In court documents, Trudeau defends decision to call out Quebec heckler for ‘racism’

2019/09/30 Leave a comment

Interesting case. PM comments come across as reasonable and thoughtful:

In the wake of Justin Trudeau’s blackface scandal, his comments in a recent lawsuit give an illuminating insight into how the prime minister thinks about racism.

In August 2018, Trudeau made headlines when he called out a woman for “intolerance” and “racism” after she heckled him at a rally in Quebec and asked him about “illegal immigrants.”

That incident led to an ongoing lawsuit that has received little public attention since it was filed by the heckler last December. In July, Trudeau was questioned in Montreal as part of the lawsuit.

In the court documents, obtained by the National Post this week, Trudeau said he believed the intolerance had to be addressed clearly and also pointed to a particular brand of Quebec nationalism he found troubling.

In videos that circulated widely of the altercation — during a speech Trudeau gave to Liberal supporters at an event in Sabrevois, Que. — the prime minister can be seen telling the heckler that “this intolerance regarding immigrants does not have a place in Canada,” and later that “your racism has no place here.”

At the time, commentators and Conservative politicians were quick to accuse the prime minister of berating an elderly woman without justification, a narrative that changed somewhat after it was revealed that the woman, Diane Blain, had connections to far-right nationalist groups.

In December, Blain filed a defamation lawsuit against Trudeau, demanding $90,000 for psychological distress and damage to her reputation and her right to freedom of expression.

Trudeau’s defence argues that it was “perfectly legitimate” for the prime minister to “note the intolerance expressed by the terms used by Ms. Blain.”

During his examination, Trudeau told Blain’s lawyer the context of her comments made it clear she was intolerant. But he also said he doesn’t believe Blain was a racist, despite having accused her multiple times of racism.

At the event, Blain called out multiple times from the crowd, asking, “When will you give us back the $146 million that we paid for your illegal immigrants?” Her question was in reference to the Quebec government’s demand at the time to be reimbursed for costs incurred by the influx of asylum seekers entering Quebec at Roxham Road, between official entry points.

In examination, Trudeau said he didn’t initially understand Blain’s question, but realized what she was asking when he heard the words “your illegal immigrants.” He told Blain’s lawyer that the way she asked the question, referring to “your illegal immigrants,” proved it was not in good faith. “It was a context in which the goal was to disrupt and push an agenda that was either anti-immigrant or that simply wanted to spark fear and concern about immigrants,” he said. “So for me, it was important to respond firmly and clearly.”

He also said he felt it was necessary to speak out swiftly because the crowd was very diverse and many of his supporters at the event were immigrants.

He went on to discuss Quebecers’ concerns about asylum seekers at Roxham Road, saying there are “very reasonable people” who worry about illegal border crossings. “But there’s a point where it goes beyond concern and (becomes) a desire to preserve a historic Quebec identity against immigrants,” he said. “And unfortunately, it’s not something we hear often, but it’s common enough to be part of a pattern.”

At the August event, Blain asked Trudeau if he was tolerant of “Québécois de souche,” a term that refers to white Quebecers who are descendants of the original French colonists. He responded by saying he was tolerant of all perspectives and accused Blain of being intolerant. Later, when she confronted him again as he was moving through the crowd, he told her, “Your racism has no place here.”

Blain’s lawyer, Christian Lajoie, asked Trudeau during the examination about Quebec nationalism, after Trudeau said he didn’t like the term “Québécois de souche” because of its “connotations of intolerance.”

Trudeau referred to René Lévesque, the founder of the sovereigntist Parti Québécois, saying the former premier envisioned a “civic nationalism,” not one based on ethnicity. “I think a little bit for some people in recent years, we’ve been missing that desire to bring people together that Mr. Lévesque had,” he said.

Still, asked directly if he believes Blain is a racist, Trudeau said no. “I was speaking about her comments… that I associated with intolerance,” he said. “There’s a wave of thinking that has racist elements.”

In the days after the altercation, Trudeau stood by his response to Blain’s questions, telling reporters that “Canadians deserve to know that they have a prime minister that will always underline when these dangerous tactics are used in politics.” At the same time, media reports revealed that Blain had connections to far-right nationalist groups Storm Alliance and Front Patriotique du Québec and that she had once refused to be served by a Muslim woman at a dental clinic in Montreal.

In her lawsuit, Blain claims the event and subsequent media coverage caused “serious damage to her dignity, honour and reputation,” and that her family has been divided by the incident. She is asking for $90,000 in damages. She initially wanted an additional $5,000 for the pain caused by an RCMP officer grabbing her arm, but that has since been dropped. Blain did not respond to the Post’s request for an interview, and her lawyer declined to comment.

Trudeau’s defence claims that Blain came looking to confront him and his responses to her questions were reasonable under the circumstances. It points out that Blain identified herself as the woman in the videos after the fact, and has given several interviews about the incident. A spokesperson for Trudeau declined to comment.

During his examination, Trudeau indicated he believed his lawyer had approached Blain to try and reach a settlement. Blain recently told right-wing news site The Post Millennial, which has reported on the examination, that no settlement has been reached. According to court documents, preparation of the file will not proceed until November, after the Oct. 21 election.

Source: In court documents, Trudeau defends decision to call out Quebec heckler for ‘racism’

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Scheer says he would continue Liberals’ $45M anti-racism strategy

2019/09/27 Leave a comment

Unfortunately, behind the paywall but nevertheless interesting.

Of course, if we judge by the previous Conservative government, which drastically reduced the resources dedicated to multiculturalism and anti-racism programming (The Conservative legacy on multiculturalism: more cohesion, less inclusion):

The Liberal government’s $45-million anti-racism strategy isn’t going anywhere under a Scheer government, the Conservative leader says.

Asked by a reporter in Thorold, Ont., on Tuesday whether he supports the anti-racism plan put forward by the Trudeau government this year, and the approach it is taking, Andrew Scheer said he would continue to back such programs.

Source: Scheer says he would continue Liberals’ $45M anti-racism strategy

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‘Afraid We Will Become The Next Xinjiang’: China’s Hui Muslims Face Crackdown

2019/09/27 Leave a comment

More on Chinese repression of religious minorities:

Gold-domed mosques and gleaming minarets once broke the monotony of the Ningxia region’s vast scrubland every few miles. This countryside here is home to some of China’s 10.5 million Hui Muslims, who have practiced Sunni or Sufi forms of Islam within tight-knit communities for centuries, mainly in the northwest and central plains. Concentrated in the Ningxia region, the Hui are China’s third-largest ethnic minority.

Now, though, virtually every mosque in Ningxia’s countryside has been denuded of its domes, part of a sweeping crackdown on China’s Muslim minorities that has reached Hui strongholds in Ningxia, in central China, and as far inland as Henan province in the east. (Up to now, Gansu province in central China has been able to keep most of its mosques intact.)

The crackdown on Muslims has been most extreme in the northwestern region of Xinjiang, where scholars estimate that up to 1.5 million Muslim Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking group, and other ethnic minorities have been detained since 2016, in one of the most sophisticated surveillance states in the world.

The same restrictions that preceded the Xinjiang crackdown on Uighur Muslims are now appearing in Hui-dominated regions. NPR has learned that since April 2018, Hui mosques have been forcibly renovated or shuttered, schools demolished and religious community leaders imprisoned. Hui who have traveled internationally are increasingly detained or sent to reeducation facilities in Xinjiang.

In August 2018, in Ningxia’s Tongxin county, authorities attempted to demolish the Weizhou Grand Mosque, claiming it lacked the right building permits. Hundreds of furious residents staged a sit-in, sharing videos of their protest through popular Chinese social media platforms like WeChat and Kuaishou, a live-streaming app, faster than censors could take them down.

