Dear Editor:
Re: Former KGB agent offered ticket to Russia, Burnaby NOW, Jan. 1.
After reading this story, I found it quite disturbing that a "civil liberties" organization here in B.C. would find humor (a free one-way Sochi ticket?) in the forced separation of a man from his family here in B.C. to return to Russia and probable incarceration.
And for what? Being a translator? Definitely not something detrimental to the interest of Canadian national security, I would think.
It seems to me that the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association has been on a very firm agenda to have this man out of Canada more than anyone
Why would they not afford a man and his family the same Canadian values of compassion, fairness and understanding as they would have wished on their own parents and grandparents decades earlier in the dark days of Soviet oppression?
My family goes back almost 200 years to the early Southern Ontario farm communities, and these are values that have made us who we are as Canadians and of which I hold dear.
I understand that Mr. Lennikov was "recruited" by the KGB for his language translation skills and was positioned in a low, non-decision-making position of translator.
Mr. Lennikov left the KGB after only five years, and most of that time was spent trying to get himself out of the agency - a rather "reluctant" KGB man, to say the least.
Isn't this of any significance to Mr. Roman Zakaluzny, current chairman of the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association? Would he rather Mr. Lennikov not have left the KGB or perhaps had been more ambitious in his work there? I think not.
I would suggest that both Mr. Lennikov and Mr. Zakaluzny may have very similar feelings about the KGB and possibly share some common ideals as well.
Most Canadians have never known the unbelievable horrors and suffering the Ukrainian people have felt under various Soviet regimes and the KGB, and I don't pretend to understand these horrible things as they do, but I feel that Mr Lennikov (and his family) is not the enemy.
Derek Morton, Burnaby
