[Foundation-l] New project proposal: Soviet Repressions Memorial

Kurt Maxwell Weber kmw at outwardhosting.com
Thu Dec 25 01:04:57 UTC 2008


On Wednesday 24 December 2008 18:43, Phil Nash wrote:
> Geoffrey Plourde wrote:
> >> Well where will it stop? If we have a project, we should have a
> >> memorial project for all disasters. I echo Mr. Bimmler in his
> >> concerns about the motives behind this proposal.
>
> I'm in some agreement here because my experience of UK charity law is that
> it is not generally permitted to have a "political" purpose, and certainly
> taking such a strong line on any "repression", "genocide" etc, would appear
> to be anathema to a charitable objective. It's OK, I suppose, if the United
> Nations has used such terminology, but I don't think we should be seen to
> be taking partisan sides in political disputes, because that dilutes the
> educational charitable status of the Foundation. It's entirely a different
> issue to support humanitarian aid to the victims, however, and I am open to
> the idea that such memorial projects might have that idea as a focus.
> However, the way it's been put forward seems to militate against that
> construction.
>

I fail to see how simply presenting a list of peoples' names and telling their 
stories constitutes "taking partisan sides in political disputes."  It's 
educating people about the impact of these events, plain and simple.
-- 
Kurt Weber
http://blog.kurtweber.us
<kmw at kurtweber.us>



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