Canadian Museum for Human Rights hosts discussion on Armenian Genocide

PanARMENIAN.Net - Participants of a discussion organized jointly by the International Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies (a division of the Zoryan Institute; IIGHRS-Zoryan) and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) touched upon the issue of representing the Armenian Genocide.

The Institute made a detailed presentation to CMHR officials in December 2009, as part of its public consultation, on how to represent genocide in general, and the Armenian Genocide in particular.

“When we found that the public consultations were not being taken into consideration by museum officials, and there was an outcry from various communities about what they felt was unfair treatment, we issued two public statements on this issue in February and August 2011, and wrote directly to Stuart Murray, the museum’s president and CEO. None of the points have been dealt with by the CMHR, nor has our letter been responded to,” it said.

The essence of the arguments is as follows: The lack of responsiveness of the CMHR and the absence of information about how cases of the gross violation of human rights will be represented raise questions as to which cases will be included, how much space will be allotted to each case, what their content will be, if they will have a permanent or only temporary exhibit, and how these decisions are made. Moreover, there is a close relationship between the gross violation of human rights and genocide that is being neglected in the museum’s planning. Unless we study such cases comparatively, the lessons that can be learned are of limited value, particularly with a view to the prevention of such cases.

The museum will include the five genocides officially recognized by Canada’s parliament, including the Armenian Genocide, but it is will unknown how they will be represented, Armenian Weekly reports.