Three pro-Palestinian activists were arrested and charged with criminally harassing Marc Miller, a Montreal MP and the federal immigration minister, prompting a group of protesters to rally at the Montreal courthouse to denounce the arrests as a violation of the right to freedom of expression.
Samar Alkhdour is one of those activists.
Alkhdour — who is identified in legal documents as Samar Elkahlout but uses her maiden name — has taken part in regular protests to condemn Israel’s retaliatory offensive in Gaza and criticize what she described as Canada’s inaction in the face of a growing death toll.
Since March, many of her protests have been sit-ins in front of Miller’s riding office.
Alkhdour and the other two accused appeared in court on Tuesday.
According to Barbara Bedont, Alkhdour’s lawyer, the charges come from a protest that took place last Thursday in front of the Liberal campaign office, with Miller nearby.
Bedont said Alkhdour was packing her belongings after the protest, when Miller showed up in a vehicle. She said Alkhdour approached the vehicle and “expressed her feelings about his policies.”
“They said ‘shame on you’ and ‘you’re a child killer.’ Things like that — political speech,” the lawyer said, adding that Miller was in the vehicle the whole time before it drove off.
She said the interaction lasted about five seconds, with Alkhdour standing about a metre away from the vehicle, and the other two people charged standing further back.
“At no time was he ever threatened,” Bedont said. “There was no violence. It was a purely peaceful expression of her political views.”
In addition to criminal harassment, Alkhdour and the two others were charged with mischief.
Alkhdour’s supporters gathered inside and outside the courthouse simultaneously, with the group on the sidewalk waving Palestinian flags and chanting slogans such as “free Palestine,” “we are all Palestinians” and “we won’t be silenced.”
The three activists were released with conditions.
Bedont said the conditions for release initially included forbidding the protesters from returning to Miller’s riding office and posting anything about him on social media. Bedont said she objected to those because it would effectively “criminalize” the sit-in protest.
She said the accused ultimately agreed to conditions such as avoiding direct contact with the minister and refraining from posting about the other two alleged victims on social media.
A spokesperson for Miller’s office declined to comment on the arrests.
Daughter’s death sparks protests
Alkhdour’s protests began shortly after the death of her 13-year-old daughter, Jana Elkahlout, who was born with cerebral palsy.
Alkhdour, her husband and two of her children moved to Quebec in 2019, and started the process of bringing Jana to Canada, after she was forced to stay in Gaza due to the unavailability of safe ambulance travel between there and Egypt.
After years of trying to get her daughter to come to Canada, the family finally received the green light from the federal government in January, but Jana was already dead.
Alkhdour told CBC News she had died of malnutrition because of the limited access to the specific food she needed given her condition.
She wants the federal government to streamline its temporary visa program for Gazans who have relatives in Canada.
As of June, very few Gazans had been able to come to Canada through that program.
“I don’t want them to think that there is anything that can stop me,” Alkhdour said while protesting during an April snowstorm.
“I’ve had to live with that experience of losing a dear child. I don’t want that to happen again for my sister, for other family members of mine.”
Freedom of expression questioned
Haya Alsakka was one of the protesters who showed up to the Montreal courthouse.
As someone who is also trying to get relatives out of Gaza, she said the criticism Miller and the federal government have faced for the temporary visa program has been warranted.
She sees Alkhdour’s arrest as an attempt by Montreal police and federal politicians to shut down her protests.
“I think there’s a very clear example of discrimination and of a selective process of when we decide a protest is peaceful and when we decide it’s crossed the line,” Alsakka said.
The limits to peaceful protest and freedom of expression is “the toughest topic in constitutional law,” according to Frédéric Bérard, a partner at the Gattuso Bouchard Mazzone law firm and who also teaches the subject at the Université de Montréal.
“What’s offensive to me might not be offensive to you. The feeling of being threatened changes from one person to another,” Bérard said.
But he added that harsh words alone aren’t enough to warrant an arrest, and that freedom of expression must be protected.
“I can easily imagine that a minister that was seeing someone in front of his office for three months in a row was getting fed up about that,” Bérard said.
“We need to protect that sort of speech, that sort of protest, if we want to protect the democracy and protect the rule of law.”
Samar Alkhdour says she finally got a call from Global Affairs Canada to say her 13-year-old daughter was cleared to leave Gaza two weeks after her death.
