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International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group

October 8, 2021

ICLMG: Seven Civil Liberties Priorities for the Next Parliament

ICLMG 08/10/21 - In the coming weeks, the new session of Parliament will begin. While the Liberal Party remains in government, and the make up of the House of Commons remains largely the same, there are still opportunities to push for action on these issues. A minority government offers up the opportunity of improving the governing party’s legislation and policies since it cannot simply rely on a majority to prioritize its own agenda.

There’s no lack of issues that need to be addressed to protect human rights, fight racism and discrimination, and support fundamental freedoms overall, but we’ve identified seven key areas that the government must address when it comes to national security and anti-terrorism:

1. The Canada Revenue Agency’s targeting of Muslim charities
2. Dr. Hassan Diab & Canada’s extradition laws
3. Strengthening privacy rights, reining in surveillance
4. Mohamed Harkat, security certificates & security inadmissibility
5. CBSA oversight and review
6. CSIS accountability
7. Rethinking the government’s approach to national security & anti-terrorism Read more

CSILC: Pourquoi nous devons abandonner l'antiterrorisme et la sécurité nationale

Écrit par Anne Dagenais Guertin, responsable aux Communications et à la Recherche à la CSILC.

Merci aux Nouveaux Cahiers du Socialisme et à Maya Berbery pour leur travail de traduction. Cette version française a été publiée le 4 octobre par les Nouveaux Cahiers du Socialisme.

CSILC 04/10/2021 - Depuis le 11 septembre 2001, les groupes de défense des libertés civiles, des droits de la personne et de lutte contre le racisme mettent en garde contre l’impact des lois sur l’antiterrorisme et la sécurité nationale. Cela dure depuis si longtemps, qu’on n’y prête désormais peu d’attention.

Si la menace qui pèse sur les libertés civiles n’a cessé de croître au cours des 20 dernières années, les événements récents ont suscité un regain d’inquiétude : pressions pour l’adoption de nouvelles lois sur le terrorisme intérieur aux États-Unis, ajout d’inscriptions à la liste des entités terroristes au Canada, élargissements de la définition de la « sécurité nationale » et augmentation incessante des pouvoirs et des ressources des agences de sécurité nationale. Les gouvernements tentent de justifier leurs actions au nom de la « sécurité », mais aucun ne s’attaque réellement aux causes profondes de la violence qu’il prétend combattre. Nous devons changer de cible : passer de la sécurité nationale, c’est-à-dire la préservation de la souveraineté et donc du pouvoir de l’État, à la sécurité humaine, c’est-à-dire la protection des personnes pour qu’elles puissent agir et vivre à l’abri du besoin et du danger.

Le concept de « la loi et l’ordre » – et plus tard de la « sécurité nationale » – est utilisé sur le territoire maintenant appelé Canada depuis que les colons européens ont décidé que cette terre leur appartenait et qu’il fallait écarter les peuples autochtones, qui faisaient obstacle à leur projet colonial. La Gendarmerie royale du Canada a été créée — d’abord sous le nom de Police à cheval du Nord-Ouest — en grande partie comme une force paramilitaire chargée de surveiller, contrôler et déplacer les peuples autochtones, un rôle qu’elle joue encore aujourd’hui et qui suscite des appels à l’abolition de la GRC.

Voici à quoi ont mené les inquiétudes entourant la « sécurité nationale » au Canada :

• l’internement de plusieurs groupes dans des camps pendant les Première et Seconde Guerres mondiales ;
• la chasse aux sorcières contre les fonctionnaires et les militaires homosexuel.les, des années 1950 au début des années 1990;
• le ciblage d’indépendantistes québécois, de communistes, de militants anti-pauvreté et d’organisateurs syndicaux dans les années 1960 et 1970;
• la séparation des familles de migrant.es et de demandeur.ses d’asile à la frontière canado-étasunienne;
• la détention pour une durée indéterminée des migrant.es et des réfugié.es des pays du Sud;
• le ciblage et l’étiquetage des Musulmans (et des personnes perçues comme musulmanes) comme terroristes;
• le piégeage par la GRC de personnes vulnérables; et
• la surveillance, le harcèlement et la détention d’organisateurs et de manifestants, notamment de défenseur.ses autochtones des terres et leurs allié.es, d’activistes et d’organismes de défense de la justice climatique, d’organismes pacifistes, altermondialistes et anarchistes, et même de journalistes.

Et on ne parle ici que du Canada.

De plus, à mesure que la crise climatique et la pandémie de la COVID-19 s’aggravent, les appels se multiplient pour les qualifier de menaces à la « sécurité nationale ». Certaines personnes qui réclament des actions urgentes pour faire face à ces crises ont remarqué la démesure de l’attention et des ressources consacrées aux problèmes et aux agences de sécurité nationale. Elles espèrent donc que la qualification de la crise climatique et de la pandémie comme « menaces à la sécurité nationale » entraînera des réponses tout aussi sérieuses. On peut certainement comprendre la logique qui consiste à voir dans la crise climatique et dans la pandémie des menaces existentielles pour l’humanité, et on peut comprendre les tensions qui résultent de la mauvaise gestion par les gouvernements de ces deux crises dans une optique de sécurité. Cependant, non seulement l’appareil de sécurité nationale est mal outillé pour s’attaquer aux questions écologiques et sanitaires, mais l’accroissement des ressources octroyées aux organismes de sécurité nationale ne fera qu’augmenter les abus que l’on vient de décrire.

