BQ leader defends reading of FLQ manifesto

QUEBEC – Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe says the 1970 Front de Liberation du Quebec manifesto is part of the history of the province, and he told reporters Tuesday morning those who object to reading the manifesto want to practice "censorship."

Organizers of Moulin a paroles, a series of readings this weekend to commemorate the 1759 Battle of The Plains of Abraham, have asked Montreal singer Luck Mervil to read the manifesto.

The Quebec government lashed out Friday at event organizers for promoting the ideology of the FLQ – a separatist group responsible for bombings, kidnappings and a murder which culminated in the 1970 October Crisis.

The manifesto, written by the kidnappers of British trade commissioner James Cross, was first read on Radio-Canada television as one of the kidnappers’ conditions.

But Duceppe, in Quebec City for a meeting of his Bloc Quebecois caucus to prepare for a new session of Parliament next week said other texts, including those of Lord Durham, would be read at the event.

Quebec nationalists consider Durham’s 1839 proposal to unite Upper and Lower Canada, as Ontario and Quebec were known then, was an attempt to assimilate Quebec.

The Bloc leader said the logic of opponents to the reading of the FLQ manifesto would also ban the French national anthem, La Marseillaise, whose chorus – "Aux armes les citoyens" – urges citizens to take up arms.

The poetry and spoken word event is scheduled to take place on Sept. 12-13 to replace the controversial military re-enactment of the battle cancelled by federal officials.

In February, the National Battlefields Commission cancelled the July 31-Aug. 2 re-enactment of the Battle of the Plains of Abraham in Quebec City after hard-line nationalists threatened to disrupt it.