EXCERPT
August 20, 2024 in Canada - 3 Minutes
In an effort to highlight the issue of Canada’s complicity in the genocide of the Palestinian people, the group LaSalle-Émard-Verdun pour la Palestine (LEV 4 Palestine) has registered as a third party and launched a poster campaign in the riding.
LEV 4 Palestine says the aims of its third-party campaign are to shine a light on Canada’s complicity in the genocide; attract media attention and force candidates to debate Canadian militarism, military exports and support for Israel’s genocidal actions; and “affirm that the residents of Lasalle, Ville-Émard and Verdun are in solidarity with the Palestinian people.”
The group points out that as a registered third party, its campaign posters are protected by electoral laws, and altering or vandalizing them can result in criminal prosecution.
However, within just 36 hours of going up, the posters were vandalized and removed from public spaces in the riding. Sources told People’s Voice that nearly one hundred posters were removed on Wellington Street alone, which is Verdun’s main thoroughfare.
Adrien Welsh, leader of the Parti communiste du Québec (PCQ, section of the Communist Party of Canada), says there are suspicions that the removal and vandalism is a coordinated and that the City of Montreal is involved.
“The mayor of Hampstead, which is a suburb in the Greater Montreal area, is a notorious Zionist. He urged Montreal mayor Valérie Plante to demand the removal of these posters,” Welsh told PV. “At the same time, the Liberal candidate is a city councillor and her party is clearly targeted by the campaign. People are asking, justifiably, if she took advantage of her position to press for the posters to be removed.”
Whatever the case, the motive for the vandalism and removal is clearly to conceal the genocide in Palestine and maintain the status quo which has led to the deaths of more than 40,000 Palestinians since October 2023.
____________________________________________
Source:
https://pvonline.ca/2024/08/20/palestine-solidarity-censored-in-verdun-byelection/
Image source:
https://lev4palestine.ca/media.html