Canada Aids and Abets the Spectre of Nuclear Terrorism

By Matthew Behrens

Earlier this year, Michael Walli made a blunt confession in a Tennessee court. “I was employed as a terrorist for the United States Government,” he told the judge hearing his case. And sure enough, Walli is facing down a potential 35 years in prison for what his prosecutors successfully argued was an action that fit the “federal crime of terrorism.”

            Walli is an army combat veteran of the U.S. invasion of Vietnam, and is certainly  not the first to take some personal responsibility for America’s genocidal occupation and relentless bombing of Southeast Asia  (with at least 3 million murdered). Indeed, as the recent book Kill Anything that Moves reminds us, American military units were committing so many atrocities that the Pentagon opened up its own, secretive war crimes investigation unit. 

            But his participation in such crimes is not what led Walli to that Tennessee court. Rather, it was a peaceful protest against nuclear terrorism and the U.S. construction – in clear violation of the nonproliferation treaty –  of a new generation of nuclear weapons. Unlike Iran, the U.S. has used – and threatened to use – nuclear weapons for almost 70 years, in the form of atomic bombs as well as depleted uranium-coated ammunition that has left a cancerous wasteland behind in Iraq, among other countries where it has been used by U.S. and NATO forces.

            Walli, joined by Sister Megan Rice (aged 82) and Greg Boertje-Obed, all veteran peacemakers, entered the Y12 nuclear weapons site in Oak Ridge, Tennessee on July 28, 2012, cutting through four fences and making their way right to the Enriched Uranium Materials Facility which, as the venerable magazine Nuclear Resister notes, is “the largest storehouse of bomb-grade uranium in the world. They marked the building with blood, painted disarmament messages on the wall and hung banners. Symbolic of beginning to transform swords into plowshares, they also hammered a few chips of concrete from the building’s foundation before being seen by security guards and arrested.”

            It was the latest in a 33-year legacy of scores of similar protests known as Plowshares Actions that have directly confronted militarism in its most physical forms, from pouring blood on B-52 bombers to hammering on nuclear weapons nose cones at a General Electric factory in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. All such actions have been well-planned, almost always involve a faith-based statement, and are committed to nonviolence.

            On June 20 of this year, Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama, according to an Associated Press dispatch filed from Berlin, appealed “for a new citizen activism in the free world” to reduce nuclear stockpiles and confront climate change. Yet his Attorney General has piled on the charges against the Plowshares activists who were engaging in just such citizen activism. All are scheduled to be sentenced in September. While lengthy prison sentences have often been the fate of those confronting the nuclear state, the equation of nonviolent protest with terrorism is consistent with what critics have long argued is one of the main purposes of so-called anti-terrorism legislation: squashing dissent.

            In his usual unctuous fashion, Obama’s dishonest speech in Berlin belied the facts of nuclear weapons development. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), at the start of 2013 eight states possessed approximately 4,400 operational nuclear weapons. Nearly 2,000 of these are kept in a state of high operational alert. SIPRI also notes that if all nuclear warheads are counted – operational warheads, spares, those in both active and inactive storage, and intact warheads scheduled for dismantlement – the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan and Israel possess a total of approximately 17,270 nuclear weapons. As SIPRI indicates in their 2013 annual report, the five leading nuclear weapons powers “appear determined to retain their nuclear arsenals indefinitely.” Last year, NATO concluded that nuclear weapons would remain a core component of their arsenal and strategic planning (with no peep of protest from Canada).

            Canada’s response to this reality is, among other activities, a secretive working plan to ship large amounts of bomb grade uranium from Chalk River through the Ottawa Valley and to the United States for “reprocessing.” Anyone who thinks this uranium will not wind up in a new nuclear weapon might be interested in some oceanfront Arizona property. Until 2008, Canada had mined more uranium than any other country in the world – including the raw materials for those first flashes of unforgettable fire that decimated two of Japan’s civilian cities during World War II – and now accounts for over 15% of worldwide production. Among its largest clients are countries that continue to violate the non-proliferation treaty. At the same time, those who are front-line victims of the chain of nuclearism are indigenous people who have mined the uranium and had its waste dumped on their lands.

Worldwide war spending, including for nuclear weapons, now tops $1.75 trillion, an amount perhaps so infinite that it becomes meaningless. As hunger and other social ills plague billions of people, few in the political world dare question this massive waste of resources,  including the over $20 billion annually flushed down Canada’s own rathole of militarism. Indeed, the official NDP opposition last ran on a platform of equaling the Harper government’s war spending.

            As we approach the landmark days in August marking the anniversaries of the murderous use of atomic weapons against the undefended cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it is a good time to not only reflect on the nature of nuclearism, but militarism itself. We must also remember the firebombing of Tokyo and Dresden, the napalming and carpet bombing of Southeast Asia, the NATO terror bombings of the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq – clearly war crimes as defined at Nuremberg – as well as all atrocities supposedly committed in the name of religion, freedom, and democracy.

            Militarism creates its own state of permanent exception: anything done in the name of “national defense” is above the law, any calls for accountability are laughed off as unpatriotic, and resistance is treated as heresy. While eminent scholars Richard Falk and Robert Jay Lifton once argued that nukes were “indefensible weapons,” perhaps it is time to shift our frame to the whole business of war as not only indefensible, but completely incompatible with democracy. Shifting the language might help as well, reminding people that War is Always Terrorism.

 Canada’s own War Department, it was recently revealed, is so bloated, so over-funded, that it has been sitting on a pile of over $2 billion in unspent cash. While social programs suffer, the homeless die on Canadian streets, and women cannot find shelter from male violence, the War Department remains a sinkhole of taxpayer monies, the largest single use of discretionary federal spending and one that is increasingly immune to oversight given its refusal to share details – even with officials such as the Parliamentary Budget Officer – of its operations and spending plans. Indeed, the Ottawa Citizen reports that former CSIS head Richard Fadden, now a deputy minister at the War Department, has recently written to say he will not provide Parliament with any details on new warships, armoured vehicles, and other unnecessary purchases.

