My Speech from the “Bucha Massacre Silent Protest,” 04/10/22
Bodies.
Blood.
Entrails.
Everywhere.
russian soldiers intruded onto our soil, into our cities, our towns, our villages, our homes. They were sent to destroy and obliterate anything and everything in their wake. As if that was not enough, they intruded into our bodies.
They intruded most brutally, most sadistically, most corporeally. They inserted themselves into the purest, most innocent, most defenceless of beings: into our women and our children. To them we are a no mans land but they have come to stake their claims and break our bones and charr our skin with marks of their russizm, their lunacy, their tyranny.
Untreated and undiagnosed they are the ultimate case study of psychopathy. The plague of humanity, the grim reaper, the most infectious disease.
They the disgrace guilty of crimes most unfathomable. The sick 11 sadists that raped a 9 year old girl child then carved their disgusting “Z” into her chest, cut open her stomach, her insides turned inside out by their malfeasant savage hand.
They are the rapists that used and abused our bodies like toys, that cut open 10 year old girls whose bodies were too small, too young to bear their vile manhood, to fit them inside. They are the nauseating gag reflex at the back of our throats where they lodged their cocks like spears that pierced and stabbed and deadened our souls, our minds, our bodies.
They are the sadists that bludgeoned and beat and burned and carved an innocent girl after they had had their fill of her body. The arsonists that took fire to her skin to leave their despicable swastika on her chest, red brown with blood curdling, blue purple with bruises forming even in the stillness of death you are the last breath of far too many.
russia, you are the virus that spread like wildfire through my land, that burned my home, that took my sanity, and possessed my body with the angriest thoughts.
But we are not afraid. We are furious.
You the silent killer that steals into our homes at night when we should be sleeping but you the monster under the bed that keeps crawling on top.
You the beasts that raped and tore from the inside the bodies of our women then set them on fire with gasoline on the side of the road like a spectacle. For show. For your entertainment.
That made the children watch their mothers be raped then murdered. That made mothers watch their children be raped and murdered.
You are the clinically insane venereally infectious sexually perverted beasts. You the deviants destroying life at our expense. You the pollutants of our wombs, the depression upon our minds impressed forcefully, brutally, and hatefully.
You the laughing stock of the world that sees your savagery, mocks your thievery but fears you still too much to do enough by us. The world that slaps “sensitivity” warnings and controls onto our photos and articles of upsetting nature so you can shield yourself from our lived reality and crawl back into your hole, and live in peaceful dumb unawareness.
No more.
We stand here before you today, naked, bound up, blood-smeared, hysterical, distraught, deranged, angry. Because we do not have the luxury of sensitivity controls to fake normality. Because every day we wake up we have to check whether our loved ones are still alive. Because every morning there is some new tragedy, some new disaster the russian army has wreaked upon our homes. Because we have to confront you with the brutalities of russian terrorism, and the perpetrators of our genocide.
We stand here before you today in the nude because ours are the bodies of our fellow women and children who were brutally raped and murdered by the russians, deprived of everything: clothing, honour, life. We are tethered to each other by blood as much as we are bound together by enemy: their ropes — the tentacles of our imprisonment, our death grip.
We stand here in black because you donned us in funeral wear for life — eternally grieving for our homes that you turned to mass graves, ever burying, ever somber, ever grieving. We stand with blood and dirt smeared on our faces because we stand here proxy for those poor, mutilated bodies of women and children you killed — bodies abused, dragged through the mud, wiped into dirt, skin torn and torched like the pages of our history — ever burning under russian fire.
We stand here because it could be us, just because we are Ukrainian.
We stand here, hohlushkas as the russians would no doubt call us, reclaiming the term that once meant something else, a term appropriated by the russians as part of their hate speech against us. A word that they use to belittle and humiliate us, to intimidate us. This word — another item of their looting, thievery, their cultural appropriation.
A word that in its earliest form meant strength, resilience and resistance. A word that was used to describe our cossack warriors in the 14th century, that in ancient mongolian stood for blue and yellow — the colours of our flag, our country, our freedom.
