Boycott Israel [IslamCity] Action Alert: Palestinian Suppression at University of Western Ontario: Justin Podur interviews Tarek Lubani of Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights, University of Western Ontario, September 16, 2006

[Susan Howard-Azzeh]

Please phone or send letters of objection. Main article at bottom of email. Susan.     "Edward C. Corrigan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:  Date: Sat, 16 Sep 2006 17:29:28 -0400From: "Edward C. Corrigan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>To: undisclosed-recipients:;Subject: Action Alert: The Palestinian Issue at the University: "SPHR DERATIFIED- Something is not quite right, on another Canadian campus, Justin Podurinterviews Tarek Lubani of Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights, Universityof Western Ontario, September 16, 2006Here is a follow up interview on the suppression of Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR) at the University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada. I thank Beth Guthrie for bringing it to my attention. The link to the interview
 is below as is the text. The link to the SPHR Website is http://www.usc.uwo.ca/clubs/sphr/ . There may be a problem with the link to the petition and addresses for the letters as I could not get it to open.I have attached the contact information for the relevant parties if you want to send a letter of protest. Contact info is below for University President Dr. Paul Davenport and to the UWO Student Council (USC) President Fab Dolan, the V.P.Finance and Clubs Alison Todd. Also please copy USC V.P. Education Paris Meilleur who should be sympathetic on the issue of free speech and anti-racism.Please send protest letters to the student paper, The Gazette. I have copied the entire section of relevant editors. The Editor in Chief and the Opinion editor should be emailed at minimum. Also please sent letters to the University Newspaper, The Western News. Chose one or the
 other paper. It has been my experience that the University Administration paper is very open to publishing letters. The staff there are very good. The contact info for these different groups is below. Hard copies sent by mail or by fax are better than emails. Please copy me on the letters etc. and I will forward to the SPHR executive. Thanks for your help. It is important that we show we can mobilize on these questions to preserve free speech on University campuses and to combat racism against Palestinians and Arabs and discrimination against Muslims, Middle East Christians and Anti-Zionist and Non-Zionist Jews.Ed Corriganhttp://sphr-uwo.2y.net/node/1 *Dr. Paul Davenport *President & Vice-ChancellorT: (519) 661-3106E: [EMAIL PROTECTED]  *Office of the
 President *The University of Western Ontario, Room 113 Stevenson-Lawson BuildingLondon, Ontario, CanadaN6A 5B9*The University Students' Council*Room 340, University Community CentreThe University of Western OntarioLondon, ON , Canada N6A 3K7P: 519.661.3574F: 519.661.2094E: [EMAIL PROTECTED]  President:Fab Dolan[EMAIL PROTECTED]  VP Finance & Clubs:Alison Todd[EMAIL PROTECTED]  VP Education:Paris Meilleur[EMAIL PROTECTED]  WESTERN NEWS*E**ditor: *David Dauphinee ([EMAIL PROTECTED] )*Phone:*(519)
 661-2045*Fax:*(519) 661-3921*Mail: *Western News, Room 335 Stevenson-Lawson Building, University of Western Ontario, LONDON, ONTARIO0, CANADA, N6A 5B8------------------------------------------------------------------------Return to Western's home page 1151 Richmond Street, Suite 2, London, Ontario, Canada, N6A 5B8 . Tel: (519) 661-2111University Student paper.The GazetteUniversity Community Centre, Rm. 263The University of Western OntarioLondon, Ontario, Canada.N6A3K7Phone: 519-661-3580/The Gazette/ is owned and published by the University Students' Council.EDITORS BY SECTIONTo contact an editor, click on the particular section title to send an email.*Ian Van Den Hurk,Editor-in-Chief *Anna Coutts ,Deputy Editor *Matt Larkin ,Managing Editor *Ravi Amarnath ,Associate Editor**News Editors *oJen DavidsonoCigdem IltanoClaire Neary oDave Ward **Opinions Editor *oGeorgia Tanner*edit primary links Solidarity for ------------------------------------------------------------------------*Home SPHR DERATIFIED - Something is not quite right, on another Canadian campusJustin Podur interviews Tarek Lubani of Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights, University of Western OntarioThe University of Western Ontario is a medium-sized University campus at which typical campus activism takes place. Like many North American campuses, activism on Israel/Palestine is a feature of campus life. Also like many North American campuses, suppressing such activism seems to be a priority for the establishment. The deratification Tuesday, and treatment throughout of the campus group /Solidarity for Palestinian Human
 Rights/ (SPHR) fits well into this North American context, though it seems a particularly farcical example. In the interest that there be a public record of all such events, great and small, tragic and farcical, I conducted a short interview with Tarek Lubani, a campus activist in SPHR, who described the strange situation for the record.*/Justin Podur/: Please describe SPHR and how it works on the Western campus.*/Tarek Lubani/: SPHR UWO started in September 2003, at the beginning of the school year. Until it was founded, the concern for Palestinian human rights on campus was voiced by religious or cultural groups like the Muslim or Arab students' associations. We wanted to create a place where Palestinian human rights was the main focus, not a sub-agenda. Our core membership is more than 100, which makes us one of the larger groups on campus. We are mostly students, but we work closely with groups like
