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Syria has been under martial law since 1963

Also backing Lafleur against Yussuff is Ali Mallah, former CLC executive committee member, Canadian Union of Public Employees officer and prominent “anti-war” activist — which is to say a frequent denouncer of Israel at Toronto “Al Quds Day” events. Mallah was particularly harsh with the New Democratic Party’s foreign-affairs critic Guy Caron, who had expressed shock at Lafleur’s presence in Damascus: “It is an indication of the slippery slope taken by the NDP by siding with Western interventionists and their murderous thugs in the Middle East.”

If that doesn’t strike you as an utterly unhinged criticism of the NDP’s approach to foreign policy, then I can’t help you. As for the bits about “inhumane U.S. economic sanctions” and “standing in solidarity with fellow Syrian trade unionists,” a couple of things to keep in mind.

Photo by Maxime Popov/AFP/Getty Images

The sanctions imposed on the criminal Assad regime were imposed early on, by the Arab League. The sanctions Canada supports are the same as the European Union sanctions against the regime, and the United Nations sanctions against the regime. As for the Baathist-controlled Syrian General Federation of Trade Unions that hosted Lafleur along with scores of fake unionists and fake anti-war activists in Damascus, its main job is to enforce Assad’s labour law.

Syria has been under martial law since 1963. According to the International Trade Union Confederation: “Collective bargaining hardly exists, and it is prohibitively difficult to call a lawful strike. All trade union rights have been abolished in the country. The labour law is vague and allows employers to sack workers at will … forced labour can be imposed on anyone who causes ‘prejudice to the general production plan.’ ”

The CLC may well want to keep this under wraps for now. But for the CLC’s own sake, and for the sake of a properly robust trade union movement in this country, the profoundly unhygienic politics at work in the sordid Hands Off Lafleur campaign is going to be rooted out, without mercy, without pity, and without let or cease until it’s banished and gone.