief relating to war memorials” for allegedly spraying the words “Actual Nazi” on a statue of a Ukrainian nationalist and Nazi collaborator Roman Shukhevych located at the Ukrainian Youth Unity Complex in Edmonton. Shukhevych was involved in the massacre of tens of thousands of Poles and Jews during the Second World War.
The journalist has denied the allegations and is contesting the charges in court, The Maple wrote. If found guilty, he could be sent to prison for up to 10 years. Kinney and his lawyer argue that the journalist has been deliberately targeted by police for investigating “numerous” cases of misconduct in the force.
According to Polish-born former Alberta deputy premier and cabinet minister Thomas Lukaszuk, the authorities are misinterpreting the law by extending the protection it offers to Canada’s wartime enemies and those who committed war crimes.
”I think it clearly shows that Edmonton police and the Crown prosecutor’s office… are lacking, grossly, in historical knowledge,” Lukaszuk told The Maple.
The monument to Ukrainian SS veterans, allegedly defaced by Kinney, has a family link to Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, The Maple noted. Freeland’s maternal grandfather, Michael Chomiak, served as a Nazi propagandist in occupied Poland during the war and helped to raise the money for the monument, journalist and author Peter McFarlane told the outlet.
One member of the 1st Galician Division was 99-year-old Yaroslav Hunka, who received two standing ovations in the Canadian parliament in September 2023 during Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky’s visit. The parliamentary speaker later resigned over the incident, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau issued an apology.
Russia has accused Canada of “whitewashing” the crimes of Adolf Hitler’s regime by failing to prosecute the former Nazi soldier, and rejecting a request by Moscow to extradite Hunka.
