Racism harms workplace relationships in Canada, CEOs expected to take action: Survey

2021/07/08 Leave a comment

Interesting survey by Edelman, even if online:

Racism is harming workplace dynamics in Canada, with nearly 80 per cent of Black Canadians saying racism has damaged their relationship with their employer, according to new research released Tuesday.

That’s nearly double the reported response from the general population and is followed closely by South Asian employees, with nearly two-thirds also reporting that workplace racism has damaged their employer relationship.

The findings, included in the 2021 Edelman Trust Barometer Special Report: Business and Racial Justice in Canada, are based on an online survey of more than 2,000 Canadians.

The research found racism is a growing concern in Canada, but only one in three people surveyed said the country has made progress tackling racism in the past year.

More than 60 per cent of people said the biggest challenge in solving racial injustice is changing the attitudes of people who are racist, while nearly 40 per cent said the biggest challenge is changing systems that are racist.

Meanwhile, the research found the vast majority of Canadians expect CEOs to take some form of action to address racism and racial injustice.

It also found that brands and corporations that take a stand against racism are far more likely to gain consumer trust than lose it.

Still, over half the people surveyed said brands and companies that issue a statement in support of racial equality need to follow it up with concrete action to avoid being seen by consumers as exploitative or as opportunistic.

Actions that improved a company’s reputation included replacing a racist logo, jingle or product name with one that is non-racist and creating a nationwide campaign to raise awareness regarding systemic racism.

Nearly a third of Canadians said they have started or stopped using a brand in the past year because of its response to protests against systemic racism and calls for racial justice.

Edelman said the survey includes an oversample of racialized people, with a special focus on Indigenous Peoples.

According to the polling industry’s generally accepted standards, online surveys cannot be assigned a margin of error because they do not randomly sample the population.

Source: Racism harms workplace relationships in Canada, CEOs expected to take action: Survey

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with , ,

Cancellation puts spotlight on Malaysia’s cultural conservatism

2021/07/08 Leave a comment

Of interest:

When his online talk on how multicultural performing arts should transcend race was cancelled in early June by the Islamic centre of a prominent Malaysian university, Ramli Ibrahim, was both puzzled and angered.

An official statement by Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), one of the country’s most highly regarded public universities, said that “the organisers have been instructed by the university’s Islamic centre to cancel the programme over undisclosed reasons.”

Ramli, the celebrated artistic director of the Kuala Lumpur-based Sutra Dance Theatre, who is a Malay Muslim and globally renowned for his choreography of Indian classical dance, notably the Odissi style, went online to call UTM’s Islamic centre “narrow-minded” and “bigoted”. The centre did not respond to Al Jazeera’s questions about the cancellation.

“We have sanctioned extreme religious indoctrination to infiltrate our education system,” Ramli told Al Jazeera in an interview. “The latter is the axis mundi of cultivating the kind of citizenry we will eventually produce.”

Ramli’s case is the latest episode in a long-running national debate on the state of the arts in Malaysia and underlines the continuing role of Islamic conservatism in policing and shaping the nation’s cultural identity and practices. Most of Malaysia’s population is ethnic Malay Muslim, but there are also large communities of ethnic Chinese and Indians, as well as Indigenous peoples, especially in the states of Sarawak and Sabah on the island of Borneo.

“We have produced a generation with a rather skewed and narrow world view. Unfortunately, these are the same people who run the country,” Ramli said.

Going against the grain

Ramli’s experience is a reminder that in Malaysia it is not just political artists like Fahmi Reza and Zunar, or the budaya kuning (“yellow culture”, meaning Western culture) of banned foreign films and censored international pop and rock acts that come onto the authorities’ radar. Even traditional, but non-Islamic, art forms like Ramli’s Odissi Indian dance are at risk of being sanctioned by conservatives.

The current state of affairs has roots going back several decades.

In 1970, the government unveiled a National Culture Policy following a violent and racialised political crisis the previous year, which aimed to establish what was claimed to be a new basis for “national unity” in the multiethnic and multireligious nation.

The result was a national culture based largely on the traditions of the Malay majority, with Islam as an important component.

By the 1990s, the identity focus of the NCP started to wane as the country faced new and more pressing challenges in keeping up with globalisation. But as Ramli’s recent case illustrates, the core of the policy continues to inform mainstream cultural decisions.

“Cultural elements of the Chinese, Indians, Arabs, Westerners and others, which are considered suitable and acceptable are included in the national culture,” read a 2019 document explaining the National Culture Policy on the website of the Prime Minister’s Office.

It noted that “acceptance” depended not only on provisions within the Constitution, but other issues including “national interest, moral value and the position of Islam as the official religion of the country”.

Experts said the approach is stifling Malaysia’s cultural traditions.“The attempts to control and manipulate the arts have not only stifled the creativity of all arts practitioners but will lead to the demise of our local traditions,” said Tan Sooi Beng, a professor of ethnomusicology at Universiti Sains Malaysia’s School of Arts in Penang, and an advocate of the sustainability of local traditions through community-engaged research.

Tan points to laws like the Printing Presses and Publications Act, which allows the government to ban cassettes, videos and books that are not approved by the official censors; and the Police Act, under which applications for police permits have to be made to hold public gatherings, including performances of theatre, music and dance.

Ramli, who founded the Sutra dance company in 1983 after returning from Australia, has seen Islam in Malaysia grow more conservative in the years since he returned home.

While his company’s productions have been popular with local and international audiences and achieved considerable critical acclaim, his artistic ethos, drawing on a rich tapestry of cultural elements, has faced a constant struggle with the religious censors.

“There had been initial official opposition to my performances up to the mid-1990s, even before the Department of Islamic Development Malaysia (Jakim) was formed. And there was an unstated understanding among organisers that my performances would be considered ‘controversial’ due to the reference of a Muslim performing Hindu ‘temple dance’,” he said. Jakim is part of the Prime Minister’s Office and responsible for Islamic affairs.

