On October 15, the Canadian federal government announced that they had added Samidoun, a Palestine prisoner solidarity organization, to its official list of “terrorist entities.”
According to Minister of Public Safety, Democratic Institutions and Intergovernmental Affairs Dominic LeBlanc, “Violent extremism, acts of terrorism or terrorist financing have no place in Canadian society or abroad. The listing of Samidoun as a terrorist entity under the Criminal Code sends a strong message that Canada will not tolerate this type of activity, and will do everything in its power to counter the ongoing threat to Canada’s national security and all people in Canada.” This comes despite the government’s inability thus far to produce evidence linking Samidoun to said acts or financing.
In the last year alone, Palestine solidarity activists have been criminalized, harassed, fired, and surveilled for standing with Palestine. From doctors to professors (even Jewish professors with tenure) to CUPE’s Fred Hahn, those standing against Israel’s genocide in Gaza have stared down immense backlash and consequences.
The labeling of Samidoun, whose Canadian chapters are involved in organizing Palestine solidarity rallies and activity, as a “terrorist entity” comes on the heels of Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre’s calls for the Canadian government to add Samidoun to the list of terrorist groups, and his promise to do so if elected Prime Minister.
This is the logical conclusion of the crackdown by our politicians and the ruling class on free speech for Palestine. Moreover, it is a sign that Poilievre is successfully pulling the government to the right, with the Liberals having no backbone to meaningfully take a stand against the genocide in Gaza and the NDP proving incapable of capturing the popular sentiment of Palestine solidarity to take action. With Poilievre leading in the polls, this crackdown could be a sign of the grim future that lies in wait without meaningful worker-led mass opposition.
Who is a “terrorist”?
The term “terrorist” is a loaded one, used to paint a person or organization as an inherent danger or threat. However, who exactly gets deemed a terrorist is always a moving target and depends largely on the government of the day.
These provisions have often been used to target organizations standing in solidarity with liberation struggles. Canadian MP Rob Anders was rightfully criticized after he declared Nelson Mandela a terrorist in 2001, but the reality is that Mandela was not removed from US terrorist lists until 2008. As recently as 2013, Mandela’s anti-apartheid African National Congress still appeared on Canadian terrorist lists.
According to documents from 2020, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) investigated whether the Wet’suwet’en’s defense of their unceded land against pipeline construction constituted “terrorism.” Though CSIS ultimately backed down, criminologist Jeffery Monaghan noted that, “their willingness to just almost skate over the actual political grievance, the actual political movement, and all of a sudden latch on to these de-legitimizing tropes really paints a picture internally of the policing-intelligence culture.”
The far-right Jewish Defence League (JDL) is a prime example of the selective and political nature of terror designations. The JDL is banned in Israel and is designated as a terrorist organization in the United States. But in Canada, this extreme and violent international organization is allowed to operate openly.
From Mandela to the Tamil Tigers to Wet’suwet’en, the Canadian government uses the “terrorist” label as a way of criminalizing dissent to its imperialist interests, and especially with regards to national liberation struggles, within and beyond its borders. As Wet’suwet’en documents show, the government will label whoever it can get away with as long as it means stopping opposition to its capitalist, colonial, imperialist goals.
A green light for broad criminalization
In the federal government’s own words, the terrorist entity list “is an important tool that supports criminal investigations and strengthens the RCMP’s ability to prevent and disrupt terrorist activity.” Essentially, it gives the state carte blanche to turn its full force against an organization and its members in the name of “counter-terrorism,” including and especially through the use of the RCMP.
Once an organization is listed as a terrorist organization, it becomes subject to a new set of laws, including a variety of Criminal Code provisions surrounding “terrorist groups.” For example, according to the federal government, “the Criminal Code prohibits dealing in any property (including money) owned or controlled by terrorist groups or to provide any financial services (such as services offered by banks and money services business) for the benefit of or at the direction of a terrorist group.”
In the name of investigating these connections, the Canadian government is able to take any person or group with a suspected connection to a group that has been designated as a terrorist entity and subject them to investigation, harassment, and criminalization.
When the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam were deemed a terrorist group in Canada, it opened the door for the state to investigate other Tamil organizations that supported the Tamil national liberation cause. Despite not a single charge having been laid against the World Tamil Movement (WTM) at the time, the WTM (a non-profit that openly supported the Tamil liberation struggle against the backdrop of the Sri Lankan government’s genocide) had its offices raided by the RCMP in 2006 due to its suspected financial ties to the Tigers.
In 2008, the government added the WTM to the terror list, including in its description that it has been “involved in acts of intimidation and extortion,” despite the fact that not a single case has ever been prosecuted related to the WTM and intimidation and extortion. In fact, the terror list notes that the WTM “has not been involved in recent terrorist plots.” And yet, eighteen years later, the WTM remains on the terror list.
The terrorist label also had the effect of bringing every Tamil person under state scrutiny. When the MV Sun Sea arrived at a Canadian port carrying hundreds of Tamil refugees, the police led them off the boat in handcuffs—even children. They were immediately detained, many for months and some for years.
