#Transcription of my #speech for #deaf folks - as it wasn't provided on vid.
Hi, everyone. Thank you for showing up with #community #solidarity, to call for a #PermanentCeasefire in support of #Palestinians who are suffering #famine & #genocidal violence under #Israeli occupational forces.
My name is Que & I'm a survivor of the #USinvasion #WarOnVietnam. I was a #WarChild conceived & born under active shelling & had #IntergenerationalTrauma pre & post birth.
We were #displaced from our homes & survived in a #RefugeeCamp in Indonesia for a year. We were sponsored to come to Canada in late 1979 as #WarRefugees, seeking #asylum.
My patriarch family lived in #Cholon the #Chinese District in #Saigon & my matriarch family lived in a tiny village near Can Tho near the Hau River in #SouthVietnam. Both sides of my family had already lived through multiple foreign invasions & foreign militarized imperialism & colonialism by the time the US invaded & occupied our lands.
Many of us living Vietnam war civilian survivors can relate so well to the many struggles, the suffering, the violent foreign occupation & also the passionate resilience & resistance of the Palestinian peoples.
Throughout the 1960s into the 1970s both areas that my family lived in were carpet bombed. My Matriarch family village was bombed out of existence by 1970. The rebuilding took 18 years. Cholon was #CarpetBombed twice & the scenes from those aftermaths are eerily similar to the scenes from #Gaza after #Israel carpet bombed the area.
The #USmilitary used #Vietnamese #civilians as involuntary guinea pigs. They tested out never used before #WarMunitions including #biochemical warfare like #AgentOrange & #NerveGasBombs on our peoples.
Our peoples, our lands, our waters - still suffer the toxic & deadly effects from the illegal - illegal #biowarfare chemical uses by the #USA to this day & our peoples & especially our children are still suffering from the many leftover war munitions, exploding, maiming & killing innocent civilians.
Israel is treating the Palestinian peoples very much like the USA had treated our Vietnamese peoples. Like we are not human. We do not deserve to live. The dehumanization of Palestinians is too similar to how the USA dehumanized our Vietnamese peoples. We're savages. We are vermin. We're stupid tunnel rats. We're gooks & we deserve to die.
The USA bombed our #schools, our #hospitals, our #temples, our #ResidentialAreas - just like Israel has bombed schools, hospitals, temples & residential areas in Palestine. The USA has more powerful weapons of mass destruction while fighting resistance forces with much less firepower. The Vietnamese #ResistanceForces also used #TunnelSystems & some of them are now part of an #educational #LivingMuseum.
Vietnam is now #SovereignNation because the occupational militarized US forces left which opened up our path to #DiplomaticNegotiations. Palestinians deserve their true path to diplomatic Solutions too. They deserve a sovereign state. That can not happen without a permanent - not a temporary - a permanent ceasefire - an end to #IllegalOccupation by Israel.
You cannot occupy & oppress a people & claim you are a #democracy. True #Democratic states do not occupy & oppress people for decades. True Democratic states do not jail, murder & deny #PressFreedom to #journalists. True democratic states do not arrest, vilify, nor illegally detain their own citizens with dissenting voices. True democratic states don't continue to violate multiple #InternationalLaws so openly & so disrespectfully.
Israel has become too #arrogant that's mainly due to the Western powers like the USA & #Canada continuing to put their #WarProfiteer interests over #humanitarian & global #PublicInterests.
At a time when we need an arms embargo on Israel, the US & Canada sent billions more in war munitions & funding to Israel. It is shameful.
Our politicians tell us there's not enough money to fund more essential health & medical service needs. There's not enough money to increase the pay scale of essential medical staff. There's not enough money to fund environmental protection & cleanups. There's not enough to help our seniors & disabled not live in poverty anxiety. There's not enough to fund safer, more inclusive, accessible education. There's not enough to provide more low income & some more support of housing for our most marginalized citizens. These are all citizen needs that our governments have told they cannot afford to fully fund but they can find billions to fund ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. That is not okay & that is not in our public interest.
I urge everyone here to please keep contacting all of your local provincial & federal representatives in every way possible & ask them to please push Trudeau to call for both a permanent ceasefire & to initiate an arms embargo on Israel - NOW.
Please keep having the conversations with people you know & people you don't know about Palestine. The conversations are important. Please keep standing in solidarity with Gaza & all Palestinians.
The antidote to despair is action. This here is humanity in action & I thank all of you for showing your humanity & your ongoing support of Palestinians because remember, no democracy can exist without the freedom of citizens dissenting voices and I appreciate all of your voices dissenting, against our government who is still supporting genocide.
Free Palestine!