Concerns seemed to have settled in the past decade when Ramli started receiving considerable support in India and stopped being seen as, in his own words, “an aberration”, among Malay cultural gatekeepers. But he also notes that getting major government sponsorship for taking his dynamic and innovative Indian classical dance company abroad remains difficult.

Cultural desertification

The cultural traditions of Malaysia’s Malay majority have also come under pressure from government regulation.

Age-old dance-drama performances such as mak yong, main puteri and kuda kepang, and the shadow puppet theatre, wayang kulit – the foremost examples of traditional Malay culture – were officially banned in 1998 for being “un-Islamic” under the entertainment laws passed in the northeastern state of Kelantan, which has been controlled by Malaysia’s Islamic Party for 30 years. Kuda kepang, with its trance elements and mysticism, has also been the subject of a religious decree in southern Johor state since 2009.

Traditional Malay arts have been around for well more than a millennium, originating in the pre-Islamic era, during the time of the regional Srivijaya Empire. And as with similar traditions in Thailand, Cambodia, Laos or the Indonesian island of Java, the Malaysian versions are at their heart local adaptations of stories and characters from the Hindu epic Ramayana.

Mak yong – performed in Kelantan for centuries – has been particularly targeted by Islamic conservatives for having female performers who also interpret male roles. According to their interpretations of Islam, female performers, and cross-dressing especially, are shunned.

“The rituals, the costumes for the women, the content and stories that contain the key to understanding the female energy in Malay traditional healing practices have all been affected for a long time, since we gave up the power of the art itself to the control of men,” said Aida Redza, a Malay choreographer and performer whose original and modern productions are lauded abroad yet struggle to find spaces at home.

Declared a Masterpiece of Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO in 2005, mak yong’s ban was finally lifted in late 2019 thanks to pressure from the UN special rapporteur in the field of cultural rights, Karima Bennoune, who campaigned against the deliberate stifling of the tradition. Even so, mak yong performances can only proceed if they adhere to Islamic law-compliant requirements that experts said fundamentally alter their original style and symbolic significance.

“The ban on mak yong was cosmetically lifted, but it makes the form unrecognisable from its origins – only men are permitted to perform roles that are ritually and traditionally performed by women. You cannot get further from the roots of mak yong than that,” said Eddin Khoo, a writer and founder of PUSAKA, a Kuala Lumpur-based cultural organisation involved in the ritual arts of Malaysia.

Khoo also emphasises that, regardless of bans, mak yong has survived among traditional grassroots communities as a form of resistance to “cultural cleansing”.

“Mak yong is a Muslim art form,” emphasised Khoo, who pointed out that many pre-Islamic art forms have developed with Islam across the centuries. “That process is part of the evolution of the Islamic faith itself in Malaysia and throughout much of Southeast Asia. This struggle is not about art or culture or religion – it is a struggle about power: who has the power to condition the minds, attitudes and behaviours of a particular community.”

Navigating restrictions

Bans and restrictions translate into a gridlocked system in which government-run arts agencies also act as filters and censors, reminding the artists of what is permitted – and what is not – in order to issue licences to perform.

“There is a strong subtext of strict religious values in the procurement of permits which lean more towards austere Sunni Islam,” Ramli told Al Jazeera. “The ‘thou shall not’ dictums censor and shackle most institutions, not just in education, but also literature, film, music, food and beverage, attire, and so on.”

One recent example is the film, The Story of Southern Islet, by Chong Keat Aun, which was nominated for four awards at Taipei’s high-profile Golden Horse Awards last November nominations and won for Best New Director. Set in Kedah state near the Thai border and based on the filmmaker’s childhood memories, the film tells of a woman’s dream-like spiritual journey to heal her husband, who has fallen mysteriously ill to what he believes is a supernatural curse.

Regardless of international acclaim, the film was subjected to a dozen cuts by the Malaysian censorship board, all related to elements of ancient pre-Islamic rituals, including wayang kulit gedet – a form of shadow play typical of the northern state which was very popular in the 1980s. Today, only two wayang kulit troupes remain.

Wayang kulit – perhaps the most popular form of traditional entertainment in both Malaysia and parts of Indonesia and once used as way to share news and gossip among villagers – was also banned in 1998 because its origins hark back to pre-Islamic traditions. Before COVID-19 halted performances altogether, wayang kulit had already been reduced to a shell of its former self, staged only in selected locations and during weddings and opening ceremonies.

“The cancellation of a high-profile artist like Ramli Ibrahim is very unwise: if the organisers thought he’d be unsuitable, then don’t invite him in the first place,” said Tintoy Chuo, the founder and primary concept creator for Fusion Wayang Kulit, a Kuala Lumpur-based group that has helped revive Kelantanese wayang kulit by fusing it with modern elements.Their Peperangan BintangWayang Kulit updated the tradition using characters from the Star Wars saga and DC Comics’ superheroes like Batman and Wonder Woman. This made the art form more appealing to today’s multiethnic urban audiences – some of whom might never have bothered with a traditional performance – while side-stepping the thematic restrictions.

“Whatever happened to this land before Islam is history, and everything should be accepted as a historical background we cannot change,” Chuo said. “Look at our neighbouring countries and wonder how they are doing arts so well? Because they understand the separation between religion and art, and they respect that.”

For Ramli, the challenge is to transform Malaysia’s majority cultural identity – Malay Muslim, or Melayu in the Malay language – into a more encompassing, updated worldview.

“I wouldn’t dare to define what a ‘sustainable Melayu’ should be, but suffice to say that I prefer my Melayu not to wear his religion like an albatross around his neck,” he said.

Ramli was introduced to Bharatanatyam classical Indian dance while studying in Melbourne in the 1970s.

He joined the newly formed Sydney Dance Company in 1977, and was then introduced to the Odissi style, which he perfected under the guidance of Guru Debaprasad Das in Odisha, continuing to visit the late master until his death in 1986.

