International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group
May 17, 2019
Bill C-59: Senate committee misses opportunity to protect rights. Now Senate as a whole must act.
ICLMG 13/05/2019 - Bill C-59 was passed by committee without substantial amendment today, despite calls from leading civil liberties and human rights groups, and hundreds of letters from the public.

“National security concerns cannot come at the cost of privacy, free expression, due process and government transparency,” said Tim McSorley, national coordinator of the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group. “There was a missed opportunity today to address the most egregious aspects of this bill.”

The Liberal government has touted Bill C-59 as being a “fix” for the previous government’s controversial Bill C-51 (the Anti-terrorism Act, 2015). While it brings some important improvements, Bill C-59:
  • Continues to allow CSIS to engage in secret and dangerous threat disruption powers;
  • Maintains the secretive No Fly List, which violates due process and has never been proven to be effective;
  • Grants sweeping new surveillance powers to both the CSE and CSIS, including the collection of metadata, vaguely defined “publicly available information,” and the incredibly broad category of “unselected information” (which essentially means any information)
  • Fails to prohibit the use and sharing, in all circumstances, of information linked to mistreatment and torture;
  • Will allow the CSE to engage in broad and powerful new “active cyber operations” with little oversight, creating the risk of retaliation as well as attacks from leaked new cyber-weapons.

The provisions adopted by the committee today to reduce the number of years before review of Bill C-59, and which allow the Intelligence Commissioner to suggest conditions on surveillance authorizations, are welcome, but are severely insufficient.

The committee also had the opportunity to improve on the strongest part of the bill: new national security review and oversight bodies. The ICLMG has welcomed the proposed National Security and Intelligence Review Agency (NSIRA), as well as the Intelligence Commissioner. Greater transparency, independence and the ability to make binding recommendations, as well as offer redress for complainants when abuse is found, though, are essential to ensure both accountability and that the public have faith in the review and oversight system being created.

Even if review and oversight were improved, though, it still would not make up for bad laws, warns the ICLMG. “The NSIRA and the Intelligence Commissioner will only be able to enforce the rules set out in Bill C-59. With new powers of surveillance and data collection, ongoing secretive activities, and the real threat to due process, free expression and privacy, these bodies risk simply becoming rubber stamps,” said McSorley.

The bill will now return to the full Senate for debate and vote at third reading. The ICLMG is urging senators to use this last opportunity to take a strong position in defending civil liberties and human rights in Canada and internationally, all while protecting the safety of people in Canada and abroad. Read more + Share on Facebook + Share on Twitter



Take action: Call on the Senate to fix Bill C-59 and protect our rights!
ICLMG 07/05/2019 - Why fight to fix Bill C-59?

- Conservative-era issues brought in with Bill C-51 have not been fixed, including: CSIS's dangerous and secret threat disruption powers; overly-broad information sharing rules that infringe on privacy and free expression; the secretive No Fly List, which undermines due process, among other fundamental rights.

- The new National Security and Intelligence Review Agency and Intelligence Commissioner are good developments for accountability, but must be strengthened.

- Broad new data collection powers for CSIS and the CSE need to be restricted - especially the collection of "publicly available information" and "unselected information", meaning any information basically - to avoid new forms of mass surveillance.

- New CSIS powers will grant agents or designated individuals immunity for committing crimes in the line of their work.

- The CSE's new "active" cyber powers give it the power to engage in secret, pre-emptive cyber attacks with little oversight and the potential for retaliation and serious repercussions for people in Canada .


As Animal Rights Activists Push Legal Boundaries, Canada Considers What Makes a Terrorist
The Intercept 12/05/2019 - In 2013, Moskaluk, by then an RCMP media spokesperson, was diagnosed with stage 4 kidney cancer. Told that he might have only months to live, Moskaluk began a strict plant-based diet. A year later, the cancer had gone into remission. He was featured in “Eating You Alive,” a 2016 documentary about using a vegan diet to cure disease, and it was a short step from there to activism. Moskaluk began attending Okanagan Animal Save vigils with Soranno.

