Author: Charles Procee

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Addressing reconciliation with empathy

Graphic by Alexa Hawksworth.

Recognizing and celebrating our nation’s progress, but understanding there’s still more to do

It has been 10 years since the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was adopted on Sept. 13, 2007. As such, Montreal’s city council chose Sept. 13 to mark the addition of an Iroquois symbol to its city flag.

The city also committed to renaming Amherst Street—named after British general Jeffrey Amherst, who advocated for the use of biological warfare against Indigenous peoples in 1763. These were important and complex decisions, however, they are only part of a larger, ongoing conversation about Indigenous rights and reconciliation.

The debate surrounding the honouring of controversial historical figures in the public and governmental spheres has been an ongoing conversation in Canada for some time. However, it seems to have peaked in the wake of the Confederate monument discourse happening in the United States. While I certainly agree with the renaming of Amherst Street, the issue of consistency comes into question.

For instance, the Langevin block, which houses the prime minister’s office, was named after Hector-Louis Langevin, a father of Confederation and proponent of residential schools. Back in June, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the building would be renamed because “keeping that name on the prime minister’s office is inconsistent with the values of our government.”

However, when confronted by the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario’s initiative to remove the name of John A. MacDonald—Canada’s first prime minister and a supporter of residential schools—from the province’s schools in August, Trudeau sang a different tune. According to CBC News, he said he believes this discourse is important, but “reconciliation is not just about the relationship between government and Indigenous people.” He said there are no plans for the federal government to remove MacDonald’s name from schools, and therein lies a sort of contradiction.

Some of the public’s reaction has been to label Trudeau’s Langevin block announcement and the Montreal city council decision as acts of virtue signalling. I don’t necessarily agree with that, yet when Mayor Denis Coderre proudly claimed: “If we want reconciliation, I don’t think we should celebrate someone who wanted to exterminate Indigenous peoples,” it was hard not to see his point. You can’t have it both ways.

It is important to recognize the work that led to Confederation. However, it is equally important to recognize that our nation was built at the expense of Indigenous people’s territory, culture and lives. Assembly of First Nations national chief Perry Bellegarde told the CBC that the actions of Trudeau and Ontario’s teachers signal an awakening in the minds of Canadians. “What’s hopeful for me is that Canadians are starting to get it,” Bellegarde told the CBC.

To be clear, I am not a member of the Indigenous community, nor do I mean to speak on their behalf. I believe in inclusion, empathy and reconciliation. I think Bellegarde’s words are quite poignant. This is indeed part of a slow awakening. Canada has come a long way. Two years ago, our leadership was hard pressed to even acknowledge a divide between Canada and Indigenous peoples. Now, as a nation, we are at least recognizing that our historical legacy is not perfect, and we are having a discourse to reconcile that past with the present.

I think the way forward is to recognize and celebrate the progress we have made, but not to believe—even for a second—that the past is in the past. The actions of our past have tangible, contemporary consequences. Progress is the sum total of acts of empathy, large and small. We cannot poison acts of goodwill just because they don’t address all violations at once. A single act cannot be comprehensive. But we can certainly be critical and hold our leaders accountable.

It is important to realize that total reconciliation of the past may never be fully realized, but we can work towards a more empathetic and active engagement with our nation’s past. The act of striving for a better relationship with your neighbour is certainly a noble pursuit.

Graphic by Alexa Hawksworth

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Dealing with terrorism and empathy in a climate of fear

Graphic by Florence Yee

Are Middle Eastern lives worthless in the eyes of the Western world?

On New Year’s Day, 2017, a gunman entered a nightclub in Istanbul’s Beşiktaş district. Seven minutes later, 39 people lay dead and the attacker escaped into the crowd.

I learned of this attack through Twitter. However, I was hard pressed to find any other concrete information from major news sources. A Canadian even died in this ISIS attack and yet barely a passing glance was made.

Why is this? Why is an attack in Paris “an attack on all humanity,” as President Obama called it, while attacks in non-Western nations barely make it out of the newsroom? The answer is complex.

