International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group
March 27, 2021
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Contest: Enter for a chance to win the Big Data Surveillance book! |
ICLMG 22/03/2020 - ICLMG’s National Coordinator Tim McSorley and Communications & Research Coordinator Anne Dagenais Guertin have contributed a chapter to the recently published book “Big Data Surveillance and Security Intelligence: The Canadian Case”.
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ICLMG's comments on the news that "RCMP breached policy on collection of online information: audit"
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ICLMG 23/03/2021 - Long-awaited audit of RCMP's online surveillance activities finds officers "across the organization" failed to follow the forces own policy, and that there was no guidance on the collection, retention & storage of this information. At the same time, the RCMP has been adopting ever-more powerful and invasive social media surveillance tools leading the Privacy Commissioner to launch an investigation in December 2020.
The report highlights that the failure of officers to follow the forces own policy (& the weaknesses and omissions in the policy itself) exposes the RCMP to liability risks and jeopardizes criminal prosecutions & raises issues "relating to privacy." What it doesn't say is that this is because these failures risk violating our privacy rights and other Charter rights that are undermined by the RCMP's online surveillance activities.
We still need to analyze the full audit, but even a preliminary reading supports the concerns we raised in September when Brian Carney and the Tyee reported on the RCMP's surveillance activities. ICLMG is reiterating our call for a suspension of the RCMP's use of Babel Street & other tools until these concerns are fully addressed. Thanks to Jim Bronskill for his long-standing and excellent reporting on this issue that otherwise gets little attention. Source + Tweet & additional links
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Free City Radio podcast: Tim McSorley on opposing anti-terror laws in Canada |
Soundcould 19/03/2021 - Listen to ICLMG's National Coordinator Tim McSorley on Free City Radio who gives a critical perspective on the use of existing "anti terror" legislation to target white supremacist organizations and far right organizations.
An open letter from the ICLMG recently called on the government to take action against far right racism, but to not entrench existing anti-terror legislation which has historically been used to target anti-colonial movements and progressive movements opposing colonialism and injustice globally. The issue is complex, but this is why I thought that it was important to include this discussion on the program. Read the open letter here. Listen - Écouter
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Hameed: Why Canada must stand clearly behind Hassan Diab |
Ottawa Citizen 22/03/2021 - It’s clear why Canada must unequivocally stop any potential extradition process for Diab to face the “weak” charges that have been reinvoked by the French Court of Appeal.
First, the evidence against Diab has previously been found not to be sufficient to proceed to trial at a Court d’assise by anti-terrorism judges who are specialized in assessing the merit of anti-terrorism prosecutions. So, France had already taken a good long look at its case for more than a decade and decided it was inadequate to go to trial.
Second, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice has previously found the evidence against Diab to be “weak” and in particular, that “ … the prospects of conviction in the context of a fair trial, seem unlikely.” As a corollary to this problem, the political decision to allow an extradition of Diab would be for Canada to subject its citizen to an outcome which offends Canada’s own standards of legal fairness and would also not advance the public interest.
Third, the Court of Appeal’s decision is based on the same old case against Diab. There is no indication that any new information has surfaced that would materially alter, cast doubt upon or suggest that there was some error in fact or in law by the anti-terrorism judges who originally dismissed the charges against Diab. According to Diab’s Canadian lawyer, the appeal “flies in the face of existing evidence.”
And finally, this appeal is the product of a reinvigorated French terrorism system of prosecution that has been strongly criticized as offending human rights standards by Human Rights Watch. In Canada, moreover, we have witnessed since 9/11 that the “Global War on Terror” is a fight without boundaries, that seeks out an enemy, often racially profiled to be a Muslim or Arab man. We also know that this fight against terrorism has irremediably injured many victims – a repeated lesson that that has been the subject of serious judicial rebuke and political embarrassment for Canada. The litmus test for when human rights are shown to matter is when they are defended despite the inconvenience of doing so. For Canada, this means taking a clear, unequivocal and principled position against Diab’s extradition, even when doing so might offend the nuances of diplomatic relations between Canada and France. Justice demands clarity on this question. So does the family of Hassan Diab, his community and some of the preeminent human rights defenders of this country. And, after even a cursory look at this absurd and tragic miscarriage of justice, so should we all. Read more - Lire plus
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Ottawa repatriates child from Syria but leaves mother behind |
The Globe and Mail 15/03/2021 - Human Rights Watch says it is “horrific” that Canada prevented a mother from accompanying her young child who was recently repatriated from a detention camp in northeastern Syria.
