http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/ukrainian...th-swastika-graffiti-20140621-zsheb.htmlA Ukrainian church in Sydney has been desecrated with racial slurs in an attack the NSW government has labelled vicious and abhorrent.
Members of the Ukrainian community woke on Saturday morning to find the St Andrew’s Ukrainian Catholic Church in Lidcombe covered in spray paint. Among the vandalism is a swastika symbol and the message ‘‘traitors fascists’’.
Father Simon Ckuj said the church partly commemorated Ukrainians who fought against Nazism in World War Two.‘‘This act completely defiles the memory of those who died fighting fascism,’’ the parish priest said on Saturday.
Despite the offensive crime, the church says it will pray for the graffiti artists at a Sunday morning service.
New South Wales Communities Minister Victor Dominello said the attack highlighted the need for strong racial vilification laws,
The attack on Friday night on the Lidcombe church was being investigated by NSW Police and was "completely unacceptable", Mr Dominello said.
"To use an international racial dispute to vilify a community in Sydney is abhorrent. The use of swastikas as a means of denigrating and attacking any community in NSW is utterly offensive."
Peter Shmigel, of the Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organisations, said the act trashed the principals of a multicultural and democratic Australia.‘‘There is no room for people like those who attacked our church to import their foreign conflicts to Australia and Sydney, where our community has made a positive contribution for 65 years,’’ he said in a statement.
The church says the graffiti, translated to English, also reads ‘‘burn in hell for the sins of Poroshenko’’, referring to the President of Ukraine.
NSW Community Relations Commission chairman Vic Alhadeff said it was "deeply disappointing that some have seen fit to import overseas conflicts and hatreds into our country".
Mr Alhadeff said it was more than an act of vandalism and was clearly designed to vilify the Ukrainian Australian community.
"This incident again reminds us why we need to have strong laws to protect people and communities in NSW from racial vilification," he said.
The Abbott government's plan to change the Commonwealth racial discrimination law, and weaken protections against offensive, insulting or intimidating actions, has been highly controversial and opposed by Mr Alhadeff and the NSW government.
A NSW parliamentary inquiry has meanwhile recommended state racial vilification laws be toughened, to make it easier to prosecute criminal offences. The Baird government has delayed its response on the issue.
Mr Dominello urged anyone with information about the attack to come forward to police.
Mr Alhadeff said the attack, which involved property damage and racism, could possibly lead to criminal charges under the NSW vilification law.
However there had been no successful prosecutions under the NSW law, and this was why the NSW government was examining the need for changes, he said.
If the words painted on the church had been made on social media, it would fall under section 18C of the Commonwealth law "which is why the removal of 18C is undesirable", he said.
With AAP
