Paul S. Graham

The hardest time to defend human rights is when they are under attack. This is one of those times.

The debris from the September 11, 2001 attacks on Washington and New York still has not settled. It provided American imperialism with the springboard for two bloody wars and fueled a wave of fear and hatred that has yet to subside. Under the guise of fighting terrorism, governments around the world enacted draconian laws that undermined hard won civil rights. Self-styled proponents of human liberty participated in the most heinous crimes against individuals and nations.

The carnage continues on the battle field while eager warriors at home seek to undermine further our rights and freedoms in Canada.

War is the ultimate assault on human rights. For that reason. Peace Alliance Winnipeg held a public forum in Winnipeg on March 7, 2009 entitled Defending Human Rights in a Post-9/11 World. We assembled a diverse panel of activists and asked them to reflect on their experiences and discuss between themselves and with the audience the best ways to defend human rights in the current environment.

The Panel

Lesley Hughes: Lesley is a well-known journalist and broadcaster with a long history of community activism in Winnipeg. A recipient of the YMCA-YWCA Woman of Distinction award, Leslie is author of We Chose Canada, a columnist for Canadian Dimension magazine and host of Alert Radio. Lesley became embroiled in controversy during the 2008 election, slandered as antisemitic and dropped from the Liberal slate of candidates over an article she wrote in 2002 on the possible origins of the 9/11 attacks. I`ve written about this issue elsewhere in my blog, so I won`t recount the issues here. It had been planned that Lesley would moderate the panel. Upon reflection, it made more sense for her to be a full participant. Suffice to say, Lesley`s experiences qualify her uniquely to address the topic.

Colleen Simard: Colleen is a columnist for the Winnipeg Free Press and founder and publisher of Urban NDN – a newspaper she founded in 2008 that offers a fresh journalistic voice from, for and about Aboriginal people in Winnipeg. She doesn`t regard herself as an activist, but I do. Anyone who starts up a community newspaper to give voice to her community`s concerns is as activist as it gets.

Michael Welch: Michael is a peace activist who has shown leadership in organizing support in Winnipeg for American war resisters who are fighting deportation to the United States. He is active in Citizens Concerned About Deep Integration and Peace Alliance Winnipeg and is the local chapter contact for the Council of Canadians.

Shahina Siddiqui: Shahina is Executive Director of the Islamic Social Services Association – Canada, and a frequent commentator on Islamic and human rights issues in Canada and the United States. She sits on the Advisory Board of CAIR-CAN, the Canadian branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, and principal author of Women Friendly Mosques and Community Centers: Working Together to Reclaim Our Heritage. I think of all the presenters, Shahina touched me the most when she said that before 9/11 she was a Canadian; after it she became part of “the other.“

Anthony Hall: Anthony is founding co-ordinator and professor of Globalization Studies at the University of Lethbridge and author of The American Empire and the Fourth World, which Naomi Klein has described as “an overflowing tool box, filled with little-known stories, legal arguments, and fresh ideas that, if used properly, could change the world.”

The forum was well attended; about 100 people came out. As well, it was well supported by 15 organizations who sponsored it. An extra special acknowledgment must go out to the University of Winnipeg Students Association, which provided its excellent facilities at no cost.

For those who missed it, I shot some video — about 2 hours worth — neatly parceled it into the 10 minute segments that You Tube restricts you to. I`ve posted the first 6 segments below so you can access the presentations. If you want to know more, go to You Tube for the final six installments that contain the discussion.

Introductions – Glenn Michalchuk

Michael Welch

Lesley Hughes

Colleen Simard

Shahina Siddiqui

Anthony J. Hall

News that the Tories are rushing to restore extraordinary police and judicial powers dropped from the federal Anti-Terrorism Act two years ago should concern every freedom loving Canadian. These measures include preventive arrests and compelling people to testify in investigations on the strength of suspicions by law enforcement authorities. The news story doesn’t say one way or another, but the old Anti-Terrorism Act permitted arrests without warrants of people suspected to be thinking about a terrorist act — we should be very afraid.

Before the “war on terror” a citizen was presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law where all of the charges and the evidence would be laid out. These days, the government can allege “terrorism” and important protections disappear.

What is a terrorist?

What is a terrorist? While there is no short answer to this question, a terrorist is someone who either does nasty things for political purposes, helps a terrorist or belongs to a terrorist organization. (Of course this is horribly simplistic, which is why you should follow this link to the Criminal Code terrorism provisions.)

Being a peace loving guy, I have no difficulty with jailing terrorists. But I am very concerned about how being charged with terrorism automatically deprives people of the rights they would have should they be charged, for example, with rape and murder, or less dramatically,  stealing the potted tomato plant off the front of my front porch under cover of darkness four years ago (but I digress).

Who is a terrorist?

Ever helpful, the Canadian Government has compiled a list of organizations that:

• “have knowingly carried out, attempted to carry out, participated in or facilitated a terrorist activity
• knowingly acted on behalf of, at the direction of or in association with an entity that has knowingly carried out, attempted to carry out, participated in or facilitated a terrorist activity”

This list is compiled on the basis of intelligence reports, and doubtless many of the groups named will be familiar to folks who read the newspaper. Conspicuously absent from the list are governments and government agencies that routinely perpetrate terrorist acts on groups and whole populations. You know who I mean.

Where it gets sticky is the secrecy that surrounds the whole business. If you find yourself on the list, you can appeal the ruling. However, under the Criminal Code, you have no right to see all of the evidence “if the judge is of the opinion that the disclosure of the information would injure national security.” (See Criminal Code 83.05 (6) (a).)

