Action Alert: British MP George Galloway Banned from Entering Canada

ITEMS IN THIS POST:
1) Call to action to defend free speech
2) Statement by George Galloway MP on Jason Kenney's ban
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1) Call to action to defend free speech

Defend free speech. Let George Galloway into Canada. Stop Jason Kenney¹s attack on civil liberties.

Dear friends:

By now you will have heard that Jason Kenney, Canada's Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, has banned British MP George Galloway from entering Canada. Galloway is scheduled to speak in four cities during a pan-Canadian speaking tour from March 30 to April 2.

Kenney's decision to ban Galloway is an unprecedented attack on free speech and on the right to criticize our own government's foreign policy. Kenney's office has publicly stated that Galloway will be banned because of his views on the war in Afghanistan and because he represents a "threat to national security".

The ban follows Kenney's recent attacks on Canadian Arab and Muslim organizations and on Palestine solidarity campaigners for their criticism of Israel's war on Gaza and its treatment of Palestinians. In the last few days, Kenney unilaterally cut funding to the Canadian Arab Federation for its immigrant settlement program. Kenney also recently attacked students organizing Israeli Apartheid Week on campuses across Canada.

Kenney has attempted to silence their voices by accusing them of anti-Semitism, despite the wide range of support and participation of Jewish organizations and individuals in these Palestine solidarity events.

The organizers of Galloway's speaking tour ­ the Toronto Coalition to Stop the War, the Ottawa Peace Assembly, and Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights ­- condemn in the strongest terms Kenney's attack on free speech and our right to criticize our government's foreign policy. We call on all supporters of civil liberties to join us in challenging these attacks and in reversing Kenney's ban.

In the next few days, we will launch a pan-Canadian campaign to defend free speech in Canada and to reverse Kenney's ban. We call on you to join in this campaign to ensure Galloway's entry into Canada. We must organize now to ensure that all events where Galloway is scheduled to speak will proceed as planned.

Supporters should continue to buy tickets for these events and to promote them widely.

To that end, we urge you to take the following steps:

1) Contact Jason Kenney's office to condemn the ban and to demand its immediate reversal:

E-mail: minister@cic.gc.ca; kennej@parl.gc.ca
Phone: 613-992-2235 (Ottawa office); 403-225-3480 (Calgary office)
Fax: 613-992-1920 (Ottawa office); 403-225-3504 (Calgary office)

2) Join an emergency city-wide organizing meeting in Toronto to defend free speech and to reverse the ban:

Sunday, March 22
3:00pm to 5:00pm
Ryerson Student Centre
55 Gould Street
Ryerson University

This organizing meeting will take place during the closing session of the Student Assembly against War and Racism, scheduled to take place from Friday, March 20 to Sunday, March 22 in the same location (www.unitedagainstwar.ca). Anti-war delegates from across the country will be present to participate in developing a pan-Canadian campaign to defend free speech and to reverse the ban on Galloway.

3) Are you on facebook? Join the facebook group: Let Him Speak: Allow George Galloway to Speak in Canada:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=62965075809

4) Buy tickets for the Galloway events in Toronto, Mississauga, Montreal and Ottawa.

Help us promote these events. Spread the word widely. Ticket information for
each city is available at www.nowar.ca and www.acp-cpa.ca.

5) Forward this e-mail across all your lists to build the biggest response possible.

If Kenney does not reverse his ban, a delegation of Canadian MPs, lawyers, peace campaigners, and civil liberties advocates will travel to the US to escort Galloway across the border on the day of his scheduled arrival to Canada.

We will join with Galloway in publicly defying Kenney's attack on free speech, civil liberties and the peace movement.

Please spread the word about Sunday's meeting. If you are outside Toronto and would like to get involved, please contact us:

Email: stopthewar@sympatico.ca
Web: www.nowar.ca or www.acp-cpa.ca

Campaign materials will be ready following Sunday's organizing meeting in Toronto for local organizers to distribute across the country.

Together, we will defend free speech and civil liberties.

And one way or another, we will bring George Galloway to Canada!

Thank you for your ongoing support.

