Author: Mary Vallis and Mark Hume
Publication: National Post, with
files from The Vancouver Sun and The Canadian Press
Date: October 3, 2001.
URL: http://www.nationalpost.com/home/story.html?f=/stories/20011003/717653.html
TORONTO and VANCOUVER - Gordon Campbell,
the Premier of British Columbia, yesterday condemned a leading feminist's
controversial speech on U.S. foreign policy as "hateful, destructive and
very disturbing."
In a speech to a Women's Resistance
conference in Ottawa, Sunera Thobani, a women's studies professor at the
University of British Columbia and former head of the National Action Committee
on the Status of Women, said "the path of U.S. foreign policy is soaked
in blood" and is linked to the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.
The 500 women in the audience interrupted
Ms. Thobani with cheers and a standing ovation, but her remarks were widely
condemned.
"I think Ms. Thobani is dead wrong,"
Mr. Campbell said. "I think the only people that will be cheering her will
be those who propagate the kind of hate you saw her talking about.
"The comments she made were hateful
and destructive and the very liberties that allowed her to say what she
did are what the fanatics and the terrorists have in their crosshairs."
Mr. Campbell added: "When I hear
someone say that Americans are bloodthirsty and vengeful, that's disgraceful.
It's clearly not the case and those sorts of words are motivated by one
thing and that's her own hate."
The federal government contributed
an estimated $80,000 to fund the conference, at which Ms. Thobani was a
keynote speaker.
Landon Pearson, a Liberal Senator
who also addressed the conference, joined Ms. Thobani on the podium but
did not applaud her remarks.
"I thought it was a manipulative
rant," she said during an interview yesterday. "First of all, I don't think
this is the moment to come out with an anti-American rant. Secondly, I
don't think you use that kind of language. You don't talk about a blood-stained
foreign policy. That's the same kind of language that the terrorists use,
for heaven's sake."
A conference organizer said Ms.
Thobani's travel expenses were covered in the conference budget.
Barry McBride, UBC's vice-president
of academics, said Ms. Thobani had every right to express her views.
"Free speech is a cornerstone of
university culture," he said in a statement. "Assistant Prof. Thobani,
as a social critic, is encouraged to express her views ... This is the
stuff of democracy, a core value that our society seeks to protect in its
struggle against terrorism."
During her address, Ms. Thobani
said the United States is "the most dangerous and most powerful global
force unleashing horrific levels of violence."
She said she empathized with the
suffering caused by the Sept. 11 attacks. "But do we feel any pain for
the victims of U.S. aggression?" she asked the audience.
Yesterday, she told Global Television
she did not regard her comments as controversial. "I do think there should
be a public debate in this country before we engage in any kind of war,"
she said.
"It seems like there's really a
closing down of space for voices which are dissenting to this Bush administration's
agenda and to me that's very worrying for what that means for Canadian
political life."
It was reported a security guard
had been posted outside Ms. Thobani's class on campus but she said she
had asked for the protection not for herself, but for her students.
Kal Holsti, a UBC professor of political
science and an expert on U.S. foreign policy, said his colleague got her
facts wrong and misrepresented the United States' position.
"The Americans have made some mistakes,
there's no questions about that. But under no circumstance would I say
that what the Americans have done is the moral equivalent of what Osama
bin Laden has done."
Joe Wai, an architect and member
of UBC's board of governors, said people must judge for themselves how
appropriate Ms. Thobani's remarks were.
John Manley, the Minister of Foreign
Affairs, described the speech as "simply outrageous." Stockwell Day, the
Canadian Alliance leader, said the Prime Minister should inform the U.S.
government that Canada repudiates Ms. Thobani's messages.
"Who's going to trust us as neighbours,
friends and allies when we pay people to attack another nation which has
already been deeply, deeply wounded?" asked Gwen Landolt, national vice-president
of REAL Women of Canada, a conservative women's group. "Taxpayers are funding
these extremists to attack a country which is on its knees."
Ms. Thobani came to Canada from
Tanzania as a doctoral student in sociology in 1989. She obtained landed
immigrant status in 1993, the same week she was elected president of the
National Action Committee on the Status of Women, a position she held for
three years.
A spokeswoman for NAC yesterday
refused to comment on the speech, saying she had not heard it.
