Approval of Tribute to Liberty's Anti-Communist Monument by Harper Government
On November 9, 2008, the anti-communist organization Tribute to Liberty
announced their project to erect a monument in Canada to the so- called "victims of
totalitarian communism." Chair Alide Forstmanis, former president of the Latvian National
Federation in Canada, made the announcement at a private meeting of 150 people held in
Ottawa, the same meeting where Prime Minister Stephen Harper spoke to commemorate the
fall of the Berlin Wall. Harper's speech included congratulating Forstmanis for her monument
project. The official name of the Tribute to Liberty monument at that time was "A Memorial
to Victims of Totalitarian Communism – Canada, a Land of Refuge." It has since been
renamed to "Memorial to the Victims of Communism – Canada, a Land of
Refuge."
On September 9, 2009, the Tribute to Liberty project was approved by the appointed
board of directors of the federal government's National Capital Commission (NCC), after
some debate over the name of the monument. The NCC oversees the use and development of
national capital region land and must approve all such public monuments. Prime Minister
Stephen Harper was a big supporter of the monument, as was Jason Kenney, Minister of
Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, who first took the idea to Harper after meeting
with the Czech and Slovak Association in Toronto in 2006. Kenney proposed the monument
be built in Ottawa. No public discussion on the monument was held; all discussions between
Tribute to Liberty, the federal government and the NCC have been conducted behind closed
doors.
The Tribute to Liberty monument project is a slavish imitation of the 2007 "Victims of
Communism Memorial" in the United States, which was sponsored by the most reactionary
elements in the U.S. ruling elite in cahoots with the most backward elements from eastern
Europe and Scandinavia. In fact, George W. Bush was the honourary chairman of the
"Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation."
Forstmanis participated in the June 2007 meeting of the Baltic Federation of Canada in
Toronto where member Avo Kittask lauded the U.S. monument and noted "the time has come
for the Baltic Federation in Canada to add to its agenda and workload a project for erecting a
memorial in Canada which will commemorate the victims of Communism of the Republics of
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania." Swedish anti-communist campaigner and MP Goran Lindblad
was keynote speaker at the Toronto conference.
Who Is Tribute to Liberty?
Tribute to Liberty was formed on September 26, 2008. The officers at the time were:
- Alide Forstmanis, Chairman. Former President of the Latvian National Federation in
Canada.
- Ms. Reet Marten-Sehr, board member. Awarded the 5th Class White star by the
Government of Estonia for the "preservation of Estonian culture in Canada."
- Gerry (Gerald William/Yaroslav) Kokodyniak, board member. Professor of Applied
Science and Engineering, University of Toronto, and co-founder of InfoUkes Inc.
website.
- Charles Coffey, honorary chair. Former executive VP of RBC Financial Group, Chair of
the Canadian Council of Christians and Jews, Chair of the Advisory Council of the National
Museum for Human Rights (an Izzy Asper project partly funded by and to be operated by the
federal government, built in Winnipeg on land rich in Aboriginal artifacts), and member of
the National Committee of the Aga Khan Foundation.
- Philip Leong, honorary patron. Bay Street investment manager and consultant to the
Canadian government.
Tribute to Liberty's partners for the monument project were Open Book Group, which
comprised Hearts Open Toronto, Sokol Canada, and Dare Theatre. Zuzana Hahn, an artist
who ran Hearts Open Toronto, prepared the monument design, had another artist build the
model, and wrote (with her associates) a submission to the NCC. Joe Cermak of Sokol
Canada helped publicize the project. Sokol Canada is a branch of the Sokol ("falcon")
movement, a physical education organization founded in Bohemia (Czechoslovakia) in 1862.
Many Sokol members fled Czechoslovakia after opposing the establishment of the people's
democracy in 1948 and the organization's activities became concentrated in Canada, Australia,
and the U.S. The Czech Sokol organization was re-established in Czechoslovakia in 1989,
after the so-called Velvet Revolution. Dare Theatre was founded in Toronto in 2001 as
Designated Driver Theatre.
Tribute to Liberty is closely connected to the "Victims of Communism Memorial
Foundation" in Washington, DC. The U.S. memorial, dedicated by George W. Bush on June
12, 2007, was first proposed in a resolution put before the U.S. Congress in 1991. It was
signed into law by President Clinton in 1993, following amendments by Senator Jesse Helms,
infamous for his anti-Cuba legislation amongst other things. The Victims of Communism
Memorial Foundation (VCMF) was established in 1994 as a private foundation by the
anti-communist advocacy group National Captive Nations Foundation (NCNF), which was
established in 1959 by President Eisenhower. The NCNF signed into law Captive Nations
Week, established in 1953 and still celebrated yearly by the U.S. administration, which in
effect called for the overthrow of all eastern European governments as a part of U.S.
government policy.
The founders of VCMF in 1994 include Polish-born former U.S. National Security
Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski (under Jimmy Carter); Grover Norquist (founder of Americans
for Tax Reform which sponsors the Ronald Reagan Legacy project); long-time
anti-communist advocate Lev Dobriansky (former member of the Office of Strategic Services
– forerunner of the CIA – NCNF chairman, writer of the Captive Nations Week
Resolution, former president of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, and member
of the Reagan administration) and Dr. Lee Edwards, who is current chairman of VCMF.
Edwards is a fellow of the right-wing Heritage Foundation (funded by U.S. oil billionaire
Charles Koch), the author of biographies on Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater, and a
former media fellow at Stanford University's anti-communist Hoover Institution.
Major U.S. funders of VCMF include Eagle Publishing Chairman Thomas L. Phillips
(Eagle's subsidiary Regnery, is a conservative book publisher founded in 1947 which
publishes books by neo-conservatives such as Newt Gingrich and Ann Coulter); Pew
Charitable Trusts (Sun Oil); and the Earhart Foundation (major contributor to the right-wing
American Enterprise Institute). A major non-U.S. funder is the government of Taiwan through
their "Taiwan Foundation for Democracy."
The National Advisory Council to VCMF includes former U.S. ambassador to NATO
David Abshire, anti-communist writer Robert Conquest (author of Harvest of
Sorrow, a fabricated history of the so-called Ukrainian famine); president of the
right-wing Heritage Foundation Edwin Feulner; former head of the U.S. National Security
Agency William Odom; and founding member of the CIA Major-General John Singlaub.
The International Advisory Council to VCMF included members from Albania (former
president Sali Berisha); Russia; Romania (former president Emil Constantinescu; Great Britain
(intelligence agent Brian Crozier); Hungary (former president Arpad Goncz); Czech Republic
(former president Vaclav Havel); Estonia; Lithuania (former president Vytautas Landsbergis);
Latvia (former president Guntis Ulmanis); Poland (former trade unionist and president Lech
Walesa); Cuba (U.S. resident and Cuban counter-revolutionary Armando Valladares); and
China (U.S. resident and anti-China campaigner Harry Wu).
VCMF presents the "Truman-Reagan Medal of Freedom." The most recent recipient is
former U.S. attorney-general (under Reagan) Edwin Meese, a member of the Heritage and
Hoover Foundations who was involved in the Iran-Contra Affair which illegally funded
anti-Sandinista counter-revolutionaries in Nicaragua. VCMF is also charged with the overall
administration and policy oversight of the "Global Virtual Museum on Communism"
(GVMC). The stated mission of the GVMC is supposedly to "educate this generation and
future generations about the history, philosophy, and legacy of communism," a mission which
it carries out by publishing lies and fabrications.
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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