Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre is demanding that a group that organized a Vancouver demonstration where the Canadian flag was burned and protesters cheered on Hamas be added to Canada’s list of designated terrorist entities.
Poilievre joined the call from Jewish advocacy groups and, recently, BC Conservative leader John Rustad to ban Samidoun, an organization with non-profit status in Canada from operating.
This comes after the one-year marking of the Hamas-led terror attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. In celebration of the attack, Samidoun hosted a night of protesting in Vancouver, which caught the eye of Canada’s House of Commons on Tuesday.
Samidoun Prisoners Solidarity Network is an international organization which bills itself as a Palestinian prisoner advocacy group. The organization advocates for the freeing of Palestinian prisoners, mainly from the Marxist-Leninist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, who have been arrested for terrorism charges.
The PFLP is a listed terrorist entity in Canada.
True North has reported on Samidoun for its continued open support of other listed terrorist entities.
“We see that on our streets, the organization Samidoun, which is a front for the PFLP, has been fomenting these violent and horrific protests and mob actions,” Poilievre said on Parliament Hill. “This organization is a front for an already banned terrorist group,”
He noted that knowingly acting on behalf of, at the direction of, or in association with a terrorist entity is an offence under section 83.05 of the Criminal Code, as enacted by the Anti-Terrorism Act.
He said the Israeli government has described Samidoun founder Khaled Barakat as a high-ranking member of the PFLP. The PFLP has been placed on the list of banned Canadian terrorist entities for 20 years.
The PFLP was behind the 2014 massacre at a synagogue in Jerusalem where a Canadian rabbi was one of the victims.
Barakat’s wife, Charlotte Kates, currently leads Samidoun and operates outside Vancouver. She has received human rights awards from the Islamist dictatorship in Iran, appearing on Iranian state TV calling the Oct. 7 attack “heroic,” and, while in Madrid this week, said she was there to celebrate the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led terror attack.
Samidoun has been designated as a subsidiary of the terrorist PFLP in Israel, and the organization is also banned in Germany for its glorification of terrorist organizations and antisemitic propaganda.
“This is a terrorist organization. Common Sense Conservatives are now calling for the government under Section 83.03 of the Criminal Code to ban Samidoun. Let’s bring home safety, security and peace to our streets,” Poilievre said. “Let’s unify our people…. Let’s secure our borders. Let’s keep terrorists out of our country, and let’s stand up for what’s right. Once again, stand with our allies against terrorism and for decency.”
In the House of Commons Tuesday, Liberal MP for Pickering–Uxbridge Jennifer O’Connell said the government was “already taking action” and that the Conservatives’ demand that the group be listed as a terror group was just political posturing.
“Those actions that have been taking place in our streets are wrong. We condemn them full stop. Any form of anti-Semitism is wrong,” O’Connell said. “This is precisely why the minister of public safety had already referred the listing of Samidoun to our National Security Advisor and asked for an emergency and urgent review.”
However, the Conservative’s deputy leader, Melissa Lantsman, said this organization should already be listed as a terrorist entity.
“if they took action, they would have listed them already,” Lantsman said. “So if burning a Canadian flag, calling for the death of Canadians, if fomenting hate in this country, and most of all, being a front for an already listed terrorist organization is not enough to put them on the list, then what the hell is it going to take for them to ban them.”
O’Connell repeated the line that Conservatives were playing politics and that it is not a political decision to designate a group as a terrorist organization, and it is up to national security to make that decision.
Samidoun did not respond to True North’s requests to comment.