Farida Deif, the Canada director of Human Rights Watch, said the four-year-old girl was living in a Kurdish-run camp in northeastern Syria and travelled to Canada over the weekend. She said her repatriation was facilitated by the girl’s aunt, who was assisted by Peter Galbraith, a former U.S. diplomat. The girl’s mother was not allowed to leave. Ms. Deif said Human Rights Watch has been in contact with the mother and “her emotions are still really high.”
“She knows that this is the best thing for her daughter’s future… but she doesn’t understand why families have to be separated,” Ms. Deif said. In 2019, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces detained thousands of people from more than 60 countries, including Canada, who had lived among Islamic State terrorists when the group’s final holdout in the town of Baghouz crumbled. Foreigners were detained in two camps, al-Hol and Roj, and prisons across northeast Syria. It has been a long and complicated dilemma for the Trudeau government – risking political backlash for repatriating possible daesh sympathizers or leaving Canadians to languish in dire conditions.
Human Rights Watch has been urging Canada to repatriate its citizens, saying in a report last year that Ottawa is defying its international obligations by abandoning them. The organization said more than 40 Canadians, over half of which are children, are detained because of their alleged ties to the terrorist group. [...] Ms. Deif said Ottawa’s decision to repatriate the four year old without her mother sends a message to all the other mothers in the camps that they don’t have any hope of leaving unless they relinquish custody of their children. Meanwhile, she said, children in the camps are dying of preventable diseases. Read more - Lire plus
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Cihan Erdal's letter from jail + In Turkey, two Facebook posts are enough to land you in jail |
OpenDemocracy 15/03/2021 - To date, attempts to secure Erdal’s release have not met with success. In September, Carleton’s sociology and anthropology department wrote a letter condemning his detention and imprisonment, as did the Canadian Union of Public Employees, Canadian Association of University Teachers, and Canadian Federation of Students. A petition and support page was launched (the petition has since collected thousands of signatures), and the Scholars at Risk programme became involved. Human rights organisations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch intervened. Numerous articles and op-eds were published, some by Carleton faculty and students. The #FreeCihanErdal hashtag has circulated for months on social media, and there is a Twitter account – @freecihanerdal – devoted exclusively to the campaign.
More recently, the European Parliament explicitly highlighted Erdal’s case when formally condemning Turkey’s ongoing repression of opposition party members, as well as other politicians, activists, lawyers, and political prisoners. Despite these and a host of other efforts, Erdal remains in prison, spending much of his time in isolation, without the COVID-19 vaccine for which most others, in Turkey as elsewhere, continue to wait. Canadian officials have done nothing of substance to further his release. Erdal’s basic human rights – including the right to pursue the education for which he first came to Canada – are violated with each passing day. Prosperous Western countries like Canada have long made a point of touting their countries’ many ‘contributions’ and ‘achievements’ to democracy, human rights, and social pluralism. If they are serious about these commitments, and want them to actually mean something, they are obligated – morally as much as legally – to do what they can to secure Erdal’s immediate release. Below we reproduce Cihan Erdal’s letter to us from his prison cell:
I was detained on 25 September 2020, in Istanbul, where I came to visit my family, to see my nephew's birth, and to undertake fieldwork for my doctoral research. I have been held in Ankara Sincan Prison as a political hostage for five months as part of a case related to the Kobanî protests that took place in October 2014. Today, due to political calculations, my freedom has been seized arbitrarily and unlawfully due to an event for which I have no responsibility. This situation creates the risk that I may lose my doctoral research, which I have been carrying out with great effort for four years, and also my scholarship. With completely unlawful and baseless allegations and political motives, not only my individual freedom and right to education and work but also universal norms and values of law are being usurped.
The European Court of Human Rights’ (ECtHR’s) Grand Chamber decision on Selahattin Demirtaş, dated 22 December 2020, indicates that there is no concrete evidence that can persuade an objective observer that the detention of those in my situation is justified. The decision regarding Mr. Demirtaş demanded the end of such unfair and arbitrary detention, without any need for a new application. The fact that I shared a link to a newspaper that reported the painful cry of a Kurdish father who lost his soldier son in 2015, adding the one-sentence comment that "This war is not our war”, cannot reasonably be presented as "evidence" of "being a supporter of a terrorist organisation”. This is an injustice not only against me and my loved ones, but also against Turkey’s future. It is not a crime to be anti-militarist, or to oppose war anywhere in the world. [...] I would like to thank each and every person whose presence I have felt by my side from the first moment I was detained and who has lent their support with letters, messages, prayers, and good wishes. Read more - Lire plus
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Monia Mazigh: Guantanamo prisoner's story shows legacy of stigmatization from war on terror
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rabble.ca 15/03/2021 - The Mauritanian story has a Canadian chapter that the movie was silent about. In 1999, Slahi came to Canada as a permanent resident and attended the same mosque as Ahmed Ressam, the "Millennium Bomber," who was later convicted by U.S. authorities for planning to bomb the Los Angeles International Airport.
