Vandalism can’t spoil Pakistani independence party

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This article was published 20/08/2018 (2769 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Winnipeggers celebrating Pakistan’s Independence Day at a park named after Pakistan’s founder had a message for diversity critic Maxime Bernier and his Twitter fans — let’s get to know each other.

“This gives us an opportunity to be on the same page for a progressive Canada,” said Masroor Khan, who helped to organize a celebration of Eid al Adha and the 71st anniversary of Pakistan’s independence Sunday at Jinnah Park in the South Pointe area. Earlier in the week, the sign with the name of the park was chopped down by someone with a saw, not long after Quebec Conservative MP Bernier complained about it on Twitter.

“Canada under extreme Liberal multiculturalism:,” Bernier said in a tweet Tuesday about the removal of the John A. Macdonald statue in Victoria and Winnipeg naming a park in a new development after Muhammad Ali Jinnah.

“While a statue of our country’s founder is being removed in one city, a park was recently named after Pakistan’s founder in another, in the presence of M103 Liberal MP sponsor. Pakistan independence from India led to 1M deaths.”

Khan, who is on the executive of the Pakistani Students Association in Winnipeg, said there’s no evidence Bernier’s tweet incited vandalism of the sign but it sure wasn’t going to spoil a party that drew people from a number of neighbourhoods, ethnocultural groups and faiths. Politicians from all three levels of government and across the political spectrum were lined up to give speeches. Loudspeakers playing Pakistani music, kids jumping in bouncy castles, fellowship and the aroma of free food drowned out the bad vibe of the vandalism.

The sawed-off Jinnah Park sign — now removed without a trace — inspired one Pakistani-Canadian mom to think big.

“We’ll try to make a bigger sign,” said Nuzhat Farooqui, a teacher from Pakistan who lives near the park with her husband and two school-age children. Farooqui made a giant Pakistani flag this year for the special day and will make a Canadian one to fly with it next year. She dismissed the damage to the sign as “politics”. “We are not scared,” she said. “Seventy-five per cent of people love new immigrants,” she said. At Sunday’s party, she said she felt that their diverse neighbourhood and city have never been more united.

“Everyone is happy,” she said as a group of Sikh neighbours from Punjab chatted with a young man who recently moved to the area from China.

“I love Winnipeg,” said Farooqui.

Besides, naming parks after people from other countries who are revered is nothing new, said Hamza Khan, who was helping get things ready for Sunday’s celebration.

“It’s just a normal thing,” he said.

Former MLA and provincial cabinet minister Tim Sale — who was invited to the event at the park on Tim Sale Drive — said Bernier’s tweet is one of the “bumps” on the road to diversity and that diversity is something “that we all benefit from.”

‘We are not scared. Seventy-five per cent of people love new immigrants… I love Winnipeg’– Nuzhat Farooqui

“The hope is the bumps don’t become mountains,” Sale said.

The way to prevent mountains from occurring between people is to respect and reach out to one another, said Moazzam Faisal, an event organizer and vice-president of the University of Manitoba’s Pakistani Students Association.

“Mr. Bernier is a very respected (community) leader, and he has his own point of view,” said Faisal, who issued a public invitation to Bernier to get to know the community and to attend next year’s Pakistan Independence Day in Winnipeg.

“He needs to know a little bit more.”

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca