Surviving the era of ‘tantrum style’ politics

2019/09/26 Leave a comment

John Geddes draws on Northrop Frye in this interesting column:

Anyone clinging to sanity deserves a mechanism for coping with the latest Donald Trump outrage. The socially sanctioned default response—I couldn’t imagine him going any lower, but he’s done it again—is too benumbed to feel nearly adequate. My own defensive twitch is to mutter the words “tantrum style” at the iPhone screen when news appears of the inevitable worst-yet presidential utterance, which draws some looks on the bus, but at least I’m not left entirely speechless.

I lifted the phrase from a lecture series Northrop Frye delivered in 1961, which was preserved in a slim book called The Well-Tempered Critic. Midway through a virtuosic explication of the sort of language deployed by the Trumps of this world, the late Canadian literary theorist described the basic transaction: “A mob always implies some object of resentment, and political leaders who speak for the mob aspect of their society develop a special kind of tantrum style, a style constructed almost entirely out of unexamined clichés.”

Frye was at his best in precisely cataloguing the topics covered in the clichés spouted by the tantrum-throwing ego. “It can express,” he said, “only the generic: food, sex, possessions, gossip, aggressiveness and resentments.” Doesn’t that satisfyingly sum up Trump’s constricted range? He’s aggressive and resentful, of course, and a vicious gossip, and obsessed with possessions. But don’t pass over the seemingly quotidian first item on Frye’s list: food. Trump was never more Trumpian than when—in recounting how he told Xi Jinping over dinner at Mar-a-Lago about a U.S. missile strike on Syria—he gloated that they were, at that moment, eating “the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake, and President Xi was enjoying it.”

It’s not the usual line of attack to parse Trump closely enough to grasp how his fixation on the menu fits with all the rest. His racism, his nativism, his populism—these are all aspects of the era’s dominant figure that lend themselves to analysis by writers who come at him through political conviction or even political philosophy. The spate of books and essays that might be gathered under the heading Trump vs. the Enlightenment are almost touching in the earnestness of the authors as they extol values handed down from the 18th-century, like respect for democratic institutions and regard for science, now banished from the White House.

But these approaches can only remind us of what Trump and the rest of the right-wing populists are undermining, not how they’re doing it. In other words, the political thinkers who can help us get clear on what’s worth defending aren’t much help in figuring out what’s put us on the defensive. For that, we don’t need philosophy, but we might be able to make use of a literary critic’s insights in order to fathom how Trump’s crude rhetoric can possibly be working.

He’s a voice, after all, not a mind. If stray scraps of ideology cling to his blather, they don’t add up to much—certainly nothing coherent enough to make any clear-headed listener doubt the basic tenets of democratic liberalism. But he sure knows how to string together clichés—or, as they say on Twitter, make a thread of them—and the world evidently can’t or won’t block him. Frye left us a guide to understanding his tantrum style, and, even better, a way to start thinking again about fostering a culture that hears how empty it really is.

Born in 1912, Frye’s concerns were rooted in his reaction to the totalitarianism that was on the march as he came of age in the 1930s, when he was studying at University of Toronto and Oxford. Hitler’s raving never quite stopped echoing for him, right through to his last big book, 1990’s Words With Power, published the year before he died, in which he describes how the most debased political rhetoric comes down to a “shrieking head” ranting until the “steady battering of consciousness becomes hypnotic, as the metaphor of ‘swaying’ an audience suggests.”

Frye was never swayed by the pull fascism exerted on, to stick to his literary field, Eliot and Pound. As for any tug from the left, well, he once reportedly dismissed rival critic Terry Eagleton as a “Marxist goof.” Frye proposed arming citizens against ideological assaults with educated imaginations, so they would know a verbal bludgeoning when they heard one. “Literary education should lead not merely to the admiration of great literature, but to some possession of its power of utterance,” he wrote in The Well-Tempered Critic. “The ultimate aim is an ethical and participating aim, not an aesthetic or contemplative one, even though the latter may be the means of achieving the former.”

The notion of literary appreciation underpinning participatory citizenship might well land as naïvely bookish. Yet it would be a mistake to assume Frye was out of touch. Despite his tweeds and rimless spectacles—not to mention the intimidating reputation draped over him after his daunting masterpiece, Anatomy of Criticism, appeared in 1957—he never really retreated into his Blake, his Shakespeare, and his King James Bible.

