A former leader of native Canadians is accused of stirring up national hatred. He claimed in Saskatoon court the accusations to be unjust, since he does not hate the Jews themselves, but the fact that they "bring other people harm."
The 75-year-old David Ahenakew who used to be Chairman of the Assembly of First Nations, which unites the communities of ethnic Canadians, appeared in court last month. The charge was formulated as follows: "for stirring up hatred towards a certain group of population."
This man used to be very respected, and in 1978 he was even awarded the country's most prestigious decoration – the Order of Canada for peacemaking activity. In 2005, his award was revoked on the grounds of "stirring up hatred": in the interview he gave to a newspaper in 2002, he compared the Jews to a "cancer" and approved of the "final solution of the Jewish question suggested by Hitler."
"Hitler's aim was to prevent the Jews from seizing the power in Germany and in the whole Europe," said Ahenakew to the Saskatoon Star reporter James Parker. "That is why he killed six million of these… you know… Jews. Otherwise the Jews would have seized the entire world."
This statement was made in response to a request from Parker to give explanation for the speech at the Health conference, where Ahenakew accused the Jews of having unleashed the Second World War. The native was fined one thousand dollars for provocative statements, but this did not calm him down. He sued to review the case and, strangely enough, won it because the judge failed to prove that the statement was inflammatory.
This was followed by several more trials. And now there is a new trial, where the interests of the accused are protected by the lawyer Doug Christie, who belongs to a narrow circle of the most fervent Holocaust deniers.
The accused has already told the press that he remains convinced that it is the Jews who started the conflagration of World War II and later became a cause of war in Korea, in which he had to participate. "Everybody says that I hate Jews, but this is not true," he explained. "I do not feel any hatred towards them, but I really hate what they did to people."
The defendant told the court that his world-view was formed in 1964, when he participated in the peacekeeping mission in Gaza. There, his responsibilities included the construction of the fence, which did not allow children to get to the mined areas. He accused Israel of removing the fence later on.
When the native was deprived of the order, and a press statement was issued that a person with such opinions is undeserving of it, the public reaction was very diverse. But at least one of the local leaders openly stated that he does not agree with the statement that the Jews have taken control of the media in Canada.
"Now, Canadians understand that what Ahenakew says is anti-Semitism in its pure form," says Wendy Lampert, PR director of the Canadian Jewish Congress. "It is now up to the court to decide whether his statements contain violations of law. The second court shows that the anti-Semitic statements have attracted considerable attention." The Congress has sent two delegations of Canada's indigenous population to Israel, in the years 2005 and 2006. President of the Congress in 2005 addressed the Assembly of the First Nations of Canada, he specifically came to the northern part of the country for this purpose.
The native population of Canada totals in 1 170 000 people.