'Unsung hero' (From Barry And District News)

'Unsung hero'

A PLAQUE was unveiled this week to honour a Barry journalist who was murdered more than 70 years ago.

The trilingual plaque - in Welsh, English and Ukrainian - was presented at the University of Aberystwyth on Tuesday in memory of Gareth Richard Vaughan Jones.

Mr Jones, dubbed an "unsung hero" of Ukraine, exposed a famine in the former Soviet Union in 1932 that killed millions.

The fluent Russian speaker wrote a number of articles about the man-made famine created by the Stalinist government.

Many millions of Ukrainians perished even as the Soviet authorities denied that a famine was raging, and continued to export grain.

The story was reported around the world, but the journalist was later banned from ever returning to the Soviet Union.

Mr Jones was shot by bandits in Inner Mongolia in 1935, aged 30.

At the unveiling of the plaque, Dr Lubomyr Luciuk, the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Libeties Association's (UCCLA) director of research, said: "Today we have hallowed the memory of the many millions of a Stalinist crime against humanity, arguably the greatest example of genocide to befoul 20th century Europe.

"We have also paid tribue to a brave and honest journalist, Gareth Jones, who tried to expose the truth, only to fall victim to Stalin's men.

"He was, in some ways, the last victim of the Holodomor, the famine-genocide of 1932-33 in the Soviet Union.

"It is fitting that we could gather today in Wales, at the university where he studied, to honour a remarkable young man who paid such a heavy price for his commitment to being an honest reporter of the facts."

Mr Jones graduated from Aberystwyth University in 1926. From 1930, he acted as a foreign affairs advisor to the then prime minister, David Lloyd George.

In his short career, he worked for The Times, the Western Mail, The Daily Express, the New York Evening Post and the Manchester Guardian.

He studied at Aberystwyth in the mid-1920s, gaining a first class degree in French. He was also awarded first class honours from Trinity College, Cambridge, in French, German and Russian in 1929.