Les mots « terrorisme » et « menaces à la sécurité nationale » sont puissants. Nourris par des années de campagnes de peur incessantes de la part des gouvernements et des médias, ils provoquent une condamnation automatique de quiconque porte ces étiquettes. Ces étiquettes servent maintenant d’outils très efficaces au service de l’État (et d’autres acteurs) pour discréditer ou réprimer tout groupe, mouvement ou individu, particulièrement s’il remet en question le statu quo, s’oppose à des politiques ou mesures gouvernementales, ou lutte pour l’émancipation collective.

Que faire alors? Se débarasser du mot « terrorisme » de même que des lois et outils antiterroristes, et remplacer les concept et appareil de « sécurité nationale » par des politiques et mesures visant la protection des personnes.

Pourquoi ne pas simplement réformer nos lois antiterroristes et l’appareil de sécurité nationale pour en corriger les abus et freiner l’érosion des libertés civiles? Voici cinq raisons :

1. La grande malléabilité des mots « terrorisme » et « sécurité nationale »

2. Le mythe du « terroriste musulman »

3. La diversion qui obscurcit la violence étatique

4. Le ciblage des défenseur.ses des terres autochtones et des activistes écologistes

5. L’incapacité de la sécurité nationale à assurer la protection des personnes Lire plus

ICYMI: The English version: Why We Need to Ditch Anti-Terrorism and National Security

ICLMG Submission to Government's "Online Harms" Consultation

ICLMG 25/09/2021 - On September 25, 2021, the International Civil Liberties submitted feedback to the federal government’s proposal to tackle online harms.

Given our coalition’s mandate, our analysis focuses primarily on the inclusion of “terrorist content” as one of five areas of online harm. We also examine the proposal’s interaction with anti-terrorism laws, policies and activities, as well as how they overlap and raise concerns for other areas of the proposal (for example, the overall approach towards involvement of police, the impacts of censorship and policing based on vaguely worded definitions, etc.). You can read our full submission here.

In our submission, we identify several worrisome and even troubling aspects to this current proposal that may in fact undermine the stated goals. These include:

• the further expansion of problematic definitions of terrorism and its enforcement online, which have been shown to more often target the very communities which the government proposes to support with this new regime.
• a questionable conflation of efforts to address wildly different harms which need very specific solutions
• a monitoring and removal process that threatens freedom of expression and privacy rights, and which will likely have severe and significant impacts on already marginalized communities
• new obligatory reporting rules to law enforcement and intelligence agencies and
• new warrant powers for CSIS
• transparency and accountability requirements that require the addition of more robust obligations

We also raise questions about the form and approach to the consultation itself, which we and many other stakeholders have found to be wholly inadequate. We believe that in order to address the concerns raised in our submission and by others, the government must commit to extending and improving their consultation process before any new legislation is introduced.

We recognize the importance of tackling harmful content that can lead to violence, and have urged the government to take greater action. Unfortunately, there are deeply troubling aspects to this proposal that, unless addressed, we believe will lead to greater harms both for the population at large, as well as for the very communities the government states they wish to support. Source

Michael Geist: Tracking the Submissions: What the Government Heard in its Online Harms Consultation (Since It Refuses to Post Them)

Ditch 'fundamentally flawed' online harms bill, experts say in submissions to Heritage Canada

Opinion: Canadian government's proposed online harms legislation threatens our human rights

Anti-Racist Groups Concerned Canada’s Proposed “Online Harms” Legislation Could Do More Harm Than Good

ICLMG is one of the signatories to the letter.

Independent Jewish Voices 04/10/2021 - Particular aspects of concern regarding the proposed legislative framework from an anti-racism perspective include:

1. Incentivization of over-removal produced by: the short timeline for required response after content being flagged (24 hours); the obligation for online communication service providers (OCSPs) to take proactive measures to identify harmful content, including through use of automated systems (repeatedly shown susceptible to amplifying existing biases); vague definitions that will lead platforms to be over-inclusive in order to be “safe;” and significant financial penalties for non-compliance.

2. Conflation of very different types of online harms – for example, “hateful” or “terrorist” content with “child sexual exploitation” or “non-consensual sharing of intimate images” – under a single regulatory regime. This is particularly problematic given the existing deployment of categories of “hate speech” and “terrorist speech” to censor Black and Palestinian content online; abetted, in the Palestinian case, by efforts to institutionalize the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, widely critiqued for conflating criticisms of Israeli policy with antisemitism.

3. Increased information-sharing with law enforcement and security agencies regarding possibly harmful content. As law and technology scholar Michael Geist observes, this may “lead to the prospect of [artificial intelligence] identifying what it thinks is content caught by the law and generating a report to the RCMP” – likely intensifying the current state of over-policing and -surveillance of colonized and racialized communities.

4. Sweeping search powers for “inspectors” to verify compliance with the legislation, secret hearings, and new information-gathering powers for CSIS – allocating further police-like capacities to CSIS.

