Guest letter by Ken Bilsky Billings, who protests the proposed Memorial to the Victims of Communism. He is concerned that the previous Conservative government tried to ram this project without real consultation. Now the new Liberal government has decided to support it but ‘the monument will cost far less, have a new design and, if built, will be on a different site’.
Kensky is a videographer and peace and environmental activist in Ottawa, Canada.
TO: Catherine McKenna,
Member of Canadian Parliament,
Minister of Environment and Climate Change.
RE: Memorial to the Victims of Communism
Dear MP Catherine McKenna
I am shocked and saddened by the lack of insight and discussion on this topic. Our capitalist ideology is overriding common sense or this is racism? No other country paid the price of lives lost more than the Russian people in WWII.
One account by the National WWII Museum, New Orleans, USA, gives the figure of Russian military and civilian deaths at around 24,000,000 people. That was about 200% more people than the total population of Canada in 1945. The sacrifices and suffering these people went through that actually turned the tide of the war was unfathomable. So why does our government want anything to do with a memorial to victims of Communism. It should be a memorial to the Russian people who lost their lives in WWII trying to stop the Nazi regime.
What does your government say to that?
Ken Kensky
Dear Koozma,
ReplyDeleteIf there should be a memorial to the victims of communism, there should be a memorial to the victims of capitalism and imperialism right opposite it. The list of victims of capitalism and imperialism can start with the names of individuals whose human rights were violated by the Canadian government, such as interned individuals during the WWI and II. The recent part of the victims of capitalism and imperialism should include the names of individuals murdered by Canadian flight jets in Syria and Iraq and of civilians murdered by Canadian troops in Afghanistan. Oh, yes, how about adding a memorial to the victims of the Hypocrisy of Canadian government which first bombs Syria and Iraq, creating refugees, and then sheds tears about the boy who drowned when his family was trying to get out of the area, and accepts 25,000 refugees ...whom they contributed to creating the problem in the first place.
There were no more human right violated and innocent lives taken by communist governments than by capitalist government. And prior to poking fingers at human rights violations in other places, Canada has to acknowledge human rights violations in their own country.
I agree with the above two letters and would include a recommendation for a memorial for the indigenous victims of settlers in Canada and even worldwide.
DeleteSure agree with the above comment ~ a memorial for all the 'disappeared' and other victims of American regime change. That would be most appropriate.
ReplyDeleteПрочитал комментарии Veronica Makarova, Jen Jones,
ReplyDeleteLarry Ewashen. Большое спасибо вам, что вы есть на этом свете.
I read the commentaries of Veronica Markova, Jen Jones, and Larry Ewashen. A big thank you that you exist on this earth.
I'm no admirer of Communism but agree that the Memorial should not be built. If it is then it should be a Memorial to Victims of "All Horrific Ideologies" and besides Communism, should include Fascism (Ethiopians, Libyans, Spanish,...), Nazis (Jews, Romas, undesirables), Turks (Armenians, Greeks, ...) , Imperial Japanese (Chinese, Koreans...), Pakistanis (Hindus,...), British (Irish, Scots ...), U.S. (Indigenous peoples, Philippinos ...) and on and on.
ReplyDeleteBut the real story is that it's another subliminal attack by Conservatives (the Right) on the Left. As an example, Conservatives painted the environmentalist Rachel Carson as a mass murderer because banning DDT resulted in many malarial deaths (not true). But that's not their point. They couldn't care the least if people died because DDT was banned. No, what the wanted to do is tarnish the idea of environmentalism by making environmentalists to be seen as naive, counter productive and woolly headed.
This is what Harper was doing. Communism (now essentially extinct) has been associated by Conservatives with socialism, even liberalism. By emphasizing the connection between Victims and Communism he can subliminally tarnish the Left. Harper doesn't care a whit about Communism, what he cares about is moving Canadian culture to the Right and away from the "evil" Left.