I'm only home for a few minutes, so this is a quick blog. Check out TulipGirl.com for the latest on the elections here in Ukraine -- she'll be updated regularly.
I'm living in the tent city down on main street here in Kiev. You can see a small part of it on webcams from Independence Square, but the majority of us are farther down the street, extending about half a kilometer. The people are incredible -- everything from earthy-crunchy college types up to a cluster of Ukrainian babushkas. Volunteers bring hot tea or vareniki or old blankets to us at the perimeter.
This election was stolen through forced voting, a murder, acid attacks, ballot stuffing, ballot box theft, and literally thousands of other premeditated acts of fraud or violence. A quick example -- voting in the oligarch candidate's region was at 96%. Can anybody say "North Korea"? Despite millions of stolen votes, the oligarch candidate still only managed to win by 2%.
Anyway, the Opposition has established a tent camp and barricades downtown. The government announced it would send in troops to drive us out at 2 am last night. They gathered special forces troops (and eight buses of thugs from Donetsk) over by the Dneiper River last night, but I guess there were too many witnesses and foreign journalists. So for last night, at least, we were spared.
The Kiev city government has rejected the election as illegitimate, and several other cities are following suit today. I'm heading now to the parliament building, where we're demonstrating for them to also declare the election invalid. That would be a huge victory for a free Ukraine.
It's an amazing thing to be given such a vivid, historic chance to "work for justice." And I've been able to share with a ton of people about Christ and about the Reformation -- the fact that I'm a Protestant at a "protest" (the words are also almost identical in Russian) makes for good conversation. And the color of the Opposition is the same as that of the Reformation -- orange. Ukraine has a sense of history, and this is interesting to people.
Everyone here feels like we're making history -- a real "Chestnut Revolution". I pray that we are.
Posted by Discoshaman at novembre 23, 2004 11:17 AM | TrackBack
I hope you do have good conversations with your neighbors there. Sounds very exciting.
Posted by: Paul Baxter at novembre 23, 2004 05:17 PM