British MP George Galloway, due to speak at U of T’s Mississauga campus this month, has been refused entry into Canada following a ban imposed on Saturday by Canada’s immigration minister Jason Kenney. A spokesperson for the immigration ministry said the purpose of the move was to “to protect Canadians from people who fund, support, or engage in terrorism.” Galloway is a long-time activist for Palestinian rights and recently visited the Gaza Strip as part of an aid convoy.
“We are giving you now 100 vehicles and all of their contents, and we make no apology for what I am about to say. We are giving them to the elected government of Palestine,” said Galloway after he arrived in Gaza. In addition to fire trucks and ambulances, Galloway personally gave three cars and £25 000 to Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniya. The Palestinian group Hamas is considered a terrorist organization in Canada and several other Western countries. The anti-war group Toronto Coalition to Stop the War, which opposes Canadian involvement in Afghanistan, had invited Mr Galloway to speak at a UTM conference called “Resisting War from Gaza to Kandahar” on March 30. Galloway is also an outspoken critic of NATO operations in Afghanistan.
Stephen Zhou, an event organizer, told The Varsity he was surprised by the ban. “They say he’s a supporter of terrorist organizations; they don’t care that Hamas is the elected government of Palestine. If they’re saying he’s a security threat, I don’t buy that whatsoever. We will explore legal avenues to overturn the ban.”
On Sunday, members of several anti-war groups held a meeting at the Ryerson University Student Centre and called for an end to what they deemed a “long-standing pattern of attacks by the government on free speech.”
Responding to the government’s decision, NDP immigration critic Olivia Chow said that the ban perpetuates a pattern in which views that contradict those of the Conservative government have been suppressed. “The minister of immigration is becoming the minister of censorship,” Chow said. “We don’t have to agree with everything Galloway talks about but, at bare minimum, he should be allowed to express his point of view so Canadians can make decisions themselves.”
“If he’s being barred on free-speech grounds, that’s an outrage,” said Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff, adding, “You can come to Canada and talk rubbish all day long as far as I’m concerned. If there’s a security threat, that’s another matter.”
Galloway said he will take legal action against the ban, saying of Kenney, “That’s the way the right-wing, last-ditch dead-enders of Bushism in Ottawa conduct their business.”
The vice-president of B’nai Brith, one of Canada’s most prominent Jewish organizations applauded the ban. “We applaud the government for its explicit recognition that individuals who glorify terrorism, and promote hatred be denied access into Canada,” Frank Dimant told the Globe and Mail.
The ban on Mr Galloway follows a similar move by the Harper government in January when it refused entry to University of Illinois professor Bill Ayers for his participation in the radical anti-war movement “The Weather Underground” during the 1960s.