One could assume that Turkey, a country seen as a nexus between the East and West, perhaps shares the perceived characteristic violent connotations of its Middle Eastern neighbours. This, I think, is only half right. It is certainly true that Turkey has a history of terror attacks—primarily from Kurdish rebel forces—an ethnic minority who’ve been pushing for cultural and territorial independence for decades.

ISIS has recently been wreaking havoc across the nation, as the Syrian civil war spills across the border, with 415 Turkish civilians and soldiers having been killed since June 2015, according to The New York Times.

Yet, Turkey is also considered by many to be a “Westernized nation,” the strongest member of NATO next to the U.S. and a secular democracy. So why aren’t acts of terror in Turkey and other non-Western nations treated like world-shaking events as they are in Paris, Brussels or Berlin?

As Molly Crabapple of The Guardian wrote, the West is conditioned to perceive Middle Eastern lives are “cheap.” To a certain extent, I am inclined to agree with this perspective. For instance, on November 12, 2015, two suicide bombers killed 42 people in a Beirut market. This attack was reported by western media but focused on the fact it was an “explosion in a Hezbollah stronghold,” rather than an ISIS attack against innocent civilians, according to The New York Times.

Presenting this attack and countless others in the Middle East as routine incidents of sectarian violence has the effect of normalizing violence in that region rather than showing us what it truly is: a robbery of innocent lives that is worthy of our attention.

However, the responsibility for this normalization is not solely at the feet of the mass media—the public plays a part in effacing the significance of these attacks. Social media is a perfect example of such a disparity in empathy. The Charlie Hebdo and Bataclan attacks in Paris in 2015 both elicited mass public outcry.

This sympathy manifested itself in the hashtags #jesuischarlie and #jesuisparis. In addition, attacks in Brussels and Berlin in 2016 garnered similar responses. But where was the outcry and mass public support following terrorist attacks in Nigeria, Turkey, Lebanon and Iraq, many of which occurred within weeks or days of the Parisian and Belgian attacks?

I asked this exact question on social media—Facebook specifically. What was surprising to me is the fact that all of respondents acknowledged the lack of media and public sympathy for non-Western victims of terror. They almost unanimously felt the reason for the lack of empathy was that they could see parts of themselves in Western nations but not in others.

For example, Paris is iconic and romanticized in the West. One respondent said she could imagine herself at the Bataclan the night it was attacked, in much the same way she could see herself at the Metropolis here in Montreal. But why doesn’t the New Year’s attack at an Istanbul nightclub elicit a similar response? Surely Turkish people enjoy music, friends and life just as much as Parisians and Montrealers.

The reasons behind such a lack of empathy are many and hard to capture in an article of this length. However, I believe that thinking about these questions is a good exercise for broadening our worldview and opening our hearts and minds beyond what is familiar and comfortable to us. In other words, this an opportunity to cultivate a sense of empathy for those deemed different from us.

With ISIS committing atrocities on what seems like a weekly basis, lack of empathy and a belief that violence in the Middle East is “just how things are over there” are a threat to the values we claim to hold and the lives of those fleeing places like Syria and Iraq. Such beliefs only feed the rhetoric which equates Muslims with terrorism. We owe it to ourselves and our fellow human beings to be cognizant of such gaps in our empathetic compass, and to directly address these issues. If not, how can we truly deny that we consider Middle Eastern lives “cheaper” than our own?

Graphic by Florence Yee

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Iran’s dark history of imprisoning foreigners

Dr. Hoodfar arriving in Oman. Photo courtesy of Oman News Twitter.

Dr. Homa Hoodfar is not the first to be detained by the Revolutionary Guard

This article was originally written as a protest for the immediate release of Dr. Homa Hoodfar—an Iranian-Canadian professor of anthropology at Concordia—from Evin prison in Iran. However, as of Monday, Sept. 26, 2016, I am pleased to say that she has been released. Still, Professor Hoodfar’s ordeal can provide us with an opportunity to discuss Iran’s alarming trend of human rights abuses and socio-political oppression.

