Civil rights groups alarmed over Quebec’s move to ban prayer in public | Canada
Quebec says that he will pray in the public opinion, which is a movement, which is defined as “worrying precaution önemli targeting religious minority groups and violates“ basic democratic freedoms ..
Jean-François Roberge, Minister of Secularism of the state, said that this movement was requested by the “Street Prayer ği, which he described as a“ serious and sensitive issue ılan that follows that the government watches with “discomfort”. Roberge said the government would bring legislation in autumn.
The announcement follows Quebec’s leading François Legault’s public statements, which is disappointed on public prayers in Montreal, the largest city of the state.
“This is not something we want in Quebec to see that people pray on the street, in public parks,” he said. “When you want to pray, you go to a church or mosque, not in a public place.”
For more than half a year, the Montreal4Palestine group has organized market protests other than Notre-Dame Basilica, which includes the public prayer of the city. The demonstrations also led to counter protests.
Legault’s management coalition Avenir Québec, secularism in 2019 exceeded the controversial Bill 21, making a key priority.
This law, which prevents Bars of Quebec’s Human Rights and Freedoms and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms of Canada from wearing religious symbols while wearing bars, police officers, prison guards and teachers. Other public workers, such as bus drivers, doctors and social workers, should only keep their faces open.
In 2021, Quebec’s Supreme Court approved the charter despite the fact that the law was violated. freedom of expression And religion Religious minorities. If the governments in Canada use a legal mechanism known as “despite the matter ,, it may pass the laws that violate certain fundamental rights.
It is not clear whether the state will call the matter once again while passing through the legislation on public prayer.
The Canadian Muslim Forum said that the state government should focus on “real problems, not to polish the fundamental rights of its citizens, instead of demonstrating policies that will stamped communities, exclusion of fuel and weaken Quebec’s social adaptation.
The public prayer prohibition follows a detailed report by the state’s independent committee examining how secularism will be strengthened. Among the 50 suggestions, the committee proposed to expand the prohibition of religious symbols to daily care workers. In particular, the report did not require a prohibition for new vehicles to protect public prayer and universities from forcing them to establish prayer rooms. Instead, he found that the municipalities already had “necessary competencies” to implement the rules surrounding the street prayer.
The Canadian Civil Freedom Association said that the prohibition of prayer in public spaces will violate freedom of religion, freedom of expression, peaceful parliamentary freedom and freedom of relationship.
Harini Sivalingam, Director of the Equality Program of Canada Civil Freedoms Association, said, “It is not only by suppressing the peaceful religious expression of individual or social religious expression, not only marginalizing faith -based communities under the guise of secularism, but also weakening the principles of dignity and equality.”
Despite the anger from civil rights and advocacy groups, the movement has support from other political leaders.
Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, the leader of the party, the leader of the party in the public vote, called public prayers as “the allocation of public space by religious fundamentalists ve and promised to internal referendum to determine the official position of his party.
Nevertheless, it is likely that the issue is once again possible to revive violent debates against the scope and access of the government’s focusing on secularism.
“Let’s be clear here: not prayers in uncomfortable places; Catholics have been praying in the public for decades, and even if Quebecers has thrown a religion in the trash, no one protested, And André Pratte, a former journalist and senator, said Published on X. “No, what is disturbing is Muslims who pray as it is really for the Muslim headscarf of the prohibition of religious signs.”
Pratte said that “there is no need for a new legislative ammunition to disappear from a religious application from the public sphere” and that the last print reflects a non -popular government “desperately trying to win the public”.
