CNA\/EWTN News<\/a>).- A traveling exhibit currently set up in Rome\u2019s St. Silvester Square highlights the difficulties \u2013 as well as the strength, resilience, and hope \u2013 of Ukrainians who have had to flee their homes due to ongoing conflict in the country\u2019s eastern regions.<\/p>\n\u201cThrough this exhibition we want to share with you our hopes, energy, and ideas for the future,\u201d the introduction to the display reads. \u201cWe, as Ukrainians, have our rights and responsibilities \u2013 we want to be part of our nation that lives in peace and security.\u201d<\/p>\n
Displaying about 10 stories of individuals and families from different professions and situations, the exhibit shows the common theme of longing for home and the freedom to live a normal life.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are internally displaced people who left our homes, but this doesn\u2019t make us different. We were, and are, citizens of Ukraine,\u201d the introduction continues. \u201cWe don\u2019t ask the state for anything more than our right to live and be treated the same as others. To have the possibility to work for ourselves and help build our country\u2019s future.\u201d<\/p>\n
Launched by the British government through the British Embassy and the British Council in Ukraine, the exhibit was first opened in Kyiv in Nov. 2015 and has stopped in other places in the Ukraine, as well as London and Brussels. It is in Rome Dec. 5-14.<\/p>\n
The display consists of large photographs of individuals or families with their own messages superimposed.<\/p>\n
Each story and message is unique, expressing the man or woman\u2019s own particular struggles and fears \u2013 but through many of them is the same desire \u2013 not for charity, but for work, so that they can contribute to and thank their new communities.<\/p>\n
Conflict erupted in Ukraine in Nov. 2013, when the former government refused to sign the Association Agreement with the European Union, leading to months of violent protests.<\/p>\n
Tensions deepened in Feb. 2014, when the country\u2019s former president was ousted following the protests, and a new government appointed. In March of that year, Ukraine\u2019s eastern peninsula of Crimea was annexed by Russia, and pro-Russian separatists have since taken control of eastern portions of Ukraine.<\/p>\n
More than 9,700 people, including civilians, have died in the fighting between Ukraine\u2019s military and the separatists. Roughly 2 million others have been forced to flee due to violence and a lack of basic humanitarian necessities, such as food and medicine.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey ask me \u2018what is it like to lose your home?\u2019\u201d wrote Yana Cherkas, a mother of six. \u201cHow should I answer? I don\u2019t know. I don\u2019t have time to think about it. We have lived in five towns in six months. Everything\u2019s destroyed.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to be home so badly,\u201d she wrote. \u201cI ask myself, does anybody want us. What for? We have no right to vote, no normal life. I just want to settle. With no need to go further, no need to ask anyone for help, no need to survive.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI say to myself: tomorrow is a new day, and everything will be fine. Everything will come together, it\u2019s that now it\u2019s difficult. It will get easier. Donetsk remains home for us and one day I dream of returning. But they hate us there fiercely, they hate us here politely.\u201d<\/p>\n
Though Cherkas and her family have had trouble settling in the villages, others say they have been welcomed by the people in Kyiv \u2013 although the government does nothing to assist them.<\/p>\n
One is Olga Todorova, a graphic designer and volunteer from Stakhanov, in\u00a0 the Luhansk Oblast, which is controlled by the separatists. She said that since arriving in Kyiv, she and her family \u201chave met kind people who helped us,\u201d although the government \u201cless so.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOur position is this,\u201d she wrote: \u201cif you can\u2019t help, at least don\u2019t hinder.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you see total lawlessness and chaos, you don\u2019t simply leave \u2013 you run,\u201d she expressed. \u201cThe very beginning is the most difficult, the adaptation. When you think of what you had and what you left behind.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOver there, we were \u2018Ukry,\u2019 betrayers who left Luhansk to go to Ukraine. But we were luckier than most. I know seven people who were killed because of their pro-Ukrainian position. This is horrifying.\u201d<\/p>\n
Anzhelika Ostapenko, a pharmacist also from Luhansk, wrote about the fear of living and working in the middle of conflict, like a bomb that hit a nearby government building while she was working.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt night I would come to my window, look at all these people with machine guns and realize \u2013 this is it, it cannot continue like this any longer.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen people shoot near your windows and your child starts trembling with fear, the only thing you can think of is how to save your family,\u201d she wrote. \u201cSo we packed our children\u2019s stuff, got on the train and left.\u201d<\/p>\n
She noted that people in Kyiv have accepted them very well, but other people have stayed behind in the east, either because of commitments or circumstances.<\/p>\n
One is her mother: \u201cshe says that relocating at her age is like uprooting an old tree.\u201d But for Ostapenko, \u201chome is where my children are.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe only thing I ask now is to have the opportunity to earn money so that we can get a mortgage at normal interest rates,\u201d she wrote. \u201cThe rest will follow. Everything else will mend in time.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the meantime, one young mother, Elena Lusenko, wrote as if speaking a word of encouragement to her young son: \u201cYou will have a wonderful and a very happy life.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou will never be an internally displaced person because it is impossible to lose what you have inside your heart. The most important thing is that we are together, where we are truly happy.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Rome, Italy, Dec 13, 2016 \/ 12:02 am (CNA\/EWTN News).- A traveling exhibit currently set up in Rome’s St. Silvester Square highlights the difficulties – as well as the strength, resilience, and hope – of Ukrainians who have had to fle…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1031,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe"],"yoast_head":"\n
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