Rights & Democracy: Time changes everything

Shawan Jabarin, director of Al Haq, talks on the phone at his office in Ramallah last March. A grant given to Al Haq has raised ire at Rights & Democracy. (Nasser Shiyoukhi/Associated Press)

What a difference a few years can make.

Take this year, for instance. A state of chaos now reigns at the Montreal-based human rights organization called Rights & Democracy. Senior staff have been suspended, employees are in revolt, a private investigator is on site, and a forensic audit is underway with investigators sifting though files looking for financial impropriety.

This tumult, leading to a serious split in the board of Rights & Democracy, had its origins in three small grants handed out by the late organization's president Rémy Beauregard, who was accused of having an anti-Israel bias.

One group that got a grant, Al Haq, a 30-year-old Palestinian human rights NGO, drew paticular ire. It is "toxic", according to Rights & Democracy's Board Chair, Aurel Braun, largely because Al Haq's general director Shawan Jabarin, as a student in 1987, belonged to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a banned terrorist organization in Canada.

The board (or, a majority consisting of Aurel Braun and six other members) reacted "in shock" when it learned of this grant. It's the kind of grant, the board said, that taxpayers and political leaders would find "appalling."

But go back two years, and this cbc.ca story.

There's then-Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier standing beside his counterpart, the Foreign Minister for the Palestinian National Authority, Riad Malki, in 2008.

Malki was once the chief spokesperson for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Despite this connection, Malki, like Jabarin, has won numerous international human rights awards.

And Harper's government pledged $300 million to former PFLPer Malki.