A graveyard at Wescam built by Homes not Bombs to remember the victims of the company's drone warfare equipment.
Canada Has a War Crimes Problem
By Matthew Behrens
Two
new reports on Canadian weapons exports reveal that Canadian-based corporate
entities (and, by extension, government agencies that support and encourage
their exports) are complicit in the commission of war crimes in Yemen, Turkey, Libya,
Syria, and Iraq. These findings build on previously raised concerns that the
Canadian military was complicit in
war crimes during the occupation of Afghanistan (including when current war
minister Harjit Sajjan operated there as a soldier).
Earlier this month, the United Nations criticized
Canada, among other nations, for continuing to export weapons to all parties
that fuel the commission of war crimes in Yemen.
“Yemen has been ravaged in
ways that should shock the conscience of humanity,” said Melissa Parke, a member of
the Group of Eminent International and Regional Experts on Yemen that produced
the report, Yemen: A Pandemic
of Impunity in a Tortured Land. “Yemen has now experienced some six
years of unremitting armed conflict, with no end in sight for the suffering of
the millions of people caught in its grip.”
Kamel Jendoubi, who chaired
the UN group, added: “After
years of documenting the terrible toll of this war, no one can say ‘we did not
know what was happening in Yemen’.”
Trudeau Fuels Saudi Weapons
Experts
Yet despite the detailed, years-long public record documenting
such crimes, the Trudeau regime has never taken any meaningful steps to end its
government’s complicity. Indeed, during the April pandemic lockdown, the
Trudeau government lifted its
temporary suspension of weapons exports to the Saudi regime spearheading the
war against Yemen, one imposed after Saudi agents murdered
journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Istanbul-based Saudi consulate. Meanwhile, Saudi-bound
killer armoured vehicles are still rolling off the London, Ontario assembly
line of General Dynamic Land Systems as part of a $15 billion contract that met
the federal government’s definition of
an “essential” workplace during the height of Covid-19’s first wave.
Since coming to power in 2015, the Trudeau government eagerly embraced
the Harper-initiated weapons deal, with former Global Affairs Minister Stéphane
Dion infamously signing the final
contract in defiance of domestic and international law prohibitions, as well as
giving a lie to the so-called feminist government’s own proclamations about
respecting the rights of women and international “rule of law.”
Dion conceded he
could not have mustered the intestinal fortitude to engage in such a criminal
action without the assistance of then Minister of Trade Chrystia Freeland. He
added however that he was afraid of what the Saudis would say if Canada did the
right thing by refusing to participate in war crimes. “If you cancelled a
contract of this magnitude, it will resonate everywhere …. And Saudi Arabia
will have to react. Don't think they will praise Canada,” Dion said,
as if criticism from one of the world’s worst human rights violators justified
continued support for those violations.
In a similar statement
that revealed Dion’s intense need to undertake self-awareness training, he told
the Globe and Mail, “I think it's
fair to say we are more concerned about human rights than the Harper
government. That's what I think as a Liberal. That is for you to assess
[whether] it's the case.”
Twisted Justifications for
Criminality
Long after Dion left the
Global Affairs bunker in Ottawa, the justifications for ongoing weapons exports
to Saudi Arabia continue from a branch of the federal government that suffers
from a major conflict of interest: on the one hand, it acts as a global pimp
for the Canadian weapons industry, while on the other, it is empowered to determine
whether or not its ravenous appetite for arms sales violates its treaty
commitments. This past spring, in an echo of the Yoo memos
that twisted the global anti-torture legal regime into a justification for Bush
administration torture, Global Affairs’ report on
Saudi weapons exports concluded that “there is no substantial risk that current
Canadian exports of military goods and technology to KSA [Kingdom of Saudi
Arabia] would be used by KSA to commit or facilitate serious violations of
[International Humanitarian Law], including ‘internal repression.’” The report
further found that there was no evidence to suggest Canada’s war exports would
“undermine peace and security, either nationally or locally.” In fact, the
report finds that Canada’s $15 billion in military exports to Saudi Arabia
“contribute to regional peace and security.”