            All this serves as part of a long-standing trend in which democracy is sacrificed on the altar of a war economy.  Whether it is the clear deception that the Harper government continues to employ to try and sucker Canadians into spending scores of billions on stealth fighter bombers, shutting down Parliament to prevent hearings on Canadian complicity in the torture of Afghans, or the secretive plans to ship by truck highly radioactive uranium down Highway 417 along the Ottawa River so the U.S. can continue to upgrade its nuclear weapons, it is clear that the objections of citizens have  been pushed to the side as an unwanted annoyance.

            This is, of course, not new. Indeed, shortly after the passage of Canada’s Anti-Terrorism Act, resisters against militarism, who were holding weekly vigils in 2002 to transform Toronto’s Moss Park Armoury into housing for the homeless and underhoused, found "Security Zone in Effect” signs around the perimeter, language coming directly out of the Anti-terrorism Act and clearly aimed at the organizers from Homes not Bombs. Similarly, at Hancock Air Force Base in New York State, special injunctions seeking to bar peaceful protesters from the entrance have been issued to maintain the silence around the drone strikes that are launched from within. At protests outside Canada’s drone manufacturer of choice, L3 Wescam, protesters were threatened with civil action for nonviolent trespass. 

            The antidote for such diseases as militarism and the secrecy that undergirds it is democratic participation, perhaps through education, boycott and protest. For others, it may take the form of direct interference with the tools of global genocide via Plowshares Actions or the nonviolent civil resistance action that last week saw 23 people arrested at a Honeywell plant in Kansas City, where key components for that new generation of nuclear weapons are being developed.

            Not everyone is prepared to risk jail for their conscience. But at the very least, we can support those who, with love in their hearts and a passion for justice that burns brighter than any weapons flash, continue to push back against the state of exception called militarism. One thing everyone can do is write a letter to members of Transform Plowshares now looking at being jailed until 2048 – essentially life imprisonment –  for their simple act of saying “No.”. They are also encouraging people to send letters to the judge who will sentence them in September. More information is available at http://transformnowplowshares.wordpress.com/

           

  

              

              

Thick as A Brick: Disturbing Questions in RCMP Canada Day Bust

(July  8, rabble.ca)

By Matthew Behrens

The July 1 arrests of BC residents Amanda Korody and John Nuttall – charged with planning to blow up a pressure cooker cluster bomb at the BC legislature – raise many disturbing questions about the nature of the Canadian government’s “counter-terrorism” operations. Equally troubling has been media coverage playing up hot-button themes that trigger fears of marginalized people, whether they be drug addiction and reliance on social assistance to heavy metal music and the popular catch-all description for anyone who doesn’t quite fit in to a sick society: mental illness.

   As anyone can gather from news reports, the two suspects have not trod the easiest of paths, and the pair’s friends doubt they would be capable of planning, much less executing, the alleged acts. Their right to privacy has also been invaded, with media thumbing through their personal effects in an apartment that, remarkably, was not taped off as a potential crime scene by the police.

   Interestingly, following a month of revelations about massive spying on the global citizenry, the attempt by the Mounties to scare up a little self-serving attention by trumpeting themselves as The Heroes Who Saved Canada Day appears to have fallen flat, as many are questioning what role undercover operatives may have played in facilitating the apparent attack. RCMP Assistant Commissioner Wayne Rideout noted at the press conference announcing the arrests, “We employed a variety of complex investigative and covert techniques to control any opportunity the suspects had to commit harm. These devices were completely under our control, they were inert, and at no time represented a threat to public safety.”

   In other words, they appear to have had someone on the inside with a great deal of influence over events, either a Mountie or someone from CSIS, the spy agency that  allegedly spoke to the Mounties about the case in February. As the Vancouver Province noted in an editorial, “On April 2, police had enough evidence leading to charges of facilitating a terrorist activity and conspiracy to commit an indictable offence, but the couple was not arrested. On June 25, there was enough evidence for Nuttall to be charged with making or possessing an explosive substance, but again there were no arrests.” Did the RCMP stagemanage things so that the connection to Canada Day would provide them with a blast of patriotic coverage?

Sting Operations

   The questions point to practices south of the border, where the great majority of so-called terrorism arrests are in fact set up by and facilitated by the agents who then bust them: the FBI. A 2011 investigation by Mother Jones magazine examined the FBI strategy of “pre-emption” and “disruption” –  the latter a term used by the RCMP in the present case – and found that the agency targets “tens of thousands of law-abiding people, seeking to identify those disgruntled few who might participate in a plot given the means and the opportunity. And then, in case after case, the government provides the plot, the means, and the opportunity.”

   Mother Jones quotes lawyer Martin Stolar, who defended one man caught in a 2004 FBI sting, as noting that with many of the terrorism cases, “defendants would not have done anything if not kicked in the ass by government agents. They’re creating crimes to solve crimes so they can claim a victory in the war on terror.”

   The magazine points out that with three exceptions, “all of the high-profile domestic terror plots of the last decade were actually FBI stings,” all of which tend to target socially marginalized individuals.

   Were the BC arrests part of an RCMP/CSIS sting operation?  Some recall that the so-called Toronto 18 case may never have gotten off the ground without the able assistance of undercover, paid government informants who facilitated key elements of the case. In the case of Mr. Nuttall, his paintballing friend was quoted as saying, “Personally, I think he was hanging out with the wrong people and they screwed with his head a little bit.” Was one of the apparent “wrong people” a government agent encouraging Mr. Nuttall? And is the RCMP above staging terrorism arrests?

History of Illegal Acts

If history is any indication, the answer would be no. Much of the Mounties’ lengthy history of corruption, illicit activity, and outright lawbreaking was summed up nicely in a 1970 memo from then RCMP Commissioner W.L. Higgitt. Labeled “RCMP Protection for Members Engaged in Sensitive or Secret Operations,” the Commissioner wrote: “Though it has not been the subject of general conversation, and should not be, it may have been considered necessary in the past, and may continue to be necessary in the future, to transgress the common, civil, or criminal law of the Country in order to work effectively or to achieve the desired results in a given case. More recently it has come to my attention that some members involved in delicate operations are concerned with the protection they and their families will receive in the event that an operation goes sour and they become subject to civil or criminal processes as a result.”