For instance, he dutifully watched countless hours of miscellaneous TV for the Canadian Radio-television Commission in the early 1970s. From the notes he jotted down, which were published much later, we know he was astute enough about popular culture to see football was the medium’s ideal sport (its “discontinuous and intensely localized rhythm seems to me the rhythm of television”) and to greatly enjoy a segment of a CBC comedy special co-created by Lorne Michaels (soon to break big with “Saturday Night Live”).

He grappled more systematically with his times in a 1967 lecture series published as The Modern Century. Frye spoke of how the liberal ideal of social progress had devolved, at the individual level, to the progress of time ticking toward death. When life feels so pointless, so alienating, many individuals shield themselves by adopting a  “deliberately frivolous” attitude, he observed, ignoring news other than tabloid “human interest” pieces. (Imagine if Frye had lived to witness the rise of reality TV.)

At the same time, he detected in advertising and propaganda—and especially their new hybrid progeny, PR—the ascendant forms of language. Decades before the Internet emerged as an all-encompassing digital counter-reality—ushering in a presidency that’s only fully itself only on Twitter—Frye sensed something like it coming. “The triumph of communication is the death of communication: where communication forms a total environment, there is nothing to be communicated,” he wrote.

He was never easy to label. Frye insisted that literary criticism must not be an adjunct of any ideology, whether feminism or Marxism or, back in his day, Freudianism. His resistance to isms in his core work was known to sow confusion about where to peg him on the left-right spectrum. On one hand, the RCMP kept a secret file on him, their interest reportedly prompted by his involvement with a “teach-in” on China at University of Toronto in 1966; he also opposed the Vietnam war and apartheid in South Africa. On the other hand, he scoffed at the student radicals of the ’60s, who sounded to him, as a former student of the ‘30s, to be repeating the “formulas of the ignorant and stupid of a generation ago.”

In other words, he was more or less a centrist liberal, which frustrated his detractors during his lifetime. How could such a formidable genius be so politically bland? I think this largely explains why he’s fallen so far out of intellectual fashion. Yet today—with the best parts of the postwar status quo we used to take for granted under siege by the forces of raw stupidity—Frye’s critical preoccupation with cultivating what he called democracy’s “shaping and controlling vision” takes on an unforeseen urgency.

In the roiling spring of 1969, when he was accepting an honorary degree at Acadia University, Frye pleaded for a return to a “revolutionary belief in democracy and equality,” arguing that, at least for Americans and Canadians, “the dynamic of democracy is an inclusive one, and it moves toward dissolving the barriers against excluded or depressed groups.” He acknowledged where North American society was falling short, but believed the solutions had to be found in its own myths. “The old middle-class and white-ascendancy stereotypes are no longer strong enough to hold society together, and of course they were never good enough,” he said that day. “But the recovery of its own democratic tradition is the key to the present identity crisis on this continent.”

What might be impeding the recovery of that tradition? More than 50 years ago, Frye warned that the comfortably prosperous democracies are vulnerable to an insidious internal blight more dangerous than any overt ideological challenge. “The most permanent kind of mob rule,” he wrote in The Modern Century, “is not anarchy, nor is it the dictatorship that regularizes anarchy, nor even the imposed police state depicted by Orwell. It is rather the self-policing state incapable of formulating an articulate criticism of itself and developing a will to act in its light.”

Sensing that their state is paralyzed in this way, citizens grow susceptible to the empty calls to action bellowed by Trump, or the Brexiters, or any number of subsidiary blowhards. When well-intentioned politicians can’t come to grips with climate change or shrink income inequality, reform immigration or fix health care, why keep voting them in? Supposedly enlightened leaders who haven’t been able to muster plausible critiques, or summon the will to act on them, won’t put populism back in its place until they regain their mobility.

Along with recovering the capacity to move on what matters, they’ll need to find the language to regain the respect of distracted voters. Frye wasn’t against healthy rhetoric. In Words With Power, he cited the most redoubtable of classics—Lincoln’s Gettysburg address and Churchill’s 1940 speeches—as examples of “how an ideology maintains itself in a historical crisis.”

Lincoln and Churchill, he wrote, didn’t appeal so much to reason, as to a shared understanding that respect for the rational is integral to an even deeper social bond. “The principle invoked is that we belong to something before we are anything, that our loyalties and sense of solidarity are prior to intelligence,” Frye said. “The sense of solidarity is not simply emotional any more than it is simply intellectual: it might better be called existential.”