Global Affairs, in a
bizarre and racist statement, clearly wants its readers to understand that
Canada is on some high moral plateau because Saudi Arabia “has not committed to
the same standards with respect to exports or the use of certain weapons.” Yet
in another example of the self-awareness deficit that appears to dominate
Global Affairs thinking, the report declares that Saudi Arabia is not a member
of the Arms Trade Treaty (which Canada is violating with its arms exports to
Saudi Arabia), the Mine Ban Treaty (which Canada violates by continuing to sell
weapons to and participate in wars led by the US, which earlier this year committed to
new production and deployment of land mines) and the Convention on Cluster
Munitions (horrific weapons which Saudi Arabia has used
against residential areas, and the U.S refuses to ban). Despite these
acknowledgements, Canada sees no problem trusting that the Saudis will not use
Canadian-made weapons – whose singular purpose is to undermine peace and
security – to actually undermine peace and security.
It’s not just on the battlefield
where Canadian-made weapons make their mark. Canada’s weapons are equally
useful in suppressing any form of dissent in Saudi Arabia. Remarkably, the
bureaucrats at Global Affairs concluded in their evaluation of military support
to the dictatorship of Saudi Arabia that, “it cannot be assumed that any use of
military equipment to control protests is an illegitimate use, rather than a
legitimate public security operation.” (Given that Canada regularly uses
military equipment and resources to suppress Indigenous land defenders here at
home, such a conclusion is not surprising, though it might shock U.S. generals
who earlier this year said they were opposed to
Donald Trump using the military to repress the American people.)
In a section that would be
right at home in George Orwell’s 1984,
the Global Affairs analysis also finds that Saudi Arabia is “a valued Canadian
security partner” in the so-called war on terror, praising the terrorist Saudi
regime because it is a founding member of the Global Counterterrorism Forum
that Canada currently co-chairs with Morocco.
Wescam’s Drone Tech
Implicated
Those on the receiving end
of Canadian-exported weapons are not likely nodding in agreement that their
lives have enjoyed greater peace and security. Indeed, a new report from
Project Ploughshares on the commission of war crimes involving Canadian-made
sensors and targeting equipment produced by Burlington, Ontario’s Wescam concludes
that “Canada's export of Wescam sensors to Turkey poses a substantial risk of
facilitating human suffering, including violations of human rights and
international humanitarian law. Canadian officials are obligated by
international and Canadian law to mitigate the risks of such transfers,
including through the denial of export permits, when such risks are apparent
from the outset—which appears to be the case with Wescam exports to Turkey.”
As
with the Saudi killer vehicles contract, the news that Wescam is involved in
producing technology used in repression and war crimes is nothing new. Indeed,
in the early 2000s, Homes not Bombs documented how Wescam (at that time owned by L-3
Communications) “supplies human rights violators (Colombia,
Egypt, Algeria, China, Iran, Libya, Saudi Arabia, U.S., and U.K), provides
components used by the Hellfire-missile-armed US Air Force Predator, Cobra
Attack Helicopter, & Vigilante chopper's Low Cost Precision Kill
scheme; L-3 Wescam ‘border control’
products prevent refugees from finding safety; L-3 Wescam outfits police forces
to repress demonstrations and ‘public disturbances’; Wescam parent L-3
Communications Canada is ranked #1 war manufacturer (Canadian Defence Review, 2006); and Wescam Parent company L-3 Communications
supplies ‘interrogation’ teams allegedly implicated in torture in Iraq.”
Situated on a sideroad next to an elementary school in Burlington,
the Wescam factory was the focus of years of protests by
groups including Homes not Bombs, where dozens were arrested for seeking
meetings with company officials to discuss their role in the war crimes of the
day. These included the opening salvo of Bush administration use of armed
drones to conduct extrajudicial assassinations in 2002, as well as ongoing complicity
in the crimes committed by occupation forces in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and
other countries targeted by U.S. and allied forces.
