Canada's Mausoleum for "Human Rights" Gets Well and Truly Steynified

It couldn't happen to a better--which is to say, a worse--colossally useless and prohibitively expensive public edifice:

Having been put through the mill by Canada's "Human Rights" Commissions, I naturally despise any juxtaposition of the words "Canadian" and "human rights." But if you have to yoke them, this is the place: To paraphrase Justin's fellow musician Joni Mitchell, they took all the rights and put 'em in a rights museum, and they charged the people a dollar-and-a-half just to see 'em. 

But I've warmed up to what the blogger Scaramouche calls the Canadian Mausoleum for Human Rights. It could have been just the usual sucking maw of public monies had it not descended into an hilarious, er, urinating match of competing victimhoods. For those who thought "human rights" had something to do with freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and so forth, it turns out to be about which guy's genocide is bigger. The Ukrainian-Canadian Congress was wary of the mausoleum from the get-go, suspicious that it would downplay the Holodomor, Stalin's enforced famine in the Ukraine 80 years ago. The mausoleum assured them that they were going to go big on the Holodomor, but to guarantee the UCC came onboard offered to throw in a bonus exhibit of Canada's internment of Ukrainian immigrants during World War I. This would be part of "Canada's Journey," a heartwarming historical pageant illustrating how the blood-soaked Canadian state has perpetrated one atrocity after another on native children, Chinese coolies, Japanese internees, Jews, gays, the transgendered, you name it. And, of course, the Ukrainians. Per Izzy's wishes, the Holocaust would have pride of place in a separate exhibit, because, its dark bloody history notwithstanding, Canada apparently played a minimal role in the murder of six million Jews. However, the Holodomor would be included as a permanent featured genocide in the museum's "Mass Atrocity Zone." 

Oh, you can laugh at the idea of a "Mass Atrocity Zone" tourist attraction in Winnipeg, but there isn't an ethnic lobby group that doesn't want in. The Polish-Canadian Congress complained that lumping all the non-Jew genocides in one Mass Atrocity Zone meant they'd have to be on a rotating schedule, like revolving pies on the lunch counter. The Armenian genocide was felt to be getting short shrift, considering it was the prototype 20th-century genocide. On the other hand, the Rwandan genocide, the last big 20th-century genocide, and the Congolese civil war don't appear to have got a look-in at all. The Poles wanted room made for the Germans' ill treatment of the Poles, which did not seem to be a priority of the mausoleum. 

The floor plan has now emerged, and the Ukrainian-Canadians are furious that their people's suffering has been "ignored or minimalized." The Holodomor has been relegated to "a small obscure gallery near the museum's public toilets." Don't you hate it when that happens? When your genocide gets the lousy seats at the back by the bathroom while those Jews are all at the big power table up front? Adding insult to injury, the bonus exhibit about the internment of Ukrainian-Canadians turns out to be one measly photograph — whether a respectable distance from the toilets or not, I cannot say...

Mark didn't mention all the terrific items for sale in the mausoleum gift shop. The 100% fair trade cotton wearable reading "Someone Who Loves Me Visited the 'Mass Atrocities Zone' and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt," for instance. ;)

Update: This is exactly what I feared--that the "human rights" mausoleum would be used for "teachable moments":

WINNIPEG, MANITOBA--(Marketwired - May 8, 2013) - Teachers across the country have identified a pressing need for more human rights tools and resources - especially when teaching younger children, according to a national survey by the Canadian Teachers' Federation (CTF) and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR). 

A whopping 92 per cent of respondents said teachers place high value on human rights education, even though they already feel pressured by high expectations in a demanding curriculum. And 94 per cent said it was important for them to acquire more knowledge and skills around age-appropriate methods for teaching about human rights.

"There are not enough resources to use to teach students about human rights, especially at the primary level, which is where we need to start before bias sets in," said one respondent, when asked to describe the greatest challenges facing human rights education in Canada. Teachers also said they need help with strategies for addressing student concerns about human rights, as well as resources for teaching about current human rights issues in Canada. 

"These survey results confirm a very strong desire by teachers to acquire more tools and skills to help students learn the value of human rights," CTF President Paul Taillefer said during an event today at École St. Avila with CMHR President and CEO Stuart Murray and representatives of The Manitoba Teachers' Society. 

Murray said the Museum will help fill human-rights education gaps - not only through its own content when it opens next year as a national educational hub, but through strong partnerships with educators at all levels. As a first step, the CMHR and CTF are working to create the first national human rights toolkit for teachers, creating an unprecedented searchable database of reliable K-12 educational resources on human rights.  

"Canadian teachers are on the front lines of human rights," Murray said. "We want to help them, and we plan to do this in many ways. As a Museum, our goal is to facilitate dialogue, discussion and learning about human rights. Teachers share those goals. They are our natural partners." ...

Hard to argue with that. Indeed, I suspect very few teachers are up to speed re the truth about "human rights" in our time--i.e. how, on the international level, it has been hijacked by thugs and despots to serve the anti-West/pro-sharia agenda and how, domestically, it is the preserve of authoritarians who seek to police the thoughts and speech of free-born citizens.

Update: A perfect example of how the mausoleum gets it wrong, wrong, wrong--the message on a hoodie for sale in the gift shop:

 

In fact, human rights--real human rights, not the fake ones championed by the UN's "human rights" racket and Canada's manifold "human rights" bodies--is all about the "me," which is to say the individual.