Nobel Prize nominee effectively barred from Canada:
The Canadian government issued a visa to a prominent peace activist and Palestinian MP too late for him to make the long trek in time for a three-city speaking tour about Middle East politics.
"It is clear I cannot make it," Mustafa Barghouti said from Ramallah on Friday after having learned that Canada would issue him a visa when it was already impossible for him to arrive in time to speak at two of three scheduled public events.
The physician, independent MP and former presidential candidate for the Palestinian Authority, who was recently nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, was scheduled to speak on Palestinian politics and peace in the Middle East while in Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa.
His appearance at the University of Toronto Saturday had been sold out and Barghouti was scheduled to meet with senior members of the three opposition parties Monday.
Only one point of view is to be permitted in Canada under the Harper regime: Israel, right or wrong. Keep Canada pure and free of other ideas. Maybe we need a Canada Apartheid Week.
[H/t Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, via Filasteen]
1 comment:
Unless you know the circumstances surrounding the issuance of his previous visas your thesis is speculation. Maybe this time of the year is a busy one for visa issuance and the backlog is longer. Maybe he was an invitee of the government previously and the visa was granted through a special process. Maybe he had an MP or cabinet minister advocating on his behalf throughout the application process. In fact I would suspect that one of the two latter scenarios was the case - two to three days sounds unaturally quick for Canadian bureaucracy. Given that it takes three weeks for me to renew my passport outside of Canada (there's no fast track process here in the UK) six weeks for processing a visa application for a non-Canadian citizen which probably involves some sort of background check sounds much more likely.
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