Chilling Protest with Designations of Terrorism
US documents say the organization helps fund a terrorist group. But lawyers warn of chilling legitimate protest.
December 6, 2024
Source: The Tyee
Jada-Gabrielle Pape has fears after a National Post article falsely said she belonged to Samidoun, recently added to Canada’s terrorist entities list.
Jada-Gabrielle Pape has fears after a National Post article falsely said she belonged to Samidoun, recently added to Canada’s terrorist entities list.
Photo by Jen St. Denis.
The moment Jada-Gabrielle Pape saw an online National Post report calling her “one of Samidoun’s most active organizers,” she was gripped with fear.
The Canadian government had declared the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network a terrorist entity less than a month earlier. Samidoun has been an active presence at many protests in Vancouver.
Pape is passionate about advocating for Palestinians and has attended many protests in Vancouver. But she says she is not a member of Samidoun.
Pape immediately wondered about how her life could change. Would her work as a consultant be affected? Would she be added to no-fly lists or targeted by police?
“As an Indigenous person, we’re targeted by the state at a disproportionate rate,” said Pape, who is Coast Salish from the Saanich and Snuneymuxw nations. “I’m afraid to be targeted by the police and by the state and afraid of what it will do to my family. My family is very afraid for me.”
Pape immediately reached out to the National Post to demand a correction. The columnist hadn’t contacted her before claiming, without evidence, she was a member of a terrorist organization, she noted.
Editors quickly removed any reference to her from the article. The National Post did not respond to The Tyee’s request for comment.
Reader comments posted on the article are filled with threats of violence; many express the view that Muslim immigrants should be deported and immigration should be curtailed.
Supporters of Samidoun’s designation as a terrorist entity say it will let police take legal action against anyone who donates to or financially supports the organization.
But legal experts argue the designation process lacks transparency and can paint all pro-Palestinian protesters as terrorist supporters, stoke Islamophobia and have a chilling effect on legitimate protest.
What’s a terrorist entity?
Liza Hughes, executive director of the BC Civil Liberties Association, said Pape’s experience is an example of how the federal government designation of Samidoun as a terrorist entity can chill political speech.
The designation process, Hughes said, is opaque, politically driven and lacks transparency, with few avenues of appeal.
That can affect free speech, she said, as people fear being linked to any organization that might be designated as a terrorist entity.
“This lack of transparency that makes the system flawed to begin with is a major factor in spreading the chill on expression in support of Palestine, because it leaves people feeling like ‘Who will be next?’” Hughes said.
People — like Pape — who are organizing support for Palestine are being discredited based on the terrorism designation, she said, “whether or not they’re actually associated with Samidoun.”
Who’s on the terrorism list, and why?
There are 79 organizations on Canada’s current list of designated terrorist entities, most foreign-based.
Listed entities can have their property seized, and it’s a criminal offence to “knowingly participate in or contribute to, directly or indirectly, any terrorist group.” But that participation is only an offence “if its purpose is to enhance the ability of any terrorist group to facilitate or carry out a terrorist activity,” according to Public Safety Canada.
Jessica Davis, an expert in terrorism financing who is the president of a consulting firm called Insight Threat Intelligence, agreed Canada’s lack of transparency around the process for designating terrorist entities is a problem. It’s impossible to know why some groups are being listed, she said.
The process was introduced in response to the 9/11 attacks in the United States, in 2001, she said, and needs to be reassessed and reformed.
“Our listings are somewhat political theatre,” Davis said. “You can look at the Proud Boys listing under a similar light — no matter what you feel about the Proud Boys, there was pressure to list that group, and that’s what ended up happening.”
The Proud Boys, a far-right neo-fascist group, were added to the terrorist list in 2021 after their prominent participation in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol that sought to disrupt the transfer of presidential power from Donald Trump to Joseph Biden.
