The U.S. Department of State has announced sanctions against a number of individuals including the British head of the Global Disinformation Index (GDI) Clare Melford, whose organization issued a report this summer listing “digital denialism” of Canadian residential schools as one example of “hate speech” that harms democracy.
Undersecretary of State Sarah Rogers linked to a Sept. 25 GDI report on hate speech in Canada in an X post to announce Melford’s travel ban, saying that GDI has interfered with speech on American platforms, including by labeling opinions that “question” the nature of Canadian residential schools as hate speech. “If you question Canadian blood libels about residential schools, you’re engaging in ‘hate speech’ according to Melford and GDI,” Rogers wrote Dec. 23 on X. “This NGO used StateDept taxpayer money to exhort censorship and blacklisting of American speech and press.”
For its part, a GDI spokesperson said the travel bans are “an authoritarian attack on free speech and an egregious act of government censorship,” adding that they are “immoral, unlawful, and un-American.” The issue of residential schools in Canada has garnered further international attention since a 2021 announcement by the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation in B.C. that ground-penetrating radar had identified possible burial sites of 215 “missing children” at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School.
No excavations have been conducted at the site to confirm the claim.
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