Taken aback, officials called off the demolition. But the victory was short-lived. In November, local government work units began visiting every household in Weizhou, pressuring residents to sign letters stating their acquiescence to “renovate” the mosque by removing its main dome and domed minarets. In some cases, Weizhou officials threatened to fire state employees if they did not sign the letter, according to multiple residents.

This month, NPR drove through Weizhou, which is now guarded by checkpoints on the only road leading in and out of town. The mosque is closed, its main dome and minarets replaced with tiled Buddhist-style pagodas, and its entrances blocked by scaffolding.

“Of course we are afraid we will become the next Xinjiang,” one Hui man told NPR. He did not provide his name for fear that authorities in Xinjiang would find him. Three years ago, he abandoned his family’s property in Xinjiang in order to transfer his residency to Tongxin county. “But what can an individual do? We can only take it year by year.”

“We say what we have to say”

Descendants of Arab traders who entered China some 1,500 years ago, the Hui pride themselves on having thoroughly assimilated into Chinese society. Unlike the Uighurs, the Hui have no distinct language, speaking Mandarin and often some Arabic. Save for the occasional white cap customarily worn by Hui men or hair coverings among women, they are often visually indistinguishable from China’s ethnic majority, the Han.

Their exemption from the harshest of religious restrictions changed in April 2018, when the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front Work Department formally took control of the State Bureau of Religious Affairs — meaning that the party now directly oversees policy for religious affairs, not the government.

“The day-to-day responsibility for managing religious activities and organizations shifted to the UFWD, and its atheist party apparatchiks, whose overarching mission is the protection of party power,” James Leibold, an associate professor at Australia’s La Trobe University and an expert on China’s ethnic minority policy, tells NPR via email.

That same April, a mass dome-removal campaign began in Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan province in central China, and resumed in Ningxia as part of the official effort known as chu shahua, fan ah’hua, to “combat Saudi and Arabic influence.”

All Hui-run nursery schools, child care centers and religious schools were forcibly closed in Ningxia and across Yunnan and Henan provinces, which are also home to a large number of Hui Muslims.

The United Front’s new control over Chinese ethnic and religious policy marks a substantial change, says Leibold. While the State Bureau of Religious Affairs was sometimes restrictive, it at least “saw the protection, if not promotion, of ‘normal religious activities’ as part of their mission and mandate, and many of its officials were religious practitioners themselves,” he says in his email to NPR.

Abroad, the United Front is the party body that liaises with international nonstate individuals and organizations. Domestically, the United Front has emerged as one of the most aggressive proponents of stripping away foreign influences within religious practices and bringing them under state control — making them more Chinese, a process known as “Sinification.”

“Sinification of religion in China is an important discourse of Party General Secretary Xi Jinping on the problem of religion and religious work,” Ma Jin, a United Front official, told the Islamic Association of China, a state-backed organization, in January.

“This recent crackdown on the Muslim activities is really a part of a national campaign of China today to correct what they believe are the excesses in permitting Arab-style mosques … and influence by the Middle East. The Salafi and Wahhabi groups have been pouring money in China,” says Dru Gladney, an anthropologist at Pomona College and an expert on Hui Muslims. “These restrictions through UFWD are part and parcel of government efforts to control Islamic practices, to make them more Chinese.”

In Xinjiang, Uighur-language books and films have been expunged, Uighur intellectuals imprisoned, and Uighur children sent to state-run schools to be taughtMandarin Chinese and culture.

For the Hui across China, mosques have become the major vehicle for Sinification. In April 2018, authorities began revoking the state-issued licenses given to imams who have residency outside the province in which they practice and from those who have studied abroad. In Ningxia, smaller mosques without licensed imams have been closed outright.

Ningxia sent senior leadership delegations to visit Xinjiang’s detention camps last November and signed a counterterrorism cooperation agreement with Xinjiang a month later.

Like many mosques, the Huarenjie mosque in downtown Zhengzhou, Henan, is now monitored around the clock through a network of surveillance cameras installed last year by the local public security bureau.

Emily Feng/NPR

Imams in Henan and Ningxia must now attend monthly training sessions that can last for days. There, imams told NPR, they are taught Communist ideology and state ethnic policy and discuss Xi Jinping’s speeches. Imams must then pass an exam testing their ideological knowledge in order to renew their license each year, mirroring how the government issues licenses to imams in the Xinjiang region.

“We go along with it. We say what we have to say, because it is just words, and it lets us continue to work in the mosque,” said one of the few imams still based in Henan, requesting his name be kept anonymous because of fears of political reprisal.

Fears of Saudi influence

Mosque employees say orders to demolish mosque domes and minarets are transmitted orally from local officials citing the United Front, with no written notice. The demolitions are swiftly executed at night, to avoid protests and video documentation.

“We ourselves do not even have the documents. [The United Front] takes them back at the end of each meeting,” a local Henan official says in a recording NPR listened to of a meeting between local officials and employees at a mosque whose domes were removed after the meeting.

“Party organs like the UFWD work outside the state legal system and thus have far greater power than the state bureaucracy and are not required to report back to the State Council,” the equivalent of China’s cabinet, says Leibold.

Others say officials are looking to avoid the attention that mass mosque demolitions and detentions of Muslims in Xinjiang have attracted.

“Local officials learned from Xinjiang. They know that by aggressively restricting people in obvious ways, like constructing detention centers and leaving written evidence, they might create resistance,” Tianfang, the pen name of a prominent blogger critical of China’s religious policies, told NPR.

The crackdown on China’s Hui Muslims is in part driven by the government’s fears that fundamentalist strains of Islam like Salafism and Wahhabism are filtering into China by way of Hui students who study in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan and through private religious foundations on the Arabian Peninsula that have funded some Hui social enterprises and mosques.

Signs of Saudi influence, including Arabic script, are being removed across China. Hui women in Henan and Ningxia provinces say they are no longer allowed to wear the head-to-toe black abaya customary to Saudi women, and Hui shops say they no longer stock Saudi-style clothes for men or women.

Imams suspected of preaching Salafism are also promptly removed. One of them, Han Daoliang, was the imam at Huarenjie Mosque in Zhengzhou, Henan province’s capital, according to mosque attendees. Han raised his hands three times during prayer instead of just once, they said, marking him to Zhengzhou officials as a Salafi adherent.

Hui tombstones inscribed in Arabic outside Xiaomagou Mosque in Zhengzhou, Henan.

Emily Feng/NPR

Forced by local officials to resign this year, Han is now living in Malaysia, according to acquaintances. His former mosque has been given a state-appointed imam. According to a new plaque and mosque employees, the house of worship is now run by a new committee appointed by the state, with a board including two non-Muslim government officials.

“Sweep away the black and root out evil”

The crackdown on Hui Muslims is backed by a national anti-corruption effort launched by the government in 2018 to “sweep away the black and root out evil.” Posters exhorting residents to “sweep away the black” are now ubiquitous in Chinese cities and such slogans have been scrawled in graffiti on village walls.

Among the crimes the campaign targets is using “religious connections at villages and townships to form mobs,” according to implementation guidelines published late last year. State media reports say 6,885 “black and evil” criminal organizations were taken down under the campaign as of January.

The “sweep away the black” campaign has also decimated power bases outside the Communist Party structure, including among religious communities. Hui communities are now told that unauthorized religious events or proselytizing are considered gatherings of “black” forces or “underworld forces.”