While visiting family and conducting research in Tehran, Dr. Hoodfar was detained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Since June 6, 2016, Hoodfar had been held captive in Evin prison, just outside of Tehran. She had been charged with collaborating with a hostile government against national security, and with propaganda against the state.

As CBC News reports, Hoodfar’s family believed these charges to be trumped up. Which certainly was a reasonable assertion to make, given that Iranian state media accused Hoodfar of “dabbling in feminism.”

Alex Neve, the secretary general of Amnesty International Canada, states that these charges are a symptom of a weak and paranoid state. Neve believes Hoodfar was a prisoner of conscience—imprisoned for her beliefs—since Iranian authorities accused Hoodfar’s research of “disrupting public order” and “prompting social-cultural changes that can ultimately pave the ground … for a soft overthrow.”

I am inclined to agree with such claims, as Iran has a significant legacy of incarcerating people for perceived obscenities or political dissidence. Evin prison—which is nicknamed “Evin University,” due to the number of intellectuals held there—has a dark history of brutal treatment of prisoners. Another alumnus of Concordia and dual Canadian-Iranian citizen, Maziar Bahari, is likely one of the more recognizable victims of Iranian legal transgressions.

His 118-day imprisonment is recounted in the 2009 book Then They Came For Me, and in a film produced by Jon Stewart called Rosewater. Bahari was detained for reporting on the 2009 protests surrounding the Iranian presidential election. Like Hoodfar, Bahari too was accused of disrupting public order and working with foreign powers against the state.

Another prisoner of Evin is Soheil Babadi, who was charged with insulting the Prophet Mohammed, the Ayatollah, and subverting the state, and arrested in May 2012. According to iranhumanrights.org, Babadi was detained for posting satirical jokes on a Facebook page. While imprisoned, he was denied medical care for his kidney disease, which some agencies (such as Amnesty International) believe to be a tactic used by the Iranian state to coerce confessions from their detainees.

However, the detention of Zahra Kazemi, another Canadian-Iranian citizen, is a particularly important case in relation to Hoodfar’s imprisonment. Kazemi was photographing the protests of the 2003 election, and was detained after filming the families of arrested protesters outside of the infamous Evin prison. She was charged with espionage and smeared by state media as a spy. During her detention, Kazemi was tortured, raped and beaten, which led to her subsequent death on July 11, 2003.

All these prisoners of conscience point to a legacy of brutality that made Hoodfar’s plight all the more alarming and urgent. Just like Bahari, Hoodfar felt the sting of her intellectual endeavours. Similar to Babadi, Hoodfar has medical concerns — suffering from a neurological condition called myasthenia gravis, which causes severe muscle weakness.

Dr. Hoodfar arriving in Oman. Photo courtesy of Oman News Twitter.

More alarming still, is the risk to women under Iranian custody. As the brutal treatment of Zahra Kazemi proves, the risk to Professor Hoodfar was extremely realistic and present. In a male-dominated prison system, her health was at risk due to the taboo surrounding men examining women. There was also the realistic risk of sexual aggression as a form of coercion and terror. Amnesty International writes that Hoodfar’s arrest coincides with a trend of increased targeting of women associated with feminist movements, or groups advocating increased female representation in the government. This placed Hoodfar’s research directly under the gaze of Iranian intelligence.

More than 100 days had passed before Dr. Hoodfar’s release could be secured. How could this matter have been allowed to escalate for so long? This goes back to Stephen Harper’s government, which, in 2012, placed Iran on the list of state sponsors of terror, which subsequently severed diplomatic ties. I believe this action was a mistake, and needlessly put the lives of Canadian nationals abroad at risk in a misguided attempt to be “tough on terror.”

Former Canadian diplomat to Iran, Ken Taylor, tells CBC news it is important to have a presence on the ground. “If a country’s government won’t interact,” Taylor writes, “there’s still intelligence to gather.” I could not agree more. A diplomatic presence on the ground could allow us to know more about our nationals abroad in general, and Dr. Hoodfar in particular. If the purpose of diplomacy is to ensure the security of interests abroad, how can that be done with no dialogue?