Moskaluk soon became infected with a creeping discomfort with the way he noticed police interacting with industry. It started when he stumbled upon a January 20 18 article in the Ontario Hog Farmer, titled “Extremist Tactics, and Farmers’ Rights.” The piece described a presentation given by Ontario Provincial Police Officer Lisa Kinnear at the Ontario Pork Congress’s annual meeting. Kinnear worked with the police department’s hate crimes unit and said she’d spent nine years monitoring animal rights activists.

Without citing a source, the article said that animal rights “extremism” had been designated as “left-wing terrorism.” Kinnear warned the hog farmers that things would only get worse. “The worst mistake we can make is to underestimate extremists,” she said, adding, “You may have to start a different way of thinking and prepare yourself for the things that are going to happen.” “I was appalled as to what I was reading,” Moskaluk said. He complained to the Ontario police department and was assured that Kinnear would no longer be giving such presentations. The Ontario Provincial Police declined to respond to The Intercept’s requests for comment in time for publication. Read more - Lire plus
Q&A: Omar Khadr and Canadian law
The Gateway 13/05/2019 - Omar Khadr presented a difficult situation to Canadian law and citizens of this country. At the age of 15, Khadr was detained in Guantanamo Bay by the United States for ten years, where he faced several criminal charges for alleged actions in Afghanistan. A ruling in March stated that Omar Khadr’s war crimes sentence has been completed. The Gateway spoke to Janice Williamson, an English professor at the University of Alberta — who was present in court during the ruling — about the decision and her book regarding Khadr’s case: Omar Khadr, Oh Canada. [...]

What implications do you think this ruling has for Canada on a broader cultural level?

An important part of this is when Khadr was 15 and captured in Afghanistan, he’d been sent to be a translator to a suspected terrorist group and the Americans bombed this group. He survived and a few months later he was taken to Guantanamo. The first thing the Canadians did was send a note to the Americans saying Khadr needs to be treated in a special way because he’s a youth, due to there being international and domestic law saying youths have to be treated differently. When a Canadian official went to interrogate Khadr, he’d been told that Khadr had first been sleep deprived. That is against the United Nations convention on torture. We should not have been participating in that. All of those early actions of the Canadian government are quite reprehensible. This ruling reminded us of that first moment that people don’t know about. I think the justice that was served in this recent decision was returning us to that first moment when we knew that his imprisonment simply should not have proceeded the way it did.

What do you think are the appropriate next steps for the Canadian government to take in terms of policies that affect Khadr or Islamophobia as a whole?

I think that people are now saying that we should have a category of terrorists that takes into account white nationalism. In some ways, that would be useful, because it would allow for the public to understand the range of othering that occurs by objectifying and dehumanizing people. I also think that government leaders speaking out very actively in an engaged way about this issue is really important. Harper’s policies were clearly Islamophobic. He called Muslims “Islamists.” I think Andrew Scheer playing dog whistle with Islamophobes is very dangerous too, so leaders need to call this out. It takes a very active and engaged political leadership to speak out about these things. Read more - Lire plus
Three former Guantanamo prisoners were cleared by the U.S. — but will Ottawa let them join their Canadian wives?
The National Post 07/05/2019 - It’s been more than a decade since U.S. authorities freed Ayub Mohammed from their Cuban prison, having decided he was not, after all, an “enemy combatant.” In that time the ethnic Uyghur from China has earned a business degree from the New York University of Tirana in Albania — his home since 2006 — met online and married a Canadian woman, and had three children, all of whom are Canadian citizens. Now he wants to live with them in Montreal.

But Mohammed’s four-year ordeal at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and the radioactive stigma that comes with it continue to haunt him. The Federal Court of Canada recently ordered a new hearing for the 36-year-old after immigration officials denied his request for permanent resident status here. Disagreeing with those George W. Bush administration officials, a visa officer concluded he was a member of an obscure terrorist organization, and thus inadmissible. “I live with that everyday, that stain of having been a detainee at Guantanamo Bay,” Mohammed said in an interview from Tirana. “Coming out of Guantanamo, I went into another kind of prison. Everywhere I go, I don’t have the documentation, I don’t have the freedom to move around and once people hear about my background, they stay away…. After they hear about my past, they just disappear.”

