Refused Entry: Get Lost

British Member of Parliament George Galloway is furious with Canada. Canadian Border Services took it upon themselves to contact the Canadian High Commission in London to inform Mr. Galloway that he is persona non grata in Canada. That would put anyone in high dudgeon, anticipating unrestrained entry once again to honour agreed-upon speaking engagements anywhere. After all, Canada is one of many democracies that guarantees freedom of expression.

He is determined to speak in Canada to those freedom-loving entities eager to hear his message of peace. His personal admiration for and support of Hamas is the issue, not in that he speaks in support of their agenda, but in that he famously led a delegation to give financial support to a terrorist organization, thus ensuring his inadmissibility to Canada, which lists Hamas as a terrorist organization. Simple as that.

So Mr. Galloway is free to fulminate away at his leisure. And the Ottawa Peace Assembly (there goes George Orwell's double-speak again) who organized the event featuring this great man of peace is free to have him speak via video-conference from the United States. Mr. Galloway saw fit to personally launch a giveaway in Gaza just recently in support of Hamas of three vehicles and $44,715.

That goes down in Britain, where the man was democratically elected, even though his own Labour Party expelled him from their caucus, but not in Canada where he isn't elected to represent anyone. This is the man who famously visited Iraq in 1994 and expressed his support for Saddam Hussein: "Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability".

Mr. Galloway is himself indefatigable, and he plans to challenge his disallowed entry to Canada, for he deems it shameful that Canada would deny an elected politician from another democracy the right to express his views. Last I heard, France too is a democracy, and Mr. Galloway did his best to persuade Britain's government to disallow a visit by French politician Jean-Marie LePen.

And try as I might, I couldn't recall hearing or reading that Mr. Galloway protested Britain's decision to block Dutch politician Geert Wilders from entering the country although he was invited to do so just last month, to show his film 'Fitna' to the House of Lords. Now let's see, Holland is a democratic country, and Mr. Wilders an elected politician.

And Mr. Wilders too plans to appeal his blocked entry to England. Unlike the situation with Mr. Galloway, however, the government of Holland has taken umbrage at one of their politicians' exclusion from another democracy. Mind, his short and instructive film on Islamism hasn't been reviewed favourably by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, either.

The message to Mr. Galloway is clear; this government considers him unwelcome and it has a perfect right to block entry to anyone whom it considers undeserving of entry to the country. Case closed.