Internee descendants call for boycott of the CMHR

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This article was published 15/09/2014 (4219 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A coalition led by descendants of First World War internees issued an open letter today calling for a virtual boycott of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.

“We, the undersigned, are profoundly dismayed by the lack of a meaningful portrayal of Canada’s first national internment operations of 1914-1920 at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights… We will be asking our affected communities to refrain from partaking in the opening ceremonies or any subsequent activities at the CMHR until this matter is resolved fairly,” the letter states.

The letter is addressed to the museum CEO Stuart Murray and signed by Andrew Hladyshevsky, president of the Ukrainian Canadian Foundation of Taras Shevchenko.

The other signatories include officials with the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association, the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Foundation, as well as the Canadian-Croatian Chamber of Commerce and the Canadian Polish Congress.

There are also signatures from individuals who claim to represent the Armenian and Kurdish/Alevi communities, the German-Canadian Congress, the Serbian National Shield Society of Canada, Descendents of Ukrainian Canadian Internee Victims Association and a woman who identified herself as a descendant of an internee.

The Canadian Museum for Human Rights is slated to hold its opening ceremonies Friday in Winnipeg.

The Canadian First World War Internment Recognition Fund commemorated the 100th anniversary of the internment camps this year with a series of plaques that were unveiled across the country. Parks Canada’s website notes that thousands of ethnic minorities were identified as enemy aliens and held under the War Measures Act for up to six years in 24 labour camps from Nova Scotia to Vancouver Island. Another 80,000 immigrants from Central and Eastern Europe were forced to register and report regularly to local authorities under the threat of arrest.

In fact, the issue of wartime internment appears at least twice in the museum’s major Canadian gallery. Wartime internment is featured as one of several issues explored with video, still images and text on a huge digital canvas in the Canadian Journeys gallery. That digital canvas is visible from nearly everywhere in the gallery.

And, elsewhere in the same gallery, the internment of Ukrainian Canadians and other ethnic groups during the First World War will be one of the significant events highlighted by overhead images.

More information on the internment will also be available at individual digital kiosks, said Angela Cassie, the museum’s communications and external relations director.