“He doesn’t have to justify himself all his life that he is a Melayu … my Melayu doesn’t have to be so ‘pure’ in his pedigree and is confident that he is Melayu regardless of what he does and importantly, proud to be a Malaysian first.”

Source: Cancellation puts spotlight on Malaysia’s cultural conservatism

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#COVID-19: Comparing provinces with other countries 6 July Update, Economist Normality Index

2021/07/08 Leave a comment

The latest charts, compiled 6 July as overall rates in Canada continue to decline along with increased vaccinations (still largely first dose, Canadians fully vaccinated 36.6 percent, comparable to or higher than most EU countries). Steep upward trend as per Globe chart below suggests gap between USA and UK fully-vaccinated will continue to narrow.

Vaccinations: All Canadian provinces ahead of USA, China now ahead of Germany and other EU countries.

Trendline charts

Infections: No significant change

Deaths: No significant change.

Vaccinations: Captured above.

Weekly

Infections: No relative change.

Deaths per million: No significant change.

Interesting integration of various data sources to develop a normality index (Canada is 63.4, slightly below the number for all countries, ranking 35, just ahead of UK):

Since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic in early 2020 many have wondered when the world will return to “normal”. But whether things will ever go back to the way they were is unclear: remote working looks set to continue, for example, and going to the movies may never be as popular as it used to be. 

The Economist has devised a “normalcy index” to track how behaviour has changed, and continues to change, because of the pandemic. Our index comprises eight indicators, split into three domains. The first grouping is transport and travel: public transport in big cities; the amount of traffic congestion in those same cities; and the number of international and domestic flights. The second looks at recreation and entertainment: how much time is spent outside the home; cinema box-office revenues (a proxy measure for cinema attendance); and attendance at professional sports events. The third is retailing and work: footfall in shops; and occupancy of offices (measured by workplace footfall in big cities). 

Our index covers 50 of the world’s largest economies that together account for 90% of global GDP and 76% of the world’s population. Our aggregate measure is the population-weighted average of each country’s score. The pre-pandemic level of activity is set at 100 for ease of comparison. The tracker is updated with new data once a week. 

Overall activity

The global normalcy index plummeted in March 2020 as many countries imposed draconian restrictions on their citizens. It fell to just 35 in April 2020, before improving gradually over the following months. Today it stands at 66, suggesting that the world has travelled roughly half of the way back to pre-pandemic life. Some indicators, such as traffic congestion and time spent outside, have recovered faster than others, particularly sports attendance and flights. The global average masks a lot of variation across countries. Click on the drop-down box to explore how behaviour has changed in each one.

Source:

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Anti-Critical Race Theory Laws Are Un-American

2021/07/07 Leave a comment

Good joint commentary from a variety of perspectives:

What is the purpose of a liberal education? This is the question at the heart of a bitter debate that has been roiling the nation for months.

Schools, particularly at the kindergarten-to-12th-grade level, are responsible for helping turn students into well-informed and discerning citizens. At their best, our nation’s schools equip young minds to grapple with complexity and navigate our differences. At their worst, they resemble indoctrination factories.

In recent weeks, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Iowa, Idaho and Texas have all passed legislation that places significant restrictions on what can be taught in public school classrooms, and in some cases, public universities, too.

Tennessee House Bill SB 0623, for example, bans any teaching that could lead an individual to “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish or another form of psychological distress solely because of the individual’s race or sex.” In addition to this vague proscription, it restricts teaching that leads to “division between, or resentment of, a race, sex, religion, creed, nonviolent political affiliation, social class or class of people.”

Texas House Bill 3979 goes further, forbidding teaching that “slavery and racism are anything other than deviations from, betrayals of, or failures to live up to, the authentic founding principles of the United States.” It also bars any classroom from requiring “an understanding of the 1619 Project” — The New York Times Magazine’s special issue devoted to a reframing of the nation’s founding — and hence prohibits assigning any part of it as required reading.

These initiatives have been marketed as “anti-critical race theory” laws. We, the authors of this essay, have wide ideological divergences on the explicit targets of this legislation. Some of us are deeply influenced by the academic discipline of critical race theory and its critique of racist structures and admire the 1619 Project. Some of us are skeptical of structural racist explanations and racial identity itself, and disagree with the mission and methodology of the 1619 Project. We span the ideological spectrum: a progressive, a moderate, a libertarian and a conservative.

It is because of these differences that we here join together, as we are united in one overarching concern: the danger posed by these laws to liberal education.

The laws differ in some respects but generally agree on blocking any teaching that would lead students to feel “discomfort, guilt or anguish” because of one’s race or ancestry, as well as restricting teaching that subsequent generations have any kind of historical responsibility for actions of previous generations. They attempt various carve outs for the “impartial teaching” of the history of oppression of groups. But it’s hard to see how these attempts are at all consistent with demands to avoid discomfort. These measures would, by way of comparison, make Germany’s uncompromising and successful approach to teaching about the Holocaust illegal, as part of its goal is to infuse them with some sense of the weight of the past, and (famously) lead many German students to feel “anguish” about their ancestry.

Indeed, the very act of learning history in a free and multiethnic society is inescapably fraught. Any accurate teaching of any country’s history could make some of its citizens feel uncomfortable (or even guilty) about the past. To deny this necessary consequence of education is, to quote W.E.B. Du Bois, to transform “history into propaganda.”

What’s more, these laws even make it difficult to teach U.S. history in a way that would reveal well-documented ways in which past policy decisions, like redlining, have contributed to present-day racial wealth gaps. An education of this sort would be negligent, creating ignorant citizens who are unable to understand, for instance, the case for reparations — or the case against them.