Later in the memo, the Commissioner advises that “where the member acts within the scope of the direction or the expressly approved plan, he will be protected to the greatest extent possible from criminal, quasi-criminal or civil responsibility. In the event complete protection cannot be afforded, a solicitor will be appointed to protect the member’s interests. The Force will accept responsibility to pay any fine or reward levied against our member. In the event of incarceration for a period of time, the member will be paid as usual and on release will be employed again by the Force….Information contained herein should be disseminated on a ‘need to know’ basis to the members of your command.”

This attitude of impunity for crimes committed riddles the RCMP like a cancer. It is why the RCMP authorized the questioning of Canadian Abdullah Almalki, then detained in Syria, knowing those questions would lead to his torture, without a thought for his human rights, much less the complicity in torture provisions of the Criminal Code of Canada or Canada’s legally binding obligations under the Convention Against Torture.

Things are no better at CSIS where, as investigative reporter Andrew Mitrovica pointed out in his expose Covert Entry, Canada’s spies have "routinely broken the law, treating the rights and liberties of Canadians as no more than a nuisance...[it is] riddled by waste, extravagance, laziness, nepotism, incompetence, corruption and law-breaking." There is a culture of impunity at CSIS, whose agents often refer to a Ways and Means Act: "if you have a way to get things done, the means -- legal or not -- are justified."

Throwing in Islam

Meanwhile, less attention has been paid to pathetic attempts to throw Islamic references into the mix, with desperate efforts to find a landlady or neighbor who can testify to hearing loud “Islamic” recordings coming from the basement and the RCMP’s bizarre contention that although there is no international connection, the two appear to be “Al-Qaeda-inspired” and “self-radicalized,” two canards that have little connection to reality. (While the Globe and Mail was invading the couple’s privacy, they reported on finding amongst their books a copy of the Bible, George Orwell’s Animal Farm, and albums by Jethro Tull and Nine Inch Nails.)

   “She was into the rave scene, and then she became goth, then she was a big activist, then she was someone who worked out hardcore,” a friend of suspect Amanda  Korody was quoted as saying. “Before he was a proud Canadian,” said a friend of John Nuttall.  “Later he said, ‘All I care about is Allah’ and that Canadians and Americans shouldn’t even be in Iraq or Afghanistan at all.” 

   Taken together, these quotes represent a broad swath of Canadian opinion and experience, with the underlying brush that now tars as tainted anyone associated with such activities or beliefs.  Yet, unlike some leaders in Canada’s diverse Muslim community, no one from Canada’s goth or workout scenes has been called upon to condemn the alleged acts or to engage in RCMP “community consultations”. Nor is it likely that LA Fitness chains will now be infiltrated by undercover agents to root out the discontented health nuts pedaling their sweaty way atop an elliptical while reading rabble.ca columns on their ipads.

   Continual references to the two as apparent “converts” to Islam begs the question: what religion were they following during previous years of mixed up lives, and why has that not been part of media reporting? It also plays into the insidious idea that, regardless of how many times Muslim community leaders plead that they are loyal and peaceful Canadians, the “influence” of their religion is what is ultimately dangerous, a powerful subtext that is repeated with each new scare headline about the growth of Islam in Canada (now estimated at a whopping 3.2% of the total population). In other words, it is bad enough when people born Muslims are alleged to be involved in nefarious activities; it appears to be even worse when “one of ours”, i.e., white Canadians, are sucked into the faith. Such pernicious thinking underlined much of the Red Scare: it was not so much the danger of Communists themselves as it was their ability to infect our precious bodily fluids with their subversive thoughts, and before one knew it, former boy scouts were marching against the bomb and for civil rights.

Mounties Want You to Like Them

   Like the scandal-plagued CSIS, the RCMP is desperate for good press these days, and the language in their early July press conference verged on a plea to like them on Facebook.  “These arrests are another example of the effectiveness of our Integrated National Security Enforcement Team who worked tenaciously to prevent this plan from being carried out,” said RCMP Assistant Commissioner James Malizia, perhaps a shout-out to CSIS, still reeling from revelations in late May that they failed to inform the RCMP about the Canadian navy’s Jeffrey Delisle selling secrets to the Russians. 

   But the RCMP love-in that followed the arrests of two people in the alleged VIA Rail plot in April does not appear to have been replicated here. (In April, NDP leader Tom Muclair discarded the niceties of presumption of innocence when he led a standing ovation in the House of Commons for the Mounties after he said, without offering any proof of the allegations, that “I’d like to begin by thanking law enforcement officials, as well as a brave religious leader from the Toronto Muslim community who, as we learned yesterday, helped to prevent a potentially devastating attack on Canadian soil.") 

   In a final irony, the week before the Mounties rode to the rescue to save Canadians from folks who allegedly planned to “produce explosive devices designed to cause injury and death,” those very same weapons, cluster bombs, were the subject of an ongoing attempt by Ottawa to water down the Convention on Cluster Munitions in Senate hearings. Rather than ratifying the convention as is, Ottawa has introduced a range of measures that, as the Mennonite Central Committee points out, “Creates loopholes and exceptions on the use of cluster munitions that undermine the Treaty as a comprehensive ban on an inhumane weapon; omits many of the positive obligations of the Treaty, including the destruction of stockpiles; the promotion of Treaty norms; the prohibition of investment in cluster bomb production; and the provision of support for victims.” 

   Ultimately, a government that seeks to enable state use of cluster munitions appears possibly involved in an effort to encourage two hapless souls to build such a bomb, then arrest the couple as a notch in the war on terror, and convince Canadians that the authorities have decent human values at their core. Such logic would appear, in the words of a song in Mr. Nuttall’s Jethro Tull collection, to be thick as a brick.

