'Travesty of Democracy' as Canada's Closed Borders Mar Opening of World Social Forum

This year’s World Social Forum (WSF), which is being held in Montreal this week, is off to a rocky start as hundreds of international activists were denied entry due to Canada’s restrictive visa policies.

Aminata Traoré, who is one of the candidates to replace United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, was among those barred from attending. Traoré, an anti-globalization activist and a former minister of tourism and culture in Mali, called Canada’s closed-border policy a “dreadful lesson in democracy.”

This year marks the first time the annual summit, which aims to bring together civil society, organizations, and social movements who want to build a sustainable and inclusive world, is being held in North America and in a G7 nation.

“It is precisely these countries that are supposedly there to give lessons to our democracies,” Traoré said. “In reality, the West is more and more afraid of debates on ideas … We are bearers of ideas, not bombs.”

The conference’s co-coordinator Raphael Canet said hundreds of invitees had their visa applications rejected by the Canadian government, the majority of whom are from Africa and Latin America. Organizers are concerned that attendance could suffer at an event that has drawn hundreds of thousands of people in years past. So far, 15,000 people have registered for the event.

“If there are less people, it’s probably unfortunately going to be the Canadian government that will… suffer a little bit,” said co-organizer Carminda MacLorin, “because it taints Canada’s reputation of openness and hospitality that is always put forward.”

Canadian author and activist Naomi Klein, who will be taking part in a series of workshops and panels at the summit discussing the Leap Manifesto, took to Twitter to lambast Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for the policies that limit international visitors and speakers.

In addition to Klein, there are more than 80 scheduled speakers, including Bolivian Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera and French philosopher Edgar Morin.

The 12th gathering, which is being held August 9-14, is focused on putting forth “concrete alternatives to the neoliberal economic model and to policies based on the exploitation of human beings and nature,” with one of the key issues this year being nuclear disarmament.

Gordon Edwards, who heads the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility and who is attending the conference this week, told Radio Canada International that the world has “turned a corner” with major powers, including the United States, spending “huge amounts of money in reconstituting and in fact modernizing the nuclear arsenals,” which he said, “does not bode well for the planet.”