Hughes said that while the listing targets organizations rather than people, individuals can be charged criminally as a result of certain actions related to the listed entity. Hughes cited multiple examples of people being charged for the criminal offence of knowingly participating in or contributing to the activity of a terrorist group. The charges have usually been related to doing something violent or travelling to another country to join a terrorist group, Hughes added.
Public Safety Canada’s website says the process of listing a terrorist entity begins with “criminal and/or security intelligence reports” indicating reasonable grounds to believe the group has either knowingly carried out, participated in or facilitated terrorist activity, or that it has acted on behalf of an entity involved in terrorist activity.
The reports are then submitted to Canada’s public safety minister, who makes a decision on whether to recommend listing the group as a terrorist entity.
The case against Samidoun
On Oct. 15, both Canada and the United States announced they would add Vancouver-based Samidoun to their terrorism lists. The Netherlands, Germany and Israel had previously listed the organization.
The organization, founded in 2011 with branches in 12 countries, says it works to support Palestinian prisoners held in Israel.
Public Safety Canada’s announcement about the listing said the organization “has close links with and advances the interests of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine,” which is a listed terrorist entity in Canada, the United States and Europe. The PFLP has carried out several violent attacks in Israel, including the assassination of a government minister.
The U.S. announcement said Samidoun was listed “for being owned, controlled or directed by, or having acted for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, the PFLP.”
“Based on its past and recent actions, Samidoun meets the threshold for listing as set out in the Criminal Code,” a Public Safety Canada spokesperson told The Tyee over email.
The United States called Samidoun a “sham charity” that provides financial support to the PFLP.
Advocacy groups supporting Israel, such as the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs and B’nai Brith Canada, have pushed for Samidoun to be designated as a terrorist entity for years.
Those calls intensified as pro-Palestinian activism ramped up in response to the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people. Israel’s retaliatory war in Gaza has killed 44,000 so far and has created dire humanitarian conditions.
Both Hamas and Israel have been accused of committing war crimes. The United Nations has said Israel’s actions in Gaza are consistent with genocide, and the International Criminal Court recently issued arrest warrants for Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and former defence minister Yoav Gallant.
On its website, Samidoun’s statements frequently support Hamas and praise violent efforts to replace Israel with a Palestinian state. The organization also has been active helping to organize several university protests in the United States.
At a rally in Vancouver in April, the international co-ordinator for Samidoun, Charlotte Kates, led a call-and-response chant in praise of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack. Protesters associated with Samidoun have also been blamed for burning a Canadian flag and chanting “Death to Canada, death to the United States, and death to Israel” during a protest on the one-year anniversary of Oct. 7.
Davis said those actions don’t meet the bar for listing an organization as a terrorist entity in Canada. Samidoun’s alleged financial connections to the already-listed PFLP was the likely reason the group was listed.
In a statement responding to its listing as a terrorist entity, Samidoun said that it “does not have any material or organizational ties to entities listed on the terrorist lists of the United States, Canada or the European Union.”
The listing “is meant to introduce a norm in which organizations may be designated as ‘terrorist’ for organizing demonstrations, lectures, publishing posters and engaging in entirely public and political work that challenges imperialist states’ complicity in Israeli war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ongoing genocide in Gaza,” the organization wrote.
A week after Samidoun’s designation was announced, B’nai Brith Canada released a seven-point plan for tackling antisemitism that included the “comprehensive listing of terrorist organizations,” amendments to the Criminal Code and banning rallies “that support terror entities.”
Vancouver police have recommended hate speech charges against Kates for her comments praising the Oct. 7 attack at a rally in April, but Crown prosecutors have not yet decided to proceed.
Following Samidoun’s designation as a terrorist entity, Vancouver police carried out an aggressive raid on Kates’s home as part of their investigation. Police justified the use of force, including the use of an emergency response team, based on a prior risk assessment.
The Tyee contacted Kates’s lawyer, who declined to comment for this story.
Civil liberties concerns
While organizations like B’nai Brith see Samidoun as a public safety threat, some pro-Palestinian supporters are concerned that the terrorism listing is just one more way to shut down speech about the consequences of Israel’s war in Gaza.