5. Absence of adequate transparency, accountability, and redress measures with no clear mechanisms for publicly assessing whether Internet companies are fulfilling their obligation to prevent discriminatory treatment in content removal and reporting to law enforcement and CSIS; the protection of companies from criminal and civil liability for notifications to law enforcement and CSIS made in “good faith”; and no requirement to restore content found to be wrongfully removed, deferring to Internet companies’ own community standards. As three UN Special Rapporteurs recently noted, “such terms of service or community standards do not reference human rights and related responsibilities, thereby creating the possibility of an ‘escape route’ from human rights oversight.” Read more - Lire plus

Neve, Aiken and Champ: Canada’s next justice minister must defend Hassan Diab’s rights

Ottawa Citizen 04/10/2021 - It's time this country explicitly told French authorities that Canada will not in any way continue to participate in such a profound miscarriage of justice.

The federal election is over and we now await word as to who will be appointed to which ministerial roles. We will be keeping an eye on who takes up the important position of minister of justice and attorney general and what priorities are included in this person’s mandate letter. We have urgent advice to the prime minister as he drafts that crucial mandate letter. Whether David Lametti continues as minister or someone new is chosen, it is vital that resolving the case of Hassan Diab and pursuing rights-based extradition reform in Canada feature prominently among the issues taken up. That need for reform is certainly timely in the wake of the Meng Wenzhou extradition drama.

Hassan Diab then spent three years in detention without trial in France, held in cruel conditions of solitary confinement in a maximum-security prison. UN human rights experts have concluded that prolonged solitary confinement of that nature takes such a toll that it constitutes torture.

Investigations by French judges assigned to Diab’s case decimated the flimsy evidence, primarily handwriting analysis, that had been relied upon to justify extradition. To the contrary, judges found strong evidence corroborating Diab’s claim that he had been in Lebanon sitting his university exams at the time of the bombing. They eventually ordered the case against him dropped. Diab returned home to his wife and children in Canada in January 2018. That should have ended the matter. But French authorities appealed the dismissal of the charges and in two stunning judgments earlier this year, the French Appeal Court and Supreme Court ruled that the case should be reinstated and Diab should stand trial.

Throughout the three years that the appeal was pending, the evidence against him continued to collapse to the point that there is not one shred of credible proof that substantiates the accusation that Diab was involved in this horrific crime. But the political pressure in France is such that it seems not to matter that an innocent man is being offered up in answer to the understandable demand from families of those who were callously killed more than 40 years ago that someone, seemingly anyone, be held accountable. It is not yet clear what will happen next. Will France have the audacity to seek Diab’s extradition a second time? Will it instead opt to try him in absentia, itself a flagrant violation of fair trial rights? Either way, Diab and his family, who have been trapped in a Kafkaesque world of injustice for 14 years, currently face the prospect of several more years of the same. It is intolerable and it must end.

That is why we recently joined more than 100 lawyers and legal academics in an open letter to Minister Lametti during the recent election, urging him to convey to French authorities that Canada will not in any way continue to participate in this profound miscarriage of justice. Concretely, that means going on the record making it clear that Canada will not agree to a further extradition request if such is forthcoming. This fiasco also points to the need for Canada’s extradition treaty with France to be renegotiated and for reforms of Canada’s Extradition Act to ensure stronger human rights protections. The Canadian judge who ordered Diab’s first extradition in 2014 did so reluctantly, and with serious doubts about the validity of the evidence. How many more lives will be ruined by an unjust law? The last round of extradition reform was more than 20 years ago and stripped away safeguards in the law. Diab’s experience make it clear much needs to be addressed. While not much changed in the election, there must now be real change for Hassan Diab. The next justice minister must be mandated to unflinchingly defend his rights and to fix Canada’s flawed Extradition Act. Read more - Lire plus

The Canadian Bar Association Magazine 04/10/2021 - Under the current law, a state requesting extradition need only shows up with a summary of the evidence it claims to have. But that summary cannot be challenged or tested, says Robert Currie, a Schulich School of Law professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax. "It's an unfair process." The problem is how the Extradition Act is structured, says Currie. There is no meaningful way for the person targeted by the request to challenge the case, even if the Supreme Court has previously ruled, in its 2006 decision in Ferras, that an extradition judge can, in a limited way, consider the evidence to determine whether there is a "plausible case" for extradition.

Currie says that the Diab case is an egregious example of how the Supreme Court's intention in Ferras has failed. "If Hassan Diab could be committed for extradition, then there's no meaningful way to challenge it at all," he says. "The judge just becomes a rubber stamp on the whole thing." Even so, the federal government maintains that the Extradition Act is a key component of their commitment to the rule of law. "We continually assess the need to improve our policy and legislation," said justice minister David Lametti in an emailed reply to CBA National. "While the need for change at this time remains uncertain, we expect that upcoming assessments, as well as any conversations with key stakeholders and international partners, will take into account recent cases, as well as the findings of the Segal report." In 2019, the federal government released a report produced by lawyer Murray Segal following his independent review of the Diab extradition to France. This marks a subtle change from 2019, when Lametti told CBA National in an interview that Canada's extradition regime is "a system that's worked well, that has put the focus on the rule of law."

