Alwaght- A vote on divestment taking place today
[March 15] at Montreal’s McGill University has attracted national attention in
Canada after Liberal Party leader and would-be prime minister Justin Trudeau
attacked student organizers and questioned their right to free speech.
Campaigners for the
campus vote are hitting back in defense of their freedom of conscience and
expression.
“Freedom
of speech is a core Canadian value that has been enshrined in our Charter of
Rights and Freedoms, and perhaps much to politicians’ dismay, that does not
only mean the protection of popular speech,” Solidarity for Palestinian Human
Rights McGill (SPHR McGill) said in a statement emailed to The Electronic Intifada. “Once again, Israel is
being singled out with unconditional support from government officials.”
“The only way that we
will be able to remove the intentional suppression of discussion around
Palestine that scares spineless politicians such as Trudeau and others is to
refuse to be sidelined by their attempts to harass students at one of Canada’s
foremost universities,” the statement adds.
Rex
Brynen, a professor of political science at McGill, also responded that he is “disappointed” that Trudeau “apparently opposes
free speech rights of Canadian students.”
The Liberal Party has
governed Canada for much of its history, but lost power to the Conservative
Party in 2006. In 2011, the Liberals suffered their worst defeat in decades,
collapsing to just 34 seats in Canada’s 308-seat House of Commons.