Creepier yet, “(6.1) The judge may receive into evidence anything that, in the opinion of the judge, is reliable and appropriate, even if it would not otherwise be admissible under Canadian law, and may base his or her decision on that evidence.”

Hmmm. Does this mean that hearsay evidence or evidence obtained under torture is admissible?

Who else is a terrorist?

According to the Canadian government, anyone on their no-fly list could be, might be, is, kinda, should be dammit, a terrorist. It’s soothingly, reassuringly called the “Passenger Protect” program and it works like this: first you join a terrorist group off the approved list, then you commit or consider the idea of committing a heinous act, or maybe you do something else that makes you unfit for air travel, like not bathing, maybe. This qualifies you for membership on the government’s “specified persons list.” Once a member of this special group, you get a Via Rail Pass because you’ll never fly again.

Is that how it really works? Who know? I looked all over the Transport Canada site trying to get clear information and found some FAQs that don’t really explain how the list is compiled. One may assume that the Star Chamber process used to construct the terrorist entity list is somehow involved. How do you get off the list? Ask the two boys named Allistair Butt who were caught up in this anti-terrorist dragnet. They managed.

Is anyone else a terrorist?

When all else fails, blame some immigrants, arrest them, issue security certificates, and deport them so they can be properly tortured in their country of origin. Or, as the government explains:

“The Government of Canada issues a certificate only in exceptional circumstances where the information to determine the case cannot be disclosed without endangering the safety of any person or national security.”

Not only is this information sooooo sensitive that it can’t be revealed publically, it can’t be revealed to the subject of the security certificate. Go to Mohamed Harkat’s web site and learn how security certificates were used to ruin the lives of five Muslim immigrants in Canada.

National Security versus Real Security

Anyone who has followed the case of Maher Arar knows that government spooks are unreliable judges of threats to our national security. Secret evidence and secret trials lead only one way — to tyranny.

Under the guise of fighting terrorism, our freedom is being stolen. Real security exists where accused persons have the unfettered right to confront their accuser with all of the evidence public and open to challenge. Unless we demand this basic protection for all accused, we are allowing a police state to be born.

Recently retired American War Criminal in Chief George W. Bush is visiting Calgary March 17. In response, Lawyers Against the War has written the RCMP War Crimes Section, requesting that Mr. Bush be investigated and denied entry on the basis that his well known crimes against humanity make him inadmissible to Canada under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

Here is their letter. Pass it on!

Should George W. Bush Be Arrested in Calgary, Alberta to be Tried for International Crimes?

by Anthony J. Hall, Professor of Globalization Studies, University of Lethbridge, March 6, 2009

George W. Bush and Omar al-Bashir

Serious allegations of criminality are swirling around ex-US President George W. Bush and current Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir. In late February of 2009 it was reported that the Hague-based International Criminal Court was preparing to issue a warrant for al-Bashir alleging his culpability for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. As the documents were being prepared against Sudan’s head of state, ex-President Bush was preparing to initiate a series of high-paying speaking engagements beginning in Calgary Alberta on March 17. Bush’s visit to Alberta’s oil capital tests the consistency and authenticity of the Canadian government’s “unequivocal” position that “Canada is not and will not become a safe haven for persons involved in war crimes, crimes against humanity or other reprehensible acts.”

The contrast between the treatment afforded Bush and al-Bashir was inadvertently highlighted by Geoffrey York, a colleague with whom I conferred frequently when we were both reporting regularly in The Globe and Mail about two decades ago on the surprising twists that repeatedly made Aboriginal Affairs in Manitoba a major source of national news. York introduced his story on the charges against al-Bashir by writing, “For the first time in history, an international criminal court is set to issue an arrest warrant for the leader of a country, accusing him of orchestrating a campaign of murder, torture and rape.” The reporter anticipated that the ICC’s initiative “will be hailed by many as a sign that nobody is above the law.”

The striking contrast between the treatment of al-Bashir and Bush serves to clarify the division of the world’s criminals and suspected criminals into two major categories, one inhabited by a small elite that is essentially above the law and the other populated by figures not rich or influential enough to gain exemptions from the law’s coercive force. It is not without a sense of irony that I arrive at this conclusion. On the one hand the ICC’s decision to press charges against al-Bashir, as well as to initiate in January of 2009 a full-fledged trial against Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, signals a major transformation in the career of the ICC. It indicates that the court is no longer a mere vehicle for the empty expression of lofty idealism but rather a site of real engagement aimed at subjugating the rule of murder, mayhem and intimidation to the higher authority of law.

On the other hand by pointing its initial surge of juridical activism at the local criminality of individuals in those afflicted regions of Africa where resource cartels and their client regimes often dominate, the ICC has called attention to the West’s hypocrisy in shielding its own war lords and war profiteers in the military-industrial complex from any legal accountability for the violent acts its operatives, many of them in the so-called private sector, regularly plan, instigate, finance, arm, facilitate, commit and exploit. Indeed, the double standard promoted by the ICC in the choice of its targets for prosecution replicates in the international arena much of the duplicity of the criminal justice system in the United States.

Article continues . . .

This paper was presented at the annual distinguished lecture sponsored by the Sociology Department of the University of Winnipeg, March 6, 2009. Professor Hall will be speaking at the Peace Alliance Winnipeg forum “Defending Human Rights in a post-9/11 World” on Saturday, March 7, 2009 at Bulman Centre, University of Winnipeg, which begins at 1:30 p.m.

Calgarians are preparing a warm welcome for George W. Bush’s March 17th visit. Read more about it here and here.