Donald Bayne, a partner with Bayne Sellar Ertel Carter in Ottawa, who represented Diab in his extradition hearing, says the current extradition system is a "parody of justice." "Extradition deprives liberty – not just of foreigners like Meng Wanzhou, but any Canadian who is sought by any foreign state for anything, without any sworn evidence at all, and no normal procedural protections apply," says Bayne. "It's not the usual deprivation of liberty. In Diab's case, the person who is to be extradited isn't simply detained in custody; they're detained in a foreign country away from family, supports, and in Diab's case, a country where he didn't speak the language." What's more, says Bayne, a defendant can't produce contradictory evidence showing innocence. "You're still extradited," Bayne says. "You can show that you were with the prime minister on the day, and he can vouch for you – it doesn't matter." Also problematic, says Currie, is the role of the International Assistance Group in the Department of Justice, which handles extradition requests from the Crown side. Part of its job is to advise the minister on whether or not to grant the extradition request.

"The minister's decision is supposed to be objective, and is supposed to be based on the matter before him, but it's the same lawyers doing the whole thing," says Currie. "It's like they're judge, jury and executioner all into one office. Even Murray Segal's report saw the perception of a major conflict of interest there." Bayne recalls that when he started representing Diab, the lawyer leading the International Assistance Group team introduced himself and said "I've never lost a case." "I didn't exactly fall on the floor from that either reeling or laughing," Bayne says. "Good lawyers lose cases, but it's a statement about the experience of the International Assistance Group and the terrible imbalance in our system when it comes to extradition and how we've distorted both the role of the extradition judge, and the constitutional rights and remedies of Canadians." To fix the extradition system will require a renewed focus on the presumption of innocence, says Currie. As well, a greater reliance on modern technology, such as video conferencing, would allow an extradition hearing to test the evidence of witnesses rather than simply relying on the unsworn statement of the government seeking the extradition.

"If there's a major witness that the requesting state's case depends on, then that witness should appear by video conference and be asked questions by both the Crown and by the defence lawyer," says Currie. "We need a fairer process because it's just impenetrable now." Under Canada’s extradition regime, the Minister of Justice can exercise some degree of discretionary authority and refuse an extradition request, particularly if he considers that it would otherwise “be unjust or oppressive having regard to all the relevant circumstances.” But that involves an analysis of hard legal questions — whether the extradition target will get a fair trial in the requesting country, for instance. Currie says that a judge should be making those determinations instead of an elected political figure. "The decisions about people's liberty should have very little political content to them," he says. Read more - Lire plus

The Canadian Press 28/09/2021 - It wasn't until Tuesday morning, when Kamila Telendibaeva saw the footage and pictures of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor landing in Canada, that she started to picture her own reunion with her husband who has been in a Chinese prison for 15 years. As she watched the joyful scene, Telendibaeva said she was happy to see Spavor and Kovrig freed after a years-long ordeal, saying it was great for the two men and the country. But thinking about a reunion with a husband she hasn't seen in years, and a father who has never met his youngest son, now a teenager, Telendibaeva raised her voice and raced over her words.

"Honestly, my blood is boiling," she said, adding that she felt the Liberals are ignoring Huseyin Celil's case, and wants to see a harder push to secure his release. Telendibaeva believes winning his freedom is possible after seeing how Canadian officials worked with international counterparts, including the United States, to pressure the Chinese government to release Kovrig and Spavor. "They should sit at the table with (Chinese President) Xi Jinping or any Chinese authority, or a special envoy to bring him back," Telendibaeva said in an interview. "I'm not saying what kind of deal they're going to do for my husband's case, but they have to bring Huseyin back now." Celil has been detained in China since 2006, after he was arrested in Uzbekistan and sent to China after his long-standing advocacy for the human rights of his Muslim ethnic Uyghur minority. Telendibaeva said the family's overtures to Chinese officials to see Celil in-person have been unsuccessful.

Their period visits to him in prison were cut off about five years ago when Beijing first cracked down on Muslim Uyghurs in China's Xinjiang province, rounding them up into prison camps, citing the need to fight terrorism. Telendibaeva added she hasn't heard much recently from Canadian officials about the state of her husband's case. Celil's supporters had hoped he would be part of a deal to free Kovrig and Spavor and ahead of election day called for the winning party to appoint a special envoy to win his freedom. Speaking Tuesday afternoon, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau thanked the public servants, diplomats and officials who "worked unbelievably hard" to secure the release of the two Michaels, and gave a nod to other countries who lined up to pressure the Chinese government. Among those nations was the United States. Days before their release, President Joe Biden pressed Xi in a phone call to release Spavor and Kovrig. Asked why the government hasn't been successful at securing Celil's release, Trudeau said Spavor and Kovrig were detained for political reasons, which galvanized public opinion in Canada and around the world.

