Call to strip Belgian town carnival of Unesco status
A JEWISH human rights organisation has called for a Belgian carnival to be removed from a prestigous world heritage status after a float depicted caricatures of Strictly Orthodox men.
The Simon Wiesenthal Centre said the Carnival at Aalst should be removed from Unesco’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list because of “repeated antisemitic displays”.
In a call supported by the UK Lawyers for Israel (UKFLI) group, it said the world heritage organi- sation should set in place preparations to formally remove the event from the list at its plenary meeting in December. The Aalst carnival was added to the list in 2010.
Over 15,300 people signed an online petition calling for Unesco to withdraw the status.
This year’s float depicted Strictly Orthodox figures standing on piles of money and diamonds, surrounded by safes and rats, leading to criticism from the Dutch chief rabbi Binyomin Jacobs, who said it was “shocking” and contained “typical, antisemitic caricatures from 1939”.
UKLFI chief executive Jonathan Turner said: “Unesco should not continue to endorse this repeated violation of its values by retaining the Carnival on its Representative List.”
Floats at previous carnivals were criticised by Irinia Bokova, a former Unesco director-general, who called them an “unacceptable act that is an insult to the memory of the six million Jews who were killed in the Holocaust.”
But Aalst’s mayor Christoph D’Haese said it was not up to him to forbid such displays and that “the carnival participants had no sinister intentions.”