Canada Downplays Persecution of Burma’s Rohingya Muslims

(July, 2013, MuslimLink)

By Matthew Behrens

            While the Harper government imposes stricter sanctions on Iran, it is opening up trade and diplomatic relations with Burma, despite that government’s ongoing oppression of a Muslim minority that has led to well-placed charges of ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. Burma may soon become the only nation on the planet that limits family size based on religion (with a revived policy restricting Muslims to two children), yet Canada is forging ahead with plans to open an embassy and full-time trade commission in Rangoon.

            According to an April, 2013 report by Human Rights Watch (HRW), Burma’s Rohingya Muslim population has been under attack by ethnic Rakhine Buddhists who have killed hundreds, displacing over 100,000 Muslims while the Burmese government appears at best to have stood back and refused to intervene, and at worst to have encouraged the looting, rape, and murder of Muslims in that country. The HRW report was released the same day that the European Union lifted long-standing sanctions against the Burmese government, best known for the lengthy military dictatorship’s brutal repression and the long-time house arrest of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been notably silent on the issue.

            The majority Buddhist country has long refused to recognize the status of the Rohingya – indeed, they were stripped of their citizenship in 1982 – declaring them illegal immigrants who should be removed from the country, and enforcing discriminatory laws that prevent employment and freedom to move, such as the recent proposal that would ban Muslim men from marrying Buddhist women.  British MP Rushanara Ali recently wrote that the Rohingya, whose heritage in the area can be traced to the 7^th century, have been designated by the United Nations as “one of the most persecuted minorities in the world.” 

            A long history of discrimination forms the backdrop to the massacres and human rights abuses documented in the 153-page report, “All You Can Do is Pray: Crimes Against Humanity and Ethnic Cleansing of Rohingya Muslims in Burma’s Artakan State.” HRW documents how the Burmese government has created “a humanitarian crisis” with “coordinated attacks on Muslim neighborhoods and villages in October 2012 to terrorize and forcibly relocate the population. The tens of thousands of displaced have been denied access to humanitarian aid and been unable to return home.” HRW’s deputy Asia Director added in a press statement, “the government needs to put an immediate stop to the abuses and hold the perpetrators accountable or it will be responsible for further violence against ethnic and religious minorities in the country.”

            On October 23, over 70 Rohinya Muslims were massacred in Yan Thei Village. HRW reports, “Despite advance warning of the attack, only a small number of riot police, local police, and army soldiers were on duty to provide security, but they assisted the killings by disarming the Rohingya of their sticks and other rudimentary weapons they carried to defend themselves. Included in the death toll were 28 children who were hacked to death, including 13 under age 5.”

            The October, 2012 atrocities were preceded by earlier destruction of mosques, mass arrests, the razing of villages, and killing of residents. Since the 1990s, UN special rapporteurs have identified and condemned such abuses as “widespread,” “systematic,” and resulting from “state policy”, while new technology confirms what governments seek to deny or downplay:  HRW last year obtained satellite imagery of areas affected by the violence, which showed the destruction of over 4,800 structures across some 350 acres of largely Muslim property.

            “Many of the displaced Muslims have been living in overcrowded camps that lack adequate food, shelter, water and sanitation, schools, and medical care,” the reported continued. “Security forces in some areas have provided protection to displaced Muslims, but more typically they have acted as their jailers, preventing access to markets, livelihoods, and humanitarian assistance, for which many are in desperate need.”

            Attacks have continued unabated, and while Aung San Suu Kyi, considering a run for the presidency, has been extremely cautious, offering only tepid, bland remarks about respecting the rule of law and not wanting to take sides, President Thien has stoked the flames by suggesting the Rohingya all be placed in refugee camps or expelled from the country.

            A month before the October 2012 massacres, the Harper government send a trade delegation, including representatives of the Bank of Nova Scotia, Manulife Financial, and Skywave Mobile Communications. While Ed Fast, Minister of International Trade, has warned that Burma-bound corporations should be cautious because of the fluid economic situation, he has been non-specific on the Rohingya’s plight. “We’ve made it clear that as we engage in trade and investment relationships around the world that we also expect our partners to respect basic human rights, respect democratic processes,” Fast said in a prepared statement, a common shout-out to rights that has little effect as investment begins to pour into the country and there appear to be no sanctions on the horizon to ensure human rights compliance.

            While the government of Canada insists that trade is the mechanism that opens the door to democratic rights (a claim that has not worked well in China, where Canadian Muslim Huseyin Celil remains detained because of his religion), British MP Rushanara Ali declared “The international community must push the Burmese government to amend its 1982 Citizenship Act to ensure that all persons in the country have equal access to citizenship and are not discriminated against on grounds of ethnicity and religion.” The United Nations last month also called for full citizenship status as well, noting the Rohingya remain segregated in camps that they are not allowed to leave.

            Such a specific recommendation to end the violence against Muslims in Burma is not apparent in vague Canadian statements. Canada’s language on the attacks in Burma has been instructive, carefully worded in a manner that some might view as not wishing to harm investment opportunities by insulting the current government. While Canada’s Office of Religious Freedom has in recent months issued statements with strong language – “Canada Condemns Iran’s Continued Religious Freedom Violations, Including Persecution of Baha’is”,  “Canada Condemns Church Bombing in Tanzania” – its March statement on Burmese atrocities was more measured:  “Canada is concerned by recent reports of deadly violence targeting Muslims in Meiktila, Burma.”

            Such language appears to be a deliberate choice that sacrifices the rights of the Rohingya Muslims to the niceties of diplomatic and commercial engagement. It is also clear from a long line of similar statements that Canada downplays the violence that both now and historically targets Burmese Muslims. Indeed, in a 2011 speech to the UN, Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird declared:  “We respect state sovereignty, but Canada will not ‘go along’ or look the other way when a minority is denied its human rights or fundamental freedoms.” Laudable as the sentiment is, Baird went on to condemn Iran for “persecution” of women, Christians and Bahai, but said in the same breath that in Burma the regime simply “restricts the activities of Muslims.”