"We were able to demonstrate that we are a country of the rule of law, and we never flinched on applying the fundamental rules of our justice system," Trudeau said. "We will continue to advocate for people who are wrongly imprisoned around the world as we have for many years as we will continue to." Unlike Spavor and Kovrig, Canadian consular officials haven't been able to meet with Celil because China doesn't recognize his dual Canadian citizenship, obtained in 2005. Jeremy Paltiel, an expert on Canada-China relations from Carleton University in Ottawa, said Celil's case would be tougher to resolve because China isn't detaining him as a Canadian. Some Uyghur activists have been paroled from Chinese prisons, but subject to strict conditions, Paltiel said. The same could happen to Celil, he said, but it is unlikely he would be free to speak or even come home to Canada. "I'm not optimistic on that score, and in fact, we don't even know if he's alive," Paltiel said. "That's the sad tragedy." Read more - Lire plus

No more excuses, Canada: Bring my husband Huseyin Celil home

Haroon Siddiqui: The two Michaels are finally home. Now what about Huseyin Celil?

TAKE ACTION: China: Free Huseyin Celil

CJPME 05/10/2021 - Since the start of 2021, CJPME along with 12,000 Canadians have campaigned against Canada’s purchase of a $36m drone from Israel’s largest weapons company, Elbit Systems. CJPME and its allies believe that this purchase is highly unethical and immoral.

Neither the Transport Minister, Omar Alghabra, nor an elected representative of the government has responded to any of CJPME’s calls or emails, nor have they made a single public statement about the Israeli drone contract. Instead, CJPME has learned that the Minister has been privately responding to some people with disinformation, intending to discredit our campaign. Here’s CJPME’s response to the government’s evasion and misinformation on the purchase:

1. Myth: There is nothing wrong with Canada buying a drone from Israel

Fact: Buying a drone from an Israeli weapons manufacturer, Elbit Systems is unethical, and improperly rewards the Israeli government and its military-industrial complex for their oppression of Palestinians.

2. Myth: The contract for the drone was awarded via a transparent, above-board process

Fact: We can only know if the government’s procurement process was “open, transparent, independent and competitive,” if the government provides the necessary proof.

3. Myth: The Transport Minister has no influence over the contract.

Fact: Ministers have incredible power over the machinations of their ministries, and if necessary, the government can legislate additional powers.

4. Myth: The Transport Minister has a slide which disproves CJPME’s concerns about Canada’s drone purchase.

Fact: CJPME obtained a copy of the Minister’s slide (see graphic below), and it addresses none of the above concerns. Instead, it seems intended to mislead the public as to Canadians’ legitimate concerns about the drone purchase. Read more - Lire plus

TAKE ACTION: Canada must cancel $36M contract for Israeli drone

Protestors From 12 States Converge At Creech Afb For Week Of Protest To Demand An End To Remote Drone Killing, And Ban On Killer Drones

BCCLA 04/10/2021 - On September 21, 2021, pro bono counsel Paul Champ and I appeared in Federal Court to argue the BCCLA’s case against the RCMP Commissioner. This lawsuit was about the RCMP Commissioner’s extreme delays in responding to public complaints. In February 2014, the BCCLA filed a complaint against the RCMP for spying on Indigenous and climate advocates opposed to the Northern Gateway pipeline. The complaint was investigated by the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission (CRCC) – the RCMP watchdog. But due to the RCMP Commissioner’s extreme delay in dealing with this complaint, the CRCC was only able to release its final report in December 2020, nearly seven years after the complaint was filed.

At the Federal Court, we argued that the RCMP Commissioner had violated her statutory obligations and the BCCLA’s constitutional rights by causing this inexcusable delay.

Unfortunately, this case is not the only example of extreme delay by the RCMP Commissioner. Indeed, delays have plagued the RCMP complaints system for over a decade. These delays have significant consequences. They undermine public confidence in the RCMP and the complaints process. They harm individuals and families waiting for accountability and justice. Complaints about very serious matters have sat on the RCMP Commissioner’s desk for years. Recommendations from the CRCC for addressing RCMP misconduct are only implemented once the complaints process is complete. We told the Federal Court that the culture of complacency within the RCMP needs to change.

During the hearing, counsel for the Attorney General of Canada finally acknowledged that the RCMP Commissioner had violated her obligations under the RCMP Act by waiting so many years to respond to the BCCLA’s complaint. This was a significant concession. We now anxiously await the Federal Court’s decision. But regardless of the outcome, we know our litigation has had a positive impact. Since the BCCLA launched this case, the RCMP Commissioner has hired additional staff members to help her respond to complaints more quickly. She has also made significant progress in dealing with the backlog of complaints. We hope the Federal Court issues a strong judgment condemning the extreme delays caused by the RCMP Commissioner, so she is finally held to account. Read more - Lire plus

B.C. judge won't extend Fairy Creek injunction because RCMP conduct sullies the reputation of the court

Fairy Creek : l’injonction n’est pas prolongée

Arrestations abusives : la GRC face à ses torts

Global News 13/10/2021 - Soon after the terrorist attacks in the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, Sunera Thobani says she started receiving death threats. The professor in the department of Asian studies at the University of British Columbia is Muslim, and was outspoken at the time against the impending war in Afghanistan that kicked off the decades-long war on terror. That made her a prime target of Islamophobia, which spiked across much of the western world in the wake of the attacks, including in Canada. “People showed up at my workplace and you could see they had signed petitions, and they sent them to the president’s office trying to get me fired,” she said. “It never really went away. Those kinds of attacks, this hatred of Muslims, it has been a constant feature of Canadian political life in the period since 9/11.”

