European MPs blast PM Trudeau for handling of Freedom Convoy after Brussels speech

By Sarah Turnbull

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    OTTAWA (CTV Network) — Two European parliamentarians blasted Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for his handling of the recent Freedom Convoy protests, saying Canada has become a “symbol of civil rights violations.”

Following a Wednesday speech from Trudeau in Brussels – his first in five years – in which he defended democracy and warned of mounting populism, two MPs rose with fierce rebuttal.

Croatian MEP Mislav Kolakusic said under Trudeau’s “quasi-Liberal boot,” in recent months the world “watched how you trample women with horses” referring to the police on horseback who cleared out the convoy occupation in downtown Ottawa.

Kolakusic previously compared vaccine mandates to the death penalty and claimed “tens of thousands of citizens” have died due to vaccine side-effects. A Reuters Fact Check found that Kolakusic’s claim is “mostly triggered by a misunderstanding of information.”

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, there have been 13,434 reports of deaths after vaccination in the United States. That figure does not necessarily mean that the vaccine caused the death and represents just 0.0024 per cent of the overall doses administered in the U.S.

The Freedom Convoy movement began as a protest against all vaccine mandates and other public health restrictions but took on broader objectives through the duration of its encampment.

Kolakusic went on to slam the steps Ottawa took, through invoking the Emergencies Act, to freeze bank accounts, claiming it prevented single parents from being able to pay for medicine, education, and their mortgages.

“To you, these may be Liberal methods, for many citizens of the world, it is a dictatorship of the worst kind,” said Kolakusic on Wednesday.

The video of this speech posted on Twitter has garnered more than one million views as of Thursday afternoon.

German MEP Christine Anderson, who echoed similar remarks, said Trudeau was a “disgrace for any democracy” and asked that he please spare them his presence.

“A prime minister who openly admires the Chinese basic dictatorship, who tramples on fundamental rights by persecuting and criminalizing his own citizens as terrorists just because they dared to stand up to his perverted concept of democracy, should not be allowed to speak in this house at all,” said Anderson.

Anderson is a member of the right-wing Alternative for Germany party and has falsely claimed that COVID-19 vaccines are “experimental” and “not been properly vetted and tested.” She has also refused to be tested for COVID-19.

A third politician, Romanian MEP Christian Terhes, refused to attend the speech all together, indicating on Facebook that he “refused to validate the imposition” of Trudeau.

Terhes, the only member of European Parliament from the Christian Democratic National Peasants’ Party, previously told reporters that vaccine mandates are taking the “right to decide as they want to do with their own bodies.”

With files from CTVNews.ca Writer Ben Cousins and Reuters

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Sonja Puzic