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Visit to the 'Execution by Hunger: Holodomor 1932-1933' Exhibition
Thursday 01 March 2018, 07:36 pm
As part of their out-of-classroom experience, a total of 47 students and 4 lecturers from the International Relations (IR) and Media programmes visited the exhibition of ‘Execution by Hunger: Holodomor 1932-1933’ which was held at the University of Malaya Art Gallery recently. The exhibition, supported by the embassy of Ukraine in Malaysia, was coordinated by the Ukraine 3000 International Charitable Fund, to highlight the gruesome effect of a man-made famine against the Soviet-Ukrainian people under the dictatorship of Joseph Stalin.
The Holodomor or also referred to as the Great Famine has been long ignored by the international society and to bring light and recognition to the event, Ukrainian Government has organised similar exhibitions all around the world such as Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Throughout the visit, the IR and Media students were exposed to the reality and adversity of the Holodomor which had caused the death of estimated 6-7 million people. The students had the opportunity to gain knowledge from a historic documentary produced based on the first hand experiences of the survivors of the Holodomor, which detailed how Ukrainian farmers were forced to give up their crops for taxes. As a whole, the exhibition allowed students to understand the plight of victims and at the same time learn about the history of the Holodomor and its effect on Ukraine today.
One of the aims of IR as a discipline is to understand the struggles of the past and try to prevent it from occurring in the future. We appreciate this opportunity created for the students by the lecturers and hope that APU’s IR and Media students were able to learn from the mistakes of Stalin’s regime, thus appreciate the value of human rights and social justice in the world to be ‘better leaders of the future’.