The Youth Nationalist Congress all-Ukrainian youth organization has announced the collection of signatures for a petition to exclude OUN-UPA symbols from the list of discriminatory signs, reads a statement posted on the organization's Web site on Saturday.
“The petition calls on the leadership of international institutions to exclude the OUN-UPA flag, banners with the portraits of Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych and a heraldic symbol ‘Galician Lion’ from the FARE list of offensive and discriminatory signs,” reads the statement.
The authors of the petition believe that “FARE was incorrectly informed and misled by a particularly biased and prejudiced opinion of the people who have a personal negative attitude to the abovementioned historical figures, and this was the main reason for the inclusion of these symbols and figures in the list of those prohibited.”
“During the Nuremberg Tribunal, which assessed and judged Nazism crimes and its organizers, OUN and UPA were not included in the list of organizations and agencies that collaborated with the Nazi regime, thus tying these structures and their leaders to Nazism is irrelevant from a legal point of view,” reads the document.
After collecting the signatures the initiators of the petition are planning to send it to FARE Executive Director Piara Powar and FIFA President Joseph Blatter.
As reported, the FIFA Disciplinary Committee at a meeting on September 27 decided that Ukraine would be banned from playing in the Arena Lviv stadium as from today and for the whole duration of the preliminary competition for the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia.