And that solidarity was, for Frye, reliant on the vision that makes a society more than a mob. By vision, he meant everything we lump together, in a post-religious era, as culture. He placed the utmost importance on schools and universities doing the work of keeping genuine culture alive in students’ imaginations. That job, however, cannot be reduced to some sort of ideological indoctrination. At its heart, it must be about instilling a familiarity with and a taste for great stories—the sensibility most likely to carry with it a strong distaste for insults and lies.

What goes on in the classroom takes on real urgency where liberty is most threatened, and thus most valued. In Hong Kong, the high-school level liberal studies curriculum is being blamed by the Beijing regime and its apologists for creating a generation of pro-democracy activists. Frye would have been fascinated, and even more intrigued by reports that link recent efforts to enhance liberal-arts education at Hong Kong’s universities to the cause of bolstering liberal-democratic values there.

But that’s in a city under severe duress. In complacent North America, skeptics will doubt public education is up to a task as existential as reinvigorating democracy through the teaching of the humanities. Think about it this way, though. Let’s say the question is, “What is needed to keep liberal democracy healthy?” and your answer does not include, “The schools will have to do more heavy lifting.” In that case, the alternative answer escapes me. We need to teach the basic mechanisms of democracy (what we call “civics”) and the literature and art that bind us together as a democratic society (what Frye called “culture”).

Near the end of The Well-Tempered Critic, he described what culture accomplishes at its best, on the broadest, most democratic level. “It does not amuse,” Frye wrote, “it educates, hence it acts as an informing principle in ordinary life, dissolving the inequalities or class structure and the dismal and illiberal ways of life that arise when society as a whole does not have enough vision.” If that sounds utopian, will anything less suffice when dystopia commands a beachhead in the most powerful office in the world?

Source: Surviving the era of ‘tantrum style’ politics

Filed under Other Tagged with , , ,

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

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

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

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

‘Birth tourism’ could become election issue in B.C. riding considered ‘ground zero’

2019/09/25 Leave a comment

Not seeing much resonance outside of Richmond and it does not appear that the CPC is wedded to its policy resolution given their immigration critic Michelle Rempel’s comments (Michelle Rempel Garner on Twitter: “3/ I would hope that all …https://twitter.com › michellerempel › status):

On the streets of Richmond, an immigration topic on people’s lips for years has been “birth tourism.”

The practice — where pregnant women travel to a foreign country to give birth, thereby guaranteeing their baby automatic citizenship — has been rising steadily in the city, whose hospital is considered “ground zero.”

Under Canadian immigration law, birthright citizenship is law. But some in the city say people are increasingly taking advantage.

One woman, Kerry Starchuk, has made it her mission to bring an end to birth tourism. She has submitted two online petitions to the federal government since 2016, arguing more needs to be done to clamp down on the practice.

“It is undermining our citizenship,” she said. “Everyone comes through the front door and they work very hard to come here. This is undermining the system.

“People are lying to border guards and not saying why they’re coming here, and coming to stay at places that are unregulated. If we want a healthy community, everyone needs to contribute to being on board.”

Starchuk says several homes in Richmond are being advertised on Chinese websites and Instagram accounts as so-called “baby houses,” where families can rent rooms in advance of their hospital visit.

“We have given the wrong messages by not addressing the issue, so now there are even more operators bringing birth tourism into Richmond,” she said.

Starchuk’s first petition was sponsored by Alice Wong, the longtime Conservative MP for Richmond Centre, and gained more than 8,800 signatures — 5,100 of which came from B.C.

A second petition in 2018 was signed over 10,800 times, again with a majority coming from B.C.

That petition’s sponsor was Liberal MP Joe Peschisolido, whose riding of Steveston-Richmond East sits just east of Richmond Hospital and contains several neighbourhoods where “baby houses” have popped up.

“Birth tourism undermines both the integrity of our immigration system, as well as the integrity of our health care system,” he said. “It’s a business, but it’s an illegitimate business.

“What you have are unscrupulous businesspeople who are making money off our generosity … and that has to stop.”

The petition called on Ottawa to not only declare it doesn’t support birth tourism and study its full extent and effects, but also move towards policies that would dismantle businesses that promote the practice.

Peschisolido says the government in the process of adopting all three of those requests, but admits it’s taking time.

