OTTAWA \u2013 On Thursday, April 11, 2019, Shahen Mirakian, president of the Armenian National Committee of Canada (ANCC), testified at the House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights regarding the committee\u2019s ongoing study on how to combat online hate in Canada.<\/p>\n
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The committee initiated this study to hear the different perspectives and recommendations of various civil society organizations, on how to strategically combat online hate and to explore the possible amendments that could be made to the\u00a0Canadian Human Rights Act\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0<\/em>the\u00a0Criminal Code<\/em>.<\/p>\n In his opening remarks to the committee, Mirakian said \u201cAs representatives of a community that has suffered genocide, the ultimate expression of hate based violence, we are more familiar than most with the consequences of the promotion of hate.\u00a0\u00a0Similarly as a community that has routinely advocated for positions that run counter to the status quo, we are fierce defenders of freedom of expression.\u201d<\/p>\n Mirakian also highlighted the important work that is being done by a coalition of by human rights advocacy organizations to mark April as Genocide Remembrance, Condemnation and Prevention Month while asking the Government of Canada to adopt a national strategy\u00a0for tracking, preventing and prosecuting hate motivated cyber-vandalism and hacking of community organization websites and social media accounts.<\/p>\n \u201cThe study undertaken by this committee is a very important first step in combatting online hate.\u00a0\u00a0We are thankful to this committee for making room on its agenda during Genocide Remembrance, Condemnation and Prevention month to bring attention to this issue and do its part in preventing future genocides.\u00a0\u00a0We are hopeful that this study results in an effective national strategy to deal with the pressing problem of online hate promotion.\u201d concluded Mirakian.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n The ANCC is the largest and the most influential Armenian-Canadian grassroots human rights organization. Working in coordination with a network of offices, chapters, and supporters throughout Canada and affiliated organizations around the world, the ANCC actively advances the concerns of the Armenian-Canadian community on a broad range of issues and works to eliminate abuses of human rights throughout Canada and the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" OTTAWA \u2013 On Thursday, April 11, 2019, Shahen Mirakian, president of the Armenian National Committee of Canada (ANCC), testified at the House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights regarding the committee\u2019s ongoing study on how to combat online hate in Canada.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15152,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[115],"tags":[132],"class_list":["post-15822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-anc-canada"],"yoast_head":"\n