But
Wescam’s complicity in crimes is not limited to some long-ago war on terror
campaign. It is, as with any war manufacturer, an ongoing concern. As Ploughshares notes, the Turkish military
supplied by the Burlington company “has committed serious breaches of
international humanitarian law (IHL) and other violations, particularly when
conducting airstrikes,” while Turkey has also exported its purchased Wescam
technology to armed groups in Libya, “a blatant breach of the nearly decade-old
UN arms embargo.” These exports also violate the Canadian government’s own Arms
Trade Treaty obligations.
Ploughshares
research also revealed that Wescam maintains an authorized service centre for
the Turkish weapons company Baykar. Turkey is the third-biggest recipient of Canadian
weapons exports (valued at over $152 million). While Ottawa temporarily suspended
weapons sales to Turkey in October 2019 after that country’s latest invasion of
Syria, Canada announced an extension of the embargo in spring 2020. Turkish
strongman Recep Erdogan was furious, and confronted Trudeau about it. Erdogan
was especially peeved, since at that time Trudeau had lifted a pause on weapons
exports to war crimes being produced by the Saudi regime in Yemen. According
to one Turkish official, Trudeau “said they would take some steps to alleviate
Turkish concerns regarding the exports; that they would review everything case
by case.”
Middle East Eye reports,
“Turkey was giving utmost importance to the import of the optics and
surveillance systems from the Canadian firm Wescam for its military drones.”
The Turkish regime also relies on Montreal’s Pratt & Whitney for warplane
engines.
Exemptions for War Crimes
It did not take
long for Global Affairs Canada to grant an exemption
for Wescam to continue those weapons exports a month later. Turkey was
apparently worried that its capacity to wage drone warfare would be limited
given battlefield losses in Syria and Libya. That resumption of weapons sales
came just as the group Genocide Watch openly questioned
why Turkey was not before the International Criminal Court for war crimes
committed during its multiple incursions into Syria. They noted that “In areas under Turkey’s control, civilians have
been subjected to horrific crimes against humanity committed by Turkish forces
and Turkish supported militias. Kurdish towns have been bombed and destroyed,
some with white phosphorus, a war crime. Hundreds of civilians have been
summarily executed. Kurdish and Yazidi women have been kidnapped and subjected
to sexual slavery. Secret prisons hold hundreds of Kurds who are routinely
tortured.”
During
those incursions, schools and hospitals were bombed, as were civilian convoys
fleeing the violence, and over 180,000 Kurds were forcibly displaced in an act that even U.S. officials named as an act of ethnic cleansing. Similar genocidal attacks
against Kurds have been launched by Turkey in northern Iraq, with Ploughshares
pointing out, “In 2018, Turkey began the practice of targeted
killings in Iraq, becoming only the second country in the region, after Israel,
to undertake extraterritorial targeted killings.” When one senior Kurdish
leader was assassinated by a Turkish drone in Iraq, footage of the attack was
proudly shared on Wescam’s own website, though it was erased after the Canadian
window dressing embargo in spring 2020. Wescam’s MX-GCS EO/IR imaging system has also
reportedly been integrated into the Belgian-made John Cockerill turret of the Turkish FNSS
Kaplan armoured fighting vehicle.
Meanwhile in
Libya, where battling forces have all committed war crimes,
Turkey is exporting its own drone technology with Wescam targeting systems, in
violation of a decade-old UN arms embargo. Ploughshares shared pictures of
downed drones that had been built with Wescam
targeting cameras.
Turkey also employs Wescam drone technology in ongoing domestic
repression and murder by drone against Kurdish people, including reports that in December, 2019, that Turkish drones “participated
in airstrikes against Kurdish organizations in at least 11 provinces in
southeast Turkey.” The Intercept noted
last year as well that Turkish drones (which, notably, rely on Wescam technology)
are a “near constant presence in the skies in the country’s southeast. Nearly
every day, a Turkish drone, usually a TB2, either fires on a target or provides
the location of a target that is subsequently bombed by an F-16 or attack
helicopter.” Hundreds of people have been killed in these strikes.
In 2019, Amnesty
International reported
that Turkish operations demonstrate “an utterly callous disregard for civilian
lives, launching unlawful deadly attacks in residential areas that have killed
and injured civilians.” Ploughshares concludes that “there
is a clear and demonstrable substantial risk that the further export of Wescam
sensors to Turkey could cause harm to civilians and facilitate breaches of IHL
[International Humanitarian Law].”
