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(The following article is from the February 1-14, 2009, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 133 Herkimer St., Unit 502, Hamilton, ON, L8P 2H3.)

The record of the Conservative Party made it unacceptable to include Prime Minister Stephen Harper in the recent sod-turning ceremony for the Canadian Human Rights Museum in Winnipeg, according to the Communist Party's Manitoba Committee.

     "This is a government that commits war crimes in Afghanistan and genocide against the Aboriginal peoples in Canada, prefers to let the unemployed working class rot during the economic crisis, attacks the equality of women and other discriminated groups, and violates or allows the violation of the most basic civil rights of citizens such as Omar Khadr, the four Canadians sent to torture in Syria, and Abousfian Abdelrazik, stranded in Sudan since 2003," said CP (Manitoba) leader Darrell Rankin.

     "It is a government that believes jobs, education, health, equality and peace are not human rights," continued Rankin. "It is a government that does not believe all nations have rights including peace and sovereignty. It is a government that does not believe citizenship should correspond with diplomatic support, no rendition and freedom from torture. It is a government that does not respect the United Nations Charter, the democratic legacy of the fight against fascism.

     "It is a government that attacks collective agreements and wages, privatizes property, destroys science and regulation, and kills the environment, the ill and consumers to make money for the corporations. It is a government that could not care less about the hungry, victims of the global food crisis, except when it has shipped some morsels to Haiti and Afghanistan which are now its provinces because it is the occupier.

     "It is a government that spends its time in secret talks with corporations about a new relationship with the U.S. and Mexico. It is a government that has done nothing to honour its promise of accountability, instead keeping its candidates away from public election meetings, muzzling cabinet ministers and making media sign a waiting list to ask questions.

     "It is a government that is more friendly with the abusers of power in the world than with the governments that are doing the most to protect and improve the rights of their citizens. It promotes friendship by signing free trade deals with the Colombian oligarchy, guilty of the state murder of countless Colombian citizens. It defends Israel's criminal and genocidal actions against the Palestinian people in Gaza...

     "It is a government that issues gag orders, drops voters from lists and fires directors to get its way with the Canadian Wheat Board, a sign of what kind of elections Canada would have if the Conservative Party ever gets a majority government.

     "It is a government that does not believe in or support child care. It is a government that honours only profit, the corporations, tax cuts for the wealthy and military spending...

     "The government of P.M. Stephen Harper should be a display in the museum of an example of a violator of human rights. The invitation to Harper to attend the sod turning ceremony is another sign that the organizers believe human rights belong in a museum, as a part of our past."