Statistics and surveys show that reported hate crimes against Muslims surged in Canada after 2001, along with negative attitudes toward those of Islamic faith. And while the number of reports ebbed and flowed over the past 20 years, it never went back down to pre-9/11 levels. “There’s always what I’m going to call a ‘flavour of the month’ when it comes to who’s being targeted” by hate crimes and abuse, said Evan Balgord, executive director of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network. “Whether it’s the Wet’suwet’en blockades that sparked a wave of Indigenous abuse, or the Black Lives Matter protests that led to lots of anti-Black racism. But it always returns back to Muslims and Islamophobia.” [...] Thobani says anti-Muslim sentiment was also fuelled partly by the very justifications used by the U.S. and Canadian governments to invade Afghanistan: to free Afghan women and girls from the oppressive rule of the Taliban. “What we saw at that moment is that Islamophobia became a gendered discourse,” she said. “It fuelled perceptions about (male) Muslims, but it also othered Muslim women and girls too. And that othering, it never stopped. That gap has been growing even larger since 9/11.” [...]

During that time, Balgord with the Canadian Anti-Hate Network says the seeds of the modern Islamophobic movement were being sown. “The first real rallying cry was the opposition to Motion 103,” he said, referring to the non-binding motion in Parliament denouncing Islamophobia that was introduced in late 2016 and passed the following year. [...] Balgord also points to other flashpoints like the Stephen Harper-led Conservative government vowing to establish a “barbaric cultural practices hotline” during the 2015 election, which was criticized for feeding anti-Islamic sentiment. That move followed the 2013 Quebec Charter of Values that limited public sector workers from wearing religious symbols like hijabs. “The prevailing narrative of all this sentiment was this vast conspiracy, that Muslims were trying to infiltrate and take over the West and commit a white genocide, or at least change the culture,” Balgord said. “And some politicians fed into that.”

The mid-2010s also saw some of the worst attacks on Muslims and their places of worship in Canada’s history: the attack on Muslim students at Queen’s University in 2014; the Peterborough, Ont., mosque arson in 2015. It all culminated in the 2017 shooting at the Islamic Cultural Centre in Quebec City, where six Muslims were killed and 19 more were injured. [...] The most recent data from Statistics Canada shows that police-reported crimes against Muslims have fallen slightly over the past three years, coinciding with a wave of outreach and awareness after the attacks of the mid-2010s. However, they remain far higher than the early post-9/11 era. On average, over 140 incidents were reported each year between 2018 and 2020. Last year marked the lowest number since 2013 with 82 reported hate crimes, despite hate crimes overall increasing during the COVID-19 pandemic. [...] Thobani says now, with the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan sending refugees to Canada, is the time for reflection and change. “Until we have an honest reckoning about why we went to war in Afghanistan, how our heightened border policies are aligned with anti-immigrant sentiment, we will still see these kinds of attacks and threats,” she said. “It’s all tied back to the war on terror. Read more - Lire plus

CP24 04/10/2021 - Around New York City in the weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, as an eerie quiet settled over ground zero, South Asian and Arab men started vanishing. Soon, more than 1,000 were arrested in sweeps across the metropolitan area and nationwide. Most were charged only with overstaying visas and deported back to their home countries. But before that happened, many were held in detention for months, with little outside contact, especially with their families. Others would live with a different anxiety, forced to sign what was effectively a Muslim registry with no idea what might follow. While the remembrances and memorials of 9/11's 20th anniversary slip into the past, hundreds of Muslim men and their families face difficult 20-year anniversaries of their own. In the attacks' aftermath, the immigrant advocacy group Desis Rising Up and Moving, or DRUM, anticipated a rise in hate crimes and harassment. So it set up a hotline and placed flyers primarily in South Asian neighborhoods.

“We started getting calls from women saying, `Last night, law enforcement busted into our apartment and took my husband and my brother.' Children calling us and saying, `My father left for work four days ago and he hasn't come home, and we haven't heard anything,”' executive director Fahd Ahmed recalls. “There were people who were just disappearing from our communities,” he says, “and nobody knew what was happening to them or where they were going.” They were, according to the 9/11 Commission report, arrested as “special interest” detainees. Immigration hearings were closed, detainee communication was limited and bond was denied until the detainees were cleared of terrorist connections. Identities were kept secret. A review conducted by the Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General said the Justice Department's “hold until cleared” policy meant a significant percentage of the detainees stayed for months despite immigration officials questioning the legality of the prolonged detentions and even though there were no indications they were connected to terrorism. Compounding that, they faced “a pattern of physical and verbal abuse” particularly at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York. Conditions were, the report said, “unduly harsh.”

Detainees were swept up a myriad of ways, the report said. Three were stopped on a traffic violation and found with school drafting plans. Their boss explained they were working on a construction project and were supposed to have them, but authorities arrested and detained them anyway. Another was arrested because he seemed too anxious to buy a car. Although many of those who were held had come into the U.S. illegally or overstayed visas, “it was unlikely that most if not all” would have been pursued if not for the attack investigation, the report said. The “blunderbuss approach” of rounding up Muslims and presuming there would be terrorists among them was “pure racism and xenophobia in operation,” says Rachel Meeropol, senior staff attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights, who filed a lawsuit in 2002 on behalf of several of the men and continues to fight for additional plaintiffs to this day. “It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that it didn't work,” Meeropol says. “Of course, what it did do was destroy whole communities and not to mention the lives of all the individuals rounded up.” [...]

