‘Freedom for Palestine’ mural de-done

AN ARTIST has gone back to Woodstock to create a mural reading “Freedom for Palestine”, after the City last week removed a similar painting for being unlawful.

Spokesperson for City law enforcement, Wayne Dyason, said people wishing to paint murals must apply for a permit.

“The mural was removed because no permission was granted. The other paintings were removed as well, because none of them were permitted,” he said.

An artist on Tuesday re-did a mural on the same spot, saying in a shared video that their voices cannot be silenced.

Another artist from Woodstock, Loveleigh, said their freedom of speech was being taken away.

“It’s weird because why can’t we express ourselves in public spaces? Their argument is they are taking the mural off because road-facing murals are distracting to oncoming passengers.

“That mural, we did it in the heat of the moment. It took us three hours. We did it after the bombing in Palestine, and we just felt like doing it and that is why the colours are mixed up.

“But we felt that we had the right to say something about it.”

Community activist Youssef

Kanouni said some Woodstock residents were not happy that the murals were removed.

“I am not speaking about the Muslim community but the Woodstock community as a whole; they are not happy because Woodstock is such a great little village with people from different places and the murals bring a lot of tourists to the area.

“There are so many murals in Woodstock and my question is why did they only remove those Palestinian. They don’t answer us properly but they say ’no it’s because of the complaint’, and later they say people don’t have permits to paint any murals.

“They are trying to close the case as quickly as possible”