Ryan Booth, a pro-Palestine supporter who says he is not a member of Samidoun, says he has attended many of the rallies Samidoun was active at over the past year. He believes attendance has dwindled following the terrorism designation.
“There’s real terrorists out there, there’s real threats — ISIS, ISIL, al-Qaida,” Booth said. “Those guys are out there, and every time you call a peaceful Canadian protester a terrorist, you’re going to take away a little bit of the actual threat that is terrorism.”
Hughes said the terrorism listing is being used to discredit anyone opposed to Israel’s attacks on Gaza.
“We are seeing this terrorism listing being used to discredit any support for Palestine and also to kind of retroactively justify the claims that anyone who attends the protest must be supporting Hamas,” Hughes said. “So, of course, it intimidates anyone organizing or thinking of organizing any form of justice for Palestinians.”
Hughes said people who want to advocate for Palestinians are already facing “systemic suppression,” often taking the form of professional consequences like being disciplined, investigated or fired.
Pape is still trying to deal with the National Post’s false claim that she is a member of a terrorist organization.
The violent raid on Kates’s home — which employed heavily armed officers and a flash bomb — has left her fearing a similar raid on the home where she lives with family members.
“I have trouble falling asleep and I wake easily throughout the night. I sleep fully clothed in case the police come,” she told The Tyee.
“These are realistic concerns for Indigenous people and for those of us in solidarity with Palestine — and they are not things I should be afraid of in my home.”
With files from Amanda Follett Hosgood.
Jen St. Denis is a reporter with The Tyee. She has covered a variety of topics, including housing, the overdose crisis, civic issues, politics and justice. In 2023, she won a Canadian Association of Journalists written news award for her reporting on a fatal fire at the Winters Hotel in Vancouver. In 2024, her reporting on three cases involving missing Indigenous women and youth was nominated for the Canadian Journalism Foundation’s Landsberg Award. St. Denis has previously worked as a reporter for the Star Vancouver, Business in Vancouver and CTV. Her work has also appeared in the Toronto Star and South China Morning Post. She grew up in Nelson, B.C., and has lived in Vancouver since 2001. Find her on X @JenStDen and on Instagram @JenStDenis.
The moment Jada-Gabrielle Pape saw an online National Post report calling her “one of Samidoun’s most active organizers,” she was gripped with fear.
The Canadian government had declared the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network a terrorist entity less than a month earlier. Samidoun has been an active presence at many protests in Vancouver.
Pape is passionate about advocating for Palestinians and has attended many protests in Vancouver. But she says she is not a member of Samidoun.
Pape immediately wondered about how her life could change. Would her work as a consultant be affected? Would she be added to no-fly lists or targeted by police?
“As an Indigenous person, we’re targeted by the state at a disproportionate rate,” said Pape, who is Coast Salish from the Saanich and Snuneymuxw nations. “I’m afraid to be targeted by the police and by the state and afraid of what it will do to my family. My family is very afraid for me.”
Pape immediately reached out to the National Post to demand a correction. The columnist hadn’t contacted her before claiming, without evidence, she was a member of a terrorist organization, she noted.
Editors quickly removed any reference to her from the article. The National Post did not respond to The Tyee’s request for comment.
Reader comments posted on the article are filled with threats of violence; many express the view that Muslim immigrants should be deported and immigration should be curtailed.
Supporters of Samidoun’s designation as a terrorist entity say it will let police take legal action against anyone who donates to or financially supports the organization.
But legal experts argue the designation process lacks transparency and can paint all pro-Palestinian protesters as terrorist supporters, stoke Islamophobia and have a chilling effect on legitimate protest.
What’s a terrorist entity?
Liza Hughes, executive director of the BC Civil Liberties Association, said Pape’s experience is an example of how the federal government designation of Samidoun as a terrorist entity can chill political speech.
The designation process, Hughes said, is opaque, politically driven and lacks transparency, with few avenues of appeal.