The Federal Court ruled Mohammed was denied procedural fairness in the way his visa request was handled, but a more basic question is whether there is any reason to brand him an extremist. It is a question that could have an impact on two other Uyghur men who were held at Guantanamo. Now living in Bermuda, they also married Uyghur-Canadian refugees and have applied to join them in this country. Khalil Mamut and Salahadin Abdulahad were among four Uyghur detainees accepted by the island in 2009 — after the Americans re-classified them as non-combatants.

As they await a response from Ottawa, the American lawyers who fought to get the Uyghurs released from Guantanamo say they’re perplexed at the initial Canadian decision. “With absolute certainty, Ayub is not and never was a member of a terrorist organization,” said Wells Dixon, attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights. “I am shocked and appalled that Canada would deny someone like Ayub refuge on the basis that he was a terrorist.” Even Randall Schriver, a senior State Department official in the Bush administration — and now Donald Trump’s assistant secretary of defence — told a congressional committee in 2009 the Uyghurs’ imprisonment was “a tragic error.”

As the three Uyghurs try to get into Canada, meanwhile, international concern is growing about China’s oppression of the Muslim minority group, which includes building vast “re-education” camps and pervasive surveillance in the country’s Xinjiang province. Abdulahad says he has little ill feeling toward the Americans who held him for seven years, and believes what China is doing to the Uyghurs is far worse than anything that happened at Guantanamo Bay. He said three of his brothers are locked in “concentration camps,” while he’s been unable to contact his parents since 2015. “I have no idea if they are dead or alive.”

The ex-Guantanamo inmates say they fled their homes because of such persecution, only to be captured in neighbouring Pakistan at the height of the war on terror. Their strange tale reflects both the turbulent times after 9/11 and the West’s complicated relationship with China. Mohammed, Abdulahad, Memut and 19 others were captured in Pakistan in 2001 after trekking there from Afghanistan, lured into a trap by villagers eager to claim hefty bounties the Americans offered for suspected terrorists. Read more - Lire plus
I’ve Been to Guantanamo. It’s No Place for Kids.
ACLU 13/05/2019 - Over the last year, the country has been shocked by reports of the inhumane treatment of children and families in immigrant detention. Now, the Trump administration appears to be increasing the scope and severity of its immigrant detention scheme by potentially detaining immigrants at Guantanamo Bay. News broke last week that the Defense Department awarded a $23 million dollar contract to construct a “Contingency Mass Migration Complex” at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Station with capacity to detain 13,000 people and built to last “ a minimum of 50 years .” In April, we also learned that the Department of Homeland Security considered sending migrant children to an old “dormitory facility” at Guantanamo. [...]

But sending kids to Guantanamo is uniquely dangerous. It’s easy to imagine the Defense Department restricting or totally denying journalists, lawyers, and human rights groups access to monitor or investigate, enabling officials to commits abuses with little risk of being discovered. Members of Congress, who’ve already been refused access to visit detention facilities on the mainland, may have little or no ability to conduct effective oversight at Guantanamo. Kids sent to Guantanamo might be put in expedited removal proceedings (deported without the opportunity see a judge) that we’ve explained “ invite, and guarantee, error .” The Trump administration might argue they have no rights at Guantanamo at all. Bottom line: there’s a serious risk the government could deny immigrants sent to Guantanamo a real opportunity to seek protection from return to persecution or torture—contradicting Congress’ intent, and their rights under US and international law.

Guantanamo’s longer history helps explain why. In the 1990s, the U.S. Coast Guard intercepted tens of thousands of people from Haiti and Cuba fleeing violence and human rights violations at sea. More than 45,000 people were taken to Guantanamo and held in tent cities. In a striking parallel to today, hundreds of children were separated from their families, kept in inhumane conditions , and authorities had trouble keeping track of people in family units. Thousands of Haitian nationals were returned to Haiti despite having credible fears of persecution, forcing parents to leave their children behind.
By 1995 there were still more than 200 unaccompanied kids from Haiti languishing at Guantanamo, despite having relatives and other sponsors in the U.S. ready to welcome them. “The kids are isolated and fearful,” columnist Bob Herbert wrote. “They live in tents that tend to leak when it rains. They are ill-clothed (some do not even have shoes) and receive inadequate medical attention. Many of the youngsters are depressed and some have attempted suicide.”

