UNESCO condemns "SS officers" at Aalst Carnival
Aalst carnival is recognised by the United Nations as a world heritage event, but the UNESCO insists that the parody does not live up to the values espoused by the UN's cultural organisation.
Director-general Irina Bokova: “I am deeply shocked by this unacceptable act that is an insult to the 6 million Jews who were killed in the Holocaust."
"The Holocaust should not be trivialised in order to comment on local, political situations or fuel hatred, even though carnival does stand for freedom of expression and satire."
Aalst carnival has only been on the list of UNESCO's immaterial cultural world heritage since as recently as 2010.
The carnival group that got kitted out as SS officers that also includes a Ghent lawyer wanted to poke fun with the lurch to the right among local N-VA people. The group's Michel Keymeulen told Radio 2: "In Aalst everybody has a laugh with this. I'm sure the UNESCO DG wasn’t in Aalst. She is responding to the writings of people who are unhappy with what happened or who want to take it out of context.”
The city's N-VA burgomaster Christoph D'Haese regrets the incident "because Aalst had a very good carnival with the best security figures in a decade".
"We certainly don't want to hurt anybody, but you have to see it in the right context. That which is part and parcel of carnival should be limited to those three carnival days. Carnival is a red letter day for freedom of expression."
The Aalst burgomaster stresses that only 6 of 3,500 carnival parade participants got kited out as Nazis. He adds that it is up to the Flemish Government to respond to the criticism from UNESCO. It's unclear whether the UN organisation is planning any further steps.
TheBulletin.be reports that Flemish Culture Minister Joke Schauvliege (Flemish Christian democrat) has sent a letter to the UNESCO providing greater information about the Flemish carnival tradition. Read more on TheBulletin.be.