“We have to quantify it and come up with numbers to see what it is, what’s occurring, what kind of problems are involved,” he said. “Then we have to come up with a plan to shut down the industry, and that’s what we’re in the process of doing.”

Numbers increasing

While Statistics Canada data has reported relatively small numbers of births by nonresidents based on birth registrations — just 313 across Canada in 2016 — new studies have shown birth tourism could be much more widespread.

A 2018 Policy Options study that looked at the number of births through hospital discharge data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) found 3,223 cases that same year, more than five times the number from Statistics Canada.

Andrew Griffith, a fellow of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute who was behind the report, says that number has only continued to increase, to 3,628 in 2017 and 4,100 in the last fiscal year, which ended in March.

“That represents a 13 per cent increase year over year, which is quite significant,” he said, while noting the number still represents less than two per cent of all births in Canada.

Griffith acknowledged the data includes all births to nonresidents, including those temporarily living in Canada on student visas, and it’s difficult to tell in each case whether birthright citizenship was a motivating factor.

The CIHI information shows while B.C. may actually lag behind Ontario in the number of births to nonresidents — 689 in 2017, compared to more than 2,000 in Ontario — Richmond Hospital continues to outpace all other hospitals in the country.

In 2017-18, the B.C. hospital saw 469 births to nonresident mothers, accounting for more than 21 per cent of all births there. The next closest figure comes from Scarborough and Rouge Hospital in Ontario, with 163 nonresident births, representing 9.5 per cent of total births at the hospital.

Griffith’s report recommended financial action against nonresidents attempting birth tourism to discourage it, such as hospitals requesting substantial deposits from nonresidents.

Peschisolido says all options are being considered, but pointed to a $52-million government investment meant to help RCMP crack down on “baby houses” as a “good first step.”

Campaign issue

An Ipsos poll conducted in January for Global News found more than half of Canadians surveyed either tend to agree or strongly agree that Canada is too welcoming to immigrants.

In March, an Angus Reid Institute poll suggested 64 per cent of Canadians disagree with the country’s birthright citizenship laws, with 60 per cent calling for stricter laws against birth tourism.

But responses to Starchuk’s two petitions have suggested Ottawa has no plans to get rid of the law, despite admitting birth tourism is a problem that needs addressing.

“While there may be instances of expectant mothers who are foreign nationals who travel to Canada to give birth, requiring that a parent be a citizen or permanent resident in order for their child to acquire citizenship through birth in Canada would represent a significant change to how Canadian citizenship is acquired,” then-immigration minister John McCallum said in response to the 2016 petition, which was ultimately rejected.

Current Minister of Immigration Ahmed Hussen made similar points in response to the 2018 petition, but pledged to study the issue more closely.

Peschisolido, who was first elected to the new Steveston-Richmond East riding in 2015, says he plans to make the issue a key promise in his re-election bid.

“If I’m blessed and fortunate enough to be re-elected … I’m going to be pushing very hard to not only undermine birth tourism, but ultimately stop it and eliminate it,” he said.

Conservative candidate Kenny Chiu and Green candidate Nicole Iaci did not make themselves available for interviews.

At their most recent convention, Conservative Party members vowed to bring an end to birth tourism.

In a statement, NDP candidate Jaeden Dela Torre said the problem is concerning as it related to the health care system, but said any policies that crack down on birth tourism must come with careful considerations.

“We must not use this issue as a way to divide Canadians and fan the flames of racism and xenophobia,” she said.

“We’re reviewing all facts to come up with a fair and compassionate solution that protects health care services for all Canadians.”

Starchuk says she’s been in touch with many of the candidates, but has yet to see the action that Peschisolido has promised.

“I don’t trust anyone right now, because nothing has been resolved,” she said. “It’s a growing issue, but I haven’t seen anyone do anything.”

Source: major issue in the lead up to the Canadian elections

Filed under Birth Tourism, Birthright Citizenship, Citizenship Tagged with , , ,

Former Canadian ambassador suggests registry to help identify foreign agents

2019/09/25 Leave a comment

Hard to disagree:

A veteran of Canada’s diplomatic corps is urging the creation of a federal registry, modelled on one in Australia, to shed light on the work Canadians, including former senior public officials, are doing on behalf of foreign governments.