Joshua Dratel, co-chair of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers' national security committee, says the detentions are a foundational piece of something troubling - an acceptance of more invasive law enforcement for protection from terrorists. Searches at airports, in buildings, even on subways - “these are things that were once exceptional and extraordinary, and now the exception has become the norm. I think that has put us in a position of vulnerability to more of it and a more malevolent version of it.” Shirin Sinnar, a law professor at Stanford University, says the extreme measures taken after 9/11 have been normalized to the point that “now we don't even talk about them. They've just become part of the kinds of surveillance and deprivation of rights and profiling that we expect to see.” The positive, she says: More people seem willing to challenge that.

To a degree, that is true. Attitudes have trended toward people being more wary of the government's counterterrorism efforts. But a recent poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows that a majority of Americans, 54%, still believe it is sometimes necessary to sacrifice rights and freedom to fight terrorism. The long-running lawsuit in which additional plaintiffs were added after the first five were awarded a settlement has continued. It has ricocheted through the court system with mixed results. In 2017 the Supreme Court threw out parts of the suit but allowed one part to stand, sending it back to lower courts. Last month, a federal district court judge in Brooklyn dismissed the lawsuit. Meeropol says the initial settlement was proof that the plaintiffs had a compelling case. She says no decision has been made yet on an appeal. That leaves a striking fact: Nearly 20 years later, no individuals have been held accountable for how the detainees were treated, she says. Read more - Lire plus

Democracy Now! 07/10/2021 - The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday in a case brought by Abu Zubaydah, the Guantánamo prisoner who was the first subject of the CIA’s torture program. Zubaydah’s legal team has spent years trying to obtain testimony from two psychologists who helped the CIA design and implement his torture, and the Biden administration is continuing the Trump’s administration strategy to keep key information about Zubaydah’s torture in Poland classified despite the fact that the two psychologists are willing to testify. Several justices contradicted the Biden administration, suggesting Zubaydah, the only witness besides the psychologists to the torture in Poland, testify himself, and expressing frustration that Zubaydah is still being held incommunicado at Guantánamo. We speak with Abu Zubaydah’s attorney, Joe Margulies, and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Raymond Bonner, who has long followed the case. “The legal justification for continuing to hold [Guantánamo detainees] has disappeared,” says Margulies. Read more - Lire plus

​​Will the United States Officially Acknowledge That It Had a Secret Torture Site in Poland?

Meet Mansoor Adayfi: I Was Kidnapped as a Teen, Sold to the CIA & Jailed at Guantánamo for 14 Years

Guantanamo Bay: US court grapples with detainees' constitutional rights

Freed From Guantánamo, but Still in Limbo 15 Years Later

CTV News 05/10/2021 - Warning: This story contains graphic details that may disturb some readers. The raids started after midnight in Xinjiang. Hundreds of police officers armed with rifles went house to house in Uyghur communities in the far western region of China, pulling people from their homes, handcuffing and hooding them, and threatening to shoot them if they resisted, a former Chinese police detective tells CNN. "We took (them) all forcibly overnight," he said. "If there were hundreds of people in one county in this area, then you had to arrest these hundreds of people." The ex-detective turned whistleblower asked to be identified only as Jiang, to protect his family members who remain in China. In a three-hour interview with CNN, conducted in Europe where he is now in exile, Jiang revealed rare details on what he described as a systematic campaign of torture against ethnic Uyghurs in the region's detention camp system, claims China has denied for years.

"Kick them, beat them (until they're) bruised and swollen," Jiang said, recalling how he and his colleagues used to interrogate detainees in police detention centers. "Until they kneel on the floor crying." During his time in Xinjiang, Jiang said every new detainee was beaten during the interrogation process -- including men, women and children as young as 14. The methods included shackling people to a metal or wooden "tiger chair" -- chairs designed to immobilize suspects -- hanging people from the ceiling, sexual violence, electrocutions, and waterboarding. Inmates were often forced to stay awake for days, and denied food and water, he said. "Everyone uses different methods. Some even use a wrecking bar, or iron chains with locks," Jiang said. "Police would step on the suspect's face and tell him to confess." The suspects were accused of terror offenses, said Jiang, but he believes that "none" of the hundreds of prisoners he was involved in arresting had committed a crime. "They are ordinary people," he said.