According to Slahi, it was the harassment by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) -- following him, drilling a hole in the wall in an attempt to bug his apartment -- that pushed him to leave Montreal and go back to Mauritania, where his long nightmare with interrogations and imprisonment began. Indeed, U.S. intelligence authorities suspected Slahi of being the mastermind behind the Millennium Bomber -- and their Canadian counterparts comforted them in this suspicion. In a taped phone call, Slahi spoke to a suspected terrorist and used the words "tea" and "sugar." These words were interpreted as code names for explosives and bombs.
"We have found no evidence to show that he was involved in any planned terrorist attack. A lot of the intelligence material was pure guesswork and people were drawing unwarranted conclusions." This is how Mark Fallon, a longtime investigator at the U.S. Naval Criminal Investigative Service, described the case of Slahi. Despite his release from Guantanamo, CSIS never came clean about their complicity in Slahi's ordeal. On the contrary, then CSIS director Ward Elcock recently commented about Slahi: "He portrays himself as innocent, but I'm not sure I share that point of view." Once you're labelled a terrorist, it will stick on your back forever. [...]
This past week, former Guantanamo prisoner Lotfi Bin Ali, originally from Tunisia, died alone in Mauritania. He had a heart condition and a pacemaker that couldn't be replaced because no one paid for it. Bin Ali was released in 2014 from Guantanamo under the Obama presidency. He was never charged. He was one of those who "benefited" from Obama's promise to close the prison. But because he is from a country that didn't want to accept him, because he was a Guantanamo prisoner, because he was deemed "the worst of the worst," a "bad dude," Bin Ali became stateless -- going from Guantanamo to Kazakhstan to Mauritania to the grave. Caught in the war on terror, this man became haunted by his past. It was a past of poverty, petty crimes and a trip to a war zone that labelled him a terrorist. Of the eight Tunisian nationals sent to Guantanamo, none was repatriated to Tunisia. Some were sent to Italy and others to Kazakhstan, like Bin Ali. The same fate awaited the Syrian nationals. After their release, some ended up in Uruguay and others in Cape Verde. Some of the Chinese nationals, from the Uyghur minority, were sent to Slovakia, others to Bermuda and other countries.
These new countries, picked for them by the U.S. administration, are a sort of exile where the former prisoners don't speak the language, are not familiar with the culture and don't have any common points with the local population. Whether Biden fulfills his promise or not; whether members of Congress block his administration's efforts to transfer the prisoners to the U.S. mainland; whether the Republican House members, all military veterans, forcefully coming out against the release of the detainees continue their outcry; the fate of the 40 remaining detainees in Guantanamo can already be predicted: indefinite detention or death. Read more - Lire plus
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Huseyin Celil is the forgotten Canadian detained in China, says his lawyer |
The Toronto Star 15/03/2021 - Huseyin Celil, a Canadian citizen, Uyghur activist and Burlington resident, remains detained in China for almost 15 years now. For the last four years, the 51-year-old has been incommunicado — increasing the desperation of his wife Kamila Telendibaeva and their four children, not knowing if he is alive. They have not heard anything from him since 2017 when China ramped up the internment of Uyghur Muslims in a “sprawling and secretive network of internment camps.” Until then, the family had occasional contact with his family in Xinjiang province. Celil was on China’s radar for advocating for Uyghur Muslims. Even before fleeing to Canada in 2001, he was behind bars in China, on charges of teaching the language, faith and culture of the Uyghurs.
Celil was arrested in March 2006, when he and the family went to Uzbekistan to visit his wife’s family. China asked the Uzbek government to arrest and hand him over. Canada was aware but never intervened before he was handed over to the Chinese. Despite the arrest, his unfair trial and sentence, and lack of information about him, there is a lull in Canada about Celil. There is virtually no mention of him by the government or in the local press. In fact, early last year, Dominic Barton, the Canadian ambassador to China, embarrassingly stated that he could not meet Celil (in prison), because he was not a Canadian citizen. The minister of foreign affairs at the time, François-Philippe Champagne, had to correct the fact and a few days later Barton apologized to the family for the mistake.
When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and U.S. President Joe Biden spoke late February, Biden made a pledge to help free two Canadians, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, imprisoned in China. “You know we’re going to work together until we get their safe return,” Biden stated. But no mention of Huseyin Celil. Canadian nationals Kovrig and Spavor were detained in China in an apparent act of retaliation after Canada arrested Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou in December 2018 on U.S. charges of violating sanctions on Iran.