            While Canadian companies line up to reap the riches Burma may offer, Human Rights Watch lists a series of recommendations that Canada and other nations should be pushing for, from holding to account those behind the atrocities to new legislation upholding the rights of all Burmese Muslims, immediate lifting of all restrictions on freedom of movement, unhindered humanitarian agency access, an independent international mechanism to investigate crimes against humanity, and a return of displaced persons to their homes.

Bureaucrats Find Secret Trial Process “Too Protective of Rights”

 

June, 2013, rabble.ca

By Matthew Behrens

The end of June marks 13 years of Mohammad Mahjoub’s Kafkasesque journey. The Egyptian refugee and returnee from torture originally thought he was walking onto a Hollywood set when he was surrounded by heavily-armed men and arrested while getting off a Toronto streetcar in 2000.

                  Subjected to a secret trial security certificate, Mahjoub has since been behind bars – largely in solitary confinement – or under house arrest facing deportation to torture. His remains one of three cases under a security certificate regime whereby individuals are detained without charge on the basis of secret allegations neither they or their lawyers can see, much less contest. It allows a judge to accept as evidence anything not normally admissible in a court of law, and then make a decision using the lowest standards of any court in Canada. It’s been roundly condemned for its use of torture-gleaned information, and has also been found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Canada.

                  Throughout the years of the so-called War on Terror, the Campaign to Stop Secret Trials in Canada, working in conjunction with a number of support committees, has rallied around the Secret Trial Five, five Muslim men who, otherwise unconnected, had been subject to detention under the process. While the introduction of “special advocates” – security-cleared lawyers who can see some of the secret case but cannot discuss it with the detainees – has brought about further disclosures of information, the process remains fundamentally flawed and unfair, and will be the subject of a third Supreme Court challenge come October.

                  While some of the abuses born of the secret process have been revealed as a result of special advocate work – including the finding that an informant in one case had been having an affair with a CSIS officer investigating the case, while in another the government refused to tell the judge that its informer had failed a lie detector test – many others have come about as a result of tireless sleuthing by B.C. professor Mike Larsen, whose experience filing and following up on Access to Information requests in an increasingly closed Ottawa bureaucracy is literally unmatched in Canada.

                  Working with questions posed by Sophie Harkat (whose husband, Mohamed, is challenging the secret process in October at the Supreme Court), Larsen recently received an insightful document dump that, even with many pages redacted, illustrates the extent to which there is consternation within the Canadian government, both over how to proceed when further requests for disclosure are being made, and how to deport individuals when there is a substantial likelihood they’ll be tortured.

                  Larsen’s documents are largely a compilation of interview results undertaken as part of the Security Certificate Initiative (SCI), conducted in 2009 among seven departments as Ottawa continued to deal with a unanimous Supreme Court finding in 2007 that the process was unconstitutional. There is only one reference in the 200-plus pages to the huge human toll of living under the security certificate – one Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) officer admits “There is a human side to these cases, regardless of our operational thinking. There is a human being whose life is in limbo.”

Apart from that one afterthought, the rest is a straight-up portrait of the banality of evil, a consideration of Orwellian questions about the effectiveness of the Star Chamber, the difficulties of trying to send someone to a torture-stained regime like Syria or Egypt, and complaints by some that under a secret process where the individual is still unable to ascertain the nature of the case against him, the secretive process is still “too protective of rights” while others find it “seems to be airing [sic] on the side of protection of values.”

                  Part of the grumbling arises from a previous Supreme Court decisions that CSIS is not supposed to destroy or withhold all the information in its possession. “The disclosure obligations that have been placed on the service are incredible,” complains one of Canada’s spies. “This includes 1000s of documents on these individuals….the process was insanely lengthy.” No longer, though, than the 11-13 years that current secret trial detainees have been held wondering what, exactly, CSIS supposedly has on them.

                  The cost of persecuting five Muslim men since 2008 has been astronomical. According  to the documents, the budget for 2009 topped out at approximately $60 million. The bulk of that funds government lawyers who defend Ottawa against what they acknowledge are “challenges to indefinite detention, challenges to removal to torture,” among other issues. There is no comment about the fact that such challenges are necessary because their existence in Canada stands the government in contravention of its international and domestic human rights obligations.

                  Most prominent among the interviewees is Bob Paulson, current RCMP commissioner, who in 2009 complained that there was no intergovernmental cooperation (declaring all relevant departments “siloed and self interested”). Paulson also alluded to his preferred choice in such proceedings, the criminal process, noting “transparency and accountability is a fundamental principle of justice.” He called the security certificate process “completely off the rails” and noted that given the huge amount of secrecy, “we are going to make the subject ‘work’ for the information. ‘Take our word for it’ approach. In my view, we over claim protection of sources and methods and this is convenient if you can get away with it.” Paulson’s conclusion is consistent with numerous findings of the Federal and Supreme Court, judicial inquiries, and oversight agencies, all of which point out that CSIS has a long history of preferring to keep things secret (Paulson’s Mounties share that problem, but he did not appear to acknowledge it in the interview – or, if he did, it was blacked out).

                  Just over 10% of government workers surveyed for the SCI said if security certificates did not exist, “national security would not suffer – the criminal code would protect national security.” Notably, all those detained challenged the government to charge them if there were any real evidence, hoping to ensure they received the higher safeguards and standards in a criminal process versus the lower ones in the immigration stream. The fears about the criminal process are expressed by a CSIS interviewee who whines that “we are being driven more and more back to the criminal model – evidentiary.”

                  Students of the democratic process might wonder why an agency whose stated task is defending core values like rule of law is so frightened of having to collect things like evidence. The answer: doing so precludes them from using the information they readily acknowledge comes from torture, hearsay, and guilt by alleged association, regardless of the multiple degrees of separation.

