PSA: KJIPUKTUK (Halifax) – There will be a rally tomorrow (Monday) in Halifax to protest the decision by the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission (NSHRC) to rescind Rana Zaman’s Human Rights Award.
“Rabbi Jonah Rank, who was associated with Halifax’s Shaar Shalom synagogue until recently, wrote an impassioned defence of Ms. Zaman to Human Rights Commission CEO Christine Hanson calling Zaman “a friend to the Jews, a courageous changemaker.” He cites Ms. Zaman’s efforts in establishing a peace-seeking group of Halifax Jewish and Muslim women called “Salaam-Shalom.” From a press release issued by Independent Jewish Voices, condemning the rescinding of Rana;s Human Rights Award.
A cowardly Human Rights Commission has rescinded the award Rana Zaman received last week after it was aleged that she is antisemitic. Rana is rightly critical of Israeli policies towards Palestine, but antisemitic she isn’t.
Who really started the current campaign to demonize Rana Zaman? It was none other than the NDP., writes Judy Haiven. The NDP’s slander about her being unacceptable and an anti-semite was picked up by the Jewish establishment. I think the NDP has a lot of explaining to do, she writes.
Judy Haiven asks a good question: How can it be that an officially nominated federal candidate gets dragged through the mud; is accused of writing anti-semitic tweets; is then turfed from being a candidate for the NDP – yet wins the most prestigious Human Rights Award in Nova Scotia?
Compensation awarded to the complainants in a human rights enquiry may sound generous, but it is peanuts when you take into account the decades the three were institutionalized, away from community and their loved ones, and subjected to a regime that allows almost no space for making your own decisions.
We speak with Mayann Francis, former lieutenant-governor of Nova Scotia, about an incident at the Dartnouth General Hospital that caused her to file a complaint with the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission.
Warren (Gus) Reed is still waiting for the province to follow up on the September 2018 NS Human Rights Decision that restaurants must provide wheelchair access to washrooms. A recent case of Norovirus while traveling in the US made the risks wheelchair users are exposed to all the more real.
Last week a Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission Board of Inquiry decided that former firefighter Kathy Symington did not suffer discrimination while working at the Halifax Fire Service.
“In fact the Tessier case shows that for a woman to complain about a male-dominated workplace, such as the Fire Service, the woman has to be willing to fight for more than a dozen years, has to have an airtight complaint, witnesses, and certainly not criticize her superiors. Short of this, women are simply not believed.,” writes Judy Haiven.
A broad and sweeping joint effort to repair relations between the Town of Truro and the African Nova Scotian community in that town is lauded as a historical event, not just for Truro or Nova Scotia, but perhaps even for Canada.