David Mulroney, who worked for 32 years in the Canadian foreign service, including as Canada’s ambassador to China, said there’s an increasing risk today that foreign governments are using Canadians to mould public opinion and lawmaking here.

“It is not being alarmist to suggest that foreign countries continue to seek influence in Canada and that some are even willing to interfere covertly in Canadian affairs. If anything, the threat is growing,” Mr. Mulroney said in an interview.

What he’s proposing is that Canadians paid to lobby or communicate political messages on behalf of foreign states or enterprises owned by a foreign government would be required to disclose their activities in a federal registry. He said his proposal goes far beyond the scope of the existing federal lobbyists registry, which he says has loopholes that do not capture all activity he believes should be brought to light.

Mr. Mulroney said the rise of China as an economic and geopolitical power has added urgency to the question of foreign interference and influence. “China’s Communist Party has well-developed mechanisms for influencing political opinion in foreign countries,” he said.

He said he was unwilling to comment on individual cases, but stated that, under his proposal, virtually any work undertaken by former Canadian officials for China’s state-owned corporations would need to be disclosed in a registry.

New foreign-influence transparency laws took effect recently in Australia. The rules came in response to concerns about Chinese government influence in Australian politics.

Under Mr. Mulroney’s proposal, former cabinet ministers would be required to register almost all work – not just lobbying – that they are doing for foreign governments or related entities. Mr. Mulroney argues that international work promoting Canadian values and interests – such as humanitarian work – would remain exempt, but all other employment in which a foreign state is seeking to benefit from the knowledge, experience or contacts a former minister gained while serving Canada would need to be reported. The obligation would last their lifetime.

Former senior public servants, including deputy ministers, assistant deputy ministers and ambassadors, would face the same high bar for registration, but only for 15 years.

Mr. Mulroney is publishing his proposal in a paper through the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, an Ottawa-based think tank.

Ward Elcock, a former director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and former deputy minister of National Defence, said he supports Mr. Mulroney’s proposed registry.

“There are foreign governments who did have an interest in influencing Canadian public policy in one way or another and, yes, I think transparency is required,” he said.

However, Mr. Elcock said a registry won’t help if former politicians or senior bureaucrats attempt to hide their affiliation with foreign governments or state-owned enterprises.

Richard Fadden, another former director of CSIS, said he broadly supports Mr. Mulroney’s proposal.

Mr. Fadden, who was also national security adviser to prime ministers Stephen Harper and Justin Trudeau, said he thinks however that China is “far from the only country for us to worry about” and would like to see the registration requirements also apply to Canadian military ranks down to the Canadian Armed Forces equivalent of an assistant deputy minister.

Mr. Mulroney is proposing two extra measures on top of what Australia has done.

Any Canadians serving on federal government boards, agencies, foundations or councils in Canada would be prohibited from working for foreign governments or related entities for the duration of their appointment. It would also require Canadians to relinquish membership in what is called the Queen’s Privy Council, which is a lifetime designation granted to prime ministers, cabinet ministers and chief justices of Canada.

Mr. Fadden doesn’t support requiring Canadians in the Queen’s Privy Council to relinquish membership if they work for a foreign government.

He said if a former senior public official is, for instance, working for Britain to help promote a bilateral trade deal with Canada they shouldn’t be forced to give up the P.C. designation.

Stockwell Day, a former Conservative cabinet minister and vice-chair of the Canada China Business Council, a lobby group, said the proposed registry is not needed given existing rules against lobbying that remain in place for half a decade after leaving office.

Mr. Day said he could see the registry becoming a “nightmarish bureaucratic overburden trying to report working arrangements of individuals 15 years after they have been in office” and predicted the law would almost certainly also be challenged in court “as an unconstitutional restriction on the right to work.”

Mr. Mulroney said however that existing lobbying registry rules do not cover the sort of disclosure he’s proposing. “Think about the possibility of a former, or even a current politician taking talking points from a foreign government. … If you are speaking or disseminating information on behalf of a foreign entity, you need to be clear about your sources. Otherwise you mislead Canadians.”

Source:   Politics Former Canadian ambassador suggests registry to help identify foreign agents Subscriber content Steven Chase September 23    

Filed under foreign policy Tagged with , , , ,

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

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Every Armenian should have a citizenship of Armenia – Pashinyan on repatriation

2019/09/25 Leave a comment

??:

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan talked about the idea of repatriation during a meeting with the Armenian community in Los Angeles.

