LONDON, Ontario (Dispatches) -- Thousands of people marched in support of a Canadian Muslim family run over and killed by a Christian terrorist driving a pick-up truck last Sunday in an attack the police described as a hate crime.
The four victims, spanning three generations, were killed when Nathaniel Veltman, 20, ran into them while they were out for an evening walk near their home. A fifth family member, a 9-year-old boy, survived.
People in London, Ontario marched about 7 kilometers (4.4 miles) from the spot where the family was struck down to a nearby mosque, the site close to where Veltman was arrested by police.
Some carried placards with messages reading ‘Hate has no home here’, ‘Love over hate.’ Similar events were held in other cities in Ontario, Canada’s most populous province.
“The best part was not just the numbers ... but the diversity of the people coming from every single community in London, coming together for this cause,” said 19-year old college student Abdullah Al Jarad at the march.
The attack sparked outrage across Canada, spurring growing calls to take action to curb hate crime and Islamophobia.
Veltman made a brief court appearance on Thursday and will return to court on Monday. He faces four charges of first-degree murder and one of attempted murder.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has called the killings a “terrorist attack” and vowed to clamp down on far-right groups and online hate.
The incident was the worst against Canadian Muslims since 2017 when a gunman opened fire at a mosque and killed six worshipers in Quebec.
Canada is already reeling from the tragedy of discovering the remains of 215 indigenous students at the Kamloops Indian Residential School near the town of Kamloops, British Columbia.
The school, one of many boarding schools set up to forcibly assimilate the country’s indigenous peoples, was established in 1890 under the leadership of the Roman Catholic church, and closed in 1978.
The educational facility was part of a cross-Canada network of 139 residential schools created to forcibly assimilate indigenous children by removing them from their homes and communities, and forbidding them from speaking their native languages or performing cultural practices.
Canada has, in recent years, been coming to terms with racial injustice suffered by its indigenous people, who make up about five percent of a population of nearly 37 million.
According to an investigation in 2019, the country was complicit in “race-based genocide” against indigenous women.
It said indigenous women were 12 times more likely to be killed or to disappear than other women in Canada.
The Canadian government has been blamed for an estimated 4,000 Indigenous women who have gone missing over the past years.
In a latest politically-motivated move, the Canadian government has said it will not allow voting to take place on its territory for people of Iranian origin.
Canada adopted the same policy in Iran’s 2017 presidential election, when it did not allow Tehran to organize voting on its territory. The same happened in 2013 when Hassan Rouhani was elected president.
Iran and Canada have not had diplomatic relations for nine years. In September 2012, Canada announced it was closing its embassy in Tehran.
In a tweet last week, Secretary of the Iranian Judiciary’s High Council for Human Rights Ali Baqeri-Kani slammed Canada for politicizing the right of Iranian nationals to participate in the election.
“There are hundreds of thousands of Iranians residing in Canada, who are denied not only their consular rights but also the right to decide their fate through elections,” Baqeri-Kani said.
Over 400,000 Iranians are estimated to be living in Canada where they are preserving their Iranian nationality.
Despite Tehran’s protests, the Ottawa government has stripped the Iranians in Canada of the right to receive consular services. Those expats have to travel to Iran or third countries for consular affairs.