Communists stopping Ottawa’s victims of communism memorial

From the National Post

Plans for a monument on Parliament Hill to honour the estimated 100 million or so innocent men, women and children killed at the hands of Communist regimes around the world, on the other hand, have hit a snag, with the NCC (National Capital Commission) worried that a "Memorial to the Victims of Totalitarian Communism" risks giving offence to communists.

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"I was unsettled by this name, and other members of the committee agreed with me," Hélène Grand-Maître, one commission member, said at the public approval hearing. "We should make sure that we are politically correct in this designation…. I feel this name should be changed."

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"It’s the victims of communism that the memorial commemorates," she says. "Without the word ‘communism,’ the memorial will cease to have its intended meaning." Similar monuments, in Europe and in Washington, D.C., explicitly identify communism as the culprit in the millions of deaths they memorialize. She says her group is unclear on whether the monument can proceed, in light of the NCC’s concerns, but remains adamant that "the word ‘communism’ has to be in the name."

Already the group has had to make compromises. Earlier this year, it altered the proposed name, from a memorial to the "victims of communism," to one for the "victims of totalitarian communism." Though you’d look awfully hard to find any another kind, the NCC suggested that incriminating communism as a general ideology might be "unduly critical" of Canadians who still carry a torch for Karl Marx.

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MP and Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Jason Kenney recently expressed his Conservative Government’s commitment to the Victims of Communism national monument:

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