“I would like to talk about the idea of a big repatriation. Today many Armenians already return to Armenia. Today we released statistics, which is being made from time to time. Compared to 2015 the positive balance of Armenia’s border crossings increased by 32 times. But I want to speak about the great repatriation, stating that living in Armenia doesn’t mean living just physically. Living in Armenia also means to live with Armenia, and I believe that most of you have always lived in Armenia and today as well live in Armenia because I see and know that you live with Armenia and this is the most important. But on the other hand I want to state that living in Armenia doesn’t mean to be physically in Armenia for 12 months a year or in general in the 21st century living in any country doesn’t mean to constantly live in the same place for 12 months a year”, the PM said.

He stated that in the contemporary world many people, especially the successful people spend most of the year in travel. “And I want to address a message to our compatriots: great repatriation means, for instance, to live physically in Armenia definitely for a month, two months a year. Today the real estate prices significantly increase in Armenia and Yerevan, and having a house in Yerevan, Armenia, means to make a very good and reliable investment, and every Armenian who does not yet have a house in Armenia should have one. Repatriation means to have a business in Armenia, and the most important is to have a citizenship of Armenia. Every Armenian should have a citizenship of Armenia.

Source: Every Armenian should have a citizenship of Armenia – Pashinyan on repatriation

Filed under Citizenship Tagged with

Malaysia: When gender gets in the way of citizenship

2019/09/25 Leave a comment

Of note:

IT is not difficult to guess that Aisha and Anis are sisters. They share a striking physical resemblance reflecting the Malay origin of their mother and Mauritian origin of their father.

Yet, it takes a bureaucrat to disrupt the unity of nature’s order.

For Anis is a Malaysian citizen, while Aisha, her older biological sister, has been struggling to obtain a citizenship without success.

Their mother, Siti Haniza, shook her head as she narrated the bureaucratic trauma she underwent trying to get her daughter to be granted her birth-right — which is to be registered as a Malaysian.

Her mistake, as an official had explained to her, was firstly to deliver their first child in Mauritius, and then having failed to fly 3,000km to South Africa to register her birth within the first month of her child’s birthday.

That was where the nearest Malaysian consul was located.

Unspoken in that narrative was her mistake of marrying a non-Malaysian and having children with him. That same situation would not have happened if Aisha’s father had been a Malaysian and her mother a non-Malaysian.

The rules and regulations of citizenship are gender-biased and discriminatory to Malaysian women. According to the Campaign for Equal Citizenship, Siti is not alone and her ordeal is shared by thousands of other Malaysian women.

The campaign, led by the Foreign Spouses Support Group, had raised awareness about this dismal situation by cataloguing real-life examples from around the world.

For Malaysian men with non-Malaysian wives who deliver in foreign lands, they need only notify the nearest Malaysian embassy for their children to be granted the necessary citizenship documents.

In contrast, Malaysian women with non-Malaysian husbands in similar situations would have to clear a higher standard by applying for their children to be recognised as citizens.

There is no guarantee that their child would be deemed a citizen.

The Campaign for Equal Citizenship documents the negative effects of such discrimination on Malaysian women.

It is highly stressful and disrupting to family life when family members have to undergo uncertainties with respect to the ability to enter the country and travel.

Or when husbands are separated from their wives and children for extended periods as a result of the bureaucratic process.

Children are denied access to services and job opportunities, while family relations become difficult to maintain and become brittle.

When asked about this apparent double standard, Siti responds firmly, “No matter where she was born, my daughter is every inch as Malaysian as I am.

“She comes from a long and illustrious family of civil servants who have served passionately and diligently to build the Malaysia that we are so proud of today.”

She continued, “Her forefathers were freedom fighters who fought against colonialism and suffered for it. Yet, my country has not reciprocated this legacy with empathy nor compassion.”

Malaysia is currently one of only 25 countries globally, and one of four countries in the Asia-Pacific region, which has discriminatory citizenship laws.

Malaysia does not recognise mothers as equal parents by law, as the Federal Constitution expressly provides that children born overseas to married Malaysian fathers are entitled to citizenship by operation of law (Article 14(1)(b) but is silent on children born overseas to Malaysian mothers.

Consequently, the process for registering children born overseas as Malaysian citizens is far more arduous for Malaysian women, making them feel like second-class citizens.