Because these laws often aim to protecting the feelings of hypothetical children, they are dangerously imprecise. State governments exercise a high degree of lawful control over K-12 curriculum. But broad, vague laws violate due process and fundamental fairness because they don’t give the teachers fair warning of what’s prohibited. For example, the Tennessee statute prohibits a public school from including in a course of instruction any “concept” that promotes “division between, or resentment of” a “creed.” Would a teacher be violating the law if they express the opinion that the creeds of Stalinism or Nazism were evil?

Other laws appear to potentially ban even expression as benign as support for affirmative action, but it’s far from clear. In fact, shortly after Texas passed its purported ban on critical race theory, the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank, published a list of words and concepts that help “identify critical race theory in the classroom.” The list included terms such as “social justice,” “colonialism” and “identity.” Applying these same standards to colleges or private institutions would be flatly unconstitutional.

These laws threaten the basic purpose of a historical education in a liberal democracy. But censorship is the wrong approach even to the concepts that are the intended targets of these laws.

Though some of us share the antipathy of the legislation’s authors toward some of these targets, and object to overreaches that leave many parents understandably anxious about the stewardship of their children’s education, we all reject the means by which these measures encode that antipathy into legislation.

A wiser response to problematic elements of what is being labeled critical race theory would be twofold: propose better curriculums and enforce existing civil rights laws. Title VI and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act both prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, and they are rooted in a considerable body of case law that provides administrators with far more concrete guidance on how to proceed. In fact, there is already an Education Department Office of Civil Rights complaint and federal lawsuit aimed at programs that allegedly attempt to place students or teachers into racial “affinity groups.”

The task of defending the fundamentally liberal democratic nature of the American project ultimately requires the confidence to meet challenges to that vision. Censoring such challenges is a concession to their power, not a defense.

Let’s not mince words about these laws. They are speech codes. They seek to change public education by banning the expression of ideas. Even if this censorship is legal in the narrow context of public primary and secondary education, it is antithetical to educating students in the culture of American free expression.

There will always be disagreement about any nation’s history. The United States is no exception. If history is to judge the United States as exceptional, it is because we welcome such contestation in our public spaces as part of our unfolding national ethos. It is a violation of this commonly shared vision of America as a nation of free, vigorous and open debate to resort to the apparatus of the government to shut it down.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/05/opinion/anti-critical-race-theory-laws-are-un-american.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

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Canada has an access-to-information system in name only

2021/07/07 Leave a comment

Have encountered some of the same frustrations:

The Treasury Board is quietly conducting a long-promised review of the Access to Information Act, which governs how Canadians can obtain records held by the government. Unfortunately, these consultations appear to be more of a public relations exercise than a serious effort to improve Canadians’ right to access.

The original act dates to 1983 and has barely changed since then. It has not kept up with the advent of the internet, nor have fundamental weaknesses been fixed. Changes made by the Trudeau government in recent years have failed to fully open promised classes of records and have not advanced pro-active publication as far as needed.

Today, we have an access-to-information system in name only. A lack of firm timelines means requests regularly stretch on for months, if not years. Broad exemptions mean crucial information is withheld from the public. A culture of secrecy in many departments undermines the act almost entirely. The Office of the Information Commissioner is underresourced to handle the deluge of complaints.

The current review process is not going to fix all that. Unlike in past consultations, the Treasury Board is not releasing any kind of green paper or other consultative document to chart a course for the reforms, nor has the government sought independent expert advice.

A green paper is essential to capturing and conveying the essence of the innumerable public reports on problems with the system, which go back decades. Drawing on outside experts is equally important for any real reform agenda, especially one that might return the Canadian government to an equal footing with many allied jurisdictions. Canada was an early entrant into the arena of freedom of information; now we are a disappointing laggard.

Reform and revitalization of the Access to Information regime must include significant legislative changes, but must also consider the ecosystem in which it operates.

As it stands, the act allows for the government to exempt and withhold information “obtained in confidence,” information deemed “injurious to the conduct of international affairs,” virtually any information relating to defence and security, and nearly every record that could be described as providing “advice” to the government. These exemptions, as currently worded, simply reinforce practices of hoarding records and a culture of entrenched secrecy. We propose strict limitations on these exemptions, and a test that would require the government to prove the harm of releasing such information.

Some records are completely excluded at present, such as Cabinet confidences. These should be brought under the act, with appropriate restrictions so disputes over access to them can be adjudicated by the Information Commissioner. In addition, information practices are changing in government with ever greater reliance on text messaging, verbal briefings and other transitory material. The act should oblige all government agencies to properly document their decision-making processes and retain these records.

Equally important, a real public-interest override clause must be added, with an oversight role for the Information Commissioner.

There needs to be a declassification regime for all government records. Other governments declassify documents after 30 years or less: Canadians are lucky if these files are ever released. Library and Archives Canada, in particular, should play a role in receiving such records and educating Canadians on their importance.

Once processed and released to an individual requester, the information in question should be made publicly available on a consolidated and searchable government database, including both the metadata about the record and the record itself. We should do away with the wasteful cycle of returning records back into the hands of departmental gatekeepers after every request is fulfilled.

These measures need to be accompanied by a major change in culture within government, including a lowering of the walls of secrecy and an alignment between the Access to Information Act and the principles that underscored the National Security Transparency Commitment promised by the Liberal government in 2017.

A broken access system wastes government resources, does not serve Canadians and does not illuminate our governance history and practice. But it is not yet beyond salvation. The Treasury Board review needs to embrace a bold vision for the future and make a deep change to the legislation and administration of the act.

Dean Beeby is an Ottawa-based independent journalist, author and a specialist on freedom of information. Justin Ling is a freelance investigative journalist. James L. Turk is the director of the Centre for Free Expression at Ryerson University. Wesley Wark is a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation.

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-canada-has-an-access-to-information-system-in-name-only/

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A French Teenager’s Anti-Islam Rant Unleashed Death Threats. Now 13 Are on Trial.

2021/07/07 Leave a comment

No excuse for death threats, words have consequences:

The French girl, 16, was sharing highly personal details about her life in a livestream on Instagram, including her attraction to women. Just not Black or Arab women, she said.