                  In a sign that the government relies more on profiling than evidence, one complaint was that “Criminal charges would be way too cumbersone. The idea of trying to prove that they have committed an offence in Canada would be unlikely; proof of acts committed overseas would be difficult. Proof beyond a reasonable doubt has a larger burden of proof; so chances of success would be unlikely.” If there is so little to rely on, then what could possibly be the basis for ruining the lives of the detainees?

                  It brings to mind the outrageous document from Canada’s human rights division at External Affairs, written in 2003, that fretted over deporting Syrian refugee and secret trial detainee Hassan Almrei to Syria at a time when Maher Arar had just returned and outlined the horrors he had undergone there. The memo writer was concerned that people might ask why Almrei was slated for deportation to torture, especially when he  "does not meet the threshold for criminal charges to be laid against him in Canada."

                  The documents also reveal that the grass roots work opposing secret trials has certainly been noticed by officials in government. It is a tribute to that work that after issuing two to three annual certificates per year from 1992-2003, only one has been assigned by CSIS in the following decade. Part of the problem, CSIS official David Vigneault concedes, is the fact that many Canadians “believe that [indefinite] incarceration and administrative procedures [secret trials] are not in line with democracy.” One CSIS interviewee moans that things are not on the right track because “in the media, people see one side of the story. They do not see a fair picture and probably lose confidence” in the process. It’s a remarkable admission, yet on another level, it reveals how sensitive CSIS is to any criticism whatsoever. It also fails to appreciate that the media’s coverage of secret trials over the past decade has been dreadful, by and large portraying the men exactly as CSIS wishes to.

                  A government in disarray is also evident in the documents. It seems interdepartmental communication is poor, and while high officials may hold a certain opinion, it’s not reflected in ultimate policy decisions. For example, CBSA’s Vice President of Enforcement, Kimber Johnson, noted in November, 2009 in response to a question regarding strict bail conditions that “courts have argued that with the passage of time, the risk is less and I think this is true.” But the CBSA has not acted as if it were true, continuing to harass the detainees under house arrest and, when hearings have come up, seeking to add additional, not fewer, restrictions on the already limited liberty of the men and their families.

                  Meantime, officials at the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) appear to be exploring the long discredited seeking of “diplomatic assurances” from the likes of the Assad and Mubarak regimes that their torturers would forgo brutalizing Canada’s deportees. Apart from the fact such assurances fly in the face of international and Canadian law, they’ve also been condemned in studies by the likes of Human Rights Watch, which have illustrated such assurances are not worth the paper they’re written on, and simply act as cover for governments seeking to avoid embarrassment. Meantime, bureaucrats reveal that “there is no measure as to which country are [sic] places of jeopardy for human rights and on what basis these assessments made.”

                  Beyond the issue of security certificates is the increasing use of secrecy in regular immigration processes. Immigration security officer Themis Argyrides enthuses about the benefit of having access to secret information that someone being questioned has no knowledge of. “The classified information that was received is a huge benefit, because it allows us to concentrate on the area of concern, even though we may only use open source material in the actual processing.” In other words, the officer can play “gotcha” with an interviewee, relying on the uncontestable information in the secret file to try and show the individual may be hiding something or lying. Further, Immigration interrogators note they usually oppose the appointment of a special advocate in such non-security cases “because they would rather have fewer people implicated (seeing the information) if possible,” even though the advocates are security-cleared and sworn to secrecy.

                  While the use of security certificates appears to have stalled, their most pernicious attributes are being used in a widening net that entraps refugees and permanent resident applicants. For years, secret trials opponents have argued that security certificates were a thin edge of the wedge for a broader attack on fundamental freedoms, creating dangerous precedents via the demonization of religious and racial groups whose rights most would fear standing up for. That argument, unfortunately, continues to be confirmed, as witnessed these past few weeks by revelations of mass spying on global citizens by the National Security Agency as well as the Communications Security Establishment Canada. In the eyes of government, we are all suspects now.

Canada’s Culture of Mean: Beating up on Refugees

Canada’s Culture of Mean: Beating up on Refugees

By Matthew Behrens

            Toronto’s legendary refugee rights lawyer Barb Jackman has a unique way of framing issues at their most human level, an art often lost by those who spend their lives in courts and immigration tribunals fighting for their clients’ right not to be deported to torture and other cruelties. Testifying recently before a Senate committee on a repressive piece of deportation legislation, Jackman aptly summed up the mean political culture that increasingly grips the land.

            Bill C-43 (aka, most inappropriately, the Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act) could be called the double punishment bill, because that’s essentially what it does: individuals without full citizenship status in Canada not only face a sentence if criminally convicted, but automatic deportation following that, without ministerial discretion to examine the context of the conviction and the severe consequences of forced removal on individuals, families, and communities. 

            “Taking away humanitarian discretion, which we have never not had, is a fundamental change in the way we look at non-citizens,” Jackman told the Senate. “I believe there should have been a national debate about whether or not we want to go there in terms of being a mean, petty, disgusting country.”

            C-43 removes from a whole class of people access to the immigration appeal division and, in a masterstroke of fundamental unfairness, also applies retroactively to permanent residents who’ve served sentences of over six months that predate the new legislation. Hence, someone who has a criminal conviction from 15 years ago may now be uprooted from their family and deported without access to any kind of appeal. Pre C-43, if the sentence was 2 years less a day, one could appeal for discretionary relief from a deportation order. But if the sentence was 2 years or over, even by a day, that appeal disappeared. Under C-43, the benchmark is reduced to a six month sentence, and applies retroactively to someone who, when they negotiated a sentence, thought they would have access to an appeal if facing deportation.

            The issue was explored in the Supreme Court’s Pham decision earlier this year, in which an individual who seems to have been caught up in circumstances beyond his control was sentenced to two years behind bars, removing the possibility that he could appeal to the Minister to consider the context of his case and humanitarian reasons for allowing him to stay. The Supreme Court reduced his sentence by one day so that Pham could have access to a deportation appeal; C-43 removes that possibility.