In a followup discussion with the U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Foreign Affairs Minister Marc Garneau also brought up the issue of Kovrig and Spavor. Again, no mention of Celil. In February, the House of Commons passed a non-binding resolution, accusing the Chinese government of committing genocide against Uyghurs in its western Xinjiang region as per the 1948 UN Genocide Convention. The United States also recognizes China’s actions as genocide. A movement against the oppression of Uyghurs is gaining some traction. Will this help Huseyin Celil? Will Ottawa take up his case or is he a second-class citizen? The Liberal government needs to answer these questions. Read more - Lire plus
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Chinese cyber espionage operation targeted Canadian Uyghurs, says Facebook |
CBC News 24/03/2021 - Members of Canada's Uyghur community have been targeted by a sophisticated cyber espionage campaign that has been trying to infect devices with malware to permit surveillance, Facebook said today. Facebook said the campaign used its platform to target hundreds of Uyghur activists, journalists and dissidents in several countries with posts designed to take them to other websites harbouring malware. The company said it cannot tell how many people were tricked into clicking on links that infected their mobile phones or computers.
Facebook Canada said it will notify "fewer than 20" people in Canada who were targeted.
The company said it traced the malware used by the hackers — known as Earth Empusa or Evil Eye — to two companies in China. Facebook said it was not able to determine whether the Chinese government was involved. "This group used various cyber espionage tactics to identify its targets and infect their devices with malware to enable surveillance," wrote Mike Dvilyanski — head of cyber espionage investigations for Facebook — and the company's head of security policy Nathaniel Gleicher in a media statement. "This activity had the hallmarks of a well resourced and persistent operation, while obfuscating who's behind it." Facebook said the operation targeted Uyghurs from China's Xinjiang province living in Canada, the United States, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Syria, Australia and other countries.
Facebook said the operation used a variety of techniques to reach the people they were targeting. The company said the hackers set up Facebook accounts where they posed as "journalists, students, human rights advocates or members of the Uyghur community to build trust with people they targeted and trick them into clicking on malicious links."
They also set up malicious websites that looked like popular Uyghur or Turkish news sites and launched "watering hole attacks" to infect visitors to legitimate websites, Facebook said. Facebook said the hackers also set up fake third party stores with Uyghur-themed apps that contained malware. They included a keyboard app, a prayer app and a dictionary app. Read more - Lire plus
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Tech-enabled 'terror capitalism' is spreading worldwide. The surveillance regimes must be stopped |
The Guardian 2020 - When Gulzira Aeulkhan finally fled China for Kazakhstan early last year, she still suffered debilitating headaches and nausea. She didn’t know if this was a result of the guards at an internment camp hitting her in the head with an electric baton for spending more than two minutes on the toilet, or from the enforced starvation diet. Maybe it was simply the horror she had witnessed – the sounds of women screaming when they were beaten, their silence when they returned to the cell.
Like an estimated 1.5 million other Turkic Muslims, Gulzira had been interned in a “re-education camp” in north-west China. After discovering that she had watched a Turkish TV show in which some of the actors wore hijabs, Chinese police had accused her of “extremism” and said she was “infected by the virus” of Islamism. They predicted it would lead her to commit acts of terrorism, so they locked her away. Gulzira’s detention lasted for more than a year. She was released in October 2018, only to be told that she had been assigned to work in a glove factory near the camp. After long hours behind a sewing machine, Gulzira was kept in a dormitory surrounded by security checkpoints that used facial-recognition technology to track her movements and scraped data from her smartphone, which she was required to carry at all times. She was paid $50 a month, roughly one-sixth of the legal minimum wage in the region.
Gulzira was one of the millions of targets of a global phenomenon we call “terror capitalism”. Terror capitalism justifies the exploitation of subjugated populations by defining them as potential terrorists or security threats. It primarily generates profits in three interconnected ways. First, lucrative state contracts are given to private corporations to build and deploy policing technologies that surveil and manage target groups. Then, using the vast amounts of biometric and social media data extracted from those groups, the private companies improve their technologies and sell retail versions of them to other states and institutions, such as schools. Finally, all this turns the target groups into a ready source of cheap labor – either through direct coercion or indirectly through stigma.
The people being targeted by terror capitalism include entire stateless groups, such as ethnic Bengalis in north-east India and Palestinian Arabs. They are almost always from minority or refugee populations, especially Muslim ones. While the Chinese system is unique in terms of its scale and the depth of its cruelty, terror capitalism is an American invention, and it has taken root around the world. [...] In China, the terror capitalism system targets many of the more than 15 million Uighurs and other Turkic Muslims in the region. Coercing these people into low-wage work means fewer Chinese jobs move to Vietnam and Bangladesh. The companies that have developed China’s policing technologies are now selling them to police units and regional governments in Zimbabwe, Dubai, Kuala Lumpur, the Philippines and many other locations.