When insults and death threats started pouring in to her Instagram account in response to her comments in January 2020, some from viewers saying she was an affront to Islam, the teenager, Mila, dug in, quickly posting another video.

“I hate religion,” she declared. “The Quran is a religion of hatred.” She also used profanity to describe Islam and the crudest of imagery in referring to God.

The ensuing onslaught of threats after the video went viral has landed 13 people in court on charges of online harassment.

The case has put a spotlight on the roiling French debate over freedom of expression and blasphemy, especially when it touches on Islam. It is also a landmark test for recent legislation that broadens France’s definition of cyberharassment in regards to attacks on the internet, where vitriol is plentiful, modulated debate less so.

“We are setting the rules of what is acceptable and what is unacceptable,” Michaël Humbert, the presiding judge, said at the trial.

Some looked to history to capture the brutality of what Mila experienced online. Mila’s lawyer said she had been subjected to a digital stoning. The prosecutor in the case spoke of a “lynching 2.0.”

More than a year after Mila — The New York Times is withholding her last name because she has been the subject of harassment — posted her videos, her life remains in a tumult. She lives under police protection and she no longer attends school in person.

The 13 defendants, some teenagers themselves, are on trial in Paris, most accused of making death threats. They face the possibility of jail. The verdict is expected Wednesday.

Filed under Islamophobia, Multiculturalism Tagged with

Israel blocks law that keeps out Palestinian spouses

2021/07/07 Leave a comment

Of note, both the discriminatory substance as well as the identity politics:

Israel’s parliament early on Tuesday failed to renew a law that bars Arab citizens from extending citizenship or residency rights to spouses from the occupied West Bank and Gaza, in a tight vote that raised doubts about the viability of the country’s new coalition government.

The 59-59 vote, which came after an all-night session of the Knesset, marked a major setback for Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.

The new Israeli leader, who had hoped to find a compromise between his hard-line Yamina party and the dovish factions in his disparate coalition, instead suffered a stinging defeat in a vote he reportedly described as a referendum on the new government. The vote means the law is now set to expire at midnight Tuesday.

The Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law was enacted as a temporary measure in 2003, at the height of the second intifada, or uprising, when Palestinians launched scores of deadly attacks inside Israel. Proponents said Palestinians from the occupied West Bank and Gaza were susceptible to recruitment by armed groups and that security vetting alone was insufficient.

Under it, Arab citizens, who comprise a fifth of Israel’s population, have had few if any avenues for bringing spouses from the West Bank and Gaza into Israel. Critics, including many left-wing and Arab lawmakers, say it’s a racist measure aimed at restricting the growth of Israel’s Arab minority, while supporters say it’s needed for security purposes and to preserve Israel’s Jewish character.

The law has been renewed annually and appeared to have the support of a large majority in parliament, which is dominated by hard-line nationalist parties. But former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party and his allies decided to oppose it to embarrass Bennett and harm his coalition, which includes a collection of eight parties across the political spectrum, including a small Islamist Arab party.

Interior Minister Minister Ayelet Shaked, a member of Bennett’s Yamina party, said the opposition move to block the law’s renewal would lead to thousands more applications for citizenship. She accused Netanyahu and his allies of choosing “petty and ugly politics, and let the country burn.”

Amichai Chikli, a renegade member of Yamina who voted with the opposition, said the outcome was a sign of deeper issues.

“Israel needs a functioning Zionist government, and not a mismatched patchwork that is reliant on” the votes of Arab lawmakers, said Chikli. He was the only member of his party to oppose the new coalition-led government last month.

Netanyahu, ousted by the new coalition after 12 years as prime minister, made clear his political goals.

“With all due respect for this law, the importance of toppling the government is greater,” Netanyahu said Monday.

Bennett reportedly proposed a compromise with liberal members of the coalition that would have extended the law by six months while offering residency rights to some 1,600 Arab families, a fraction of those affected. But the measure was defeated, in part because two Arab members of the coalition abstained. The vote exposed the deep divisions and the fragility of the new government.

The decision, however, gave some hope to Arab families that have been affected by the law. The law has created an array of difficulties for thousands of Palestinian families that span the war-drawn and largely invisible frontiers separating Israel from east Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, territories it seized in the 1967 war that the Palestinians want for a future state.

“You want your security, it’s no problem, you can check each case by itself,” said Taiseer Khatib, an Arab citizen of Israel whose wife of more than 15 years, from the West Bank city of Jenin, must regularly apply for permits to live with him and their three children in Israel.

“There’s no need for this collective punishment just because you are Palestinian,” he said during a protest outside the Knesset on Monday ahead of the vote.

The law has been continually renewed even after the uprising wound down in 2005 and the number of attacks plummeted. Today, Israel allows more than 100,000 Palestinian workers from the West Bank to enter on a regular basis.

Male spouses over the age of 35 and female spouses over the age of 25, as well as some humanitarian cases, can apply for the equivalent of a tourist permit, which must be regularly renewed. The holders of such permits are ineligible for driver’s licenses, public health insurance and most forms of employment. Palestinian spouses from Gaza have been completely banned since the militant Hamas group seized power there in 2007.

The law does not apply to the nearly 500,000 Jewish settlers who live in the West Bank, who have full Israeli citizenship. Under Israel’s Law of Return, Jews who come to Israel from anywhere in the world are eligible for citizenship.

Israel’s Arab minority has close familial ties to Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and largely identifies with their cause. Arab citizens view the law as one of several forms of discrimination they face in a country that legally defines itself as a Jewish nation-state.

Palestinians who are unable to get permits but try to live with their spouses inside Israel are at risk of deportation. Couples that move to the West Bank live under Israeli military occupation.

The citizenship law also applies to Jewish Israelis who marry Palestinians from the territories, but such unions are extremely rare.