What is Our
Responsibility?
What do we do
with the knowledge that taxpayer-supported corporations, with the cooperation
of Global Affairs Canada and the Canadian Commercial Corporation, are involved
in the commission and perpetuation of war crimes and crimes against humanity? After
all, as The Nuremberg Principles established at the end of the Second World War,
citizens are responsible for acts committed in their name. One set of post-WW2 war
crimes trials concerned executives and board members of German armament maker
Krupp, which armed the Nazis while using over 100,000 slave labourers.
Most were
convicted and sentenced to modest prison terms, while Alfried Krupp, who was
ordered to sell all of his possessions, was unrepentant, crying out
in words that may well have been uttered by Stéphane Dion or Chrystia Freeland:
“The
economy needed a steady or growing development. Because of the rivalries
between the many political parties in Germany and the general disorder there
was no opportunity for prosperity. ... We thought that Hitler would give us
such a healthy environment. Indeed he did do that. ... We Krupps never cared
much about [political] ideas. We only wanted a system that worked well and
allowed us to work unhindered. Politics is not our business.”
On International
Human Rights Day, December 10, 2002, I was privileged to be among the very
first people ever arrested for resisting drone warfare. We had gathered at Wescam’s
Burlington factory to conduct a citizen’s weapons inspection as the drums of
war with Iraq were heating up. While UN inspectors were at that moment enjoying
unfettered (and often unannounced) access to a host of suspected Iraqi weapons
production sites (none were found, to the surprise of no one), we were barely
20 feet onto the property before we were met by police who hauled us away and
charged us with trespassing.
When we went to
trial the following April (after the horrors of the Bush onslaught of “Shock
and Awe”), we attempted to introduce evidence about the crimes Wescam
contributed to up to that moment in history. We also sought to testify about
the increasing dangers posed by drone warfare and the other technologies of
surveillance, border control, and domestic repression that padded the company’s
bottom line. These were all reasons why we had gone to Wescam. But neither the
judge nor the Crown were interested.
“These people [military manufacturer Wescam] run a
business,” declared Burlington Crown Attorney Tom Davies in response.
“I don't know what it is and I don't care what it is."
When we argued that the
court needed to hear about the context of our actions, Justice of the Peace
Barry Quinn, in a very political statement, declared: "Politics
are not being carried on in this court. This court is not going to be involved
in whether there is a war in Iraq. This court will hear about the here and now
only."
Needless
to say, the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq by U.S., UK, and Canadian
forces was well established by that time, and was very much part of the “here
and now.”
Although
we went back to Wescam on many occasions (as well as other military
manufacturers, war shows, and government bodies enabling these crimes), each
time we experienced the same attitude of the Crown prosecutor, who just did not
want to know that the heart of his community hosts a manufacturing facility whose
products are regularly employed to murder people halfway around the world.
The
same excuses used by the Nazi manufacturers – that they needed to do this
blood-stained work for the economy – echo with sickening consistency when
uttered by Canadian politicians of all stripes and union representatives who
ignore the posters on their walls about international solidarity with the
workers on the receiving end of Canadian-made war machinery.
Just
as the pandemic has exposed once more the structural inequality that besets
this land, these new reports add one more piece to the argument that Canada’s
war economy needs to be dismantled and transformed into peaceful uses. Indeed,
as conservatives bemoan the Trudeau government’s relatively modest investments
in pandemic supports, few are willing to discuss the annual $31.7 billion
outlay for war, the planned $19 billion in fighter bombers, and the $110 billion
purchase of new and wholly unnecessary warships. None of this huge investment
in killing has defended anyone against threats from climate change and covid-19
or economic inequality. If anything, the massive Canadian commitment to war has
contributed to the hollowing out of social safety nets by robbing from the
public coffers untold billions that could have ended up in affordable housing,
women’s shelters and child care spaces.
This
is all publicly available information. We cannot say that “we did not know.”
But there is still time to say that, in knowing, we acted, we did something, we
refused to be silent.
