“If you believe in free speech,” said the email, “please cancel Robert Fisk’s tour.” Now, where have I seen these ruthless tactics before…
by Robert Fisk, The Independent
The Syrian civil war has “spilled over” into… Canada. Now you might say that the land Generals Wolfe and Montcalm died for on the Plains of Abraham doesn’t have a lot in common with the Arab world. Canada, like America, is a land of the free and a refuge, indeed, for Arabs fleeing their dictators. This may be one of the reasons why ailing, 85-year-old Paula Coulton was ready to hear me speak in her Ontario town – itself frozen in -18C this winter – during a 10-city lecture tour. But Canada, alas, is also the land of political correctness and, I suspect, a certain amount of fear.
I should have guessed this when I was told that a group of Arab Muslim residents of Ottawa, Montreal and London, Ontario, objected to my reports of the Syrian civil war; so enraged were they that one faction in Ottawa sent an extraordinary, imperishable email to the organisers of my lectures. “If you believe in free speech,” it said, “please cancel Robert Fisk’s tour.” Bravo!
At one venue I was due to speak in a mosque about the Arab Awakening – and the gents and ladies of this particular Muslim clique managed to persuade their brothers and sisters that it might be a good idea if I did not speak there. The town’s volunteers, a fine bunch of folk with years of sterling work behind them in promoting debates on the real Middle East, felt they had no option but to step back from the mosque venue. And no other hall was available for my talk that night.
Of course, I’ve a pretty good idea why they didn’t want me to speak in Canada. While The Independent scrupulously covers both sides in the Syrian conflict – among my first reports, two years ago, was a description of Syrian militia cruelty in a Sunni village near the northern Lebanese border – opponents of Bashar al-Assad’s vicious regime did not like the fact my last reports came from the Syrian government side of the civil war front lines. They included interviews with Syrian army officers and details of the killing of civilians by armed rebels, as well as by the regime.