Congress should not let the Trump administration repeat this terrible history. It should reject the White House’s $3.7 billion request for custody operations, and demand the administration consider alternatives to detention that have proven to be more cost-effective and humane. There’s a horrific American tradition of holding people at Guantanamo unlawfully. It’s long past time we bring it to an end and close Guantanamo for good. Read more - Lire plus 
Migrant boy, 2, dies after being detained by US Border Patrol; 4th death of minor since December
USA Today 15/05/2019 - A Guatemalan official says a 2½-year-old migrant child has died after crossing the border, becoming the fourth minor known to have died after being detained by the Border Patrol since December. Tekandi Paniagua, the consul for Guatemala in Del Rio, Texas, said Wednesday that the boy had entered the United States with his parent at El Paso, Texas, in early April. Paniagua said the boy had a high fever and difficulty breathing, and authorities took him to a children’s hospital where he was diagnosed with pneumonia. The boy remained hospitalized for about a month before dying Tuesday. U.S. Customs and Border Protection didn’t respond to a request for comment Wednesday. Advocates have long questioned the Border Patrol’s ability to care for the thousands of parents and children in its custody. Read more - Lire plus

His Visa Was Stamped, His Papers in Order. Then He Was Targeted By a Secretive CBP Task Force.
The Intercept 13/05/2019 - Abdikadir Mohamed felt nervous as he approached the customs desk at John F. Kennedy Airport on December 13, 2017. The previous summer he had married his wife, Malyuun, in a ceremony held in South Africa, and now he was on his way to Ohio, where she lived. Malyuun was pregnant with their second child, and Mohamed was anxious to be with her. He stepped to the counter clutching the one-year permanent residency document he’d been granted by the U.S. embassy in Johannesburg a few months earlier.

Although his papers were in order, Mohamed had reasons for concern. The political situation for immigrants in the United States had deteriorated under Donald Trump, and the U.S. Supreme Court had recently allowed his controversial “Muslim ban” to come into effect. Mohamed was a Somali national who had been living in South Africa as an asylum seeker; instead of a passport, he had a special travel document issued by the Red Cross. Although Somalis were one of the six nationalities targeted by Trump’s ban, Mohamed had received his U.S. visa before the measure had come into effect. As a result, he was technically free to enter the country.

And at first, all seemed to go smoothly. A Customs and Border Protection, or CBP, officer asked him a few basic questions, and after a short wait, he was handed back his travel document with the words, “Go, Mohamed,” indicating that he was free to proceed. Mohamed looked at his visa. It had an entry stamp on it, which validated his residency document. He had made it into the United States. He gathered his bags and left the counter. As he walked, the anxiety that had gripped him throughout much of the flight to the United States began to evaporate. In its place grew the excitement of seeing his family. The fear that had tormented him, of missing the birth of his child, seemed to be past.

It would prove to be a fleeting moment of relief. Little did he know, he was about to be flagged by a secretive enforcement arm of CBP focused on targeting passengers who have already cleared immigration. As a result, he was blocked from entering the United States and given the choice of being deported to Somalia or waiting in custody while he sought asylum. Seventeen months later, Mohamed remains behind bars at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey, subject to an asylum process that could drag on for years.

