Sunday, August 26, 2007

Persichilli's Winnipeg Sun Article Inaccurate on FLQ

In the Sunday, August 26, 2007 article "Confusing Grit policies have a stink to them" by Angelo Persichilli there is an appalling misrepresentation of the actions of the FLQ and the subsequent invoking of the War Measures Act. Correct information is readily available from Google searches such as: http://canadaonline.about.com/cs/octobercrisis/a/octobercrisistl.htm

The most offending to me part of Persichilli's article is:
"They (Liberals) criticize the Americans for over reacting against terrorism, but it was, if I am not mistaken, a Liberal prime minister who invoked the War Measures Act because one person was killed in Quebec."

The facts as I remember them, and verified on Wikipedia and other sites on the Internet are that the Front de libération du Québec, commonly known as the FLQ, was responsible for more than 200 bombings and the deaths of at least five people in 1970.
1) The FLQ kidnapped British Trade Commissioner James Cross on October 5th, 1970, and demanded $500,000 in gold as ransom.
2) On October 10th the FLQ kidnapped Quebec Justice Minister Pierre Laporte .
3) October 17th, the body of Pierre Laporte was found in the trunk of a car at the airport in St.-Hubert, Quebec.
4) November 9, the new Quebec Justice Minister asked for the Army to stay in Quebec for another 30 days.

The trivialization of this series of events as "because one person was killed" indicates to me that the author was one or more of: ignorant of the events, too lazy to do a Google search or deliberately attempting to mislead the Sun readers.

The general tone and content of the rest of the article would suggest the third choice.

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