NEWS AND VIEWS

A proposal for World Genocide Remembrance Day

by Charmian Carl

LOS ANGELES - The Trident Network is gaining community support for Peter Borisow's proposal that Ukrainians, as victims of the Famine-Genocide of 1933, take the lead to implement a World Genocide Remembrance Day to remember all victims of genocide and to promote awareness of why and how genocide happens.

As part of the efforts to increase public awareness of the Great Famine of 1933, the network has found a general lack of knowledge not only of the genocide of 1933, which claimed at least 7 million lives, but also of other genocides in which many millions of victims died. There appears to be no coordinated effort to remember the many victims or to make the public aware that genocide is not an isolated historical event but an ongoing human tragedy.

World Genocide Remembrance Day will occasion private remembrance as well as public gatherings, media events and government recognition. It seeks to involve ethnic, political and religious groups that have been victimized by genocide throughout the world, especially in the 19th and 20th centuries, including Ukrainians, Armenians, Cambodians, Rwandans, Bosnians, Native Americans, African Americans, Jews, Tibetans, Kosovars and others.

The third Sunday of September of each year, with its yellowing leaves signaling the oncoming winter and its harshness, has been chosen to be the official day of remembrance. Efforts will be made to have it proclaimed World Genocide Remembrance Day in the United States, Canada, Ukraine and other countries throughout the world.

A looped yellow ribbon will be the symbol of genocide awareness throughout the year. Yellow is a traditional color for sorrow and remembrance in many cultures, witness Wasyl Barka's "Yellow Prince," which describes the Great Famine of 1933; yellow ribbons to remember MIAs, etc.

To implement all this, Mr. Borisow and Andy Semotiuk of the Trident Network are forming the Genocide Remembrance and Awareness Foundation as a non-profit and tax-exempt entity to promote and coordinate support for genocide remembrance groups and activities worldwide. The foundation will work to create and support a network of genocide documentation, information and study centers, museums, memorials and other commemorations and special events around the world.

The foundation will also organize a worldwide Genocide Alert Network to sound the alarm in the event of contemporary genocide and work to mobilize public opinion and lobby governments to intervene immediately to stop genocide as it happens.

Mr. Borisow also suggests that Ukrainians create their own special remembrance by serving a "remembrance borsch," but with the substitution of yellow beets for the usual red ones. The preparation and serving of "remembrance borsch" will provide an opportunity not only to remember the less fortunate, innocents who paid with their lives for crimes that never existed, but also to pass this history and awareness on to others, especially our own future generations.

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Persons interested in helping with genocide awareness should contact Mr. Borisow or Mr. Semotiuk through the Trident Network's e-mail: [email protected].

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, September 10, 2000, No. 37, Vol. LXVIII

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