Mohamed’s troubles began as he headed to catch his connecting flight to Columbus, Ohio, according to immigration court documents and interviews with his lawyers. Two CBP officers stopped him, and one of them asked, “Are you from Mogadishu?” Mohamed replied that he was originally from Somalia. The officer asked him to unlock his phone and give it to him. He then told Mohamed that the agents wanted to talk to him briefly in an interview room, adding that it would only take 10 minutes. In front of Mohamed, the two officers exchanged words with each other about whether an interview was really necessary. They then told him to follow them to an interrogation room. It would later emerge in court that Mohamed had been targeted by a branch of CBP called the Tactical Terrorism Response Team, or TTRT. Little is publicly known about the TTRT, but the Department of Homeland Security website describes it as a team that subjects travelers who have already cleared immigration to extra scrutiny. Read more - Lire plus
‘Flying Ginsu’ Missile Won’t Resolve U.S. Targeted Killing Controversy
Just Security 16/05/2019 - Last week, the Wall Street Journal revealed a noteworthy development in the U.S. targeted killing program: a modified Hellfire missile that strikes without exploding, reportedly leaving those close to the target unscathed. The CIA and the U.S. military have used the hitherto secret weapon at least a half-dozen times in recent years to kill terrorism suspects in Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen, the Journal reported.

Proponents tout the missile, called the R9X, as a game-changer that can spare more civilian lives than traditional Hellfires. But the new technology can only be as good as the intelligence and the rules that guide it. On its own, the R9X won’t resolve the host of legal issues surrounding the U.S. targeted killing program, which since 2002 has killed thousands of people with scant transparency. Key issues include the definition of a lawful target, the question of which body of international law applies in targeted killings, and the vast disparities between governmental and non-governmental estimates of civilian casualties. Read more - Lire plus
Trump Steps up War on Whistleblowers: Air Force Vet Daniel Hale Arrested For Leaking Drone War Info
The Intercept 10/05/2019 - A former U.S. intelligence analyst was arrested Thursday and charged with violating the Espionage Act for allegedly leaking documents about the secretive U.S. drone program. Daniel Hale, 31, was arrested in Nashville. He faces up to 50 years in prison. Hale is accused of disclosing 11 top secret or secret documents to a reporter. The indictment does not name the reporter but unnamed government sources have told media outlets that the reporter is investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill of The Intercept. In 2015, The Intercept published a special report called the Drone Papers exposing the inner workings of the U.S. military’s assassination program in Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia. We air excerpts of the documentary “National Bird” that features Daniel Hale and speak to The Intercept’s James Risen, director of First Look Media’s Press Freedom Defense Fund. Read more - Lire plus
Chelsea Manning ordered to jail again after refusing to testify on WikiLeaks
NBC News 16/05/2019 - A federal judge ordered Chelsea Manning back to jail Thursday after she again refused to cooperate with a grand jury investigating a release of documents by WikiLeaks. U.S. District Court Judge Anthony Trenga had Manning remanded and sentenced her to pay a fine of $500 per day if she doesn't comply in 30 days and $1,000 after 60 days pass. U.S. marshals took Manning into custody for a term that could last as long as 18 months. "I would rather starve to death than change my position in this regard," Manning told the court. “Confinement serves no purpose.” After seeing Manning led away to jail, defense attorney Moira Meltzer-Cohen said her client was standing up for principles. [...] Earlier this month, Manning was freed following 62 days in a Virginia jail after refusing to testify before a previous grand jury in the WikiLeaks case. She was released when the term of that grand jury expired. But then Manning was ordered to appear before a different panel in Alexandria on Thursday. Read more - Lire plus
France Takes Unprecedented Action Against Reporters Who Published Secret Government Document
The Intercept 17/05/2019 - Journalists in France are facing potential jail sentences in an unprecedented case over their handling of secret documents detailing the country’s involvement in the Yemen conflict. Earlier this week, a reporter from Radio France and the co-founders of Paris-based investigative news organization Disclose were called in for questioning at the offices of the General Directorate for Internal Security, known as the DGSI. The agency is tasked with fighting terrorism, espionage, and other domestic threats, similar in function to the FBI in the United States.

The two news organizations published stories in April — together with The Intercept , Mediapart, ARTE Info, and Konbini News — that revealed the vast amount of French, British, and American military equipment sold to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and subsequently used by those nations to wage war in Yemen. The stories — based on a secret document authored by France’s Directorate of Military Intelligence and obtained by the journalists at Disclose — highlighted that officials at the top of the French government had seemingly lied to the public about the role of French weapons in the war. They demonstrated the extent of Western nations’ complicity in the devastating conflict, which has killed or injured more than 17,900 civilians and triggered a famine that has taken the lives of an estimated 85,000 children. [...]