 Sabeel, UWO PIRG, and the campus chapters of NGOs like OxFam.We mainly run events with honest and frank discussion about the state of Palestinian human rights and the progress of the struggle. We regularly host one or two events each month with a range of views. In the past couple of years, we've hosted Robert Fisk, a distinguished reporter; Dr. Jeff Halper, head of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions; Dr. Uri Davis, a scholar and "anti-Zionist Palestinian Jew"; former MP Carolyn Parrish; and more. We have people come and speak, and we run activities to help people think about, visualize, or imagine what is happening. We have worked hard to be part of coalitions committed to human rights, and have tried to maintain a reasonably high profile for issues of Palestinian human rights.A poor substitute for a wall*/JP/: So, tell us about the wall that started things off.*/TL/: This is where
 this particular tale starts. On 29 November 2004, members of SPHR set up a mock Apartheid Wall in the student centre as an educational tool to show people what the Apartheid Wall in Israel and the illegally Occupied Palestinian Territories is like. It was part of the official UN Day for International Solidarity with the Palestinian people.*/JP/: I assume that your wall was a poor substitute for the real thing: did it have moats, barbed wire, electrical current, or snipers with live ammunition? Did you confiscate the student centre and declare it a closed military zone?*/TL/: Indeed it was a terrible substitute. It was made out of paper, 2mm thick, and was only 5m high (the real Wall is 8m high). Some did accuse us of dividing the student centre though.Our mock Apartheid Wall was put up after many weeks of approval processes. Before it was erected, it was approved by the student council and its organs.
 After it was put up, it was again approved by the student council and its organs, the London Police Hate Crimes Division, and the University Equity Services.The day it went up, the local Israel Action Committee sent an email to its members telling them to disrupt the wall. They did so: they came with flyers and made a lot of noise and commotion, driving away a lot of people who didn't know much about the situation.After the event, the same group sent out a sample complaint which became the template for 30-40 students to send in complaints as a campaign against SPHR.Also after the event, the President of the university, Paul Davenport -- who incidentally is no friend of progressive agendas -- came out and said the wall was protected by free speech and within the boundaries of intelligent debate. The student council released a statement saying the wall was acceptable. The Board of Governors of the same
 council voted on the issue and said it was fine. All of the groups that had approved it beforehand were present on the day of the event. All declared it was fine.But it wasn't, evidently. On December 17, 2004, we got an email from the Clubs Policy Committee, a subcommittee of the student council, telling us there was a complaint against us. We weren't allowed to see the complaint or hear a summary. We were not allowed to respond or defend ourselves. But we were told 24 hours later that we had been banned from all student council facilities for two years.We asked the Ombudsperson to write a report on the matter, on due process grounds. The Ombudsperson recommended that the student council overturn the decision and it did.The wall: redux*/JP/: Isn't that due process?*/TL/: Well, you could argue that due process includes the concept of /double jeopardy/ - that you shouldn't be tried for an offence
 you were already found innocent of. Yet even after the many exhonorations, the Clubs Policy Committee (CPC) struck again last September 2005, with another email telling us we were up for sanctions on the same charges. We were allowed to write a response this time, and we got very good, committed people who saw this as an attack on free speech, to write one. The CPC made their submission to the student council, removing large chunks of our response, with no stated cause other than their 'irrelevance'. We asked the CPC to leave our defense whole and mark the parts they thought were irrelevant. They refused.The person responsible for interpreting the legal positions of ourselves and the CPC was David Forestell, who also happens to have backed the Israel Action Committee (IAC) student council candidate, former Israel Action Committee (IAC) president Matt Abramsky. He invited Irshad Manji to speak about her book "The
 Trouble with Islam" last year under the auspices of the university gay-rights group and the IAC. We asked him to declare a conflict of interest in this case, but he refused.The outcome of this process? SPHR was again banned for a year.Casting publicity upon the injustice*JP/: You have told me in the past that SPHR's website was also edited then removed by the student council. Could you tell us about that?/*/TL/: In the fall of 2005, we consulted with our membership and decided to post all the information we had online. We finally received the complaint with no stipulations, so we published that as well. We wanted to show people what was going on: if we were to be banned, we wanted the ban to see the light of day and those who banned us to have to make their case publicly, with our response alongside the complaint.Not long after posting, during the 2005 Christmas exams, we got an email saying that
