DIPLOMATS from the Russian and Belarusian embassies will not be invited to this year’s slave workers memorial ceremony on 9 May at Westmount, it has been confirmed.
The event’s organiser, Gary Font, said that the ‘horrendous’ events in Ukraine created a dilemma when remembering those who lost their lives in Jersey during the Occupation. But he said it ‘would not be right’ to invite diplomats from Russia, or from Belarus, which has facilitated parts of the invasion.
‘I will not be sending an invitation to Russian or Belarusian diplomats but it is right that flowers should continue to be laid in memory of the poor souls who died here,’ Mr Font said, adding that the majority of the slave workers from eastern Europe were Ukrainian and Belarusian. Individual plaques recall the sacrifice of citizens from the countries concerned.
Although the slave workers memorial ceremony is a privately organised event, it has become an established element in the Island’s celebration of Liberation Day, attracting high-ranking officials to the level of ambassador from countries whose citizens were forced to work for the Nazi regime on fortifications which remain a part of the landscape. In more recent years attendance at the ceremony has become part of the official itineraries of the Lieutenant-Governor, Bailiff and Chief Minister.
Until 2018, following the expulsion of diplomats from the Russian Embassy in response to the Salisbury poisoning of former Russian military officer and double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, diplomats from Russia would routinely attend the event.
It has its origins in the spontaneous creation of a memorial at Westmount by visiting Russian sailors in 1960. The present memorial in the grounds of the crematorium was created with funding from the States in 1975.
Mr Font, who took over responsibility for organising the ceremony from one of its founders, Stella Perkins, who died in 2006, said that following the Skripal poisonings and the impact of the pandemic, diplomats from Russia had not attended the event and wreaths were laid by Islanders in their memory.
But he confirmed that the Russian invasion of Ukraine meant that he would not be renewing the formal invitation this year to either the Russian or the Belarusian embassies.
However, he added that this would not affect the tributes paid on Liberation Day to those who died in the Island during the Occupation.
‘My job is to make sure that all those who perished are remembered and I will make sure that I do the right thing. They will be remembered,’ he said.
