"We are being punished" for criticism of Canadian Museum for Human Rights: UCCLA

For Immediate Release (Ottawa, 7 March 2013)

Following the recent leak of a report titled "Gallery Profiles," prepared by the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association has reacted by expressing its disappointment and dismay over the CMHR's contents.

UCCLA's chairman, Roman Zakaluzny, said: "Not only does this taxpayer-funded national museum elevate the suffering of one community above all others – which most Canadians oppose – but it excludes most Ukrainian-related content. For example, the genocidal Great Famine of 1932-1933 in Soviet Ukraine, the Holodomor, is relegated to a light-table treatment in a secondary gallery, even though as many as 4.3 million Ukrainians perished in the first six months of 1933 alone. And, despite the fact that there was a receiving station for 'enemy aliens' in Winnipeg during Canada's first national internment operations, this Canadian story is referenced only once, in passing. It seems obvious that the Ukrainian Canadian community is being punished for having publicly raised principled and legitimate objections about the CMHR's contents and governance.

"It's very disheartening to think that Canadian taxpayers will be spending hundreds of millions of dollars in perpetuity on a museum so obviously out of touch with public opinion and so partisan and ahistorical in its portrayal of the human rights story."