Source: Israel blocks law that keeps out Palestinian spouses

Filed under Citizenship, Immigration Tagged with ,

Cardozo: Dialogues on diversity is what we need

2021/07/06 Leave a comment

Agree with need for commission or enquiry to allow for a more substantive, comprehensive and non-partisan review.

Issue is with respect to what the focus should be and what kind of research, process and recommendations are needed (stay tuned, working on my thoughts):

“They made us believe we didn’t have souls,” Elder Florence Sparvier, a residential school survivor, said at a press conference in Cowessess, Sask.

Canada Day 2021 and this entire period has been a time for reflection. We are a good country. We have the self-confidence to know that we have lots of strengths. And in that confidence, we also have the ability to be self-critical to recognize the bad parts of our history, or the problems we have today, and to make amends, or at least to try to do better.

Over 50 years ago Lester B. Pearson established two royal commissions: one on the status of women and one on bilingualism and biculturalism. They recognized the fundamental, and, yes, systemic discrimination that was faced by women and by francophones. The results of the commissions have seen significant advances, and committed Canada to an ongoing path to betterment. To be clear, it has not been flowers and rainbows on these paths, but overall the trajectory has been positive as we try to get things better.

And so today as we need to think deeply, carefully and compassionately about our country and be conscious of the racism epidemic that has met the COVID pandemic, as was articulated by Senator Wanda Thomas Bernard at a Pearson Centre webinar last summer.

What can we do? Many things, but here is one idea, a thoughtful national dialogue on diversity. There are many ways to do this, but, as a nation, we must listen to each other, and, most importantly, we must listen to those with grievances.  That’s how we build a better country.

The discovery of unmarked graves at residential schools has not been a surprise to most Indigenous people, but it is the harsh reality that has triggered for many, the many real stages of grief. Made more devastating by the fact that they have been saying this for years and governments and the rest of society either had not believed them or just looked the other way.

This tragic discovery has become a precipitating event that has been a shock for non-Indigenous Canadians, for the political class, and the mainstream media. We somehow missed Calls Action 71 to 76 in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report, the missing children and burial information, and all the conversations on this for years.

2020 and 2021 have also seen other aspects of racism come to the fore. With the killing of George Floyd, a Black man killed by a white police officer, in the U.S., our racism problems became much more apparent. Once again, it was the precipitating event there that caused us to become more aware in Canada. In addition to systemic and overt racism faced by Indigenous peoples for years, the reality of anti-Black racism has become more evident. Anti-Semitism has reached new heights—or should we say new depths. Islamophobia is on the rise. We saw the killing of a Muslim family in London, Ont., in June. And with the rise of COVID, we have seen the ridiculous anti-Asian acts of overt racism and racial violence.

There is something rotten in our state these days. And there is nothing wrong in recognizing it and dealing with it. The solutions are many: from legal, to social, to economic, to educational measures. But it starts with dialogue and understanding what marginalization feels like, what unspoken discrimination feels like, or what the hand of racial violence feels like. Also what does white uneasiness or fragility feel like?

At the Pearson Centre we launched a six-month dialogue with two webinars, one with Edmonton Mayor Don Iveson who spoke about the ancient Indigenous history of his city and one with award-winning author Michelle Good. Her novel, Five Little Indians, is about the lives of five young residential school survivors as they make their way through life seriously damaged by their experience. There will be more over the months ahead, that explore systemic racism and various aspects of inequality while always trying to increase understanding across divides and identifying solutions. Using the marvels of webinars we will easily pull together Canadians from across the country into important discussions.

October marks the 50th anniversary of the multiculturalism policy—in the world. It is a good time to take stock and plan the future.

I urge other think tanks, organizations, and companies to launch their own dialogues and to get involved. As Cowessess First Nation Chief Cadmus Delorme said, “All we ask of all of you listening is that you stand by us as we heal and get stronger. All must put down our ignorance and accidental racism of not addressing the truth that this country has with Indigenous people. We are not asking for pity, but we are asking for understanding.”

We are too far apart and we understand too little about each other. We need to learn from each other. And of course dialogue is no reason not to take action. Governments need to engage in dialogue and seriously step up their actions at the same time.

I also think about “what would Pearson do.” I dare say he would strike a royal commission on diversity and equity of some kind, to dialogue about inequality in its various forms.

Source: Dialogues on diversity is what we need

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Delacourt: Perry Bellegarde has some advice for non-Indigenous Canadians

2021/07/06 Leave a comment

Good and relevant reflections:

Nearly seven years ago, when Perry Bellegarde took on the top job at the Assembly of First Nations, one of his major missions was getting Indigenous people out to vote in a looming federal election in Canada. 

“Closing the gap” was the rallying cry in the lead-up to the campaign of 2015, which put Justin Trudeau and his Liberals in power. Indigenous people would only see a difference in their lives, Bellegarde and the AFN argued, if they made a difference at the ballot box in this election. Nonparticipation in Canada’s democracy — too often the practice for Indigenous people — kept them as outsiders in the nation. 

The results were impressive. On-reserve voting shot up from around 48 per cent in 2011 to more than 61 per cent in 2015. Some reserves ran out of ballots. Bellegarde says that Indigenous people alone helped “flip” more than 20 ridings across the country that year. 

Thanks in part to those efforts, Bellegarde’s years as AFN chief have run roughly parallel with those of Trudeau; the prime minister who has made Indigenous issues a bigger priority than any of his predecessors. 

Sitting in his soon-to-vacated office in Ottawa this past week, with time ticking down to the end of his long reign as AFN national chief, Bellegarde smiles at the memory of that first year after he was elected chief in December 2014. 

It’s a long way from there to the here and now, when Bellegarde is preoccupied with almost the opposite problem. In 2015, his prime concern was getting Indigenous people engaged in politics and democracy. In 2021, it’s the non-Indigenous population of Canada that he wants to get mobilized, as he and other leaders wonder how to seize a moment gripping the nation. “What’s changed is that Canadians now have opened their eyes,” Bellegarde says, reflecting on the past month of discovery — or rediscovery — of the truth about residential schools and the hundreds buried in unmarked graves around the country. 