That can affect free speech, she said, as people fear being linked to any organization that might be designated as a terrorist entity.
“This lack of transparency that makes the system flawed to begin with is a major factor in spreading the chill on expression in support of Palestine, because it leaves people feeling like ‘Who will be next?’” Hughes said.
People — like Pape — who are organizing support for Palestine are being discredited based on the terrorism designation, she said, “whether or not they’re actually associated with Samidoun.”
Who’s on the terrorism list, and why?
There are 79 organizations on Canada’s current list of designated terrorist entities, most foreign-based.
Listed entities can have their property seized, and it’s a criminal offence to “knowingly participate in or contribute to, directly or indirectly, any terrorist group.” But that participation is only an offence “if its purpose is to enhance the ability of any terrorist group to facilitate or carry out a terrorist activity,” according to Public Safety Canada.
Jessica Davis, an expert in terrorism financing who is the president of a consulting firm called Insight Threat Intelligence, agreed Canada’s lack of transparency around the process for designating terrorist entities is a problem. It’s impossible to know why some groups are being listed, she said.
The process was introduced in response to the 9/11 attacks in the United States, in 2001, she said, and needs to be reassessed and reformed.
“Our listings are somewhat political theatre,” Davis said. “You can look at the Proud Boys listing under a similar light — no matter what you feel about the Proud Boys, there was pressure to list that group, and that’s what ended up happening.”
The Proud Boys, a far-right neo-fascist group, were added to the terrorist list in 2021 after their prominent participation in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol that sought to disrupt the transfer of presidential power from Donald Trump to Joseph Biden.
Hughes said that while the listing targets organizations rather than people, individuals can be charged criminally as a result of certain actions related to the listed entity. Hughes cited multiple examples of people being charged for the criminal offence of knowingly participating in or contributing to the activity of a terrorist group. The charges have usually been related to doing something violent or travelling to another country to join a terrorist group, Hughes added.
Public Safety Canada’s website says the process of listing a terrorist entity begins with “criminal and/or security intelligence reports” indicating reasonable grounds to believe the group has either knowingly carried out, participated in or facilitated terrorist activity, or that it has acted on behalf of an entity involved in terrorist activity.
The reports are then submitted to Canada’s public safety minister, who makes a decision on whether to recommend listing the group as a terrorist entity.
The case against Samidoun
On Oct. 15, both Canada and the United States announced they would add Vancouver-based Samidoun to their terrorism lists. The Netherlands, Germany and Israel had previously listed the organization.
The organization, founded in 2011 with branches in 12 countries, says it works to support Palestinian prisoners held in Israel.
Public Safety Canada’s announcement about the listing said the organization “has close links with and advances the interests of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine,” which is a listed terrorist entity in Canada, the United States and Europe. The PFLP has carried out several violent attacks in Israel, including the assassination of a government minister.
The U.S. announcement said Samidoun was listed “for being owned, controlled or directed by, or having acted for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, the PFLP.”
“Based on its past and recent actions, Samidoun meets the threshold for listing as set out in the Criminal Code,” a Public Safety Canada spokesperson told The Tyee over email.
The United States called Samidoun a “sham charity” that provides financial support to the PFLP.
Advocacy groups supporting Israel, such as the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs and B’nai Brith Canada, have pushed for Samidoun to be designated as a terrorist entity for years.
Those calls intensified as pro-Palestinian activism ramped up in response to the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people. Israel’s retaliatory war in Gaza has killed 44,000 so far and has created dire humanitarian conditions.
Both Hamas and Israel have been accused of committing war crimes. The United Nations has said Israel’s actions in Gaza are consistent with genocide, and the International Criminal Court recently issued arrest warrants for Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and former defence minister Yoav Gallant.
On its website, Samidoun’s statements frequently support Hamas and praise violent efforts to replace Israel with a Palestinian state. The organization also has been active helping to organize several university protests in the United States.
