A dozen Winnipeg supporters of a Middle East Palestinian state planned to sleep overnight in a mock refugee camp erected to mark the 60th anniversary of Palestinian expulsion from Israel.
"The tent city will call for an end to the Palestinian refugee crisis, the largest of its kind in the world," said organizers with the local chapter of Palestinian exile organization, the Canada-Palestine Support Network.
Mathew Gagne and Jackie Bockstael took part in an international day of action protesting the plight of Palestinians.
Similar events were planned in other cities to mark the date, organizers said.
The one-night event here was led off Thursday evening in Memorial Park by Canadian Palestinian Bassam Hozaima.
Born in Gaza City, Hozaima said his family was among the 750,000 Palestinians driven from their homes and livelihoods in 1948.
Supporter Jean Luc Beaudry, a University of Manitoba arts graduate employed as a carpenter, built the tent city. He set up six two-man pup tents out of tarps and boards in a horseshoe pattern facing the sunrise to the east.
"They're replicas of the tents the refugees stayed in, in 1948," Beaudry said.
The Winnipeg supporter said he sees no end in sight for the religious strife between Israel and Arab states over a Palestinian homeland.
Sleeping over is his way of protesting the world's indifference to the Palestinian plight, Beaudry said.
The group that set up the tent city referred to the treatment of Palestinians who are fighting for a homeland as victims "apartheid" at the hands of United Nations "colonial" policies.
An aboriginal women's advocate invited to speak was not able to make the event, organizers announced. There was a representative there from a pro-Palestinian homeland Jewish group called Jews for A Just Peace.
About 70 people listened to the speeches. Organizers warned they would tolerate no expressions of anti-Semitism at the event.
The United Nations created the state of Israel in the wake of the Holocaust that killed six million Jews in Europe during the Second World War.
alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca
PREVIOUS