“There’s this discourse in Canada, like people are willing to open their eyes now and have a tough conversation and see the truth in history.” 

But here is the question for Bellegarde — what exactly are non-Indigenous people being mobilized to do? Seven years ago, voting was a tangible thing he could ask people to do to close that famous gap; something real, visible and measurable on election day. 

If it is true that non-Indigenous Canadians are in a mood to do something, anything to reckon with the brutal history of residential schools, what action is Bellegarde urging them to take? 

“This is what I tell you to do,” he says. “Read the (Truth and Reconciliation) Commission’s report and get familiarized with the 94 calls to action. … Lobby! Help lobby and advocate to your member of Parliament to end the boil-water advisories, help lobby to the Pope to come to Canada, to apologize for the role of the Catholic Church. Lobby to do the research and investigation into the missing children and all the residential school sites.” 

Politely, tactfully, I ask: is that it? We talk about how this long last year of the pandemic has also been an exercise in mobilization of individuals. Fighting COVID was literally in people’s own hands, following public health measures, from wearing a mask to accepting huge limits on work and social life.

If Canada is in a moment of reconciliation, it seems that somehow there should be an equivalent call for action to citizens on individual, hands-on terms. Is it enough to ask them to lobby their governments and politicians to do something? 

Bellegarde considers the question. Yes, he says, this can work on an individual level. 

“Learn about First Nations’ culture, language, and dance, First Nations foods. You know, integration can work both ways. And so that’s something that individual people can do.” 

The chief has just returned from his home province of Saskatchewan and a Sun Dance ceremony there and his conversation is laced with the importance of connections between all of creation: between land and “two-legged” creatures (that’s we humans;) between the Earth and the stars; between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. 

His talk of unity, ironically, comes just as the AFN is closing in on the last days of the election to choose his successor, which naturally is going to divide an organization that is notoriously fractious. Bellegarde’s main advice to his successor, whomever that turns out to be among the seven candidates, is simple. “AFN has to be united,” he says.

When I ask Bellegarde what his main job has been — managing the AFN or representing it to others, he doesn’t hesitate. Serving as a spokesman, he says, as the voice of the Indigenous community is clearly the priority for anyone who wants to lead this organization that says it speaks for more than 900,000 people living in 634 First Nation communities. 

“It has to be relevant. People need to see the relevancy of the AFN in order for it to be effective. We’re an advocacy organization and you advocate for policy and legislative change. And the most important thing you influence is that federal budgeting cycle every year.” 

It’s why he also smiles when presented with the familiar criticism — not unique to him, either — that this AFN chief got too close to the federal government, whose time in office has run in parallel to his own. Bellegarde has heard that before; so did the AFN chiefs who came before him. 

“You have to be able to communicate and collaborate and have access to the policy, legislative decision makers,” he says. “If you can’t do that, what good are you as a national team? How effective are you as national chief?” 

He also stresses that he is on good terms with all the federal political party leaders; not just Trudeau or his ministers. On the coffee table in front of him is a new pamphlet: an updated version of the “Closing the Gap” manifesto of 2015, which he’s been pressing into the hands of politicos of all stripes since 2019. It’s called “Honouring Promises” and runs to 16 pages of demands that the AFN wants to see in any party’s election platform. 

The whole debate around Canada Day and whether to celebrate it was not one on which Bellegarde wanted to take a side — not because it divided the political world, but because it was one on which chiefs of the AFN were not united either. It reminds him a bit of the debate around whether to vote in 2015. Some Indigenous people argued that elections — such as the one that may come again soon in Canada — have nothing to do with their own nations and democracy within them. None of their business — part of the non-Indigenous Canada so problematic through their history. 

Bellegarde has an easy answer for that. “I embrace dual citizenship,” he says. 

As he walks around the office that will soon belong to a new chief, he points out the photographs he will soon be taking down. There he is in Paris in late 2015, posing with Barack Obama while Trudeau takes a photo. They were all there for the talks that led to the Paris agreement on climate change Catherine McKenna, the minister who resigned this week and boasted that Paris agreement as one of her earliest victories, is in the shot too, as a newly sworn-in environment minister. In another photo on the AFN’s office wall, Bellegarde is posing with former finance minister Bill Morneau, focus of much of his lobbying efforts in the early years of the Trudeau government. 

He spoke to McKenna as she was resigning this week; both of them focused on turning a page. Not coincidentally, they both said they intend to spend the summer relaxing and considering what to do next. They are, in their own ways, snapshots themselves of an earlier era of Trudeau government. 

I ask Bellegarde how he’s changed since 2015. He has to think, then says: “I’ve learned to be more patient.” 

Source: https://www.thestar.com/politics/political-opinion/2021/07/04/perry-bellegarde-has-some-advice-for-non-indigenous-canadians.html?li_source=LI&li_medium=thestar_politics

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She Struggled To Reclaim Her Indigenous Name. She Hopes Others Have It Easier

2021/07/06 Leave a comment

Of interest:

For as long as she can remember, Danita Bilozaze knew that the name on her birth certificate, “Danita Loth,” didn’t reflect her Indigenous identity.

From the stories her mother recounted to her, she knew that Catholic missionaries had changed her family’s name. Her great-grandfather, a man known as Lor Bilozaze, was written into priests’ logs as “Loth Bilozaze.” Government record books in Canada ultimately dropped the “Bilozaze,” and Loth became their surname.

She never felt a connection with that name. But “Bilozaze,” which means “the makers” in her native Denesuline language, she said, is integral to the preservation of her identity and culture as a member of the Cold Lake First Nations.