Those unauthorized gatherings include Islamic schools run by Hui mosques, nearly all of which have been closed across China, particularly in Henan and Ningxia, according to residents in Henan, Ningxia, Yunnan and Gansu provinces. NPR visited multiple former Islamic schools in September, several of which looked as if they had been cleared in a hurry — with dusty bedding piled on dormitory beds and chipped dishes and other kitchenware stacked haphazardly in corners.

All taught Arabic language and some Islamic doctrine, but some are run more like vocational schools or social welfare schools for students who might be otherwise ineligible or unable to afford an education.

“We barely taught any Islamic doctrine. It was about making sure these children were educated and would not become criminals or radicalized,” said a former teacher surnamed Ma, who did not want her full name used for fear of political reprisal.

She had taught at an Islamic school in China’s southwestern Yunnan province, which closed last April. The school had stayed open despite orders in 2014 to expel all non-local students, particularly those having residency status in Xinjiang.

Ma was interrogated by police about the school’s curriculum and whether the school was distributing drugs. A common stereotype about ethnic minorities in China is that they sell drugs. One of her colleagues was held incommunicado for three days and subjected to “thought work,” or ideological training, Ma says.

Rewards for reporting suspicious behavior

In Ningxia’s Tongxin county, a rare female-only Islamic school once renowned across China’s northwest is being readied for demolition after it was shut down last April to make way for residential development.

“It is the government’s policies. Who knows if they will change and when?” one of the school employees told NPR in hushed tones. She withheld her name because of the sensitivity of the matter.

Hui residents of Tongxin say local officials are now offering rewards between $700 and $2,820 to those who report suspicious religious behavior, such as proselytizing Islam or secretly teaching Islamic texts. Some male mosque attendees have begun wearing cloth masks covering the lower half of their faces when attending daily prayers to avoid identification.

Hui who have performed the Hajj, the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, fall under particular suspicion. Last year, a group of about 20 pilgrims was detained in Saudi Arabia for having the wrong visas before being sent back to China, according to two people with friends in the group. Two Hui pilgrims with residency in Xinjiang were promptly sent to low-security Xinjiang detention facilities, according to the two people with friends in the group.

“Unbearable” pressure

NPR found evidence of significant pushback from Hui seeking to delay or avoid implementing religious restrictions. Hui say they drag out orders to demolish mosque domes, and some students continue to secretly attend religious classes, despite shuttered schools.

In Henan, NPR came across one mosque in the process of “renovating” its dome by building a cover to shield it from view, a compromise between local officials who demanded its removal and nearby Hui residents who refused to do so. Mosque employees were also installing translucent plastic Arabic calligraphic inscriptions on the mosque walls – nearly invisible to all but true believers – to satisfy demands that they remove all Islamic symbols and Arabic script.

Hui Muslim men leave the Laohuasi mosque after Friday prayers in Linxia, Gansu province, in March 2018. Gansu so far has been able to keep most of its mosques intact while domes and minarets of mosques in other provinces have been altered or removed.

Johannes Eisele/AFP/Getty Images

“The Hui people have been through one storm after another, and this is a storm that will pass,” the mosque’s imam told NPR. “Who knows how the political environment may change? We do not want to spend money to tear our dome down, only to have to pay to build it up again next year.”

Fearing the worst, some younger Hui Muslims are looking to leave China and have emigrated to Malaysia and Dubai in the past few years.

“The pressure on not just one’s religious behavior, but how one lives one’s daily life, is unbearable,” said a young Hui man from Ningxia surnamed Tian, who did not want to use his full name for fear of being punished for talking to a foreign journalist. “It weighs on your chest.”

Ma Ju, a leader in a Sufi sect of Hui Muslims, left China for the United Arab Emirates in 2009 because of his outspoken criticism of religious restrictions in Xinjiang. This year, he fled to the United States, because the UAE has an extradition agreement with China.

“The oppression I saw inflicted on Tibetans 20 years ago and the Uighurs 10 years ago, has finally reached my people,” he says.

Ma Ju worries for his community back in China, especially now that technological tools like facial recognition make evading restrictions in China nearly impossible.

“You have legs, but you can’t run away,” he says. “You have money, but it’s of no use. You have a heart, but you cannot lift yourself up. This is a new kind of repression.”

Source: ‘Afraid We Will Become The Next Xinjiang’: China’s Hui Muslims Face Crackdown

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The outliers of Canadian media

2019/09/27 Leave a comment

Similar to other commentary but would benefit from an overall discussion of the media financial situation and shrinking employment, enrolment in j-schools (appears to be about 20 percent visible minorities), and the replication of much mainstream focussing on the words, not the record.

And if one cites the percentage of the population that is visible minority, use the 2016 number, not the 2011 one:

Last week, after the trifecta of images were released of Trudeau in blackface and brownface, a group of journalists of colour—Tanya Talaga, Manisha Krishnan and Anita Li—discussed the lack of diversity in Canadian newsrooms on CBC’s The Current.

Due to the lack of visible-minority voices reporting on Trudeau’s blackface, they all agreed, the story, which was really about systemic racism in Canada, was reduced to plain outrage. Rather than giving readers the context they needed to understand the prejudices that people of colour have faced historically and continue to face now, what the public got instead, was a political spin on Trudeau’s actions.

In other words, How would Trudeau’s blackface affect him in the upcoming election? 

For Krishnan, a senior writer for Vice, the questions directed to Trudeau at the media scrum post-blackface were the most frustrating. “There was really no one asking him, ‘Okay, you didn’t think it was racist, what were you thinking? Walk us through your thought process. Why would you think this was an appropriate thing to do?’” she said.

It’s largely about how the Canadian media covers race, Li added, explaining that one of the reasons she relocated stateside was because U.S. media has more of a willingness to publish stories that unpack the nuances of race. It is part lived experience, and part education, she explained.

The stats on newsroom diversity are grossly out-dated, and uncomfortable to examine: In 2006, only 3.4 per cent of people in newsrooms were people of colour. The fact that there’s been no concerted effort to publish current statistics on diversity trends in media signals an even greater concern—while newsroom diversity is abysmal, we’re idle, and simply too embarrassed to address it.

So what does it take for a person of colour, from an under-privileged home, to make it into a national newsroom? A lot. It’s a combination of both what you did and where you were—personal motivation and external circumstances. The handful—if that—of coloured faces in each newsroom you see are outliers. Don’t believe anyone who tells you otherwise.

I grew up in Thorncliffe Park, an area in Toronto’s East York, wedged between the Danforth and the more wealthy Leaside neighbourhood. Thorncliffe Park is a cul-de-sac of apartment buildings where, in the early 90s, an influx of Filipino immigrants settled. My cousins lived in the buildings across from me. Our church—St. Edith Stein—was majority Filipino. My dad and my uncles sat inside East York Town Centre on Saturday mornings, sipping coffee and telling stories in Tagalog.

The cul-de-sac was split in half: if you lived on one side, you attended school on the Danforth, if you lived on the other, you went to school in Leaside. Our building fed into Leaside. At St. Anselm, the student population was about 40 per cent Filipino, 60 per cent white.

There, I was schooled on the opportunities afforded to white people. My white classmates, most of whom had fathers who were doctors, lawyers, business owners and mothers who stayed at home, operated with a sense of unconscious certainty. Their upbringings provided them a firm sense of place in Canadian society. This even trickled into the way teachers and parents addressed the kids—you were either a “Leasider,” or not.

I’m no Malcolm Gladwell, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that—for a child who is 10 years old—having an awareness of economic opportunity by way of your parents correlates with job success later in life. And that’s the inherent advantage white people have in journalism. It’s a career that’s foreseeable in their worldview. Meanwhile, journalism for first-generation immigrant children is like one of those secrets you want to keep from your parents; it’s not part of the conversation at home, nor do you want to bring it up.