In rooms located four floors below ground level inside the heavily fortified, beige-colored DGSI building on Rue de Villiers, for an hour the journalists were asked about their work, their sources, and their posts on Facebook and Twitter. They declined to answer questions, citing their right to silence, and instead presented a statement about their journalism and their belief that publishing the document had served the public interest. Under a 2009 French law that prohibits “attacks on national defense secrets,” a person commits a crime if they handle a classified document without authorization. There are no exceptions to this law for journalists, and there is no public interest defense.“They want to make an example of us because it’s the first time in France that there have been leaks like this,” Disclose co-founder Livolsi told The Intercept on Thursday, referring to the sensitivity of the document, which was prepared by French military analysts last September for a high-level briefing of President Emmanuel Macron at the Élysée Palace. “They want to scare journalists and their sources away from revealing state secrets.” Read more - Lire plus 
Muslim groups contest claim that proposed definition could undermine counter-terror fight
The Guardian 15/05/2019 - Police chiefs have been accused of misunderstanding a cross-party effort to fight anti-Muslim prejudice after they publicly warned it risked undermining the fight against terrorism and hampering free speech. The row centres on a proposed new definition of Islamophobia by a group of parliamentarians who say they consulted extensively before writing it, including with some police officers. The definition from the all-party parliamentary group on British Muslims is: “Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness.” Labour and the Liberal Democrats have adopted the definition and the Conservatives are facing calls to sign up, an issue more acute for them as they try to fend off claims of failing to tackle Islamophobia in their party ranks .

The National Police Chiefs Council, which represents the leaders of law enforcement in England and Wales, issued a statement voicing their concerns on Tuesday night. Its chair, Martin Hewitt, said: “We are concerned that the definition is too broad as currently drafted, could cause confusion for officers enforcing it and could be used to challenge legitimate free speech on the historical or theological actions of Islamic states. There is also a risk it could also undermine counter-terrorism powers, which seek to tackle extremism or prevent terrorism." One case study from the parliamentarians’ report into Islamophobia suggests the definition was drawn up in part to tackle possible police prejudice. The anonymous respondent said: “I was stopped at Heathrow airport. The policeman said that they targeted me because of my attire. This has happened to me so many times. I cannot report it because the police do not see this as Islamophobic behaviour.”

Harun Khan, the secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, said police had misunderstood the proposed definition. “Our understanding is that the police and security forces will rightly fight terrorism based on intelligence and a scrutiny of the evidence. Anti-terrorist operations can only be ‘hampered’ if counter-terror officers have been targeting Muslims because of their identity (or Muslimness as the definition states), categorising them as security concerns. If this is the case, it confirms long-voiced concerns about the disproportionate focus and impact of counter-terror operations on Muslim communities." Read more - Lire plus 
ACTIONS & EVENTS
NEW No Weapons for Saudi. No New Nuclear Arms Race. YES to Peace
CANSEC, the largest war profiteer/arms manufacturer trade show in Canada is coming up. Multinational corporations making billions in profit off nuclear weapons manufacturing and violence overseas – including Canada’s weapons sales to Saudi Arabia - will be there.
Join us at the EY Centre in Ottawa at 7 am on May 29th: it's time to send a message to the Government of Canada, to take a stand for peace and a for a greener future.
All-in-one action page: Stop Mohamed Harkat's Deportation to Torture
Call PM Trudeau, write a letter to Public Safety Minister Goodale & 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.
Canada: Don't roll back refugee rights
The federal govt plans to significantly roll back the human rights of refugees, and is hurrying these rights restrictions into law by including them in the federal budget (Bill C-97).

The new restriction would stop any refugee claimant from having an independent hearing to decide on their claim, if they previously filed a refugee claim in the United States and in certain other countries.

Using the quick tool below, call on Parliament to reject the rights-violating amendments to IRPA proposed in Bill C-97.
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.

