Cancelled by convoy, vigil for Quebec mosque massacre to be held Sunday

A year ago, police told Fareed Khan it would be unsafe for him to hold the vigil he planned in downtown Ottawa to mark the fifth anniversary of the Quebec City mosque massacre. The truck convoy protesters were scheduled to arrive that day, police warned. There had been credible threats made online.

So instead, Khan and the others stayed home and watched as thousands of protesters flooded into the capital, waving flags and demanding their freedom, on the first day of what would be a three-week occupation of downtown Ottawa.

This year, the vigil is going ahead Sunday evening at the Canadian Human Rights Monument on Elgin Street, said Khan, founder of Canadians United Against Hate.

“Those so-called ‘freedom protesters’ cared about no one’s freedom but their own,” Khan said Friday. “Those of us who have been victimized by Islamophobia and racist violence, our freedom was denied last year. But not this year. We’re not going to stand down.”

“We’re calling on Canadian to stand against hate — Islamophobia, yes, but all forms of hate.”

It was Jan. 29, 2017, when a 27-year-old man armed with a semi-automatic rifle and a 9mm pistol walked into the Quebec Islamic Cultural Centre and opened fire. He killed six men: Ibrahima Barry, Mamadou Tanou Barry, Khaled Belkacemi, Abdelkrim Hassane, Aboubaker Thabti and Azzeddine Soufiane. Five others were critically injured.

The shooter, Alexandre Bissonnette, pleaded guilty and is serving life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years.

Sunday’s multi-faith vigil will feature an iman, a rabbi and a minister who will honour the Quebec City victims along with other victims of Islamophobia, including a Muslim man stabbed outside a Toronto mosque in 2020 and a Muslim family of four run down by a driver in London, Ont. in 2021.

Hate crimes in Canada increased by 27 per cent in 2021, according to a Statistics Canada report released last summer. Ottawa police report the number of hate incidents reported to them jumped 13 per cent last year.

Khan said the government isn’t doing enough to counter Islamophobia, whether it be internationally such as China’s persecution of its Muslim Uyghur minority, or domestically with Quebec’s Law 21 which bans public employees such as teachers or health care workers from wearing religious symbols.

“It’s the legal and moral responsibility of the federal government to defend the Charter of Rights wherever those rights are being violated,” Khan said. “Either you’re for defending rights or you’re not. There’s no half way. And when human rights are violated there needs to be action taken to hold those violating the rights accountable.”

On Friday, the federal government announced the appointment of Ottawa journalist and human rights activist Amira Elghawaby as Canada’s first Special Representative on Combatting Islamophobia. In her position, Elghawaby will be a “champion, advisor, expert, and representative” in the government’s fight against Islamophobia, racism and religious intolerance.

Elghawaby begins her job in February, but is already thinking about her priorities.

“The pandemic showed how misinformation and disinformation can create divisions in our society,” Elghawaby said in an interview Friday. “The fact that we’re so divided, so far apart, means we’re potentially going to see more conflict if we don’t figure out a way to hear each other with respect and the ability to discern between what is truth and what is not truth.”

She also cited issues of systemic racism such as a Statistic Canada report released last week that showed racialized recent graduates earn less and have fewer benefits than white graduates.

“These reports signal that there’s still much work to do,” she said.

“My role is to amplify the concerns of our community, talk about them with decision makers and policy makers, and do everything I can to bring these issues forward and have a constructive dialogue,” Elghawaby said.

“I’m not assuming anyone will immediately agree, but at the very least in a democracy it’s about exchanging ideas and I am deeply humbled that I will be able to express these ideas and concerns of communities that have dealt with Islamophobia and deadly forms of Islamophobia.”

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