On Wednesday, as the
National Assembly was
wrapping up for the
Christmas break, the
controversy took a
sharp turn for the worse.
Michaud said he has no
reason to apologize.
"I have never said or written anything that
minimizes the Nazi horror against the Jews," he
said. "What you are doing to demonize a member
of your party is a dishonour and not worthy of a
premier."
"Michaud said he was fed up with Jews always
saying they're the only people to have suffered, and
I won't have it," said Bouchard.
Michaud has been around the PQ a long time. He
is a committed, hardcore sovereigntist, part of a
faction in the party that's often doubted Bouchard's
commitment.
Last week, on radio, and at a commission studying
the French language, he said Quebec's Jews were
intolerant, voting as they do en masse against
sovereignty, and they believe they're the only
people to have suffered throughout history.
Michaud wants to be a PQ candidate in an
upcoming byelection, but Bouchard's answer came
Tuesday after a meeting with his caucus. Withdraw
either your remarks, or your candidacy.
Michaud will do neither. And now, he's gathering
powerful support.
He has the backing of Bouchard's predecessor,
Jacques Parizeau, and some influential
sovereigntist groups. They say his remarks were
inelegant, inopportune, but not anti-Semitic.
Bouchard in the meantime says the sovereignty
movement must show the world it will not tolerate
Michaud's opinions. He has the backing of his
caucus, but in some cases, it sounds almost
reluctant.
Now, an emerging question: Can a split become
an irrevocable rupture costing Bouchard the
leadership?
He asked his party to think about it over the
holidays. But there's no apparent solution.
In February, the party must choose its byelection
candidate and right now, both sides seem locked
into their positions facing a deadline they cannot
avoid.
POSTED AT 4:04 AM EST Wednesday, December 20
Bouchard courts confrontation
By RHЙAL SЙGUIN
Globe and Mail Update
Quebec - Premier Lucien Bouchard is prepared to
put his leadership on the line if the Parti Quйbйcois fails to support him on several
contentious issues, including his intention to ban a prominent PQ member from running in
a by-election next spring.
"He is prepared to take on the party," said a senior party member. "We get the sense that if
the party executive goes against him on the Yves Michaud affair, on language or on his
strategy for achieving sovereignty, the party will shatter. The mood is such that we may be
looking at a confrontation between the leader and the party. He warned us it could be
fatal."
The source said this means that Mr. Bouchard could resign.
Shareholder-rights activist and party member Yves Michaud, who had hoped to stand for
the PQ in a by-election next spring, caused a furor earlier this month with his comments
about Jews and ethnic voters.
The party executive will meet in the new year to hear Mr. Michaud defend himself and
decide whether to bar his candidacy. It will be the first in a number of showdowns within
the party.
In February, it must take a position on toughening the province's language laws and define
a strategy to achieve sovereignty. Mr. Bouchard has made it known that he will not tolerate
any radical position on language, and has warned members to be patient about another
referendum.
He has also said he favours blocking Mr. Michaud's candidacy.
The Premier will have to deal with the mounting frustrations or face a confrontation.
The split within sovereigntist ranks blew up in public this week as prominent separatist
leaders, including former premier Jacques Parizeau and Bloc Quйbйcois Leader Gilles
Duceppe, said Mr. Bouchard's PQ caucus had no right to support a motion in the National
Assembly reprimanding Mr. Michaud.
"The Parti Quйbйcois is divided in the same way Quebec society is divided," party
vice-president Marie Malavoy said Tuesday. "The party didn't close the door on his
candidacy ... but we have to discuss it as soon as possible."
Mr. Michaud outraged the Jewish community for stating that Jews were not the only ones
in the history of humanity to suffer. He also said there is an anti-sovereignty ethnic vote,
pointing to 12 polls in the Montreal suburb of Cфte-Saint-Luc, which has a high
concentration of Jewish residents, where everyone voted against sovereignty in the 1995
referendum. He also called the B'nai Brith, an influential Jewish-rights organization,
extremist and anti-sovereigntist.
Mr. Duceppe said Tuesday that he disagreed with Mr. Michaud's comments, but that the
National Assembly had no business condemning him for them. "It could be very
hazardous, if not dangerous, for the National Assembly to hand out blame like that," he
said. "It is one thing to ask a member of the National Assembly to apologize or withdraw
what he said, like we do in Ottawa. But when it's not a member of that assembly, I think
there are tribunals that can judge whether it was correct or not."
In a full-page letter in Le Devoir Tuesday, 30 prominent sovereigntists, including Mr.
