Statement from the Roma Community Centre
September 10, 2012

BLATANT HATE SPEECH IN THE CANADIAN MEDIA TARGETING ROMA

Dear friend of Canada’s Roma community

Last week was a very sad time for us in the Canadian Roma community. Durham regional police held a press conference one week ago today (Tuesday Sept. 5) declaring that they have dismantled a “Roma organized crime ring” involving individuals from both Canada and Romania. Countless names and pictures of Roma suspects originally from Romania filled our television screens. After such clear and blatant racial profiling, the prevalent stereotypes of “Gypsies” being inherently criminal was certainly reinforced into the minds of the viewers. Latter the same day, media personality, Ezra Levant, delivered by far the most racist, abusive, hateful, misinformed commentary on live television that the Roma community has ever received in our Canadian history. The Sun Media News allowed this same type of hate speech targeting our community, as takes place in Hungary by the far-right media arm of the Jobbik “neo-Nazi” political party. Shame. To the best of our knowledge, this is absolutely unacceptable and not allowed in Canada – apparently, not. http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/sunnews/canada/archives/2012/09/20120905-203437.html Please, see direct, shocking quotes from this racist diatribe, below. 

In response to  Cohn: Canada’s splendid isolation from the realities of human smuggling

Please, stop disseminating inaccurate information

Hello Mr. Cohn,

Your article yesterday as quite disheartening. Certainly, you did not research any information that you presented as facts in your article.

1. Upwards of 50,000 Czech, Hungarian, Slovak, and other central and eastern European Romani refugees have sought asylum in Canada, since 2008. In 2009, there was one prosecuted case of human trafficking in Hamilton involving the Roma community. Five (5) individuals were convicted. Canadian Immigration Minister Jason Kenney promoted and exploited this unfortunate situation to make it exemplary of all the Roma refugee claimants coming into Canada. This lie has been continually propagated by the Canadian media.

Dorothy A. Atabong

Help stop so-called Honor Killings

Cameroonian-born Canadian actress and filmmaker Dorothy A. Atabong picked up a pencil and wrote what was the first of many drafts of Sound of Tears – A Matter of Family Honor, when she came across a newspaper article about a Mississauga girl who was strangled by her own father and brother.

Sound of Tears is a dramatic short film about a young woman who must abide by the strict customs and traditions embedded in her since birth. She must heed the admonition and relinquish a forbidden love. It is a matter of family honor.

Ballroom dance against gang recruitment?

Re: DiManno: Poverty of morals behind gang violence isn’t easily solved

Slaughtering Sheep: The Planned Destruction ofCanada’s Sovereignty by Mass Immigration

By: Shawn Dalton  shawn@endoffees.ca www.endoffees.ca

(416) 557 5666

Who is an immigrant? According to Webster’s New World Thesaurus: “it is a newcomer, a naturalized citizen and adoptive citizen.”

Salim Mansur is a professor of political science at the University of Western Ontario. He is also a highly respected journalist for the Sun chain of Newspapers. In 2011, he published the sensational smash hit “Delectable Lie: a liberal repudiation of multiculturalism”. In the book, this term is more accurately and cleverly defined.  

“In the normal or traditional sense an immigrant is an individual departing his native country to settle permanently in an intended host country, and adopt the customs and values of the host country while giving it his full loyalty.”

There are three myths that continue to confuse and deceive Canadians concerning identity, immigrants and immigration. The first is that Canada’s identity is based on immigration and multiculturalism. The second is that massive immigration compensates for anemic birthrates in order to pay for the pensions of Canadian seniors and to fill a supposed labor shortage. The last is that massive amounts of immigration boost Canada’s economic success and security. These are myths perpetuated over and over again by lawyers, politicians and religious groups. The cold hard facts of reality will easily refute such chicanery. At the end of the day, Canadians and immigrants deserve an accountable, healthy and responsible immigration system that benefits Canada’s own economic self-interests.

"When I arrived there, I found seated 20 desperate looking people, 98% of them ethnic"

For thirty years I have had the opportunity to work in a field I was trained to work in enabling me to be fully self supporting but now regrettably, I have been unemployed since October 2011.  This may not seem like a huge problem to most people in Quebec, Canada this being the end of December 2011.  However, I am no longer eligible for unemployment benefits and may have to for the first time in my life apply for social benefits from the state.