Shaming us All

Shaming us all


By Janice Kennedy, Citizen SpecialDecember 27, 2009Comments (28)



The news has been filled lately with many important stories, what with the transgressions of Tiger Woods and the impending nuptials of Mike Fisher and Carrie Underwood. (And hey, kids. Congratulations.)
In fact, there's been so much important front-page news that other things have, of necessity, been buried. So you may have missed the story about our federal government and a bunch of Christian do-gooders.
Our government -- or, more accurately, the triad of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney and Bev Oda, minister for the Canadian International Development Agency -- have cut off funding (to the tune of $7 million) to KAIROS, the ecumenical Christian organization that works for peace, development and social justice in hard places around the world.
The organization (which counts among its members the Anglican, Evangelical Lutheran, Presbyterian and United churches of Canada, as well as Quakers, Mennonites and Catholics, including bishops) has been receiving funding for its international projects for 35 years through CIDA and fully expected to receive it for its latest proposal.
Its dual focus for 2009-2013 was on human rights and ecological sustainability, and it had been approved by CIDA at each level of submission -- until Nov. 30. That's when KAIROS was suddenly informed (after being made to wait two extra months after the deadline) that the proposal did not fit "CIDA priorities." In short, no money.
That's bad enough. Given KAIROS's track record, past and present, it shows appalling judgment on the part of the Harper Conservatives. And it says something worrisome about the current workings of the federal bureaucracy.
But the story got a whole lot worse when Kenney stepped into it. While Oda had announced that KAIROS was being cut off because its priorities didn't match CIDA's, Kenney took it up a notch. A notch? Make that a whole mountainside. Speaking in Jerusalem, he said the de-funding of KAIROS was part of the Canadian government's vigilant efforts to disempower anti-Semitic groups.
Anti-Semitic. He effectively called KAIROS anti-Semitic.
The charge is horrific. For people of good will who are not Jewish, the very idea of being or appearing anti-Semitic is chilling. I speak personally. We have seen the result of anti-Semitism at its most horrendous in film, literature, the powerful testimonials of those who lived and died during the Holocaust. We have heard our Jewish friends and neighbours, and we understand without question the need for both the concept and state of Israel, as well as the worldwide duty of vigilance. "Never again" is the understandably passionate cry of every heart that is Jewish -- but it also has a resounding resonance, a powerful resonance, in hearts that are not.
Anti-Semitism, in short, is a crime against humanity, something loathsome that emerges from the hatred and wilful ignorance of shrivelled souls and the lowest of the low. To label persons or groups anti-Semitic is to condemn them, rightly, to contempt. And a minister of the Crown has just done that to a Christian humanitarian group.
Earlier this month, Kenney said, "We have de-funded organizations, most recently like KAIROS, who are taking a leadership role in the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign" against Israel. This was at a conference on combatting anti-Semitism, which effectively labels KAIROS anti-Semitic.
Trouble is, Kenney is flat-out wrong about KAIROS's position. While it has indeed expressed concerns about some Israeli government policies regarding the treatment of Palestinians (something even Jewish Israelis debate), it has not promoted, and does not support, any anti-Israel sanctions, divestment or boycott. Period.
But it does, perhaps, stand for things the Harper government at home seems to have little interest in, such as ecological justice and the international advancement of human rights. And when the Harper government doesn't like what established organizations stand for, it cuts them off. Just ask women's groups across the country that felt the sting of its dismissal in 2007.
For that matter, when the Harper government doesn't like what some people are saying about the way it operates, it tends to cut them off, too. Just ask Peter Tinsley (departing chair of the Military Police Complaints Commission), Linda Keen (fired head of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission) or Richard Colvin. What is sad here, besides the Harperites' unconscionable and politically motivated mudslinging, is the damage to both the reputation KAIROS has built up so powerfully over the years, and its role as a champion of responsible global citizenship.
In Sudan, where its humanitarian work focuses on developing livelihoods for the community; in Indonesia, where it investigates human rights violations and military atrocities; in Colombia, where its community development work is a bulwark against kidnappings and assassinations; in the Congo, where it is involved in the fight against rape as a weapon of war -- in so many places, in so many ways, KAIROS does the good, honourable and difficult thing.
Any well-meaning Canadian -- left, right, centre -- should feel a justifiable sense of shame that our government, in our name, has so ill-used an organization that walks the walk, fights the fight and does all those other things for which most of us lack the time, inclination and stomach.
In a world with no shortage of self-interest, though relatively trace amounts of hands-on compassion, KAIROS can count itself squarely among the good guys. The Harper-Kenney-Oda gang, with all due respect, can not.
Someone needs to apologize and make amends. And it's not the good guys.
Janice Kennedy writes here on Sundays.
E-mail: 4janicekennedy@gmail.com
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