            The Canadian Bar Association’s Gordon Maynard provided numerous examples to Senators of folks whose lives will be destroyed under the news legislation. For example, “a permanent resident in Canada since 11 years of age, here for 20 years, with parents here and siblings, married with children but suffering from alcoholism and mental illness, loses his employment, falls into substance abuse and engages in petty frauds and credit card thefts. He is convicted of his first criminal offences in Alberta; he is given a six-month sentence. By Bill C-43, there is no review of his circumstances upon issuance of a deportation order. His time in Canada, his illnesses, his family and his lack of any prior record will not be considered. There is no appeal to the appeal division.”

            A Canadian citizen facing the same circumstances would only be punished once and, perhaps, be directed towards help for mental illness and the addiction issues. Not so for the permanent resident or refugee. Maynard posed another possibility, whereby a  “Mr. Singh, a permanent resident in Canada, is vacationing in Hawaii. While socializing in a bar, there is a racial insult, an argument and a fight. He punches someone in the nose; it is a good punch. He is arrested and appears before a judge the next day. Mr. Singh does not want to spend his time in Hawaii fighting a charge that he does not believe he is guilty of, but he pleads guilty to go home. He pleads guilty to assault causing bodily harm and pays a $200 fine. He is released and allowed to return to Canada…. It is a conviction outside of Canada for an offence in Canada that is classified as serious. It does not matter what penalty he got. Under Bill C-43, when he is issued a deportation order, there is no review in the appeal division.”

            Criminal lawyers point out that the new legislation will likely cram the already overcrowded prison systems with permanent residents who are fearful that taking a conditional sentence in the community will harm their chances of staying in Canada. Indeed, conditional sentences for minor offences tend to be longer than those behind bars, but if a conditional sentence is over six months, that is a ticket to deportation; a four-month jail term may be sought instead, increasing the cost of punishment and also blocking the individual from community programs.

            While Immigration Minister Jason Kenney crows from atop his deportation perch that this legislation is necessary, those most affected are not “foreign” criminals but rather long-time residents who have made mistakes but, because of their status in Canada, face far greater consequences than those born here, with no right of appeal. They are not alone. The legislation stretches into the Twilight Zone by nailing individuals who are only suspected of having committed an offence outside of Canada – no actual proof of conviction required – with no chance to review the CBSA officer’s decision.

            In a shout-out to CSIS, Canada’s scandal-ridden spy agency, C-43 also requires that individuals applying for citizenship attend a mandatory interrogation, in which they must answer all questions “for the purposes of an investigation,” a significant change from the current requirement, which limits the need of the interviewee to answer questions to those that are “reasonably required.” Canadian citizens can refuse to answer questions from CSIS; but refugees and permanent residents are losing any wiggle room, exposing them to a grilling that, should they fail to cooperate in a broad-ranging questioning that may have nothing to do with their application (a common enough practice as it is), will result in a failure to pass security screening.

            In yet another example of officially legalizing what has been a standard practice of Mr. Kenney’s (such as in the high profile case rejecting entry of British MP George Galloway), the Minister under C-43 can deny entry to Canada to anyone for a period of three years based on undefined “public policy grounds.” The Canadian Bar Association condemns this as an unprecedented Ministerial power that “invites arbitrary application and abuse. It is repugnant to the fundamental principles of Canadian democracy and the freedoms protected in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The lack of accountability and the vague criteria would allow Ministers who may so choose, to deny entry to persons whose views are unpopular or simply objectionable to the government of the day.”

                  While the new law – which passed the Senate committee last week without amendment and is up for third reading later this month – will likely be the subject of litigation, another exercise of this government’s culture of mean-ness ran into rough waters earlier this year when a grass roots campaign was brilliantly organized to end the exploitation of some very vulnerable souls.

                  Readers may recall the high-profile arrest of a group of B.C. workers that was filmed by the reality TV program Border Security, a Force Four “entertainment” enterprise airing on National Geographic TV. While in detention, the arrestees had waivers placed in front of them, demanding they sign away their right to privacy so the show could air their arrests, interrogations, and deportations.

Based on a highly rated Australian show that, according to unclassified memos sent to the Canadian Border services Agency (CBSA) minister, “reinforces main compliance messages,” Border Security was recommended as a good investment for the federal government, especially since the U.S. Customs and Border Protection also pursues “a robust program to engage the film and television industry.” That’s how the CBSA became a television producer.

            Like the 1976 satire on news media, Network, whose corporate executives hire armed groups to film themselves while engaging in bank robberies and other headline-grabbing events in order to boost ratings, Border Security has a built-in incentive to produce dramatic events that will draw viewers. Indeed, the CBSA  calls itself “de facto executive production authorities and, as such, would identify scenarios, sites and storylines, as well as provide active engagement in, as well as oversight and control of, all film shoots.” 

            This is not the first time CBSA has used migrants as fodder for attention. Its notorious “Wanted by the CBSA” website maligned dozens of individuals by posting their pictures and describing them as war criminals, among other disparaging terms. Follow-up to that campaign resulted in a September 11, 2012 CBSA memo from agency Vice President Pierre Sabourin, who advised that his website would “feature a minimum of 35 individuals who will be continuously refreshed and updated with cases from the CBSA immigration warrant inventory.”

            Notably missing in that memo was the human element of wrongly named individuals whose privacy is obliterated, and whose safety is put in serious jeopardy if they are in fact arrested and deported with the “national security” label strapped across their CBSA mug shot. No, they are merely part of the CBSA’s collateral damage inventory, people whose lives have no meaning other than as tools for carrying out their propaganda campaign either on websites or TV programs.  

Like CBC or NBC executives considering their fall lineup of comedies and police dramas, the CBSA was faced with a conundrum, concluding there just aren’t enough alleged threats out there to keep the most-wanted program continually refreshed. As a result, “a proposal for the expansion” of the program’s criteria was said to be forthcoming. Shortly afterward, CBSA decided to both expand the criteria for inclusion on the Most Wanted list while dropping the inventory from 35 to 20. The briefing note does acknowledge, in one of those bureaucratic sops to that archaic notion of presuming innocence, that including the wider net of cases on the website may “be perceived negatively by the public as these individuals have not yet been determined to be inadmissable to Canada.”