In peace,
Toronto Coalition to Stop the War
Ottawa Peace Coalition
Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights
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2) Statement by George Galloway MP on Jason Kenney's ban

March 20, 2009

The Canadian Immigration Minister Jason Kenney gazetted in Rupert Murdoch's Sun yesterday morning that I was to be excluded from his country because of my views on Afghanistan. That's the way the right-wing last-ditch dead-enders of Bushism in Ottawa conduct their business. At least for now. The upcoming elections in the country look set to follow the trend set by their neighbour to the south.

Kenney is quite a card ­ almost a joker in fact. A quick trawl establishes he's a gay-baiter, gung-ho armchair warrior, with an odd habit of exceeding his immigration brief. Three years ago he attacked the pro-Western prime minister of Lebanon Fuad Saniora for being ungrateful to Canada for its support of Israeli bombardment of his country. Most curiously of all in 2006 he addressed a rally of the so called People's Mujahideen of Iran, a Waco-style cult, banned in the European Union as a terrorist organization with a penchant for encouraging impressionable young members to self-immolate in public places.

While on one level being banned by such a man is like being told to sit up straight by the hunchback of Notre Dame or being lectured on due diligence by Lord Conrad Black ­ a Kenney ally, now breaking stones in the hot sun. On another, and personal, note for a Scotsman to be excluded from Canada is like being turned away from the family home.

But what are my views on Afghanistan which the Canadian government (for we must assume cabinet responsibility) does not want its people to hear?

I've never been to Afghanistan, nor have I ever met a Taliban, but my first impression into the parliamentary vellum on the subject was more than two decades ago. At the time the fathers of the Taliban were "freedom fighters" paraded at US Republican and British Tory party conferences. Who knows, maybe even the Canadian right extolled these god-fearing opponents of Communism. I did not however.

On the eve of their storming of Kabul I told Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher that she "had opened the gates to the barbarians" and that "a long, dark night would now descend upon the people of Afghanistan". How long and how dark, as George Bush might have put it, I misunderestimated.

But with the same conviction I say to the Canadian and other NATO governments today that your current policy is equally a profound mistake. From time to time and with increased regularity it is a crime. Like the bombardment of wedding parties and even funerals or the presiding over a record opium crop which under our noses finds its way coursing through the veins of young people from Nova Scotia to Newcastle upon Tyne. But it is worse than a crime, as Tallyrand said, it's a blunder.

The Afghans have never succumbed to foreign occupation, heaven knows the British Empire tried, tried and failed again. Not even Alexander the Great succeeded, and whoever else he is, minister Kenney is no Alexander the Great. Young Canadian soldiers are dying in significant numbers on Afghanistan's plains. Their families are entitled to know how many of us believe this
adventure to be similarly doomed and that genuine support for the troops ­ - British, Canadian and other ­ means bringing them home, changing course and that an alternative policy exists, the debate around which they above all deserve to hear and judge for themselves.

For a G7 government to ban a five times elected British parliamentarian from addressing public events or keeping my appointment with some of their flagship television and radio programmes is quite a serious matter. Few would have guessed that the kinder, gentler Canada of Jonie Mitchell's lyricism would have been the villain of such a piece. Canada's conservatives have certainly paved free speech and put up a parody of liberty.

Minister Kenney's "spokesman" says in his gazette, otherwise known as the Sun, "Galloway's not coming in - end of story."

Alas for him, it's not. Canada remains a free country governed by law and my friends are even now seeking a judicial review of his decision. The Canadian people will speak soon about the whole conduct of the war and the economy by the neo-con administration he graces. And above all there are other ways I can address those Canadians who wish to hear me ­ greater in number now and including those who positively disagree with what I have to say.

More than half a century ago Paul Robeson, one of the greatest men who ever lived, was forbidden to enter Canada not by Ottawa but by Washington, which had taken away his passport. But he was still able to transfix a vast crowd of Vancouver's mill hands and miners with a 17 minute telephone concert culminating in a rendition of the Ballad of Joe Hill.

Technology has moved on since then. And so from coast to coast, minister Kenney notwithstanding, I will be heard ­ one way or another.

George Galloway MP