It was during my time at St. Anselm that I became acquainted with the term “white-washed”—people of colour who speak, dress and act like they’re white. I first recall my own intuitive white-washing when I spent the time in the homes of friends in Leaside. Inside their carefully decorated houses, I did everything not to highlight how I was different, and instead sought to prove that I was just like them.

The white-washing I subjected myself to as a child, is akin to the way in which I operated at the start of my career in media—showcasing my degrees rather than my personal perspective, listing off my bylines rather than the subject matter I’m passionate about (one being immigrant issues), and dumbing down the core reason why we need more people like me in journalism: If I don’t give the 850,000 Filipinos across Canada—the third-largest Asian-Canadian group in the country—a voice, who will?

In June, CBC and Radio-Canada’s broadcasting division announced a new commitment to diversity across their broadcasting arm. By 2025, they wrote in a press release, the company aims to have at least one key creative—producer, director, showrunner and lead performer—from a diverse background in all its programs. I’d argue that more must be done to radicalize diversity targets across all media.

This starts with having internship programs where at least 50 per cent of interns are people of colour. When it comes to securing a full-time gig in journalism, landing an entry-level role like an internship, is the first of many barriers to entry. By diversifying these jobs, we can ensure an ongoing funnel of young, visible-minority journalists making their way into national newsrooms.

Another idea is to have at least one key decision-making position at large news organizations be filled by a person of colour—and ideally, they’d have hiring authority. It’s one way to tackle what we know as the ‘similarity bias,’ which in the case of journalism and media, is the revolving door of white reporters hired by a majority-white management.

At Maclean’s, while our writers come from a number of backgrounds, the number of ethnic minorities on staff falls below 19.1 per cent,[note: 2016 census number is 22.3 percent] the percentage of people in Canada who identify as a member of a visible minority group, according to Statistics Canada. So instead of hiding from stats, shouldn’t we give these numbers a hard look and ask ourselves: Is Canada truly represented here?

Source: The outliers of Canadian media

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Andrew Cohen: Many bigoted leaders have championed minorities once in office

2019/09/26 Leave a comment

Perspective and looking at the record:

A year ago, the United States Senate was divided over the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, tainted by allegations of sexual misconduct when Kavanaugh was in high school and college. The Republicans limited – and rushed – the FBI investigation into Kavanaugh. It never even interviewed some of his critical old classmates. But the Republicans called the whole affair a smear campaign and confirmed him.

Now there are more allegations. Leading Democrats say he should be removed from the court. If they regain control of both houses of Congress in next year’s election, they could try.

Before that, they should consider the dangers of holding a public figure accountable today for the thoughts or actions of a youthful yesterday. Senate Democrats in Indiana, Missouri, Florida and North Dakota who opposed Kavanaugh lost their seats last year. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who supported Kavanaugh, won.

The suspicion: Democrats in red states (which Donald Trump won in 2016) were punished for their votes on Kavanaugh, suggesting there’s a penalty for this kind of politics. Rather than celebrating their courage, skeptics suggest that voters either didn’t think that Kavanaugh was guilty – or that if he was, it was long ago and didn’t emerge in his career as a jurist.

This is the question raised by Justin Trudeau and blackface, which has generated much sanctimonious comment in the United States. Trudeau has his defenders, though. Conservative writer and columnist Andrew Sullivan, for example, says pillorying someone for their former self is absurd.

In Trudeau’s case, wearing blackface was cavalier, crude and ignorant. But he isn’t a racist. And even if he were in his deepest thoughts two decades ago, would it matter?

Judging public figures by their private behaviour is complicated. Can we really hold people to account for what they said or did before they were fully formed? And can we judge them by their views (or acts) in the face of their public record? In Trudeau’s case, wearing blackface was cavalier, crude and ignorant. But he isn’t a racist. And even if he were in his deepest thoughts two decades ago, would it matter?

In its composition and its policies, Trudeau’s government is diverse and progressive. His cabinet comes from both sexes, many faiths and colours. His immigration and refugee policies are relatively generous. For those who dislike Trudeau, his fondness for shoe polish will only reinforce their antipathy. But there is nothing racist about his government. Nothing. And that’s why the reaction of the élites may be harsher than that of the people.

All prominent people have misjudgments in their past. A young Pierre Trudeau flirted intellectually with fascism and the anti-Semitism that shaped the conversation in Quebec in the 1940s. Did it matter? Trudeau as an adult was defined by his commitment to personal freedom. Patriating the British North America Act and entrenching the Charter of Rights was the single greatest act of statesmanship in our history.

Lyndon Johnson was a racist. He blithely used “n—–” in private conversations, even as president. It was earthy and offensive to blacks in his circle. The same Johnson drove the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. No president since Abraham Lincoln was as important on race.

Harry Truman also used “n—–” privately but it didn’t stop him from integrating the military. Richard Nixon was an anti-Semite who saved the State of Israel when he sent it planeloads of arms during the Yom Kippur War.

For each, did racism, anti-Semitism or bigotry, matter? Not if you believe that their public deeds negated their private thoughts.

Kavanaugh is more complicated. He should remain accountable for what many conclude was sexual assault. One reason is that as a high court judge, he is one of America’s nine moral arbiters, appointed for life; many judges beyond suspicion could fill the job. Another is that he apologized for nothing and was intemperate in his hearing, unbecoming of a judge.

But had Kavanaugh simply disliked (not accosted) women, as those presidents disliked blacks or Jews, why should we care what’s in the human heart – and in the past – if that is where it stays?

Source: Cohen: Many bigoted leaders have championed minorities once in office

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Incarceration of Christians and Han Chinese in Xinjiang shows broad reach of forced indoctrination campaign

2019/09/26 Leave a comment

One has to wonder what the International Metropolis Conference board members were thinking by planning to hold the immigration and integrationconference in Beijing in 2020. Or not thinking:

Chinese authorities are sending Christian Uyghurs and even members of the Han Chinese majority to internment camps in China’s northwestern Xinjiang region, an indication that the regime’s indoctrination strategy is broader than previously understood.

Most of the hundreds of thousands of people – perhaps more than a million – sent to a sprawling network of centres for political indoctrination and vocational training are Muslims, members of minority groups such as Uyghurs and Kazakhs, according to former detainees and instructors. Beijing has said the centres are being used to stamp out extremism.

But six accounts from people who have recently lived in the region or have family there – three Christian Westerners, a lawyer, a Chinese petitioner and a Uyghur family living in France – reveal that others are also being incarcerated.

‘I felt like a slave:’ Inside China’s complex system of incarceration and control of minorities

Some are Uyghurs who have converted to Christianity. Others are Han Chinese – the ethnic group that comprises more than 90 per cent of China’s population – who have challenged local authorities by petitioning for official redress, as well as people considered politically unreliable.

The reports indicate that Beijing’s campaign in the region goes beyond the stated goal, published in an August white paper on Xinjiang, of countering “the breeding and spread of terrorism and religious extremism.” The strategy claimed to be focused on quelling Islamic radicalization rather than a unique cultural group inside China.

But “all signs point to cultural assimilation” as the chief goal of the Chinese campaign, said Timothy Grose, a scholar at Terre Haute, Ind.’s Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology who studies Uyghur culture and is the author of an upcoming book about Uyghurs who study elsewhere in China. What is taking place in Xinjiang is an “accelerated, comprehensive and violent program to jettison meaningful markers of Uyghur identity, such as language, Islam and tangible connections to Central Asia, and replace them with elements of a Han-centric Chinese culture.”