A supporter at the demonstration for Dr. Hoodfar in Montreal, on September 21. Photo by Alex Hutchins.

The ordeal of Dr. Hoodfar and her family can serve as a cautionary tale against rash decisions in power politics. In a statement by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau credits Hoodfar’s release was wholly reliant on the Swiss, Italian, and Omani diplomats in Iran. In the face of diplomatic impotence, her release also signals the importance of grassroots activism. Kimberley Manning, principal of Concordia University’s Simone de Beauvoir Institute says that more than 5,000 academics signed a petition calling for Dr. Hoodfar’s release, including notable intellectuals like Noam Chomsky. While on September 14, 2016, Concordia students led a protest at Norman Bethune Square. Moreover, in a statement from Amnesty International Canada, more than 50,000 canadians signed a petition for Dr. Hoodfar’s release.

We must not forget the power we have as a collective. Injustice can be met with solidarity.

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Disruption and dismay at the Webster Library

Students studying, among other things, in the Webster Library. Photo by Charles Procee

Looking at the newly renovated library and how it strays from tradition

As I sit in the Iceland Room of LB-5, I am immersed in what can only be described as textbook irrationality and self-absorption.

The fifth floor of the Webster Library opened on March 3. This was a welcome addition as the newly added floor will be a part of an additional 1850 study spaces, according to Concordia’s website. For me, the Dissertation Writer’s room (of which the Iceland room is a part of), is the highlight of the renovations. The name itself eludes to the tranquility promised to lie within. However, beneath the veneer of floor to ceiling windows, wood panelling, and modernist design, rests an old problem: confusion about what a library really is.

Returning to the Iceland room, I am still steeped in frustration. To my left, a man is eating a sandwich from Tim Hortons, complete with that obnoxious crinkly paper wrap, which is astonishingly louder than usual. However, he must be very jealous of the two women with a full Middle Eastern spread: complete with hummus, pita bread, and olives. To my right, an astute individual offers relationship advice to a friend on his cellphone. Across the room, a group of people are gathered around a laptop streaming a Habs game. Am I the only one reading in this room? Is this not the scholarly sanctuary that was promised?

I decide to look for more peaceful surroundings. While leaving the room, I shake my head at the boycott signs on the door indicating no food and that this is a silent space. Moving through the common area I am struck by the dull roar of chatter, laughter, and… is that Drake?

Students almost always bring the noise level back up when the monitor leaves, said Mark Bysterveldt, access services supervisor at the Webster Library. “After dealing with it a few times, you start to feel like Sisyphus,” he said. Not wanting to push rocks up a hill all night, I decide to go outside for a breather.

As I step out onto Rue Mackay, I wonder, What’s going on?, Is this how my generation understands the concept of a library? I look up and see the slogan for the new library: “At Concordia, we are inventing the library of tomorrow,” a sign reads, in French. Then it hit me.

The people behind the Webster transformation are geniuses! They are not just creating any old library, rather it is an institution with a 21st-century vision. Bysterveldt said the Webster no longer ‘feels’ like a library, saying the trend toward collaborative spaces dilutes “the older image of a solace for personal study.” He is exactly right.

Quiet and silent study areas: a suggestion more than a rule. No food: a recommendation at most. Sound proof study rooms, how about a private cocktail lounge? The future is flexibility!

Mixed use building design is a very popular trend among interior designers. This is a perfect way to address Concordia’s need for both increased study and common areas while at the same time observing the strict budget compressions.

I smile to myself. As a master’s student, I am on my way out of university life. But I am excited for what the future holds for my younger colleagues. No longer will they be burdened with archaic and idealistic concepts of the library of the past. Bring your lunch, bring your cell phone, bring your friends, hell, bring your family. Concordia is building the library of the future. Put down that dusty old tome and grab a cocktail. This ain’t your grandpappy’s library!

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