Ukrainian Canadian Congress Advisory and Coordinating Committee on Exhibits at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights Topics regarding Holodomor, Internment, Oppression under Totalitarian Regimes and Human Rights Legislation/Conventions to be included in the CMHR exhibits 24 June 2013 Acronyms: UCC = Ukrainian Canadian Congress, CMHR = Canadian Museum for Human Rights ACCE = UCC Advisory and Coordinating Committee on Exhibits at the CMHR UCRDC = Ukrainian Canadian Research and Documentation Centre HR = The Holodomor Reader, B. Klid and A. Motyl, CIUS Press 2012 I) General considerations and Human Rights Legislation/Conventions. (1) Displays should be prominent, short, to the point and catch the eye of the average/casual visitor to the CMHR. (2) Displays should take into account that many of the visitors will be youth and children. (3) Options/instructions/directions to additional, more detailed information should be at hand including access to visual presentations (films, photos, art work) as well as textual materials (quotes, articles, books). (4) The UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights (http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/ ), the UN Convention on the Prevention of the Crime of Genocide (http://untreaty.un.org/cod/avl/ha/cppcg/cppcg.html ), the Geneva Conventions, which comprise four treaties, and three additional protocols, that establish the standards of international law for the humanitarian treatment of war. (http://www.ppu.org.uk/learn/texts/doc_geneva_con.html , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Conventions ) And the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Charter_of_Rights_and_Freedoms ), should be principal and prominent displays at the CMHR, along with information on the history of these documents and the reasons for their adoption. (5) Information should be included on the history of the development of Human Rights law internationally and in Canada, including the Rights of Indigenous and Other Minorities (e.g. International Law and the Rights of Minorities by Patrick Thornberry, Clarendon Press, 1993, and http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Publications/MinorityRights_en.pdf ) 1 II) The Holodomor “The Holodomor” denotes the genocide 1 perpetrated by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin’s Communist regime against the Ukrainian population of the USSR. (1)The Holodomor should be included permanently and prominently in the CMHR. It should be presented in the context of attempts by the Communist regimes of the USSR, particularly that of Joseph Stalin, to subjugate the Ukrainian nation and remove the threat of its independence from Moscow’s rule. Thus, the presentation of the Holodomor should include the invasion and ultimate occupation of The Ukrainian Peoples’ Republic by the Red Army in 1918-1920, the Famine of 1922-3 in which millions died, the suppression of the non-communist political and intellectual leadership of Ukrainian society, including the Ukrainian Churches, during the 1920s and 1030s and the subsequent “great terror”. The Holodomor reached its apex in the intentional starvation of millions of rural Ukrainians in 1932-33. (2) It should be stressed that the Holodomor was aimed not only at Ukrainians of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, but also at Ukrainians living in other parts of the USSR, particularly the Kuban region of the Northern Caucasus. (3) The Holodomor was the culminating act in the Soviet Communist Party’s attempt to subjugate the Ukrainian nation to its will and to integrate and assimilate it into a Russified body politic. [ Raphael Lemkin, the father of the UN Convention on Genocide, gave the first succinct Western characterization of the Ukrainian genocide in his 1953 paper “Soviet Genocide in Ukraine,” in which he analyzed the crime in terms of the UN document. ] (4) The presentation of the number of fatalities attributed to the Holodomor should include, besides the estimates of direct mortality from starvation in the Ukrainian SSR and the population loss from famine of Ukrainians in other areas of the USSR, the mass executions of Ukrainian villagers and national elites and the lives lost during deportations as well as confinement in the Gulag (Soviet concentration camps). It should be emphasised that more than half of the victims were children. (5) Published Soviet census data of 1926 and 1937 should be displayed. They show that during the 12 year period, the Russian population of the USSR increased from 77.8 millions to 93.9 millions, that is an increase of 16.1%, while the number of Ukrainians decreased from 31.2 millions to 26.4 millions, that is a drop of 16.3%. (6) The conversation between British PM Winston Churchill and the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, during Churchill’s visit to Moscow in August 1942, at the height of WW II, should be featured prominently on two accounts: (i) Stalin indicates that the number of victims was "ten millions". (ii) It shows that Churchill knew about this great crime and that this made a lasting impression on him, so much so that he raised it with Stalin at the height of WWII, (actually before the battle of Stalingrad, when the tide turned against the Germans). 