AhlulBayt News Agency (ABNA): A Canada-based activist group says Palestinian supporters have faced an unprecedented level of repression and prosecution across the North American country due to their stance against Israel's savage military campaign in Gaza.
According to a recent statement by the Canada Palestine Association (CPA), every major city in the country has witnessed politically motivated cases claiming fraudulent charges against activists who stand against Zionism and its narrative.
The latest of these politically motivated charges happened a few days ago in Vancouver BC, as the international coordinator of Samidoun, Charlotte Kates, was shortly detained and charged with "hate speech" offenses.
She was released on the outrageous condition that she does not attend any “protests, rallies or assemblies” until the court date of October 8.
All this is apparently for supporting the right of the Palestinian resistance to fight back against Israeli military oppression and during a rally speech on April 26.
The Zionist lobby has been on a witch-hunt against Kates, Samidoun and her husband, Khaled Barakat, for several years now.
They have been pushing the federal government to include Samidoun on Canada’s “terrorist” list, and CIJA even included this demand as part of their last election platform.
Elsewhere in the statement, the CPA also criticized the double standards of Canadian politicians and media regarding how they treat pro-Palestine activists and groups versus how they treat Zionists.
The CPA statement said, "We are sick of the double standard at play here. Zionist groups are free to bring actual Israeli soldiers on campuses to offer their 'insights from the ground.'"
CPA activists added that their supporters are publicly declaring they are “arming themselves,” but someone daring to even show verbal support for the Palestinian right to resist foreign occupation and aggression is charged with “hate speech”!
"Are our politicians not ashamed of the way they all line up to 'pile on' and attack whoever the major pro-Israel groups decide is the current persona non grata? And that they do this within just a few hours of each other?" it said.
"From mayors to provincial premiers to federal politicians, time and again we have seen this pattern of rushing to condemn some specific protestor or group. Our politicians, and many of the mainstream media, seem to have no shame when it comes to proving their loyalty to the Zionist project."
In recent days, students at the University of Toronto set up an encampment at the school's downtown campus where nearly hundreds of protesters gathered with dozens of tents.
Quebec Premier Francois Legault recently said the encampment at Montreal's McGill University should be dismantled as more students erected pro-Palestinian camps across some of Canada's largest universities,
The organizers say the encampment will stay until the university discloses its investments, divests from any that "sustain Israeli apartheid, occupation and illegal settlement of Palestine" and cut ties with some Israeli academic institutions.
Pro-Palestine student protests have intensified in several countries across the world, including Canada, France, Mexico, and Australia, amid a crackdown on US students and a mounting death toll from Israel’s war on Gaza.
The Canadian protests come as police have been arresting hundreds on US campuses and the death toll in Gaza has been mounting. Over 34,680 Palestinians have been killed since last October when the Israeli genocide began, most of them women and children.
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