            The solution to this lack of inventory likely feeds into Border Security, where CBSA control of story lines could contribute to a greater public involvement in the Most Wanted program, noting “Communications is exploring additional avenues to generate additional public interest and exposure to the ‘Wanted by the CBSA’ program, including pro-active media releases.”

            While the CBSA’s most-wanted program is facing lawsuits and privacy complaints (forcing the agency to perhaps reconsider the use of such inflammatory labels as war criminal), its biggest concession to public pressure was the response to the Deportation is Not Entertainment campaign, which rallied thousands to decry the abuse of migrants for entertainment purposes. The agency will not air footage from the original immigration enforcement raid (though numerous of the detainees have since been deported), and CBSA seems slightly humbled. But the offensive program remains on the air, and efforts to derail it continue.

            Meantime, it is never too late for Canadians to ask themselves just how mean, petty, and disgusting they are prepared to let things get. There’s plenty of opportunities to get involved in grass roots efforts to reverse the tide.

           

             

Troubling new Anti-terror Provisions Pass into Law

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(MuslimLink, May, 2013)

By Matthew Behrens

In what some critics called an opportunistic move, the Harper government swiftly scheduled debate on, and passed, new anti-terrorism provisions (Bill S-7) in the wake of the Boston marathon bombing and the subsequent Canadian arrests of two men alleged to be involved in a plot against VIA Rail. The most controversial of the provisions – involving preventive arrests (detention without charge for up to 3 days, followed by release under draconian bail conditions) and secretive investigative hearings, both part of the original Anti-Terrorism Act in 2001 – expired after five years due to a sunset clause. The federal Liberals, who joined with other opposition parties to reject an attempt to revive the provisions in 2007, voted in favour of S-7 under leader Justin Trudeau.

            The Harper government – whose four previous attempts to bring back the measures had ended because of prorogations and elections – claimed the events in Boston proved Canada needed the new law. But even the National Post’s Matt Gurney editorialized that “it’s hard to see how the Boston attacks say anything about the state of Canada’s anti-terror laws.”

            A range of civil rights groups, including the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group (ICLMG) and CAIR-CAN, declared in a public statement, “Individuals subject to these provisions do not necessarily have to be suspected of committing any crime. It is enough that they are alleged to have information relating to a terrorism offence, or that they are alleged to be associated with another individual suspected of committing (or about to commit) a terrorism offence, or that they are otherwise suspected of potential future involvement in a terrorism offence.”

            Under an investigative hearing, they pointed out, the independence of the judiciary is undermined as it moves from an adversarial to an inquisitorial model, and the judge “becomes an actor at the service of police investigations.” In addition, continued reliance on foreign intelligence could continue the use of information gleaned from torture. Ultimately, they fear that individuals will be forced to testify in court, face detention, or be subject to draconian bail conditions without charges being laid based on secret allegations they will have no access to, an eerie replication of the security certificate process used against refugees and permanent residents.

While Canada has been rapped on the knuckles by the UN and human rights bodies for its practice of torture by proxy of Canadian citizens – sending information to Syrian and Egyptian intelligence with the knowledge that such questioning of Canadians would result in torture, as in the cases of Maher Arar, Ahmad El Maati, Abdullah Almalki, and Muayyed Nureddin – the one-year detention clause serves, essentially, as a similar form of judicially sanctioned punishment for failure to answer certain questions.

            Although such provisions were not directly used in their first five years, the threat of their use by Canadian authorities, as documented in the 2003 ICLMG report In the Shadow of the Law, proved an effective means of instilling fear and compliance in targeted communities. Given the commonplace CSIS practice in Arabic Muslim communities of pressuring individuals to act in the uncomfortable role of spies, refusal to do so could bring about the potential use of an investigative hearing and a year-long detention.

While the legislation states such individuals have the right to a lawyer, the NDP’s Deputy Justice Critic Craig Scott proposed that “anybody who’s not actually under suspicion and is brought in for an investigative hearing really should not have to pay for the costs of their legal representation.” That safety measure was deemed beyond the scope of the bill.

            Also of concern are efforts to further regulate the travel of community members already subject to restrictive measures such as the no-fly list. S-7 appears to open the door to an exit-control system that would monitor the movements of anyone leaving the country. It may prove intimidating for travellers planning to visit family in Lebanon or Pakistan when they learn that they could be jailed for up to 10 years if the person “leaves or attempts to leave Canada, or goes or attempts to go on board a conveyance with the intent to leave Canada, for the purpose of committing an act or omission outside Canada” that would be considered a terrorism offence. Given the overly-broad manner in which Canadian agencies cast suspicion – based on the mosque at which they pray, humanitarian organizations to which they have given charitable donations, or their assumed knowledge of the alleged activities of a mere acquaintance – concerns have been raised about language that borders on the realm of thought-crime, allowing the state to determine why one intends to take a trip or concluding that someone is hiding something from authorities for nefarious reasons. (Notably, the Canadian Border Services Agency is, according to an April, 2013 Canadian Press report, currently looking out for Iranians in Canada who may hold “sinister motives.”)

            During December, 2012 Parliamentary questioning, the NDP’s Craig Scott listed a litany of problems with the legislation,  including: failure to incorporate comprehensive oversight for all Canadian agencies involved in national security activities, a long-ignored recommendation of the Arar Inquiry; overly broad language with respect to what it means to “harbour” someone alleged to be involved in terrorism; and rejection of the idea that immunity from criminal prosecution based on evidence coerced in an investigative hearing should extend to extradition and deportation hearings. Scott was particularly incensed to discover that someone could be placed on restrictive bail conditions “with respect to terrorist activity that is not their own terrorist activity.”  All his concerns were dismissed as beyond the scope of the bill.

            Groups such as CAIR-CAN and ICLMG will continue monitoring the effects of the new law.