Meanwhile, across Europe and North America, terror-capital surveillance tools have placed hundreds of thousands of Muslims on watchlists as part of Countering Violent Extremism programs. In the United States, immigration control measures taken in the aftermath of 9/11 have paved the way for a system that monitors and controls asylum seekers who enter the country at the southern border. These systems use GPS tracking to control people in ways that are similar to the surveillance system in north-west China. After being held in a US detention center, a Pakistani asylum seeker named Asma was required to wear a GPS-enabled ankle monitor. (More than 32,000 foreign nationals in the US have to do the same.) Asma told us how the stigma associated with her ankle monitor pushed her into low-paid work. A food-truck owner in Austin, Texas, gave her a job because, he told her, the customers couldn’t see the monitor if she stayed behind the counter in the truck. But when the monitor started blaring, “Recharge battery! Battery low! Recharge battery! Battery low!” during her shift one day, her boss fired her. A year after Asma obtained asylum, her ankle is covered with scars from the monitor and she often feels phantom vibrations in her leg.
Ankle monitors are still prevalent, but in the past two years, US asylum seekers have also increasingly been made to submit to weekly “biometric check-ins”, through an app called SmartLink, which they are made to install on their phones. They have to keep their phones charged and GPS active at all times. Lorena, an asylum seeker who has fled violence in Guatemala, was initially relieved that her ankle monitor was removed, until she was required to give Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (Ice) access to her email account, which connects to her social media accounts. The SmartLink app is now being used to control 21,712 immigrants. It was developed by BI Incorporated, a company that initially designed GPS ankle monitors. BI is now a subsidiary of Geo Group, one of the major prison and detention companies that have profited from a dramatic expansion of prisoner and detained populations in the US over the past four decades. The app is also supported by the nationwide telecom providers Sprint and Verizon, with movement tracking provided by Google Maps.
The rationale for these new regimes of technological surveillance and control emerged directly from the “global war on terror” that the George W Bush administration declared in 2001. So too did early versions of many of the policing technologies now being used around the world. The new paradigm began in Iraq, where counter-insurgent war demanded a suspension of civil and human rights that allowed the US army to identify and track the movements, online activities, networks, and states of mind of masses of Iraqis. China eventually followed suit, with Xi Jinping justifying the technological subjugation of the country’s Muslims by declaring the “people’s war on terror” in 2014. Read more - Lire plus
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Suspects could be held for up to 2 years under Sri Lanka's anti-terror laws |
Straits Times 13/03/2021 - The Sri Lankan authorities will be given sweeping powers to detain people suspected of hate crimes for up to two years, the government announced on Saturday (March 13), for "deradicalisation" under controversial anti-terror laws. The new regulations allow the detention for 24 months of anyone suspected of causing "acts of violence or religious, racial or communal disharmony or feelings of ill will or hostility between different communities" at "re-integration centres".
The rules, effective on Friday, have been set up under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), which both local and international rights groups have repeatedly asked Colombo to repeal. Sri Lanka's previous government, which was defeated at elections in 2019, had pledged to repeal the PTA after admitting that it was draconian and seriously undermined individual freedoms, but failed to do so. Read more - Lire plus
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Lebanon: Torture of Syrian refugees arbitrarily detained on counter-terror charges |
Amnesty International 23/03/2021 - Lebanese security forces have committed shocking violations against Syrian refugees who have been arrested, often arbitrarily, on terrorism-related charges, employing some of the same atrocious torture techniques that are used in Syria’s most notorious prisons, said Amnesty International in a damning new report published today.
“This report offers a snapshot of the Lebanese authorities’ cruel, abusive and discriminatory treatment of Syrian refugees detained on suspicion of terrorism-related charges. In many cases refugees who escaped war, ruthless repression and widespread torture have found themselves arbitrarily detained and held incommunicado in Lebanon, where they face many of the same horrors employed in Syrian prisons,” said Marie Forestier, Researcher on Refugee and Migrants Rights at Amnesty International.
“There is no question that members of armed groups responsible for human rights abuses must be held accountable for their actions, but the Lebanese authorities’ flagrant violation of Syrian refugees’ right to due process has made a mockery of justice. At every stage, from arrest through to interrogation, detention and prosecution in unfair trials, the Lebanese authorities have utterly disregarded international human rights law.”