Indeed, “even secular, atheist and Christian Uyghurs are being targeted, I believe, because their milieu has still been largely shaped by Central Asian and Islamic norms.”

Over the past year, Uyghurs living outside China have documented the incarceration of dozens of scholars, artists, musicians and other cultural leaders who have been taken to facilities that China calls vocational skills and training centres but which foreign critics call re-education camps.

In a July white paper, Chinese authorities directly linked Islamic belief with the spread of separatist ideology by what it called “anti-China forces attempting to split China.”

But the incarceration of Christians on extremism grounds underpins an argument that Chinese authorities have used extremism as a cover to conduct a broader campaign of sinification, irrespective of religion.

“We know of at least 14 Christians” who have been taken away by authorities in Xinjiang, said Robert Paix, a Christian businessman who has lived and worked in the region, in part to share his faith. “Islam is just one of the matrix of problems the Chinese government has with Uyghur people,” he said.

In Xinjiang, “any ideology which really captures someone’s conscience that is other than the [Communist] Party is a threat,” Mr. Paix said. “So in essence, it doesn’t matter what religion it is – or even if it was a non-religious ideology.”

Xinjiang is home to an estimated 11 million Uyghurs, a people whose customs, language, architecture and art are among the most distinct of the country’s 55 official minorities.

One Westerner who lived in the regional capital, Urumqi, with his family described the case of a Christian Uyghur woman who lived with a Han Chinese roommate. The Uyghur woman spoke Mandarin and ran a business teaching English. But in December, 2017, police took her from her apartment, put her in a prison uniform and handed her clothes, glasses and national identification card back to her roommate, said the source, a Christian whose identity The Globe and Mail is not disclosing out of concern for the safety of the person’s friends in Xinjiang.

Police said they had found questionable content on her computer, according to the source.

“The sentencing basically was very quick. From what we could understand, it was just ‘You are a terrorist,’ and there was a document that she had to sign – basically like a confession.”

Christian Uyghurs likely number only in the thousands, according to foreigners who have lived in the region. Most Uyghurs are practising Muslims or maintain cultural ties to that faith.

But from what the Westerner could see, the incarceration of Uyghurs “did not seem religious in nature. It seemed just from our experience there that the religious extremist angle was being used to really just suppress the entire people group and culture.”

Another Christian, Gulbahar Haitiwaji was incarcerated for two years, her family said. “She converted to Christianity several years ago and eschews violence,” her husband, Kerim Haitiwaji, told religious liberty magazine Bitter Winter early this year. “There is no reason to imprison her. She is not a danger to China.” The family has declined further public statements since Ms. Hatiwaji was released, and she is now with her husband and daughter in France.

Any responsible government must “remove the malignant tumour of terrorism and extremism” and ensure its people “enjoy a peaceful and harmonious social environment,” the State Council Information Office wrote in an August white paper. It defended Xinjiang’s indoctrination and training apparatus as a “deradicalization” project in line with international principles, providing free education to trainees who “have fallen under the influence and control of religious extremism.”

At the same time, the construction of a system of internment centres has provided local authorities new options for punishment outside the formal legal system – even for people who are ethnic Chinese.

Authorities can send people to the centres for making statements deemed contrary to government dictates; for spreading politically unwelcome thoughts among colleagues; and for posting politically incorrect views to Chinese social-media platform WeChat, according to a lawyer who has travelled in the region and whose identity is not being disclosed because describing the camps could lead to his own incarceration.

The Globe reviewed documents collected by a Chinese human-rights activist that described the case of a Chinese man in Xinjiang who spent years fighting embezzlement charges that dated back to 2004. He disappeared last year but reappeared this spring.

“I studied for seven months,” he said in a recorded interview with an activist reviewed by The Globe. “Studying” is a common word to describe time in indoctrination facilities. “There are Han people” in such centres, he added.

Gulzira Auelhan, an ethnic Kazakh and former detainee, told The Globe this year that she had seen four ethnic Chinese people in the centre where she was held.

Political enforcement has been employed against Uyghurs, too. One Uyghur woman who recently left Xinjiang described how her father-in-law had been sentenced to eight years in prison for “distributing incorrect political views.” The charges were rooted in an incident that, authorities said, occurred more than two decades earlier, when he was working at a government office and complained that ethnic Chinese farmers were receiving a larger allocation of water than ethnic Uyghurs. He was held for 10 months before being tried and sentenced in a single day of court proceedings, the woman said.

The woman’s identity is not being revealed because she fears retribution against members of her family still in Xinjiang. The Globe verified elements of her account with a Canadian family member and with a Western embassy that helped her leave China.

She spoke out, she said, because “I want the world to know how insane it is” for Uyghurs in Xinjiang.

Source: Incarceration of Christians and Han Chinese in Xinjiang shows broad reach of forced indoctrination campaign

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China Wants the World to Stay Silent on Muslim Camps. It’s Succeeding.

2019/09/26 Leave a comment

Those who remain silent are complicit:

When Turkey’s leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, visited Beijing this summer, he hailed a new Silk Road bridging Asia and Europe. He welcomed big Chinese investments for his beleaguered economy. He gushed about China’s sovereignty.

But Mr. Erdogan, who has stridently promoted Islamic values in his overwhelmingly Muslim country, was largely silent on the incarceration of more than one million Turkic Muslims in China’s western region of Xinjiang, and the forced assimilation of millions more. It was an about-face from a decade ago, when he said the Uighurs there suffered from, “simply put, genocide” at the hands of the Chinese government.

Like Mr. Erdogan, the world has been noticeably quiet about Xinjiang, where China has built a vast network of detention camps and systematic surveillance over the past two years in a state-led operation to convert Uighurs into loyal, secular supporters of the Communist Party. Even when diplomats have witnessed the problems firsthand and privately condemned them, they have been reluctant to go public, unable to garner broad support or unwilling to risk financial ties with China.

Backed by its diplomatic and economic might, China has largely succeeded in quashing criticism. Chinese officials have convinced countries to support Beijing publicly on the issue, most notably Muslim ones in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. They have played to the discord within the West over China. And they have waged an aggressive campaign to prevent discussion of Xinjiang at the United Nations.

At a special event ahead of the General Assembly this week on protecting religious freedom, President Trump, the host of the event, did not mention the Uighurs. Vice President Mike Pence gave a nod to the Uighurs, after mentioning the persecution of Christians in China.

China contends that its state-mandated detention camps, surrounded by high walls and watchtowers, are central to its fight against Islamist extremism. Beijing has called them boarding schools, explaining detainees are there voluntarily. China said recently that it has reduced the numbers in the camps, although doubts persist about the claim.

“There has not been a single case of violent terrorism in the past three years,” Wang Yi, state councilor and foreign minister of China, said at an event on the sidelines of the United Nations summit. “The education and training centers are schools that help the people free themselves from terrorism and extremism and acquire useful skills.”

As countries weigh their options over Xinjiang, China’s economic heft looms large.

Officials in the Trump administration have been among the most vocal critics. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has denounced the treatment of the Uighurs as the “stain of the century.” One of his deputies, John Sullivan, who convened a panel Tuesday on the sidelines of the United Nations meeting with several other countries to condemn Beijing’s policies, said China has carried out a “horrific campaign of repression.”

While the National Security Council has pushed economic sanctions over the issue, the Treasury has the power to punish China in that way. So far, the trade talks have taken precedence. And Mr. Trump has largely ignored the issue, essentially giving China a pass.

The administration’s limited action probably affects the global calculus. If the United States does not take a leadership role on the issue, other countries do not feel the pressure to act, either.