At a rally in Vancouver in April, the international co-ordinator for Samidoun, Charlotte Kates, led a call-and-response chant in praise of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack. Protesters associated with Samidoun have also been blamed for burning a Canadian flag and chanting “Death to Canada, death to the United States, and death to Israel” during a protest on the one-year anniversary of Oct. 7.
Davis said those actions don’t meet the bar for listing an organization as a terrorist entity in Canada. Samidoun’s alleged financial connections to the already-listed PFLP was the likely reason the group was listed.
In a statement responding to its listing as a terrorist entity, Samidoun said that it “does not have any material or organizational ties to entities listed on the terrorist lists of the United States, Canada or the European Union.”
The listing “is meant to introduce a norm in which organizations may be designated as ‘terrorist’ for organizing demonstrations, lectures, publishing posters and engaging in entirely public and political work that challenges imperialist states’ complicity in Israeli war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ongoing genocide in Gaza,” the organization wrote.
A week after Samidoun’s designation was announced, B’nai Brith Canada released a seven-point plan for tackling antisemitism that included the “comprehensive listing of terrorist organizations,” amendments to the Criminal Code and banning rallies “that support terror entities.”
Vancouver police have recommended hate speech charges against Kates for her comments praising the Oct. 7 attack at a rally in April, but Crown prosecutors have not yet decided to proceed.
Following Samidoun’s designation as a terrorist entity, Vancouver police carried out an aggressive raid on Kates’s home as part of their investigation. Police justified the use of force, including the use of an emergency response team, based on a prior risk assessment.
The Tyee contacted Kates’s lawyer, who declined to comment for this story.
Civil liberties concerns
While organizations like B’nai Brith see Samidoun as a public safety threat, some pro-Palestinian supporters are concerned that the terrorism listing is just one more way to shut down speech about the consequences of Israel’s war in Gaza.
Ryan Booth, a pro-Palestine supporter who says he is not a member of Samidoun, says he has attended many of the rallies Samidoun was active at over the past year. He believes attendance has dwindled following the terrorism designation.
“There’s real terrorists out there, there’s real threats — ISIS, ISIL, al-Qaida,” Booth said. “Those guys are out there, and every time you call a peaceful Canadian protester a terrorist, you’re going to take away a little bit of the actual threat that is terrorism.”
Hughes said the terrorism listing is being used to discredit anyone opposed to Israel’s attacks on Gaza.
“We are seeing this terrorism listing being used to discredit any support for Palestine and also to kind of retroactively justify the claims that anyone who attends the protest must be supporting Hamas,” Hughes said. “So, of course, it intimidates anyone organizing or thinking of organizing any form of justice for Palestinians.”
Hughes said people who want to advocate for Palestinians are already facing “systemic suppression,” often taking the form of professional consequences like being disciplined, investigated or fired.
Pape is still trying to deal with the National Post’s false claim that she is a member of a terrorist organization.
The violent raid on Kates’s home — which employed heavily armed officers and a flash bomb — has left her fearing a similar raid on the home where she lives with family members.
“I have trouble falling asleep and I wake easily throughout the night. I sleep fully clothed in case the police come,” she told The Tyee.
“These are realistic concerns for Indigenous people and for those of us in solidarity with Palestine — and they are not things I should be afraid of in my home.”
With files from Amanda Follett Hosgood.
Jen St. Denis is a reporter with The Tyee. She has covered a variety of topics, including housing, the overdose crisis, civic issues, politics and justice. In 2023, she won a Canadian Association of Journalists written news award for her reporting on a fatal fire at the Winters Hotel in Vancouver. In 2024, her reporting on three cases involving missing Indigenous women and youth was nominated for the Canadian Journalism Foundation’s Landsberg Award. St. Denis has previously worked as a reporter for the Star Vancouver, Business in Vancouver and CTV. Her work has also appeared in the Toronto Star and South China Morning Post. She grew up in Nelson, B.C., and has lived in Vancouver since 2001. Find her on X @JenStDen and on Instagram @JenStDenis.
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