The report documents the cases of 26 Syrian refugees, including four children, detained in Lebanon on terrorism-related charges between 2014-2021. It is based on interviews with former and current detainees, lawyers and an examination of legal documents. Since 2011 hundreds of Syrian refugees, have been detained in Lebanon, often arbitrarily on trumped-up terror-related charges, or at times in relation to their membership of armed groups. Read more - Lire plus
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Right to protest: UK's new policing bill is a threat to democracy |
The New Federalist 23/03/2021 - The controversial Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill includes plans to “strengthen police powers to tackle non-violent protests that have a significant disruptive effect on the public or on access to Parliament”. This means that police will have more power to arrest protestors if they think they are causing significant disruption. Additionally, the Bill states that there will be an increase in the maximum prison sentence received for criminal damage to memorials, from 3 months to 10 years. This is a result of the toppling of the Edward Colston statue during BLM protests last July.
The new policing bill essentially uses the Public Order Act 1986 which gives police powers to restrict protests if they are believed to cause serious disruption, damage and disorder. However now there has been a new caveat: noise. If a protest is considered to be too noisy or cause “serious annoyance,” then police can shut it down - quite literally silencing the voices of people who are speaking out. Additionally the bill will restrict the ability to protest outside Parliament Square and the police will be able to stop any protests that restrict vehicle access - presumably a reaction to protestors frequently blocking Westminster Bridge. Home Secretary Priti Patel has been clear about her opinions on protests. She has previously said that the Black Lives Matter protests were “dreadful”, and branded environmental group Extinction Rebellion as “eco-crusaders turned criminals” who “[undermine] a functioning society” at a police conference. It is therefore unsurprising that she advocates for the new bill, which gives the Home Secretary more power to decide whether a protest is lawful or not.
The bill was rushed through parliament on 15th March after a vigil to remember Sarah Everard, who was murdered as she walked home, resulted in the police arresting grievers, and a protest against gendered violence happened outside parliament square on the Sunday. This was a slap in the face to activists, who had been protesting against the very powers the police possess, and their use of violence to uphold them. Labour leader Keir Starmer said the bill contained “next to nothing” about women’s safety, and backtracked on his original plan to abstain from voting to voting against it. Conservative former Prime Minister Theresa May even urged parliament to reconsider the bill, and said: “I would urge the Government to consider carefully the need to walk a fine line between being popular and populist. Our freedoms depend on it.” Despite opposition on both sides the bill passed the second reading on 16th March by 359 votes to 263. Read more - Lire plus
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NEW Arbitrary Detention & Academic Freedom: The Case of Cihan Erdal
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March 29, 2021 3:00 PM-4:30 PM ET
The detention of Carleton Sociology PhD student Cihan Erdal (along with dozens of others) on September 25, 2020 in Istanbul for reposting two public (and legal) posts on his Facebook page more than 5 years ago has focused attention for many on the extensive use of arbitrary detention in Turkey and around the world and its use to muzzle academic inquiry. Online on zoom.
Speakers: Mustafa Bahran, Scholar at Risk, Visiting Prof of Physics, Carleton
Hilary Homes, Amnesty International
Umut Özsu, Law Professor, Carleton
Paul Champ, Human Rights Lawyer
Ömer Ongun, partner of Cihan Erdal
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NEW Protect freedom to protest in the UK!
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The UK government is planning to make important changes to the law that will restrict the right to protest when lockdown restrictions ease. We oppose this new planned legislation and instead demand that the National Police Chiefs Council adopts a new, eleven-point Charter for Freedom of Assembly Rights – or explain why they refuse to do so.
Support the campaign by clicking below, signing and sharing the petition. If you’re part of a group or organisation, you can contact info[at]netpol.org to add your name.
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NEW Environmental defenders are not terrorists!
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We, the undersigned environmental and climate activists from the Philippines and the international community, thus urge Filipino public authorities to undertake preventive interventions against the continued red-tagging and the possible escalation of reprisals against environmental defenders.
We urge legislators to declare red-tagging as a crime punishable by law for curtailing constitutionally-guaranteed free speech and other civil liberties.
Finally, we urge the Supreme Court to take action on the 37 pending legal actions filed by various groups and sectors to junk the authoritarian Anti-Terrorism Law.
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NEW Call on China to allow reunion of Uyghur families
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Many Uyghur parents overseas have had to leave one or more children in the care of family members in Xinjiang. Some parents have since learned their children were taken to state-run “orphan camps” or boarding schools after the relatives taking care of them had been detained.
The mass detention campaign in Xinjiang has prevented Uyghur parents from returning to China to take care of their children themselves.
Sign the petition and call on China's President to ensure that children are allowed to leave China to be reunited as promptly as possible with their parents and siblings already living abroad, if that is preferred by them.
