Project Roll Call seeks survivors of World War I internment operations (10/27/02)

Project Roll Call seeks survivors of World War I internment operations

CALGARY, Alberta - The Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association (UCCLA) is launching Project Roll Call at the House of Commons in an effort to move Canadian government action on acknowledging the injustice of the internment operations during World War I that imprisoned thousands of Ukrainians and other East Europeans on suspicion that they were "enemy aliens."

The kick-off to the project, which seeks to find survivors of the internment operations and their descendants, will take place in Ottawa at the House of Commons in the Charles Lynch Room (Center Block) in Ottawa on Tuesday, November 5, at 10 a.m.

Over 35,000 postcards are to be mailed out to Canadian households identified as having the same or similar surnames to those of over 8,000 European immigrants interned needlessly during Canada's first national internment operations of 1914-1920.

The project, co-sponsored by the Ukrainian Canadian Foundation of Taras Shevchenko, aims to inform Canadians of the UCCLA's ongoing efforts to secure the federal government's acknowledgement of this injustice and restitution in the form of various educational and commemorative projects.

"Project Roll Call is intended to engage the imagination of Canadians and remind them, whether or not they are descendants of internees, of the importance of safeguarding the civil liberties and human rights of ethnic, religious and racial minorities, particularly in times of domestic and international crisis," said Dr. Lubomyr Luciuk, UCCLA's director of research.

The postcard urges Canadians whose family members were (or may have been) interned to call the UCCLA toll-free to confirm or add any information they may have to Roll Call, a list of all known internees. It also urges all Canadians to support Bill C-331, the Ukrainian Canadian Restitution Act.

"The UCCLA has undertaken this project in order to bring to the attention of Canadians a chapter of their country's history which many still know little or nothing about," said Dr Luciuk. "To that end, we encourage all Canadians to contact us if they have any information about their interned relatives and to write to the Right Honorable Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, reminding him of his 1993 promise to support redress to the Ukrainian Canadian community. Doing so now would enable him to forge a very positive part of his legacy, much as Prime Minister Brian Mulroney did at the end of his tenure in office, by offering our fellow Japanese Canadians a redress settlement, thus establishing the precedent for our efforts."

Former internees or descendants of internees can call toll-free, 1-877-344-4434, and add their information to Roll Call. To review the Roll Call list and Bill C-331, as well as other information about Canada's first national internment operations, readers are directed to the UCCLA's website, www.uccla.ca.

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