EDITORIAL: Is Ottawa listening? (08/27/00)

EDITORIAL

Is Ottawa listening?

Two months ago in this space The Ukrainian Weekly editorialized about the Canadian government's continuing refusal to officially right a heinous wrong committed 80 years ago: the shameful treatment of certain groups of Europeans, both immigrants and native-born Canadians, during the first world war simply because they hailed from what was then the Austro-Hungarian empire.

They were categorized as "enemy aliens," stripped of their rights, and shipped off to internment camps. A total of 8,579 enemy aliens - 5,000 of them Ukrainians - were interned in 24 camps throughout Canada where they served as forced laborers. Some 80,000 were forced to register as enemy aliens so that the authorities could keep a close watch over them. Their civil liberties were curtailed, and they were disenfranchised.

The occasion for our previous editorial was the 80th anniversary of the end of Canada's first national internment operations of 1914-1920, which came on June 20, 1920. To mark that anniversary the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association (UCCLA) appealed to all Ukrainian Canadians to observe two minutes of silence on June 20, beginning at 11 a.m., in memory of those killed or abused while interned in Canadian concentration camps. We expressed our hope that Ottawa would "hear the silence" of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian Canadians and others as they observed the UCCLA-proclaimed memorial silence.

In last week's issue we reported on a remarkable occurrence: Canada's Governor General Adrienne Clarkson on August 4 publicly acknowledged the injustices Ukrainian immigrants faced during the first world war, thus, as the Winnipeg Free Press wrote, "surprising community leaders who are still fighting for the same recognition from the prime minister."

Addressing an audience at Dauphin's Selo-Ukraina during the annual Ukrainian National Festival, the governor general said the internment of Ukrainians is "one of the saddest stories in our country's history."

Borys Sydoruk, the UCCLA's director of special projects, commented, "It was most reassuring to be able to witness just how sensitive the governor general of Canada, the representative of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, is in remembering what these innocent Ukrainians suffered during Canada's first national internment operations."

And he underscored, "We hope that her awareness of this issue will prompt the government of Canada and specifically the Rt. Hon. Jean Chrétien, our prime minister, to finally acknowledge this injustice and negotiate reconciliation."

For 13 years, the UCCLA has been pressuring the Canadian government to acknowledge the injustice of the internment operations and to provide restitution to the community by providing funding for educational programs that would inform and remind all Canadians of this abominable episode in the country's history and thus prevent similar injustice from ever happening again. Thus far, its efforts have been unsuccessful - even though the current prime minister had pledged to secure redress for Ukrainian Canadians.

But the UCCLA forges ahead.

Dr. Lubomyr Luciuk, director of research for the UCCLA, wrote recently in a letter to the editor of the Winnipeg Free Press that it is "somewhat startling" that the governor general "would publicly comment on an issue that Prime Minister Chrétien and his Liberals have labored mightily to have us forget. We'll be sure to remind Ukrainian Canadians of Mr. Chrétien's broken promise on redress before this spring's federal election."

The current government in Ottawa had better take heed.

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