1 To date, the Holodomor was recognised as a Genocide by the Parliament of Canada and by 15 other countries, namely Australia, Brazil, Columbia, Ecuador, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Poland, Ukraine and the USA. 2 (7) The disinformation campaign, suppression and denial of the Holodomor tragedy by the Soviet regime before the collapse of the USSR in1989, should be presented, as also the suppression of information about the Holodomor by various European and other governments, including, in particular, the governments of Great Britain, the US, Germany, Italy and Poland. (8) The failure by the League of Nations to act, despite the appeals from Ukrainian communities outside the USSR should also be noted (e.g. HR p. 163). (9) Selected testimonies by survivors and witnesses of the Holodomor, particularly Canadians who lived through the Holodomor in their youth, should be exhibited in audio- visual form. In addition, testimonies by Western witnesses should be included, such as those of Malcolm Muggeridge, Gareth Jones, and Harry Lang (cf. HR) as well as former Soviet activists such as Lev Kopelev, who participated in the grain requisitions in Ukraine (cf. film Harvest of Despair ). Letters from Ukraine, statements by Ukrainian-Canadians and Canadian politicians published in Canadian newspapers and recorded in government papers in the federal and provincial capitals should be presented. (10) Visitors should be able to view films on the Holodomor (or segments thereof), particularly Canadian-made films such as “Harvest of Despair” (which is available in English, French, Spanish and Ukrainian) and “Genocide Revealed” (available in English and Ukrainian). Such films, as well as books on the Holodomor, should be available for purchase at the CMHR shop. (11) Highlights of current research on the Holodomor, based on recently accessible Soviet archives, should be made available to interested visitors. [For relevant material, the Ukrainian Holodomor researcher Ludmyla Hrynevych of the Institute of History of Ukraine (National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine) and the Holodomor Research and Education Consortium, which is based at the UCRDC in Toronto, are good sources. We note that the CMHR already has access to assistance from Lesya Onyshko of the National Memorial in Commemoration of Famines’ Victims in Ukraine in Kyiv, Stanislav Kulchytsky of the Institute of History of Ukraine, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, and Andrea Graziosi of the University of Naples. ] (12) A Resource list of current online resources, publications, DVDs is available for program and education staff, prepared by Valentina Kuryliw, Director of Education of the Holodomor Research and Education Consortium and Chair of the National Holodomor Education Committee of the UCC, upon request. The materials are age appropriate for Canadian educators and students. 3 III) The Internment of Ukrainians and others during the WW I period (1914-1920) The following should be considered for inclusion in the CMHR exhibits on the Internment: 1. The Pre-War context - Negative attitudes of Canadian citizens towards Ukrainian immigrants to Canada prior to World War I, as reflected in Canadian newspapers and statements by Canadian politicians. Indications of “whites to whites” racism. 2. Canada’s international treaty obligations prior to World War I under the Hague Convention – civilian rights during periods of war were to be respected. 3. History of the initiation of the Internment programme by the Government of Canada from August 7, 1914 onward. 4. War Measures Act 1914 – The War Measures Act has only been implemented three times in Canadian history: World War I (against Ukrainians and other East Europeans, most originally from Austro-Hungary), World War II (Japanese, Italian and German Canadians), and the October Crisis of 1970 (Quebecois during FLQ Crisis). This is an important cross-generational point of discussion for the CMHR, why did this happen again and again? 5. Nature of War Measures Act – Discussion about the State sanctioned deprivation of rights including disenfranchisement, restrictions on freedom of speech, movement and association, internment, deportation and confiscation of accumulated wealth. 6. Legislation, including Orders-In-Council, that was passed by Parliament to make possible the implementation of the World War I Internment. Quotations from Hansard