Some governments tiptoe around China for economic reasons. When New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, visited Beijing shortly after the massacre of 51 Muslims in Christchurch, she said she had discussed Xinjiang privately with Mr. Xi. She didn’t do much more. New Zealand sells much of its main exports, such as milk, meat and wine, to China.

Last year, China helped Turkey secure a $3.6 billion loan for energy and transportation. Since then, the Turkish economy has further faltered. And during Mr. Erdogan’s visit to Beijing in July, Mr. Xi praised him for supporting what he called China’s core interests, including Xinjiang.

“Many, many governments are looking the other way and self-censoring on the issue of Xinjiang,” said Daniel R. Russel, the Obama administration’s assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs. “Beijing is notoriously prickly about its self-declared ‘core interests,’ and few countries are willing to put the economic benefits of good relations with China at risk — let alone find themselves on the receiving end of Chinese retaliation.”

When countries do criticize China, they tend to do so in a group, seemingly as a way to diffuse and lessen possible retribution.

In Geneva this summer, nearly two dozen, mostly Western, countries, along with Japan, banded together at the United Nations Human Rights Council to call on China to close the camps. No one country was willing to be the organizer. Instead, the statement’s signers relied on a rarely used procedure that allowed it to be circulated without a principal leader.

Not to be outmaneuvered by the critics, China quickly prepared a counter-roster of 37 friendly nations praising its “contribution to the international human rights cause.” Among the cheerleaders were members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation that unanimously endorsed China’s Xinjiang policies in April.

How China Turned a City Into a Prison

Children are interrogated. Neighbors become informants. Mosques are monitored. Cameras are everywhere.

China is carefully shaping its image of Xinjiang in the diplomatic world. Over the past nine months, Beijing has invited select visitors on circumscribed tours of the detention camps to garner positive publicity.

China has generally handpicked the visitors, including journalists from friendly countries. They are then often quoted in the state-run Chinese news media offering flattering comments. “I saw genuine smiles on the faces of trainees I interviewed,” Abdul Aziz Raddad A. Alrabie of the Saudi newspaper Okaz said in China Daily, a newspaper of the Communist Party.

The trips do not always go as planned. Two reports — one by a Malaysian diplomat and another by European Union officials — were highly critical after their visits.

The private account by the Malaysian diplomat, reviewed by The New York Times, contradicted China’s contention that the Uighurs were voluntarily attending the re-education centers.

“Delegates could actually sense fear and frustration from the students,” the Malaysian wrote after his December visit with a dozen other diplomats from mostly Muslim nations. “China may have legitimate reasons to implement policies intended to eliminate the threat of terrorism, especially in Xinjiang. However, judging by its approach, it is addressing the issue wrongly and illegitimately, e.g. preventing Muslim minors from learning the Quran.”

The diplomat referred to two cities in Xinjiang — once-bustling Kashgar and Hotan — as “zombie towns,” saying the streets were virtually empty and that China was probably “using the threat of terrorism as an excuse to ‘sanitize’ Uighur Muslims until they become acceptable Chinese citizens.”

The report was never made public. At the time, Malaysia was working hard to repair relations with China over a troubled infrastructure deal. It has also become increasingly dependent on China for purchases of palm oil, its biggest export.

“The $100 billion in annual bilateral trade is enough to focus the minds of Malaysian policymakers,” said Shahriman Lockman, a senior analyst at the Institute of Strategic and International Studies in Kuala Lumpur. “China is too big a market to lose.”

Three diplomats from the European Union visited Xinjiang’s capital, Urumqi, this year in what one of the participants said turned out to be a “Potemkin village tour.” The officials were shown a hastily built display of weapons that the Chinese guides said Uighurs had used in terrorist attacks; a mosque where there was no sign of religious observance; and a kindergarten where the children sang songs praising the party.

At one camp, the class sang the Communist Party anthem. As they did, one Uighur man caught the eye of a diplomat and held up his wrists as if clamped together by handcuffs.

Afterward, the European Union circulated an internal document saying that the visit “does not invalidate the E.U.’s profound concerns about human rights in Xinjiang, including in relation to mass detention, political re-education, religious freedom and Sinicization policies, as well as concerns that similar measures could be applied in other regions of China with notable Muslim minorities.”

Rifts within the European Union on how to deal with China prevent a common front. Leaders in France and Germany are publicly silent on Xinjiang, while several Eastern European countries are supporters of China.

At the United Nations, China has made Xinjiang its main cause.

The Human Rights Council in Geneva is often considered a diplomatic backwater. The United States is no longer a member, with the Trump administration withdrawing last year in protest over policies toward Israel. As authoritarian governments gain power around the world, human rights are less of a front-and-center issue, leaving the council with less sway.

But China regards the council as a serious arena where it can outmaneuver its opponents, pursue its diplomatic agenda and score points.

A long-scheduled review of China’s human rights record was on the council’s schedule last November just as the Uighurs’ incarceration was gaining attention.

China prepared meticulously. About 60 Chinese diplomats flew to Switzerland from Beijing, a delegation headed by the influential vice foreign minister, Le Yucheng.

He was backed by 40 more members of Chinese government organizations. Such a large entourage of nondiplomats was almost unheard-of at the council, according to diplomats. They acted as cheerleaders, clapping at key moments.

One goal of the performance was to limit backing for an inspection of Xinjiang by Michelle Bachelet, the United Nations’ human rights chief.

“If you’re really serious about a fact-finding mission, please go check the southern border, Guantánamo, the Mediterranean to see if there have been fact-finding missions,” one of the Chinese advocates said, according to a recording by the International Service for Human Rights.

At the end of China’s presentation, more than 120 countries gave a positive review of its human rights record. Fewer than three dozen countries expressed real concern. Ms. Bachelet has not visited Xinjiang.

At the United Nations in New York, China has assiduously worked many angles. At one Security Council meeting last year that was set to discuss human rights violations in Syria, China intervened. It was concerned that the discussion would veer into one on Xinjiang.

The United Nations’ high commissioner of human rights at the time, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, traveled to New York to address the session.

Suddenly, as the diplomats were about to convene, Ivory Coast withdrew support for the discussion on Syria. Since there was no longer a quorum for the session, it was canceled.

Ivory Coast’s ambassador explained that his president had received a call from Beijing instructing him to ensure the session did not happen.

“If you can’t get a discussion on Syria after all these seven years of brutality, of course you can block a discussion on Xinjiang,” Mr. al-Hussein said.

Source: World Leaders Remain Silent on Muslim Camps, Just as China Wants

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Trudeau’s blackface apology rings hollow and highlights anti-Arab stereotypes

2019/09/25 Leave a comment

An example of commentary without examining the actual policies implemented (eg. appointments, M-103 and follow-up).

His case would be stronger if there was an examination of the Liberal government record, rather than what I consider to be lazy commentary without that balance:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has offended, humiliated and hurt several communities in Canada. The images of Trudeau in blackface invoke vile, racist and offensive stereotypes that have been used to deny the common humanity of Black communities across time.

Trudeau wore blackface on several occasions, including at an “Arabian Nights”-themed party where he also wore a stereotypical outfit. He has apologized for the blackface.

Canadians are now reflecting on the impact and significance of the prime minister’s apologies.

Leadership matters

In her recent book, Leading With Dignity author Donna Hicks, based at Harvard’s Weatherhead Center, says leaders play a significant role in creating institutional cultures, including governments. She argues that leaders must genuinely accept other identities if they want to promote the equal dignity and worth of all people.

Trudeau’s conduct ridicules racialized communities. It signals to them that they are second-class citizens. His behaviour must be understood in political and social context.

