[R-G] British MP vows legal action after being barred from Canada

[Anthony Fenton]

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090320.wgalloway0320/BNStory/politics/home

British MP vows legal action after being barred from Canada

CAMPBELL CLARK

 From Saturday's Globe and Mail

March 20, 2009 at 6:56 PM EDT

OTTAWA — Controversial British MP George Galloway is vowing to take  
the Canadian government to court for barring him from entering the  
country for a speaking tour about the Middle East.

Although he has visited Canada before, the Canada Border Services  
Agency declared him inadmissible on national-security grounds and  
Immigration Minister Jason Kenney decided he would not use his power  
to let Mr. Galloway in.

“We're not going to seek to overturn that [CBSA] assessment in order  
to let into the country someone who has provided financial support to  
Hamas, a banned terrorist organization in Canada, and someone who is,  
in a sense, a popinjay for those Taliban fighters who are trying to  
kill Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan,” said Mr. Kenney's spokesman,  
Alykhan Velshi.

Mr. Galloway, a Scottish-born MP who was bounced from Tony Blair's  
Labour Party in 2003 for vitriolic opposition to the Iraq war, led a  
postwar aid convoy to Gaza this month, declaring he would to hand over  
the supplies to the territory's Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh.

[photo] British politician George Galloway sits with Palestinian  
students near their school, the al-Fadelah Islamic school, destroyed  
during Israel's 22-day offensive that ended in January, in Rafah in  
the southern Gaza Strip on March 11, 2009. (Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/ 
Reuters)

The decision to bar Mr. Galloway from Canada led the NDP to accuse the  
Conservatives of censorship, but was applauded by two of Canada's  
large Jewish community groups.

The British MP, meanwhile, promised to challenge it in Canadian courts.

“Canada remains a free country, and although Mr. Kenney says end of  
story, alas for him it's not,” Mr. Galloway said in a telephone  
interview.

He accused Mr. Kenney of trampling free speech to make political hay,  
likening it to the Minister's decision to cut support for the Canadian  
Arab Federation, whose leader called him a “professional whore who  
supports war.”

“These are wedge issues being created by a neo-con, Bush-ite, outgoing  
Canadian government that's about to be gutted in the polls,” Mr.  
Galloway said.

“Flag-waving, or in the case of Canada, shroud-waving of the brave  
Canadian soldiers who gave their lives for this miserably failed  
policy of the Canadian government is despicable beyond words.”

Mr. Velshi would not say precisely why the Canada Border Services  
Agency barred Mr. Galloway on national security grounds, although one  
official said it was not for his views on Afghanistan but for other  
reasons, including statements that he would provide financial support  
to Hamas.

“But I don't raise money for Hamas. That's just a false statement,”  
Mr. Galloway insisted. “I am not now, nor have I ever been, a  
supporter of Hamas.”

When Mr. Galloway arrived in Gaza on March 10 at the head of an aid  
convoy, he pledged to hand the vehicles, medicine and equipment to  
“Ismail Haniyeh, the elected prime minister of Palestine.”

(Mr. Haniyeh became prime minister of the Palestinian Authority when  
Hamas won a 2006 election there, but he was dismissed by Fatah  
president Mahmoud Abbas in 2007, leading to a civil war that split  
Hamas-controlled Gaza from the Fatah-controlled West Bank.) “He's made  
no bones about the fact that when he has collected funds, that's where  
they go,” said Bernie Farber, the chief executive officer of the  
Canadian Jewish Congress.

In Winnipeg, Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff said he never agrees  
with Mr. Galloway, but that's not a reason for barring him from the  
country. However, he said, if security officials have found he's a  
threat, he should not be allowed in.

“If he's being barred on free-speech grounds, that's an outrage. 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, and  
I've heard no evidence yet that he presents a security threat. And of  
course if there is one, as a responsible public official I will accept  
what security services say on Mr. Galloway.”

New Democrat MP Olivia Chow said the decision to bar Mr. Galloway is  
part of a Conservative government pattern of barring people whose  
views they disagree with, like anti-war activists from the group Code  
Pink.

“Once you start censoring people, then it's a slippery slope,” she said.

With a report from Patrick White in Winnipeg