Most would agree that Canada’s strong human rights record has made it a global leader. During his recent visit to Ukraine, Mr. Harper’s performance enhanced this reputation. Visiting there last fall, he took care to demonstrate Canada’s high regard for individual rights and freedoms, no mere gesture as, unfortunately, under the watch of President Victor Yanukovych, Ukraine has been experiencing Russia-like recidivism. Arrests, violence against–even questionable deaths– journalist, a trend towards religious exclusivity for Moscow’s orthodoxy and, in particular, the incarceration of political opposition leaders tell a worrisome story.
The violations were not lost on Canada. To stress our perspective on such matters, Mr. Harper visited Lonsky Prison, the site of a national archives and museum to Ukraine’s resistance to both Nazi and Soviet occupations during WWII: weeks earlier its director has been persecuted in a back-to-the-USSR manner. Then the Prime Minister met with university students whose right to free assembly had been threatened. Reactions at home and abroad were most favourable; many considered the PM’s performance prize-worthy.
Of particular significance was Mr. Harper’s visit to the Holodomor monument dedicated to some 10 million victims of the artificial famine ordered by Kremlin. Most Canadians know about the evil perpetrated by the Nazis few, however, are aware of the genocide organized by leaders of the Communist Party, in particular Joseph Stalin and Lazar Kaganovich, to starve the autochthon population and resettle the land with non-Ukrainians supporters of the Communist regime.
The genocide had been suppressed for decades although scholars like Robert Conquest and more recently Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands, Europe Between Hitler and Stalin provide a most revealing account. The tragedy begs for global recognition and the historic and ongoing dangers of this, indeed any, perverted ideology. In 2008, the Harper government recognized Holdomor as a genocide “a historic wrong ignored by the West”, as stated by the sponsor of the legislation, MP James Bezan. Therefore it did not surprise that the Prime Minister underscored Canada’s official position by visiting the monument in Kyiv.
So far so good but now things get unpleasant.
Contrary to Parliament’s intent, the Canadian Museum of Human Rights, a government body devoted to the promotion and education of human rights, decided to treat the Ukrainian genocide differently. Museum documents indicate recidivism and whitewashing. For example, only a single photo– on its electronic display– will acknowledge this monstrous crime. More space may be allocated on a rotational basis: perhaps once in a decade? The Nazi genocide, on the other hand, has a dedicated and permanent exhibit exclusively to itself.
The CMHR, a Canadian Crown Corporation reporting to the Minister of Heritage, has a mandate “…to enhance the public’s understanding of human rights, to promote respect for others and to encourage reflection…”. Its supporting material is praiseworthy in its promise to will deal with “questions of conscience”; focusing on “the right to participate”; and working to ensure its ‘branding’ works towards achieving “a world in which everyone is respected and valued”. But such words become annoying propaganda when measured against the Museum’s current approach: diminishing the importance of one of history’s greatest evils.
The Ukrainian community is aghast that such blatant discrimination is possible in fair-minded Canada, particularly in an institution devoted to rooting out injustice and inequality. This is a serious faux pas to human rights watchers; a one-sided treatment sullying the museum’s reputation even before it opens. As things stand, the museum is acollaborator in covering up a Communist regime’s crime while selectively exposing that of the Nazis. It is at best an insult and at worst a violation of Canadian rights.
And another insult. The museum resides in Winnipeg, a city where about one-in-four citizens come from Ukrainian roots first put down here after arriving in Canada exactly 120 years ago this year.
One can only hope that the Museum’s decision-makers will come to their senses and cancel any contracts furthering this error of judgement. Otherwise any well-intended award for the Prime Minister falls under a pall. Even worse, the museum undermines Canada’s reputation as a global human rights leader in a world much in need of such a beacon.
Oksana Bashuk Hepburn was a director of Communications at the Canadian Human Rights Commission