 unless we removed the complaint from our website, we would be up for 'review'. The CPC claimed the complaints were confidential. We replied that their case ought to be able to withstand public scrutiny and we were given the complaint without any stipulation that it would be confidential.Apparently unconvinced, the student council shut down our website and we were brought before the CPC again - remember this is in the midst of the Christmas exams. We were given 2 days to prepare a defense, but it looked so obviously terrible that we were eventually were allowed an extension into the new year. Of course the CPC voted against us, and we were banned from keeping a website on the university server.SPHR UWO is deratified*JP/: And that brings us to this latest decision. Could you explain what the complaints against you were, and what happened?/*/TL/: I'll give you the punch line: SPHR does not have the right to
 exist on UWO campus. There are two major issues to talk about with relation to the latest decision. First, the process was unfair. Second, the complaints are laughably ridiculous. I'll take them one by one, if I may.Exactly like last time, we weren't allowed to see the complaints against us. We were asked to sign a ridiculous confidentiality agreement that forbade us from even showing the documents to our legal counsel. Needless to say, we refused and asked the USC to simply redact the names and release the complaints. When they refused, we asked the Ombudsperson to write a report on the matter. She did, and found that "it is not necessary to have a blanket confidentiality agreement in order to protect the information of the person(s) making a complaint", ultimately recommending that the "USC reconsider [this] practice" so it may "protect the integrity of its policies and procedures". The USC rejected, and has
 turned down at least 3 offers for SPHR and the USC to go to mediation to help release the documents. We simply could not prepare a defence when we did not know the contents of the complaints, so we were forced to submit a letter of protest instead of a proper defence.There isn't much to be said about the two complaints against us. It's all summed up in one of the lines from the decision, which found us guilty of breaching our one-year ban: "On March 23, 2006, the USC hosted an Anti-Hate Vigil. SPHR participated in the event at the request of the [Student Council's elected] Vice-President Campus Issues at that time." So, SPHR was invited by the student council to speak against hate, and did a marvelous job of this, and then were promptly sanctioned for doing so by the student council?It helps you realize why they won't release the complaints. They obviously don't have a leg to stand on legally, morally, or in any
 other way.The future of SPHR UWO*/JP/: So, what now for SPHR UWO? What can people do to help out?*/TL/: We have to understand this for what it is: An assault on the rights of Palestinian people to have their voices heard on Canadian campuses. The most important thing that anybody can do is to get informed about issues affecting Palestinian human rights, and help educate others about them.In the vein of education, people can also check out our website to see the archives of all the publicly available communications and complaints. People can also join SPHR UWO at that site to receive our emails and communications and to participate in the club.Lastly, people can make their voices heard. Those with time and energy can write letters to the addresses below, including the USC, the UWO President, and the university newspaper, /The Gazette/. Those with slightly less time
 can sign our petition, which automatically sends a form letter to the USC and the UWO president.» login or register to post comments------------------------------------------------------------------------Original design by garbetjie                                                 Continue phoning Stephen Harper at 613-992-4211 or email [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Call for complete Israeli withdrawal from all occupied lands in Palestine, Lebanon & Syria. 
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{Invite (mankind, O Muhammad ) to the Way of your Lord (i.e. Islam) with wisdom (i.e. with the Divine Inspiration and the Qur'an) and fair preaching, and argue with them in a way that is better. Truly, your Lord knows best who has gone astray from His Path, and He is the Best Aware of those who are guided.} (Holy Quran-16:125)

{And who is better in speech than he who [says: "My Lord is Allah (believes in His Oneness)," and then stands straight (acts upon His Order), and] invites (men) to Allah's (Islamic Monotheism), and does righteous deeds, and says: "I am one of the Muslims."} (Holy Quran-41:33)
 
The prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said: "By Allah, if Allah guides one person by you, it is better for you than the best types of camels." [al-Bukhaaree, Muslim] 

The prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him)  also said, "Whoever calls to guidance will have a reward similar to the reward of the one who follows him, without the reward of either of them being lessened at all." [Muslim, Ahmad, Aboo Daawood, an-Nasaa'ee, at-Tirmidhee, Ibn Maajah] 
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