Canada Imprisons Christians – Are We Next?

Is Pierre Trudeau – by the terms of established international criminal law and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – behaving like a criminal?  He has decided to imprison Christians for exercising freedoms of speech, worship, and peaceful protest. If he can imprison for resisting anti-freedom COVID restrictions and “transgender” harm to girls – is America far behind?

In a nutshell, Canada’s irreverent, constitutionally unrestrained prime minister has gradually – with audacity, vehemence, and impunity – gone after Canadians who resisted COVID lockdowns, anti-religious, anti-free speech actions, and now resist targeting Christian protestors.

Some will say “come on,” or “you must be kidding,” but the sad, hard to deny truth is that persecution, targeting of those of faith for a number of reasons happens regularly.

The highly disturbing part of this is to see Canada swept into the vortex, a country with whom we share a long border and history of respect for freedom. To see egregious suppression of core human rights – those found in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – is sobering.

Incidents of explicit, indefensible targeting, then persecution, intimidation, arrest, humiliation, and imprisonment in Canada are so numerous they would fill a small book.  The expansion of government overreach and these incidents of textbook persecution comes from the top.

So common is the suppression of formerly uncontested freedoms in Canada that articles are – out of fear – everywhere. Even liberals and moderates, like boiling frogs, feel things getting hot.  The process has also been frighteningly methodical, started early and is accelerating. 

Worried titled abound, like “On the Brink – the Criminalization of Christianity in Canada,” “Thousands of Churches Raise Alarm…,” “Canada Deaf to Persecuted Christian’s Cries,” “Canada’s Crackdown on religious Freedom is a Wake-Up Call.” The list grows.

More disturbing than these fearful objections are credible US reports of Canadian anti-religious sentiment, indisputably discriminatory acts by Canada toward all faiths, Christian to Jewish and Muslim.

But now we see a harsher turn. We are beginning to see imprisonment and even alleged mistreatment of innocent religious protestors by Canada’s political police.  Americans need to wake-up, understand that oppression of rights, if not stopped, gets infectious. We need to take religious persecution across Canada seriously, if we do not want more of it here.

Some will say, it is already here. There are arguments for that view, but Canada is in worse shape. The latest mistreatment of Christian pastors across that country is genuinely arresting.

One leading case is pastor Artur Pawlowski, and his family – relentlessly persecuted for urging peaceful support for truckers who resisted COVID restrictions, holding peaceful religious services during COVID, protesting abuse of children with sexualization and gender-changes.

This pastor’s harassment, imprisonment, and ill-treatment by Trudeau is textbook persecution. It raises profound questions about Canada’s leadership, leaders anywhere who suppress these established freedoms, ignoring the law.

Some will stop me here, say “what law?”  Okay, here it is. “Crimes against humanity” – according to the UN – include “persecution against any identifiable group…on political…cultural, religious…” or other “grounds…recognized as impermissible under international law.”

In other words, legal actions may lie in international criminal law for a crime against humanity, notably not requiring a war for that leader to be adjudged to be acting like a war criminal. 

What would these include? How about violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which identifies as impermissible – and thus actionable – conduct that contravenes articles in that document, a document framed by 50 nations and conceived by Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt.

Article 18 reads: “Everyone has the freedom to think or believe what they want, including the right to religious belief…and the right to publicly or privately practice our chosen religion, alone or with others.”

Article 19 reads: “Everyone has the right to their own opinions, and to be able to express them freely…with who we want, and in whichever way we choose.”

Article 20 reads: “We…have the right to form groups and organize peaceful meetings. Nobody should be forced to belong to a group if they do not want to.”

More could be said, but let us stop here. Canada is slipping into anti-Christian, anti-religious, anti-free speech, anti-self-defense waters – highly dangerous waters.

Mr. Trudeau is responsible domestically or internationally, and should be held accountable for violating basic, indisputable, and timeless human rights. But watch your six. What happens north of us can find its way south fast. Americans should never surrender these core rights.

Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC.