Violence and protests in Ukraine have calmed since an interim government took control of the country and issued an arrest warrant for former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who fled the country’s capital, Kiev.
For freshman computer science major Mars Farahat, an international student from Egypt, the situation looks all too familiar.
“My country is in revolution right now, and I just think people should get along,” Farahat said. “Let people be. I think politicians fight and … innocent people die; that’s what happens and nothing gets fixed.”
Farahat said he is disappointed to see Ukraine experiencing issues similar to those suffered in his country.
It’s a sentiment echoed by other CSULB students.
“I think it’s very devastating,” Malena Hanson, a sophomore journalism major, said. Hanson said she learned about the Ukrainian unrest on television, where images of protestors and police in riot gear circulated widely.
“I know that a lot of people were injured,” Hanson said. “I think it’s really sad and I think it’s good that they’re trying to promote change, but I feel that the way they’re doing it isn’t the best. I don’t think people should be dying.”
Protesters flooded the capital in November after Yanukovych rejected a deal that would have increased trade agreements between Central Europe and Ukraine and helped to modernize Ukraine’s economy, according to BBC News.
Instead, Yanukovych accepted $15 billion in loans and cheaper gas supplies from Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The violence escalated in January, when the Ukrainian Parliament passed anti-protest laws in an effort to cap opposition, according to BBC News.
On Feb. 18, police and rioters began exchanging gunfire while police attempted to clear a peaceful protest camp. As a result, 77 people were killed and nearly 600 were wounded, according to BBC News.
Both police and protestors were injured, and many of the protestors involved were also students, according to BBC News.
Jeremiah Smith, a senior English major, said he doesn’t think people are fully informed about the issue occurring abroad.
“No one knows s**t about it, all we hear is second-hand news stories,” Smith said. “Honestly, the only place I’ve heard about it was on the TV in [the library while I was] waiting for a computer. I hope they start a worldwide revolution … Everybody wants to die for something they believe in.”