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Stop arms shipments to Saudi Arabia now! |
Sign this parliamentary petition to call upon the Government of Canada to:
1) Halt arms shipments to Saudi Arabia immediately and ensure that any future arms transfers fully comply with Canada’s int'l legal obligations under the UN Arms Trade Treaty;
2) Participate in international efforts to bring an immediate end to the deliberate Saudi-led attacks on civilians which constitute war crimes;
3) Demand and support international partners in lifting the siege on Sana’a Airport and Hudaydah Port in order to deliver humanitarian assistance.
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Tell Transport Minister to cancel Canada's drone contract now! |
Canada’s Transportation Ministry recently approved a $36M contract for drone technology from Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest weapons company. The money will purchase a “civilian” version of Elbit’s lethal military drone, the same one which was used to kill civilians during Israel’s assault on Gaza in 2014.
Click below to message the Transport Minister, the Prime Minister, federal political leaders, and your MP.
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Two recent court decisions revealed the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS) engaged in potentially illegal activities and lied to the courts. This is utterly unacceptable, especially given that this is not the first time these serious problems have been raised. CSIS cannot be allowed to act as though they are above the law.
Send a message to Public Safety Minister Bill Blair demanding that he take immediate action to put an end to this abuse of power and hold those CSIS officers involved accountable. Your message will also be sent to your MP and to Minister of Justice David Lametti.
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Read our full statement on the issue here for more information. Please share it on:
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Protect Encryption in Canada |
Our ability to use the Internet safely, securely and privately is under threat. Canada wants to create 'back doors' into encryption like some of our partner countries in the Five Eyes Alliance have already done. This weakens Internet safety for all of us. If we don’t act, Canada could be next. We need a policy that explicitly protects our right to encryption. |
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Repatriate Canadian Children from Syria |
Official Parliamentary petition to the Canadian government:
We, the undersigned citizens of Canada , call upon the Government of Canada to immediately repatriate the 25 innocent Canadian children living in inhumane conditions in the camps of northeast Syria.
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Reject Dr. Carvin's Offensive Actions and Promote Anti-Racism |
On September 3, 2020, Dr. Stephanie Carvin, Assistant Professor at Norman Paterson School of International Affairs (NPSIA) at Carleton University, proudly shared on her Twitter account gruesome depictions of killings of Muslim and Brown bodies as terrorists on cakes. As members and allies of the Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour (BIPOC) community, we are denouncing her actions and we are calling on Carleton University and NPSIA to publicly denounce Dr. Carvin's actions and to commit to an anti-racist environment by offering the necessary training and resources to its faculty members. |
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#FreeCihanErdal #LiberezCihanErdal |
Cihan Erdal, a queer youth activist and a PhD Candidate in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Carleton University, was detained in Istanbul, Turkey on September 25, 2020 along with 81 other politicians, academics and activists.
We call on Canadian and Turkish authorities to take urgent action and demand Cihan’s immediate release and Cihan’s safe return to Canada!
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Pardon Edward Snowden for exposing the government's illegal surveillance |
Edward Snowden exposed the U.S. government’s illegal mass surveillance programs, along with shocking collusion between large technology companies and spy agencies. He risked everything to blow the whistle and help protect all of our basic human rights. He’s been in exile for long enough. It’s time to bring him home. Everyone from the ACLU to Senator Rand Paul has spoken out in support of the embattled whistleblower, and now even President Trump has indicated his potential support for a pardon. The administration is testing the waters. If we show overwhelming support to #PardonSnowden right now, we could finally get justice for him, and set a precedent that protects whistleblowers, journalists, and defenders of human rights in the future.
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Reunite Ayub, Khalil, and Salahidin with their families |
Ayub Mohammed, Salahidin Abdulahad, and Khalil Mamut are three Uyghur men who left China after childhoods of discrimination, persecution, and hopelessness.
They were sold by Pakistani bounty hunters to the US military in 2001 and taken with 19 other Uyghurs to Guantanamo Bay. Despite being exonerated as early as 2003, they were kept in Guantanamo for years.
Now in forced exile - Ayub in Albania, and Salahidin and Khalil in Bermuda - their families are here in Canada; and their kids growing up without their fathers.
Despite posing no threat to Canadian national security, these men have been waiting over five years to reunite with their families and find a safe place to live.
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China: Free Canadian Huseyin Celil |
The Chinese authorities accused Huseyin of offences related to his activities in support of Uighur rights. They held Huseyin in a secret place. They gave him no access to a lawyer, to his family, or to Canadian officials. They threatened him and forced him to sign a confession. They refused to recognize Huseyin’s status as a Canadian citizen, and they did not allow Canadian officials to attend his trial. It was not conducted fairly, and resulted in a sentence of life in prison in China. His life sentence was reduced to 20 years in February 2016. Huseyin has spent much of his time in solitary confinement. He lacks healthy food and is in poor health. Kamila needs her husband, and the boys need their father back. |
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Canada must act to end Islamophobia in Xinjiang, China |
There is credible evidence that up to one million Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other mainly Muslim groups in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region are being detained in secret internment camps. Detainees are brainwashed, tortured and are forced to renounce their religion and culture.