Trudeau uses anti-Arab clichés in politics

The prime minister invokes anti-Arab tropes when he criticizes Palestinian advocates and their allies who support Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israeli occupation. For example, at a town hall in St. Catharines, Ont., in January 2019, Trudeau asserted that those who support BDS violate “Canadian values.”

People can disagree on the purpose or effectiveness of BDS.

But Trudeau’s decision to declare his opponents as un-Canadian is troubling. It invokes anti-Arab stereotypes and can be linked to a larger pattern of discrimination faced by Arabs and Muslims in Canada, groups that are often improperly conflated.

In a recent paper from the Journal of Law and Social Policy, “All Arabs Are Liars,” I examined a sample of human rights cases for common anti-Arab and anti-Muslim stereotypes. My analysis confirmed that Arabs and Muslim are stereotyped as un-Canadian or disloyal to Canada.

Stereotypes impact people’s lives

Stereotypes or negative tropes are not simply insulting. They help maintain a racialized status quo. They cause us to misjudge other people’s motives, abilities and actions.

For example, after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, stereotypes influenced the decisions of Canadian officials who falsely concluded that Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen, engineer and father of two, belonged to a foreign terrorist group. The officials’ decisions reflected the belief that Arabs and Muslims are not true Canadians. Such thinking contributed to Arar’s overseas torture. It is also evident in the torture of other Canadian Arab,Muslim men in several overseas instances as determined by a federal commission’s inquiry.

Various studies have confirmed that Arabs and Muslims increasingly face discrimination and stereotyping in policing and national security surveillance. Arabs and Muslims also face discrimination at border sites, public spaces, workplaces, service counters and airports

Arab Canadians face racism

In a recent survey of Arab communities in Ontario undertaken on behalf of the Arab Canadian Lawyers Association with the support of the Law Foundation of Ontario, sociologist Suzanne McMurphy and I found that 27 per cent of people surveyed tried to hide their Arab identities.

When asked why one person explained it was because of the “prejudice and stigma associated with being Arab.” Another said: “Because it is clear to me that racism exists against Arabs and open membership can negatively affect me in the hunt for jobs.”

Unlike U.S. President Donald Trump, the Liberal government has not targeted Arab and Muslim communities. But, it has allowed anti-Arab and anti-Muslim practices to continue. It has failed to explicitly examine how its own policies diminish groups and perpetuate racial inequalities.

A show of diversity is not equity

Some point to the diversity of Trudeau’s team as a sign of his commitment to equality. But diversity and equality are not the same.

Feminists use the phrase “add women and stir” to describe the practice of including women without changing subordinating structures. The same tokenism can be taken towards racial equality.

Trudeau’s team is diverse. But the question is not simply “who does he include?” The problem is also: “On what terms does he include them?” A former Liberal adviser suggests the Trudeau team does not actually value diversity. It simply wants votes from diverse groups without fully including them in its power structures.

Meanwhile, the prime minister acknowledges that racialized people in Canada face discrimination. His apology used terms like “micro-aggressions,” “unconscious bias” and “systemic discrimination”.“

But it’s not clear that he’s internalized those concepts.

Until the prime minister demonstrates a real grasp of the dynamics of discrimination, his apologies will ring hollow.

Source: Trudeau’s blackface apology rings hollow and highlights anti-Arab stereotypes

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Former neo-Nazi, Pegida Canada official among People’s Party of Canada signatories

2019/09/24 Leave a comment

Vetting issues plus part of the pond the PPC fishes in:

The former leader of a U.S. neo-Nazi group, a former Soldiers of Odin member and a Pegida Canada official were among those whose signatures were submitted to Elections Canada last year to officially register the People’s Party of Canada, records show.

All three of their names appear on Elections Canada documents, obtained by Global News, that confirmed a minimum of 250 party members had signed membership declarations. The forms were required to obtain party status for the PPC and its leader, Maxime Bernier.

The Canadian Anti-Hate Network said the revelation that the party’s founding members included associates of extreme far-right, anti-immigrant groups should be grounds for removing Bernier from the televised election debates.

“These people speak to who is really excited about the People’s Party of Canada and who got in on the ground floor,” said Evan Balgord, the anti-hate group’s executive director. “It’s become impossible to separate the PPC from this kind of white-supremacist ideology.”

To register as an official political party, the PPC had to submit the names of at least 250 members to the chief electoral officer. Each member had to then sign an Elections Canada “confirmation” form verifying they had signed a membership declaration.

A spokesperson for Elections Canada said the process was meant to ensure that parties applying to register met all requirements under the Canada Elections Act.

“The Act is agnostic when it comes to ideology or platform,” Natasha Gauthier said in an email. “There is no mechanism allowing the Chief Electoral Officer to reject an application solely based on ideology.”

Under Canada Elections Act, parties do not have to disclose information about former or pending criminal backgrounds or investigations regarding those involved with the party, she said.

Released to Global News by Elections Canada, the forms list Shaun Walker among the PPC’s signatories. Walker, who now lives in St. Catharines, Ont., once led the National Alliance and was convicted in Utah over his role in a conspiracy to intimidate minorities.

U.S. prosecutors called the National Alliance a “U.S.-based white supremacist group.”

“Although it purports to be non-violent, the National Alliance is generally recognized as a group that condones and promotes the use of violence to achieve racial separatism,” prosecutors wrote.

The party cut its ties with Walker last month after his past involvement in the white nationalist movement came to light. While his position in the PPC was unclear at the time, the Elections Canada forms disclose his role in registering the party.

Walker did not respond to requests for comment. But in a message obtained by Global News last month, he said he was “innocent” of the U.S. charges and was “framed.”

The PPC submitted 489 membership declarations when it applied to register as a party. Elections Canada accepted 485 of them as “valid.” Of those, 314 members later signed confirmation forms, exceeding the 250 required for registration.

Among them was Janice Bultje, who is active in Pegida Canada and a group called Fighting Hate in Canada. Pegida, whose slogan is “Patriots of Canada against the Islamization of the West,” denies it is a white-supremacist group.

“As a founding member of both Pegida Canada and Fighting Hate in Canada, I believe in the importance of having a government that keeps the separation between church and state and fights hate regardless its origin, from the far-right to the far-left,” Bultje responded when asked why she had agreed to serve as one of the signatories during the registration of the PPC.

The Canadian Anti-Hate Network describes Pegida as an anti-Muslim group and says that while it isn’t militant or physically dangerous, Pegida’s rallies often attract more violent far-right groups.

Another signatory was Justin L. Smith, who was formerly active in the Soldiers of Odin. When reached by Global News, Smith confirmed his past involvement in Soldiers of Odin but said he had not been active in the group for “quite a long time.”

The Sudbury Star reported that Smith was president of the Soldiers of Odin in Sudbury as recently as September 2017. Smith said the local group kept that name and logo after splitting away from the Finland organization because it was too costly to remake.

“We are not racists or anti-anyone,” Smith told the Star.

Smith confirmed he was one of the PPC members whose signatures were submitted to register the party and that he was the financial agent for Kevin M. Klerks, the People’s Party candidate for the Huron-Bruce riding in Ontario.

“His activities with the People’s Party of Canada, according to the document you provided dated 2018 and since, are not connected to nor affiliated with the Soldiers of Odin organization in any way,” Klerks said in an email, calling him an “honest and respectful individual.”

“We have discussed his past involvement with the [Soldiers of Odin] organization. I am sorry to disappoint you but there is no story here.”

