Nelson Mandela. Mahatma Gandhi. Vaclav Havel. And…Tamara Lich? In the wake of his recent arrest for violating bail terms, one of the key architects of the occupation of downtown Ottawa earlier this year is being described by his supporters as a “political prisoner,” and the craziest corners of Internet suggest your name belongs to the aforementioned list. There is even talk that she is going to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
There is no way to confirm this, since the Nobel Prize committee is very clear that “the names of the nominees and other information about the nominations cannot be revealed until 50 years later.” Even if Lich could find a college professor or member of parliament to nominate her for the award, her chances of winning it are about the same as Donald Trump’s.
But that is not what matters to his supporters and political enablers. They want to build her as a martyr for freedom and a heroic figure of resistance against the alleged “tyranny” of a minority government and its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. To them, she belongs in the same conversation as those other famous champions of freedom and justice.
That Lich is not Mandela should be very clear to all but the most obtuse of people. While fighting a political and economic system that entrenched white power and disenfranchised black South Africans, Lich resists the efforts of a democratically elected government to help protect people from a pandemic.
In fact, the recent news that he was planning to trade his alleged Métis heritage shows why any comparison to Mandela or Martin Luther King Jr. is ludicrous on the face of it. “It’s going to work in our favor,” he said. sent a text message co-conspirator Chris Barber in late January before the convoy reached Ottawa. “Playing the career card works both ways lol.”
In the end, of course, it didn’t exactly work out in his favor. Both Lich and Barber were charged with six offenses, including police obstruction, counseling intimidation, and pranks. Lich then had his bail revoked late last month after he posed for a photo with Tom Marazzo, a fellow convoy organizer and someone he was expressly prohibited from contacting, at the George Jonas Freedom Award gala. where Lich was being awarded. honored. “Ms. Lich is not prepared to follow court orders and she is prepared to do whatever she wants,” Justice of the Peace Paul Harris said in his decision.
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Lich’s allies in politics and the press were quick to come to his defense. Lawyer and expert Ari Goldkind described the decision to revoke his bail as “the militarization of the tremendous power of the Crown and the Police to quell their ideological enemies.”
Even more subdued voices like the one above Maclean’s columnist Stephen Maher discussed his case. On Twitter, the described he called her a “political prisoner” and wrote: “I remember a little bit of the criticism I used to get when I wrote columns about Omar Khadr, and the failure of the Harper government to get him out of Guantánamo, even though people rebuked him. so you’re not scolding me now for Lich.”
That could be because they understand the obvious differences between the illegal torture of a little boy in US custody and an adult who willfully refuses to follow the clearly articulated terms of his own release. One is an insult to the rule of law, while the other is a necessary act to defend it.
Opinion: “So no, Tamara Lich is not a political prisoner, any more than Canada is a dictatorship,” writes @natobserver columnist @maxfawcett. #TamaraLich #FreedomConvoy
Like constitutional scholar Emmett Macfarlane indicated: “That she was released the first time, and that all others affiliated with the convoy and charged for her actions were granted bail (as far as I know), only denied bail after of violating the conditions, seems to demonstrate justice”.
In any case, the Crown and the police have gone to great lengths to accommodate Lich and his convoy companions. From the perspective of many Ottawa residents, including those who joined a $306 million class action lawsuit against the convoy leaders, they tried much harder than they ever should have.
Remember: These are people who came to Ottawa with the declared intention of overthrowing a democratically elected government. When they didn’t get their way, they were allowed to occupy our nation’s capital for the better part of three weeks and engage in collective acts of vandalism and harassment. Far from being violated or infringed upon, their freedoms were largely served by law enforcement, and they were allowed to trample almost everyone else’s in the process.
And while Lich supporters talk a lot about standing up for the rights of other Canadians, it’s hard to imagine they’d be as vocal if the person in question were, say, a land defender who blocked a pipeline project. Defending him, in other words, is totally conditional and entirely dependent on the policies of the person they are defending.
So no, Lich is not a political prisoner, any more than Canada is a dictatorship. She will have her day in court and her case will have a full and fair hearing. Her guilt or innocence will be determined by the facts of the case, not by the political leanings of the judge hearing it.
Whether his supporters understand it or not, that’s the way things work in this country. The rest of us should remember what real political prisoners are like and what the efforts to water down that term for political purposes are really about.