Dear Sirs,

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown (NS, Diary, Tuesday 10th October 2005) claims that that the Muslim Council of Britain has called for the Holocaust Memorial Day to be 'scrapped'. In fact, we have - ever since the Home Office first mooted the idea of a Holocaust Memorial Day in 1999 - called for a more comprehensive Genocide Memorial Day to be established.

Across the globe there is a widespread view that we in the west practise double standards and devalue the lives of non-westerners. In the MCB's view, the subtext of the Holocaust Memorial Day -"Never Again" - would be better served by also covering more recent and ongoing mass killings and human rights abuses in our world, and thus make the cry "Never Again" real for all people who suffer, even now. In the last decade we have seen genocide take place in both Rwanda (1 million killed in 1994 in the space of a few weeks) and Chechnya (10% of its population has been killed since the Russians launched their invasion of the tiny republic in 1994) and Bosnia.

We need to do more than just reflect on the past. We must be able to recognise when similar abuses occur in our own time.

Inayat Bunglawala.
Secretary,
Media Committee,
The Muslim Council of Britain

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