Fight back with us: demand updated laws , learn more about your rights, and make a complaint if your privacy has been violated at the border.
OPP must be held accountable for violent repression of land defenders
The terrifying incident happened in April 2008 during a land occupation and road blockades by members of Tyendinaga Mohawk Nation, near Belleville, Ontario. Although the road blockades involved only a small number of community members – none of whom were armed -- the Ontario Provincial Police sent more than 200 officers, including the Tactics and Rescue Unit (TRU), tasked with responding to “the most serious threats to peace and order”. 

There has never been any formal, independent review of how and why the police response went so badly wrong. In December, the UN Committee against Torture called on Canada to address this glaring gap in police accountability by ensuring that a thorough and impartial review is finally carried out.
Respectez les droits des migrant.es!
Migrer ou mourir. Des milliers de personnes d'Amérique centrale, y compris des familles, ont été forcées de quitter ce qu'elles connaissent et aiment pour trouver la sécurité et une vie meilleure pour leurs enfants. Elles ont marché pendant des semaines vers les États-Unis pour échapper aux menaces, à la violence et à une pauvreté extrême - non par choix, mais par obligation.

Mais Donald Trump et son administration travaillent dur pour s’assurer qu’ils ne pourront pas rechercher la sécurité aux États-Unis.
Les droits humains ne dépendent pas du document que vous possédez ou de votre nationalité. Ils appartiennent à tout le monde.

Signez cette pétition pour soutenir les personnes et les familles en quête de protection.
Tell China to close its secret ‘re-education’ camps for ethnic minorities
It is estimated that up to one million people - predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities - are being arbitrarily detained in “de-extremification" camps in China’s northwestern Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR). Among them are Uighurs, Kazakhs and other ethnic minority groups whose religious and cultural practices are key to their identity.
The detentions appear to be part of an effort by the Chinese government to wipe out religious beliefs and aspects of cultural identity in order to enforce political loyalty for the State and the Communist Party of China.
Make January 29 a National Day
On Jan. 29, 2017, a lone gunman entered a mosque in Quebec City and opened fire on dozens of Muslim-Canadian worshipers. By the time the shooting had ended, six had been tragically killed, and 19 more injured. 

 W e, citizens and residents of Canada, call on the government of Canada to henceforth designate January 29th as a National Day of Remembrance and Action on Islamophobia and other forms of religious discrimination or a National Day of Action against Hate and Intolerance .
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. There were lengthy periods when he had no family or consular visits. 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. Those actions prolonged his detention, with no concern for the obvious risk of mistreatment he was facing.
Don’t invest my CPP contributions in Trump’s racist agenda
An investigation by the Guardian just revealed that the  Canada Pension Plan (CPP), is pouring millions of your pension dollars into the US private prison corporations that are executing Trump’s cruel and inhumane anti-immigration agenda. That’s your money.  If you’ve ever worked in Canada, you’ve paid contributions to the CPP fund. We can’t let our CPP contributions flow to corporations that are profiting from Trump’s cruel immigration policies.

Tell the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB): Stop investing our savings in private US prison corporations that are executing Trump’s cruel and inhumane anti-immigration agenda.
Five Eyes: Save encryption
Ministers from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK, and the U.S. have gone public with their plans for a huge attack on our personal security.

They want to force companies to crush the encryption that protects our private data and messages. But ordinary people need and use encryption every day, in everything from online banking to personal messaging in apps like WhatsApp.
Tell ministers to stop their attacks, and commit to protecting our privacy and security.
Iran: Free Saeed Malekpour!
Saeed Malekpour, an Iranian national with permanent residency in Canada, has been imprisoned in Iran since his arrest on 4 October 2008. In late 2010, he was initially sentenced to death for “spreading corruption on earth” in relation to a web programme he created for uploading photos which the Iranian authorities said was used on pornographic websites. This was an open source programme and Saeed Malekpour has maintained that the use of this web programme on other websites was without his knowledge. His death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 2012.
MORE NEWS - AUTRES NOUVELLES
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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