Template for Human Rights Press Release - WCFU

News Release

8 September 2004

For immediate release

HUMAN RIGHTS COMPLAINTS LAUNCHED

AGAINST WESTERN GROUP FOR INTERNET HATE

The Canadian Anti-racism Education and Research Society (CAERS) represented by Prof. Helmut-Harry Loewen, and Ottawa human rights lawyer Richard Warman will hold a press conference and public meeting Thursday night (9 September) in Winnipeg (details below) to announce that formal complaints have been lodged by Warman with the Canadian Human Rights Commission against hate group Western Canada For Us (WCFU) and its former leaders Glenn Bahr and Peter Kouba. The meeting will also examine the history and impact of the group.

Created by Bahr and Kouba in January of 2004, WCFU was centred in Edmonton and Calgary but rapidly expanded to include representatives in Winnipeg, Red Deer, and Vancouver. During its brief but active heyday, the group operated a website ( www.wcfu.com ) that featured extensive hate material including offering downloadable electronic books such as The Turner Diaries , a work that advocates the genocide of Jews and blacks, and inspired Oklahoma-city bomber Timothy McVeigh. The group also held a number of demonstrations in Edmonton in support of imprisoned Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel.

Bahr, formerly of Red Deer and Edmonton, has now returned to his family home in Langley, BC after the Edmonton Police Hate Crimes Unit raided the Edmonton residence he was staying in on 7 May 2004. Police seized the computers involved in running the web site and Bahr's extensive collection of neo-Nazi paraphernalia. Bahr is currently the subject of an ongoing criminal investigation under s. 319 of the Criminal Code that prohibits the willful promotion of hate.

In addition to the material contained on the WCFU website, the human rights complaint filed against Bahr also deals with Internet postings where he refers to Aboriginals as “vermin” and states that he wants to get a swastika tattoo because “dead or alive Hitler is my fuhrer”. Even more troubling are Bahr's assertions that gays and lesbians, as well as the mentally disabled should be killed. Bahr posted, “I believe no matter how or why you are a homosexual your life should be terminated… They should be terminated along with retards and any other degenerates that nature would do away with in the wild.”

For his part, this is the first time that Kouba who lives in Edmonton has been publicly identified as the other co-founder of WCFU. During his tenure as co-leader of the group, Kouba pushed the idea of creating a whites-only municipality in Alberta. In addition to targeting the homosexual, black, and Jewish communities in Internet postings, Kouba described Aboriginals as “subhumans”, “red devil savages”, and argued that higher rates of AIDS infection among the Aboriginal population was “good news”. Kouba was apparently kicked out of WCFU in March of 2004 after falling out with Bahr and other members.

Loewen pointed to the WCFU as a “textbook example of the tremendous amount of harm a hate group can cause to our communities even in a short period of time.”

- 30 -

Copies of the human rights complaints are available at www.stopracism.ca

Press Conference: University of Winnipeg, Sparling Hall, rm. XXA, 6–6:30 pm (media only)

Public Meeting: University of Winnipeg, Sparling Hall, rm XXB, 7-8:30 pm

For details, please contact Helmut-Harry Loewen, t. (305) XXX-XXXX or Alan Dutton, t. (XXXXX)