This law is deeply rooted in patriarchy which allows for sexist attitudes that influence the applications process.

These women are expected to follow their husband’s citizenship, live overseas and not enjoy the option for their children to choose their nationality.

Yet such a law is out of sync with the reality of Malaysian women today.

Malaysian women are among the most educated in the region, with high rates of labour participation and they play important leadership roles in both the public and private sectors.

Malaysia’s impressive economic transformation could not have been achieved without the important contributions of her women. Yet the country is unable to recognise this by discriminating against her bloodline.

Because of the painful experience with her first-born, Siti decided to deliver Anis in Malaysia and use her family network to ensure that her second daughter’s birth right to citizenship was not denied.

She now has two daughters with two different nationalities.

Siti laments: “It pains me to realise that Aisha would not be able to continue the family tradition of joining the civil service and serve Malaysia.”

She is also concerned that Aisha’s employment prospects would be significantly constrained without her Malaysian citizenship.

In May 2018 Malaysia showed the world that it had the capacity to change, to remove the kleptocrats ruining the country, in order to make the country a better place for all its citizens.

This sense of inclusivity needs to be extended also to Malaysian women and their genetic right to determine the citizenship of their children.

Source: When gender gets in the way of citizenship

Filed under Citizenship, gender Tagged with

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

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Greek Cyprus makes nearly 1B euros annually on golden visas

2019/09/24 Leave a comment

The scam continues:

Greek Cyprus rakes in 914 million euros annually by awarding citizenship to so-called investors, the second most lucrative golden visa program in the European Union, despite strong concerns voiced by EU leadership over its vetting methods.

Berlin-based Transparency International said in a report in October 2019that the Greek Cypriot administration had raised 4.8 billion euros from its golden visa scheme. According to the report, only Spain raises more annually with Spain 1 billion euros per year from applicants.

German journalist Michael Martens of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung put Greek Cyprus’ earnings at a higher figure, reporting Sunday that the administration had earned over 6.5 billion euros in the past five years.

The visas give purported investors the right to settle in any EU country and have been criticized as a gateway to Europe not only for the super-rich but also for money launderers and other exploiters. The Greek Cypriot scheme is particularly lenient in its requirements of applicants.

Within the EU, only Greek Cyprus, Bulgaria and Malta do not require physical residency or any other connection to the country to grant citizenship to so-called investors – in violation of EU law, according to the European Council.

Only Greek Cyprus and Portugal do not ask applicants about the source of their wealth, despite the large quantities of money involved in the process.

In January, the European Commission published a report expressing concern over Greek Cyprus’ citizenship scheme, stating that the lack of thorough checks on applicants endangered the EU’s financial and physical security.

“These schemes are of common EU interest since every person that acquires the nationality of a Member State will simultaneously acquire Union citizenship. The decision by one Member State to grant citizenship in return for investment, automatically gives rights in relation to other Member States, in particular free movement and access to the EU internal market to exercise economic activities as well as a right to vote and be elected in European and local elections,” the report wrote.

It criticized the schemes as being “deliberately marketed and often explicitly advertised as a means of acquiring EU citizenship.”

The report listed the main areas of concern regarding Greek Cyprus to be lack of security checks on applicants, insufficient monitoring against money laundering and tax evasion, and lack of transparency about how the scheme is run.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) had also cited Greek Cyprus’ golden visa scheme as high-risk for abuse of international tax rules in a November report.

The Greek Cypriot administration responded in February to the report by promising more thorough checks on applicants and adding the requirements of a Schengen visa and rejection of applicants that have been rejected by other EU states. It also said 75,000 euros from each applicant would go to “research and development” and that other funds would be allotted for an affordable housing scheme for Greek Cypriots.

However, the Greek Cypriot administration admitted that the program has not done much toward its professed goal of attracting investors to Greek Cyprus. Greek Cypriot Finance Minister Harris Georgiades revealed in February that the scheme has only contributed 1.2% of 13 percentage points to the economic growth of Greek Cyprus in the past three years.

The golden visa system in EU states has been criticized for providing an easy route for oligarchs and the super-rich, and even leading to a money laundering and other exploitations. The cost of citizenship from an EU state varies depending on the country, but the average price is 900,000 euros.

Source: Greek Cyprus makes nearly 1B euros annually on golden visas

Filed under Citizenship, citizenship-by-investment Tagged with

← Older posts

Newer posts →