Parizeau, accused the National Assembly of attempting to gag Mr. Michaud and denying
him his right to freedom of speech.
"We the undersigned, consider there is a real misuse of the role of the National Assembly,
a serious attack on the rights and freedoms of citizens and a violation of the Charter," they
wrote in French. It is "a flagrant act of injustice and a stunning show of arbitrary authority of
which every citizen can from now on fear of becoming the victim."
In interviews Monday, Mr. Parizeau compared Mr. Bouchard's defence of the National
Assembly's position to the type of authoritarian actions taken in the era of premier Maurice
Duplessis. "When I was young the Duplessis regime was in place. And a system that
demands that you either believe or die with pressures to adopt this or that, you can be sure
that I can see a throwback to that era. And that is why I protest," he said. "What Mr. Michaud
said was clumsy, especially from someone who wants to be a candidate. But there is
nothing in what he said to make a fuss about."
At least two PQ caucus members, Diane Barbeau and Jean-Claude St-Andrй, have
expressed regret about supporting the motion in the National Assembly.
However, cabinet ministers and most caucus members refused to comment. Mr. Bouchard
staunchly defended the National Assembly's reprimand Tuesday.
"My view is that he [Mr. Michaud] should not be a candidate for the Parti Quйbйcois," Mr.
Bouchard said after a caucus meeting. "If he withdraws [his remarks], it will clear the air
and we could take a second look at it."
He condemned Mr. Michaud's comparison of the suffering of Jews and the plight of
Quebec sovereigntists. "When we know how an entire people was treated, how they were
treated worse than cattle, people who were separated from their families, their children
taken from them, jammed into trains and transported like garbage to concentration camps
where after incredible suffering they were thrown into gas chambers and the ovens, we
cannot speak lightly of these matters," he said.
Although Mr. Michaud said he did not mean to make light of the Holocaust, Mr. Bouchard
said perception was created.
He also criticized Mr. Michaud for "resurrecting the spectre of the ethnic vote", in effect
denouncing remarks made by Mr. Parizeau on the night of the 1995 referendum. Mr.
Parizeau blamed "money and the ethnic vote" for that loss.
"I am convinced this is an attack against people who don't deserve to be treated this way,"
Mr. Bouchard said.
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пыsпыsп
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"Someone who has provoked the Jewish community for years
should expect this sort of thing [a vicious, near-fatal beating]."
- Nazi-hunter Serge Klarsfeld on the savage attack against Professor Faurisson
Questioned Holocaust, historian badly beaten Toronto Globe and Mail | Monday,
Sept. 18, 1989, p. A5
Reuter
CLERMONT-FERRAND, France
A leading French revisionist historian who denies that millions of Jews were killed in the Holocaust was recovering from surgery
yesterday after a savage beating.
Robert Faurisson, 60, suffered a broken jaw and ribs and severe head injuries in the attack by three youths while he was walking his
dog in the town of Vichy.
A hospital spokesman in Clermont-Ferrand, the central French city where he was transferred for surgery, said Mr. Faurisson's condition
was stable.
"He was conscious, but he couldn't speak," said a fire fighter who gave Mr. Faurisson first aid. "His jaw was smashed. They destroyed
his face."
A previously unknown group, The Sons of the Memory of the Jews, took responsibility for the attack, saying those who deny the
Holocaust should "beware."
Veteran Nazi-hunters Serge and Beate Klarsfeld said they were not surprised by the attack. "Someone who has provoked the Jewish
community for years should expect this sort of thing [a vicious, near-fatal beating]," Serge Klarsfeld said.
This page is dedicated to the hundreds of people who have put their lives, reputation and freedom on the line to bring truth to the world.
Dr. Fredrick Toben - latest
victim!
Though German in origin, Dr. Fredrick Toben was raised in Australia as an Australian citizen, and speaks both English and German. Becoming interested in exonerating the German
people from the anti-German racism of the Holocaust legend, he at first edited a revisionist journal called Truth Missions, which was later renamed Adelaide Institute Newsletter. He then broadened out to establish Australia's revisionist website, Adelaide Institute. He has personally visited the site of Auschwitz and burrowed under the ruins of the alleged gas chamber, being unable to find the four holes in the roof which were supposedly used to throw in gas pellets. He conducted regular dialogue with Exterminationists, and did not expect to be arrested when he visited Prosecutor Klein in Mannheim, Germany, for a private discussion on the Holocaust laws in Germany, which make it mandatory to accept the entire Holocaust story.