- cross-posted to:
- canadapolitics@lemmy.ca
- cross-posted to:
- canadapolitics@lemmy.ca
BACKGROUND
Joanna Berry is a Canadian immigration and refugee lawyer in Ontario, Canada. On October 2, two Niagara Police Officers, one of them a sergeant detective, paid her a visit to her home. They told her they were there on behalf of the Ottawa Police Department because of her “personal social media.” They begin to tell her that “10 lawyers who are of the Jewish faith” have filed a complaint with the police about her social media. As you can tell from the video, Joanna Berry, is outraged by the visit and clearly distraught. I reached out to the Niagara Regional Police for comment but they did not respond to my inquiry. I spoke with Joanna Berry also and she gave OTL Media permission to publish the video. She told us that she wants Canadians to see it and for the video to be a warning.
“This is very Orwellian”
On The Line Media is run by Samira Mohyeddin, a multi-award-winning journalist, documentary maker, and producer at CBC Radio One’s The Current.
For everyone’s information, I support our Liberal government and I do support any of our current governments (even if I disagree with them politically) because I still believe in the rule of law everywhere. I don’t subscribe to wild conspiracy theories about any democratically elected government.
However, I still hold that we should always be ready to question and hold our government, police and those in power accountable for everything they say, do or on how they direct those under them.
The actions of these police is a step too far in intimidating someone with personal views. As she explained, those who disagree with her views should speak to their company, talk to the social media company or speak to other authorities … you don’t go straight to the police to ask them to intimidate a political opponent.
We have to stand up to this level of bullying and intimidation. This isn’t Canada. This isn’t what I support. This isn’t our government and this is not representative of our country.
I personally found the part where they tell her to not contact certain people. Which people? It’s never mentioned in the video. Is she just not supposed to say anything on social media again? How is that a reasonable response?
Now, if she was being blocked and creating new accounts to harass people, that would be more reasonable. Or if she was actually convicted of a crime. But until then, the police should just have to learn the difficult fact of life that people may not agree without any laws being broken.