Source:  Former neo-Nazi, Pegida Canada official among People’s Party of Canada signatories

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The Economist: Why American Muslims lean leftwards for 2020

2019/09/24 Leave a comment

Not surprising:

BEFORE THE presidential election in 2000, George W. Bush was urged by an adviser to go after a category of voters who would love a business-friendly, socially-conservative message: Muslims. Mr Bush took the tip and it worked. In 2001, a survey of American Muslims (including those who cast no ballot or gave no clear answer) found that 42% reported voting for Mr Bush against 31% for his Democratic rival Al Gore. Among upwardly mobile Muslim immigrants, many of them professionals or entrepreneurs, the proportion voting Republican was much higher.

Now, however, with anti-Muslim sentiment ablaze among supporters of Donald Trump, and the president hardly discouraging it, that love-in is a distant memory. American Muslims are gaining political visibility, but only on the far left of the spectrum. Symptomatic of this shift is the election to the House of Representatives of two Muslim women (Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar) who along with two female colleagues, also left-wing Democrats, have been taunted by Mr Trump and his supporters.

A huge change in Muslim sentiment was clear in the 2004 presidential race and confirmed by the 2008 contest won by Barack Obama. By 2007 some 63% of American Muslims at least “leaned towards” the Democrats, against only 11% for the Republicans. These figures have not changed very much since, according to Pew Research, a pollster. Among Muslims who voted in the 2016 presidential race, only 8% said they opted for Mr Trump (who had declared that “Islam hates us”) and 78% for Hillary Clinton.

Campaigners for Muslim political engagement reckoned that more than 1m were registered to vote in 2016, and that last year’s congressional elections saw an uptick in Muslims going to the polls. Pew estimates that about 3.5m Muslims live in America. At around 1% of the country’s population as of 2015, they were more numerous than Hindus (0.7%) or Buddhists (0.7%) though well outnumbered by Jews (1.8%). But that picture is projected to change fast with the Muslim share doubling by mid-century.

The main reasons for the transformation in Muslim attitudes have been much analysed. After the terrorist attacks of September 11 2001, there was a spate of hate crimes against followers of Islam and open antipathy towards Muslims emerged in a growing segment of the electorate. That put Muslim voters into a defensive frame of mind, and Democrats, with their embrace of cultural diversity, offered the safest haven. Another factor, though its importance is disputed, is that younger American Muslims have grown more liberal over cultural questions like gay rights, so they are less amenable to Republican-style “family values” arguments. As for African-American Muslims, they (like black Christians) have always been well to the left in their voting choices.

Still, to say that American Muslims have lurched from one end of the ideological spectrum to another would be an over-simplification. According to Youssef Chouhoud, a political scientist at Christopher Newport University, Muslims are not so much confirmed leftists as nomads, in search of anyone who will listen to them, and the only respectful attention they are getting is on the left. Even in that quarter, they have been feeling a bit unloved recently. At the convention on August 31st of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), which calls itself the country’s biggest Muslim organisation, only two candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination accepted invitations to speak: Senator Bernie Sanders and Julián Castro, a former housing secretary. Mr Sanders is also probably the most robust supporter of Palestinian rights in the primary field. As Mr Chouhoud puts it, this leaves Muslims “looking for a place they can feel wanted. Any politician who even talks to them will be appreciated.”

In this climate, Muslim Republicans are an endangered, though not extinct, species. One veteran of that cause is an Arizona-based doctor, Zuhdi Jasser. He has served as vice-chair of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, a bipartisan watchdog, as a Republican nominee. Although Mr Trump was not his preferred candidate, Dr Jasser declares himself “pleasantly surprised” by many of the Trump administration’s policies, and insists that “Muslim ban” is not an accurate way to describe the president’s drive to bar entry from five countries where Islam predominates.

Dr Jasser feels the “Muslim-equals-left” stereotype is partly the fault of his community’s self-appointed representatives, not so much the young firebrands as the community’s elderly godfathers. In his view, these veteran leaders have one big failing. They have never really distanced themselves from the global cause of Islamism, the notion that the only ideal form of governance is a Muslim one. (They are not, of course, proposing such a regime for America, but many have a record of endorsing political Islam elsewhere.) That soft spot for Islamism makes them particularly toxic in the eyes of mainstream American conservatives, leaving Muslims nowhere to go but left.

As he tours America addressing conservative groups, Dr Jasser finds them open to persuasion that the political doctrine of Islamism, which in his view can and must be separated from the spiritual teaching of Islam, is their real foe. He lays out the case that Islam as a set of metaphysical beliefs and ethical norms can flourish, in America and elswhere, under the principle of church-state separation which was dear to the Founding Fathers. Once that argument is made, his listeners are open to persuasion that decent American Muslims are allies against Islamism.

Whether or not they deserve to be dismissed as old-timers, America’s Muslim thought leaders, be they spiritual or political, are certainly divided. In ways that leave ordinary Muslim voters a bit baffled, they squabble among themselves, usually over events in distant lands. Arguments rage over the coup in Egypt in 2013, the failed coup in Turkey in 2016 and the civil war in Syria. At the core of many such disputes is a difference in attitudes to the global Muslim Brotherhood, as a standard-bearer of Islamism. In the words of H.A. Hellyer, an analyst for the Carnegie Endowment, “one of the fault-lines in the American Muslim intelligentsia is between those who see Islamism as the proper, basic norm of Muslim political life, and those who are philosophically opposed to it.”

Rank-and-file American Muslims may not have much time for philosophy but many will have felt some bewilderment in recent weeks as one of their most revered spiritual figures became embroiled in a row which has a domestic political dimension. Hamza Yusuf, a California-based greybeard, is often described as America’s most eminent scholar of Islam. In July he took a job, of sorts, with the Trump administration by joining a panel set up by the State Department to ponder the definition of human rights. Some said he was selling out to a Muslim-bashing administration; others that his warm relations with the United Arab Emirates, whose regime he calls tolerant, made him unqualified to pronounce on human rights. (The UAE is a declared foe of the Brotherhood, so views on that country are sensitive.) Mr Yusuf was already unpopular with left-wing co-religionists for saying after Mr Trump’s election that Muslims should accept his authority.

In recent days he has been much criticised for having spoken mockingly of the Syrian uprising that started in 2011. In a three-year-old video clip that suddenly went viral, he said the revolt had led to untold humiliation for Muslims. In a fresh video he apologised if his words had offended people who suffered under Syria’s regime.

Still, some advocates of a Muslim-Democratic coalition feel they can do fine without such prominent Muslims as Mr Yusuf. Despite the lack of interest shown by other Democrats, they took heart from Mr Sanders’s appearance at the ISNA convention and especially over one of his comments. He delighted Pakistani-Americans by saying he was “deeply concerned” about India’s “unacceptable” actions in Kashmir. That gave a hint of one foreign-policy issue which might loom rather large for south Asian voters in the 2020 race. Some Indian-Americans are impressed by Mr Trump’s friendship with Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister; many Pakistani-Americans hope a Democratic runner will take the other side.

Shadi Hamid, a fellow of the Brookings Institution, a think-tank, says the deepening partnership between Muslims and Democrats was built not on foreign-policy questions but more on adversity: the alarm created by the white-nativist spirit which they see stalking the country. Certain tensions do exist, he says, between the social conservatism of some Muslims and the ever more secular ethos of the Democrats. But for now, such tensions are kept under control by a common feeling of being endangered. If the Trump era passes, the Democratic coalition’s internal strains might come to the fore, but until that happens, a sense of being under siege will keep it together. Generally, Muslim voters are saying: “however secular the Democrats might be, it is the Democrats who have our backs.”

Source: Why American Muslims lean leftwards for 2020

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