Today, we take it back — we turn it back around on you, killer russia, for on our shoulders we carry the failed efforts of your oppression with heads held high.
We stand here with the word on our foreheads because we are not afraid to own our identity.
We will not be subjugated and scared into compliance by your violence. You may indulge in idiotic, unfounded and historically inaccurate fantasies, you may call us what you will, you may write onto and cut into our skin whatever you want but we will never cease being what you most despise. And in so being your greatest peeve we claim our power.
We stand donning our vinky because we are proud to be Ukrainian, because the women and children you butchered, whose blood you pointlessly and brutally spilt, will never die. Because we will ensure that their memory is alive and breathing. That their memory will continue to blossom and never leave our minds. We will ensure that their memory will be strong enough to take the stand against you for you will answer for everything.
We bear silent witness because your bestiality has left us speechless.
We stand mute, choking on rope because while much has been said, there are no words, no obscenities, no level of voice loud and furious and fitting enough to describe the actions of russia’s sadistic rapists, misogynists, child murderers, lowlife looters.
And no words sad and poignant in their power enough to describe our pain, our losses, our ambivalent hatred for you.
The you that we despise, the you that is a collective, the you that is the 64th motorized rifle brigade, you the Bucha butchers, you the 36th naval infantry brigade that shelled and shot and slaughtered and continue to shell and shoot and slaughter in Mariupol, you the bombers of Kramatorsk, the looters of every home, the killers and rapists of Irpin, Sumy, Chernihiv, Donbas, Luhansk, Odessa and many more.
You the radioactive waste more toxic than Chernobyl, the threat to humanity, the disgrace of the world.
Despicable you are the one that made body bags our final resting place, that spilled our blood upon the pavements of our own land, like a rainstorm never-ending, drowning, overflowing our streets but not fast enough to sweep you off your feet and drown you out.
Our wombs — the sarcophagi of your redemption, the looted temples you inserted yourself into, uninvited, most unwelcome, most violent.
Our chest — the canvas of your defacement, the reflection of your brutality, the mirror to the world. The careless world, the willfully ignorant world, the blind world, the purposely unseeing, comfortably ignorant apathetic world. Still not saying enough. Still not doing enough.
We stand here, testament to the genocide of our people, proxy for the rape victims of russizm, witnesses to your cowardice. You the complacent world, the russian oil-guzzling world, the capitalist pervert that watches and often does nothing except state its regrets — or acts far too late.
Today, we left with the russian consulate a jar of blood, tampons, condoms. Because russia wants our blood so bad it will bleed children for it. Because girls in Ukraine pack condoms with them when running away because they fully expect to be raped by russian soldiers. While nato and world leaders debate heavier sanction packages. While they keep buying russian oil, funding our mass slaughter.
We are thankful for all that our government, along with other world leaders, has done for our country. But it must do more. Because we need more. More fighter jets. More tanks. More heavy artillery. More weapons. Heavier sanctions. Cessation of all international trade and business with russia. Expulsion of their diplomats. Deportation of their oligarchs in hiding. And most importantly, embargo on their oil and gas. Because it is their oil spilling into other counties that spills our blood, that funds our murder.
You may find my language disturbing, unsettling, too direct. But try as hard as I might, there is simply no neat clean terminology to describe what is happening in Ukraine right now. And I do not stand here to sugar coat for the sake of your comfort. I stand here to unsettle the world, to honour the bodies of russia’s victims with the truth. The tough, brutal, heart-wrenching, gut-churning truth. We stand here, naked and exposed because our women and children and animals too lay naked and exposed and defaced and carved and scorched and raped in the streets while your satellites, like silent sceptres, watch on silently — you a sick voyeur, world. Do more.
We stand here because you must do more. Because if you do not, our women and children will keep turning up in body bags, raped, carved, tortured:
Bodies.
Blood.
Entrails.
Everywhere.
For this
We will never forget.
We will never forgive.
Special thank you to all the girls that came out, in black, in nude, blood-spattered, angry, determined to share our message, condemn our oppressors, spread awareness. To all that cried and felt and hurt, I feel your pain. May this pain only make our resistance stronger.
Slava Ukraini!
