Thw utterly dumb suggestion that we drop Holocaust Memorial Day out of deference to Muslim sensibilities - apparently its ‘offensive to Muslims’, give the impression that “western lives have more value than non-western livesâ€? and “sounds too exclusive to many young Muslims. It sends out the wrong signals” is almost too contemptible to deserve comment.

Yet, at the risk of being pedantic I am going to offer a few words and, frankly. make no apologies if any of them cause offence.

First of all, having looked over the HMD website there are certainly valid grounds for characterising the site and its resources and being rather too exclusive and, yes, rather too Jewish.

Yes, the best estimates of the number of Jewish casualties of the Holocaust run to around 5-6 million, a horrific figure in anyone’s book but some way short of the estimates 9-11 million who actually died in Nazi concentration and slave labour camps during WWII, despite the fact that the only olther casualties which seem to be explicitly acknowledged by the site are Jehovah’s Witnesses.

So, yes, there is certainly a strong case for the charity to put considerably more effort into remembering the full range of victims of the Nazi genocide in Europe, which include:

Between a quarter and half of the total Sinti and Roma population of Europe.

Poles, Russian POWs and a wide range of ethnic Slavs.

Homosexuals

The physically and mentally disabled.

Communist, Socialists, Trade Unionists and political dissidents.

In fact anything from another 3-6 million people who were not Jewish but still made their way onto the Nazi shit-list and ended up taking a short trip to a mass grave.

Now getting back to the other point, the idea of a generic ‘Genocide Day’ - as supported by Sir Iqbal Sacranie - which would recognise the mass murder of Muslims in Bosnia, Palestine and Chechnya.

To be honest I’m fine with that in principle as a new and separate event, although I might be rather more sympathetic to the idea had anyone bothered to mention the little matters of Rwanda or Darfur by name rather than lumping it in with ‘people of other faiths’ as a bit of an afterthought - oh, and why only ‘people of other faiths’, what have us atheists done to get ourselves excluded - but as we’re on the subject of remembering genocide and saying never again then I’m sure that, as a Muslim, Sir Iqbal won’t mind being the one to lay a wreath to the memory of one of two other historical genocides that he might otherwise be inclined to forget.

For starters we’re take the Armenian, Assyrian and Pontian Greek massacres carried out by the Ottoman Empire - exact figures for the number of deaths are disputed but the general estimates run to anything from 1-1.5 million Armenians, around 250-500,000 Assyrians and 300-600,000 Pontian Greeks - although it needs to be remembered here that the Turkish State does not officially recognise any of these events as genocide…

… and nor does our own government or the US and, ironically, Israel, for that matter.

Or maybe we’ll take it back a bit further in history to the Mahmud of Ghazni who slaughtered an estimated 6 million Hindu in the course of conquering the Punjab in mix of religious zeal and outright greed - Mahmud would routinely strip Hindu temples of their wealth before destroying them so never let is be said that converting the infidel is without its fringe benefits.

Perhaps we should let that one go seeing as it was just over 1,000 years ago - or, fuvk it, maybe not. After all if the Pope can offer an apology for the Crusades then why baulk at remembering events that are only a couple of hundred years further back - who knows, if moan about it enough then made the government of Norway will offer us an apology for the antics of the Vikings, either that or send us another fucking Christmas tree every year.

I know, how about something a little more recent, something more contemporary might be more to Sir Iqbal’s tastes - how about the 3 million Bangladeshi killed by Pakistani forces during the Bangladesh Liberation War - not bad going for a war (in 1971, btw) which lasted a mere 267 days. That’s an average of over 11,000 killed per day, which in purely statistical terms seems to me to make the Nazis (11 million in, say 6-10 years or so all told) look like a bunch of rank fucking amateurs - and Speer thought he was fucking efficient, huh?

Oh, almost forgot, the was the little matter of the estimate 200,000 women raped during that little altercation as well, now I come to think of it.

The moral of this piece? Only that people in glass houses… oh, fuck it, you know the rest.

If people think a genric day of remembrance for victims of genocide is a good idea then I’m cool with it… just so long as they remember that if we’re really going to be inclusive then no one gets to pick and choose which genocide they wish to remember and which ones they’d rather forget.

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