This morning my mother drew my attention to an article written by Georgetown University law professor Jonathan Turley concerning the plight of Maria Kartasheva.
Last year, moments before the Russian born tech worker was to be sworn in as Canadian citizen, she was blocked by immigration officials from proceeding in her swearing in ceremony after disclosing she had faced charges in Russia for criticizing its invasion of Ukraine, specifically the Bucha Massacre in March 2022. Turley writes:
That brings us to the final and most chilling aspect of this drama. The Canadian government informed Kartasheva that her conviction in Russia aligns with a Criminal Code offense in Canada relating to false information.
That’s right. Canada is concerned because it also has criminalized speech and Kartasheva has used free speech to spread what her government considered false or misleading information.
For example, Section 372(1) of the Criminal Code of Canada makes it unlawful for any person to convey, cause, or procure to be conveyed false information with the intent to alarm or injure anyone.
The government cracked down on Internet speech despite opposition from the public and pushed 2021 Bill C-36 to impose $70,000 fines for legal content deemed “likely to foment detestation or vilification.”
So this brave woman made it all the way to the West to live in freedom only to find that Canada also puts people in jail for voicing dissenting or opposing viewpoints. The problem is not that Kartasheva is fundamentally different from most Canadians. The problem is that Canada is legally not that different from Russia on free speech.
Turley lays the blame for Kartasheva's situation with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau whom he claims, "has devastated free speech in that country while assuming sweeping authoritarian powers." Mind you, this is the same Turley who claims January 6th isn't an insurrection.
It should be noted that Section 372(1) of the Criminal Code in Canada was enacted in 1985 by the Progressive Conservative government of Brian Mulroney. It reads:
Everyone commits an offence who, with intent to injure or alarm a person, conveys information that they know is false, or causes such information to be conveyed by letter or any means of telecommunication.
This law was enacted a decade before the internet became widely available. I highly doubt this law was intended to cover articles criticizing a foreign government for its military conduct let alone give legitimacy to a ruling by a Russian judge who is currently subject to both Canadian and U.S. sanctions.
It isn't to say the Trudeau government is immune from criticism in this matter. While it may have not enacted Section 372(1) of the Criminal Code of Canada, its interpretation of that law could potentially land Kartasheva in a Siberian prison next to Alexei Navalny.
This cannot come to pass. If it does, then I have no doubt that authoritarian and totalitarian governments would see fit to convict emigrees seeking Canadian citizenship who have expressed public disagreements with the conduct of the regimes they have abandoned.
Hossein Derakhshan comes to mind. Derakhshan is an Iranian emigree to Canada who was arrested while visiting his family in Tehran in November 2008 for his blog posts critical of the Iranian regime and subsequently sentenced to 19 years in prison before being pardoned in 2014 by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
If Derakhshan was awaiting Canadian citizenship and was subsequently convicted in absentia for writing blog posts critical of the Iranian government then he too could have found himself in Kartasheva's shoes.
In March 2022, Kartasheva became a fixture at protests in Ottawa against the Russian invasion of Ukraine. At the time Kartasheva said:
I didn’t feel safe in Russia anymore. Anytime you wanted to stand up to the violence, you were never safe. If someone didn’t like something you posted, you could be taken away.”
I am in Canada. They can’t do anything to me.
Unfortunately, Canada might very well do something to harm Maria Kartasheva. As such, the onus lies with the Trudeau government to make this right and overrule the decision of Canadian immigration officials.
As for Jonathan Turley, while he is right to bring Maria Kartasheva's case out in the open, he does a disservice when he claims Canada is criminalizing speech and that Trudeau has authoritarian powers. Justin Trudeau is many things. A Vladimir Putin clone he is not. By improperly diagnosing the problem, he may very do Maria Kartasheva more harm than good.
No comments:
Post a Comment