“It means everything to me because it lines up with who I am,” she said. “I am an educator, I am a teacher, I am a baker, I’m an artist. I’m always, always, forever making things. So when you have something that was taken away from your family, like your birthright or your name and you have a chance to make that right for future generations, it means everything to take back what is rightfully mine.”

“Loth Bilozaze,” the name of Bilozaze’s great-grandfather, was changed to “Lor Bilozaze,” according to a photocopied document found in the Provincial Archives of Alberta. “Bilozaze” was later dropped from government records.

Provincial Archives of Alberta

Last year, the 49-year-old began an emotional and frustrating nine-month-long journey to officially change her name.

new policy that promotes name reclamation promises that those following in Bilozaze’s footsteps won’t have to face the same hurdles.

A step toward reconciliation

Earlier this month, federal officials in Canada announced a new policy process that allows Indigenous citizens to restore their names on government-issued identification, including passports, for free until May 2026.

It’s unclear how many Canadians, 5% of whom are Indigenous, will pursue name reclamation under the new policy.

Frank Deer, a research chair and associate professor in Indigenous education at the University of Manitoba, says that most First Nations tribal members have lost their original Indigenous names to history as a result of forced assimilation and poor government record-keeping.

Among native people who can’t reclaim their names because of inadequate records, Deer says there’s a growing interest in acquiring new Indigenous names that carry a meaningful connection to their communities.

“Many are actually not reclaiming a lost name,” he says. “They’re simply claiming a name.”

A history of “cultural genocide”

The new policy implements a six-year-old recommendation from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It’s known as Call to Action No. 17: An appeal to all levels of government to allow residential school survivors and their families to reclaim names changed by the residential schools.

The policy was unveiled against the backdrop of last month’s harrowing discovery of the remains of 215 Indigenous children in a mass grave at a former residential school in Kamloops, British Columbia.

“It was a very harsh reminder that as a country, we have to come to grips with the fact that the residential school system was something that could have and did occur in a country that prides itself on our diversity and our relationship with Indigenous peoples,” Citizenship Minister Marco Mendicino told NPR.

Between 1830 and 1998, Canadian governments and churches separated more than 150,000 native children from their parents and confined them to mandatory boarding schools. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission said the effort amounted to “cultural genocide.” There — at Indian residential schools like Blue Quills in Alberta, which Bilozaze’s grandmother attended — students were given Christian names, had their hair cut and their clothes replaced with uniforms, suffered physical and sexual abuse, and punished for speaking their own languages.

The commission estimated that over 4,000 children died while at the schools. The shocking discoveries have continued. A week after leaders of Indigenous groups said that at least 600 bodies, mostly those of children, had been found in unmarked graves outside another shuttered residential school near Grayson, Saskatchewan, 182 more human remains were found near a another former church-run school in Cranbrook, B.C.

In March 2020, Bilozaze was as immersed as ever in that history of cultural erasure. She had just completed her master’s degree in education after studying the revitalization of Indigenous languages and the reclamation of native identities. Yet when she was awarded her degree, her diploma did not reflect her roots. She wanted it changed to her Indigenous name.

She met few who understood what reconciliation should look like

Bilozaze thought the commission’s call to establish a name reclamation policy would make the process easier.

Yet, at every step she described in getting her name changed, she found ignorance around reconciliation.

“Instead of just going and doing this work, I now have to educate people along the way,” she said.

Her first step began last September with a visit to get her fingerprints taken at the federal police station near her home in Comox Valley, British Columbia. A clerk asked her to explain why the fees should be waived for her application.

So Bilozaze pulled up documents on her phone and began teaching the clerk a history lesson.

“Then I went and I sat in my car and cried,” Bilozaze said.

She would go through nine months of delays, anguish and repeating her story. Altogether, application fees can run upward of hundreds of dollars. Eventually, through petitions, she managed to get most of the charges reimbursed.

By winter, her pursuit stalled. Her certificate of name change — the document she needed in order to make revisions on official IDs — was held up at the Land Title and Survey Authority. When the document did arrive in her mailbox three months later, it appeared singed and wrinkled — rendering it void.

“At that point, I’ve got nothing to prove who I am,” she said.

So she went through the process again. She proceeded to get her land title as well as her three university degrees changed to her Indigenous name.

Then came the passport. Instead of enjoying their spring break this year, the teacher and her daughter drove the three hours from their home in Comox Valley to a passport office in Victoria to get their names changed.

That’s where she met Samantha MacPhail, a supervisor at Service Canada’s Citizen Services Branch. For the first time in the entire process, Bilozaze says she started to see things turn around. An apologetic MacPhail gave Bilozaze’s application her full attention, Bilozaze said.

Following daily updates from MacPhail, Bilozaze finally got her official passport on May 26.

A harrowing journey offers a crash course on cultural sensitivity

MacPhail worked to ensure her colleagues could learn from Bilozaze’s experience. Bilozaze’s fight to legally change her name has provided a teaching opportunity for some 1,000 employees within Service Canada as a part of workplace training programs on reconciliation.

According to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, Bilozaze is the first person in the country to have her fees waived to get her passport changed to reflect her Indigenous name. Her 15-year-old daughter, Dani, is the second.

In an email last month, MacPhail thanked Bilozaze for letting her share her story, including on a call with leaders at the national level.

“Your story has continued to move others, both to tears and to action,” MacPhail wrote. “Because of your action and your bravery, Indigenous Canadians across the country will no longer walk into our offices and be met with a non-answer.”

Bilozaze said that other people in her Comox Valley community want to legally reclaim their names. “But of course, there’s fear,” she said on June 21, Canada’s Indigenous Peoples Day. “No one wants to have to push that hard.”

She’s a reluctant poster child in the protracted pursuit of Indigenous reconciliation. As Bilozaze said she told Service Canada when asked to share her experience: “If it’s going to help people like me, definitely use my story — only if it’s going to help those that are coming behind me to do the same thing.”

Source: She Struggled To Reclaim Her Indigenous Name. She Hopes Others Have It Easier

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