Background: Recently, there were several rallies organized by some Chinese Canadians demanding Prime Minister Trudeau to apologize for the Hijab-Hoax incident happened in January 2018. On February 18th, another rally held by the same people took place in Ottawa was joined by Far-rights groups including Storm Alliance and La Meute. Some media outlets covered the story and put “Chinese Canadians” and “far rights” into the same “headlines”. Our group has been following the situation for over a month. As ordinary Chinese Canadians and as a group, we would like to make the following statements:
1. We respect every individual’s basic rights of freedom of speech and assembly. However, we disagree with the position the rally organizers have been taking for two reasons. First, it was wrong for the under-age girl to lie but the parents apologized later. The situation should’ve ended there. Secondly, the original tweets from Prime Minister Trudeau and leaders of the two major opposition parties (both the Conservative Party and the NDP) were denouncing the purported extreme act of hijab attack not the Asian population. In short, the theoretical foundation of demanding the Prime Minister to apologize is too far-fetched.
2. The organizers and participants of the rallies can only represent their own positions. They have no representation of the Chinese and Asian communities in Canada. Our group also consists many first-generation Chinese immigrants. As Chinese Canadians, we don’t want to have any relationship with any extreme political groups including groups related to white supremacy, anti-immigration and religious terrorism. We also don’t pretend to represent all Chinese Canadians, but we believe many of the nearly 2 million ethnic Chinese citizens and permanent residents of Canada have similar views with us.
3. According to our knowledge, many of the rally participants are first-generation middle-age or senior Chinese immigrants. Due to both language and cultural barriers, they are unable to get relatively complete and objective Canadian news. They get information from some of the Chinese language media outlets with translation mistakes and twisted stories. Therefore it is possible that some of them were manipulated by others to participate the rallies without understanding the full situation. We hope the whole society pay more attention to the problem of the difficulties for new immigrants to integrate into our society and overcome cultural shocks.
4. We hope to see more interactions between different cultural and ethnic communities in Canada. People always have ideological differences and even stereotypes. However, respect each other’s existence is one of the most fundamental Canadian values. We believe in "communication over friction."
Sincerely,
Chinese Canadian Multicultural Concerns Group - a group of ordinary Chinese Canadians
Email: ccmcgcontact@gmail.com
Leave a voice message: 438-558-5036
Related news link:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/la-meute-storm-alliance-protest-parliament-hill-1.4541519
http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/anti-immigration-groups-at-parliament-hill-protest-demand-apology-from-trudeau