And send a message to Chrystia Freeland demanding that Canada actively support an independent and unrestricted international fact-finding initiative to Xinjiang.
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Stop CSIS from targeting everyday citizens & community groups |
A recent report revealed that CSIS, Canada’s spy agency, collected over 8,000 pages of documents, spying on citizens like you, people who exercise their democratic rights by attending a community meeting at a local church or taking peaceful action for what they believe in. And CSIS shared this info with Big Oil corporations. Sign this petition to tell the govt to stop using taxpayer money to unconstitutionally spy on Canadians part of peaceful community groups. |
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All-in-one action page: Stop Mohamed Harkat's Deportation to Torture
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Call PM Trudeau, write a letter to Public Safety Minister & your MP, and sign Sophie Harkat's petition to stop the deportation of Moe Harkat.
If sent back to Algeria, Moe faces detention, torture and death.
No one should be deported to torture. Ever.
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Defund the police & the RCMP |
More and more people are calling on their city councils to reduce and eliminate budgets for policing. We are no longer going to pay for police to harm our communities. These funds can be re-directed to support the recovery and provide much need improvements to public housing, transit, and food security programs among other basic needs. Please use this e-mail tool to tell your City Councillor to act now to defund the police in your communities. Together we keep each other safe.
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Philippines: Junk the terror bill and uphold human rights! |
The Anti-Terrorism bill is a clear and direct attack against our academic freedom, right to organize, and freedom of expression to air out our grievances towards the inefficiencies and deficiencies of the government's mandate to serve its people through government services.
This positions the government to silence the any dissenter or organizer and given the rich history of harassment of law enforcement agencies and military personnel, harassment and terror-tagging has been a step further for even more killings and silencing.
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Call on Justin Trudeau to ensure justice for Abousfian Abdelrazik |
In September 2003, Canadian citizen Abousfian Abdelrazik was arrested in Sudan, while he was back in the country visiting his ailing mother. Over the next three years he was imprisoned for nearly 20 months and was held under house arrest for 12 months. He was denied a lawyer, and was never charged or brought before a judge. During that time he was badly tortured in three different prisons.
Not only did Canada fail to take steps to protect him, CSIS officials frequently obstructed efforts to secure his release.
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Your phone is not safe at the border |
Canada’s border agents can search your phone and laptop at borders and airports, including looking through your private photos, personal messages, and call history.
These ‘digital strip searches’ are allowed because our laws are incredibly out of date. But politicians are refusing to update them for our digital age.
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MORE NEWS - AUTRES NOUVELLES |
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Anti-terror laws
Législation antiterroriste
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Autonomous weapons
Armes autonomes
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Criminalization of dissent
Criminalisation de la dissidence
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Freedom of expression
Liberté d'expression
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Surveillance, Biometrics & Privacy
Surveillance, biométrie et vie privée
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Transparency
Transparence
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From July to December 2020 |
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ICLMG - 2020 has been BUSY! Click below to see what we’ve accomplished in the second half of 2020, but first here is our plan for the next year.
In 2021, we will continue fighting:
- against facial recognition technology, governments' attacks on encryption, and online mass surveillance
- for a review mechanism for the Canada Border Services Agency
- to abolish security certificates and end deportation to torture
- to repeal of the Canadian No Fly List
- for justice for Hassan Diab & the reform of the Extradition Act
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Les opinions exprimées ne reflètent pas nécessairement les positions de la CSILC - The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the positions of ICLMG. |
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THANK YOU
to our amazing supporters!
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We would like to thank all our member organizations, and the hundreds of people who have supported us over the years, including on Patreon! As a reward, we are listing below our patrons who give $10 or more per month (and wanted to be listed) directly in the News Digest. Without all of you, our work wouldn't be possible!
Mary Ann Higgs
Kevin Malseed
Brian Murphy
Colin Stuart
Bob Thomson
James Turk
John & Rosemary Williams
Jo Wood
The late Bob Stevenson
Nous tenons à remercier nos organisations membres ainsi que les centaines de personnes qui ont soutenu notre travail à travers les années, y compris sur Patreon! En récompense, nous nommons ci-dessus nos mécènes qui donnent 10$ ou plus par mois et voulaient être mentionné.es directement dans la Revue de l'actualité. Sans vous tous et toutes, notre travail ne serait pas possible!
Merci!
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