Sure enough, these “suspected terrorists” ended up being successful refugee claimants who have since established lives in Canada. But treating asylum seekers—people who have uprooted their lives to seek safety—as “terrorists” because of their skin colour and country of origin, handcuffing them on arrival after a perilous voyage and keeping them locked up for months and years, shows how powerful the terrorist designation is and what it seeks to achieve. It allows for the state to expand the scope of its policing and label anyone who comes too close as a terrorist.
Once the government affixed the terrorism label to the Tamil population (with plenty of help from the mainstream media, in particular the National Post), the RCMP was able to interfere in Tamil organizing of all varieties. Every event organized by Tamils was subject to federal interference and rumours of “terrorist fundraising,” including cultural events and dinners. Prime Minister Paul Martin took considerable heat even just for meeting with Tamil cultural groups. The state repression brought on by the terrorist label made Tamil organizing nearly impossible.
Samidoun has been caught in a similar expansion of scope. Thanks to the Canadian government already listing the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) as a terrorist group, the government was able to manufacture grounds to add Samidoun to the list in the face of public pressure from Zionists and the right. Though Samidoun has not been linked to any attacks, violence, or financial activity (aside from the weak reasoning in the official listing that “Samidoun advocates all kinds of activities, including violence”), the reasoning given in the government’s press release largely revolves around its ties to the PFLP. These ties seem to consist of sharing similar positions and having former and current members in common, with no evidence of financial or other more substantial forms of connection.
It does not matter that no evidence of anything criminal has been proffered by the government. In the government’s reasoning, it has already declared one group to be a terrorist organization, and therefore other groups around it must also be terrorist organizations. As this web grows, history has shown that the government may have its sights set on targeting other Palestine solidarity groups.
Poilievre pulling political terrain to the right
Last week, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre made headlines by calling for Samidoun to be added to the terror list after challenging Liberal MPs for being “soft on antisemitism.” Samidoun’s Vancouver chapter recently led a rally where chants of, “Death to Canada, death to America, and death to Israel” were reported, which Poilievre characterized as “genocidal chants from a hateful mob.” Poilievre’s call was praised by the usual right-wing, Zionist groups like the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) and the National Post. CIJA itself had recently celebrated Israel’s recent terrorist attack in Lebanon where the Israeli state detonated thousands of pagers, killing and maiming hundreds of civilians.
By the Canadian government’s own logic, there is quite a leap from chanting at a rally to being labeled as a terrorist group. But that did not stop the Liberal government from immediately calling an “emergency and urgent review” of Samidoun’s status vis-à-vis the terror list after Poilievre’s comments. Just a week later, the government pushed through the addition of Samidoun to the list.
The speed at which this happened—and the fact that Poilievre was able to make it happen, despite not even being in power—is indicative of the political terrain, which has been deteriorating for some time now.
First, while opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza has been largely popular among Canadian workers, with thousands of people hitting the streets from coast to coast over the last year, our governments have largely shied away from voicing their support for Palestine and harnessing this political momentum. Everything from the Ontario NDP’s expulsion of Sarah Jama, Justin Trudeau’s very obvious inability to even utter the word “ceasefire” in the early going, to the Ford government’s harassment and denunciation of Fred Hahn has shown a wariness of Canadian political parties to support Palestine solidarity, let alone embrace it.
Even though our movements have won hard-fought victories, with the NDP successfully introducing a motion on Palestine (imperfect as it may be) and Liberal MP Melanie Joly suspending a number of Israeli weapons permits, our politicians are still reluctant to move forward without a mass movement actively putting pressure on them.
Second, while it takes a mass movement to pull politicians leftward, it takes far less pressure to pull them rightward. Zionists and the right have worked tirelessly to shape the narrative surrounding the genocide, and while many of us are able to see through it, our politicians are not. What the International Criminal Court calls “probable genocide,” the right calls “conflict.” And now, what we call “Palestine solidarity,” the right calls “terrorism.”
The Liberals are weak right now, dipping in the polls with an election on the horizon. Instead of pulling leftward to distinguish themselves from the Conservatives, they have decided to lean rightward and give up ground to the Conservatives in hopes that concessions might appease the many everyday people who are rightfully frustrated with the Liberals
The federal NDP, meanwhile, has done themselves no favours by hitching themselves to the Liberals until recently with a supply-and-confidence agreement. They have also been hindered by the errors of their provincial counterparts, from the Ontario NDP’s treatment of Sarah Jama to BC NDP leader and premier David Eby saying he “completely agrees” with labeling Samidoun a terrorist group. This has had the effect of distracting from the federal NDP’s early calls for a ceasefire and an arms embargo.
All of this has left the field open for Poilievre to set the terms of the debate. As his history on Israel shows, this bodes poorly for Palestine and its supporters. With polls showing Poilievre with a massive lead, the addition of Samidoun to the terror list is just the beginning of what could be a very stark future for Palestine solidarity and free speech.
Organizing is our only option
No matter who is in power, our greatest strength always lies in the streets. The Liberal government cracking down on Samidoun is the same one that had to agree to suspending arms permits and passing a motion on Palestine once the movement made it impossible to ignore.
There is little doubt that the power of the working class does not come from politicians, but from mass organizing and mobilization. The best way to combat this attack on Palestine solidarity is therefore to build a massive movement in the streets and in the workplaces in support of Palestinian rights and humanity.
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