The torture in police detention centers only stopped when the suspects confessed, Jiang said. Then they were usually transferred to another facility, like a prison or an internment camp manned by prison guards. In order to help verify his testimony, Jiang showed CNN his police uniform, official documents, photographs, videos, and identification from his time in China, most of which can't be published to protect his identity. CNN has submitted detailed questions to the Chinese government about his accusations, so far without a response. CNN cannot independently confirm Jiang's claims, but multiple details of his recollections echo the experiences of two Uyghur victims CNN interviewed for this report. More than 50 former inmates of the camp system also provided testimony to Amnesty International for a 160-page report released in June, "'Like We Were Enemies in a War': China's Mass Internment, Torture, and Persecution of Muslims in Xinjiang." Read more - Lire plus

‘There’s cameras everywhere’: testimonies detail far-reaching surveillance of Uyghurs in China

CounterPunch 05/10/2021 - Three years ago, on 2 October 2018, a team of Saudi officials murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. The purpose of the killing was to silence Khashoggi and to frighten critics of the Saudi regime by showing that it would pursue and punish them as though they were agents of a foreign power. It was revealed this week that a year before the Khashoggi killing in 2017, the CIA had plotted to kidnap or assassinate Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, who had taken refuge five years earlier in the Ecuador embassy in London. A senior US counter-intelligence official said that plans for the forcible rendition of Assange to the US were discussed “at the highest levels” of the Trump administration. The informant was one of more than 30 US officials – eight of whom confirmed details of the abduction proposal – quoted in a 7,500-word investigation by Yahoo News into the CIA campaign against Assange.

The plan was to “break into the embassy, drag [Assange] out and bring him to where we want”, recalled a former intelligence official. Another informant said that he was briefed about a meeting in the spring of 2017 at which President Trump had asked if the CIA could assassinate Assange and provide “options” about how this could be done. Trump has denied that he did so.

The Trump-appointed head of the CIA, Mike Pompeo, said publicly that he would target Assange and WikiLeaks as the equivalent of “a hostile intelligence service”. Apologists for the CIA say that freedom of the press was not under threat because Assange and the WikiLeaks activists were not real journalists. Top intelligence officials intended to decide themselves who is and who is not a journalist, and lobbied the White House to redefine other high-profile journalists as “information brokers”, who were to be targeted as if they were agents of a foreign power.

Among those against whom the CIA reportedly wanted to take action were Glenn Greenwald, a founder of the Intercept magazine and a former Guardian columnist, and Laura Poitras, a documentary film-maker. The arguments for doing so were similar to those employed by the Chinese government for suppressing dissent in Hong Kong, which has been much criticised in the West. Imprisoning journalists as spies has always been the norm in authoritarian countries, such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt, while denouncing the free press as unpatriotic is a more recent hallmark of nationalist populist governments that have taken power all over the world. It is possible to give only a brief precis of the extraordinary story exposed by Yahoo News, but the journalists who wrote it – Zach Dorfman, Sean D Naylor and Michael Isikoff – ought to scoop every journalistic prize. Their disclosures should be of particular interest in Britain because it was in the streets of central London that the CIA was planning an extra-judicial assault on an embassy, the abduction of a foreign national, and his secret rendition to the US, with the alternative option of killing him. These were not the crackpot ideas of low-level intelligence officials, but were reportedly operations that Pompeo and the agency fully intended to carry out. Read more - Lire plus

Amnesty International 05/10/2021 - Amnesty International urges International Criminal Court (‘ICC’) Prosecutor Karim Khan to conduct a full investigation in Afghanistan into all parties to the conflict and to urgently reconsider his decision to ‘deprioritise’ investigations into Article 5 crimes allegedly committed by Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) and the armed forces of the United States of America and its Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Failure to do so would present grave questions on the ICC-OTP’s future legitimacy and purpose.

On 27^th September 2021, Prosecutor Karim Khan announced that he had filed an application seeking authorisation for the Office of the Prosecutor (‘OTP’) to resume its investigation in the Situation in Afghanistan. The statement provided that he had ‘decided to focus my Office’s investigations in Afghanistan on crimes allegedly committed by the Taliban and the Islamic State – Khorasan Province (“IS-K”) and to deprioritise other aspects of this investigation.’ Amnesty International is gravely concerned by the Prosecutor’s approach and urges the OTP to proceed with a full investigation in Afghanistan, a situation which has been subject to OTP preliminary examination and investigation for 14 years, during which victims of crimes committed by all parties to the conflict have ceaselessly demanded justice from the ICC. In his stated approach, Prosecutor Khan appears willing to bow to political as well as resource pressure, applied by powerful states, whose actions would restrict the activities of a ‘universal’ ICC which may investigate situations where their nationals and interests are affected. Read more - Lire plus

‘War on Terror’ Terrorized Afghans for 20 Years

Afghanistan: Ex-Bagram inmates recount stories of abuse, torture

Former Member of Afghan Parliament Says U.S. War Ushered in “Another Dark Age” for Women

EU: More "war on terror" in the Afghanistan Counter-Terrorism Action Plan

European Commission: suspend deportations to Afghanistan, but deport Afghans to other "third countries"

The Intercept 10/09/2021 - We now know that later that day then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was barking instructions at one of his minions, who faithfully wrote them down. The minion’s notes, later obtained by a blogger via a Freedom of Information Act request, included this line of Rumsfeld’s: “go massive — sweep it all up, things related and not.” Ever since I read that, I’ve pondered this question: What exactly was this “it” — related to 9/11 and not — that Rumsfeld was so desperate to sweep up? And why did we have to keep at it for 20 years, at the cost of $8 trillion and 1 million lives? There’s a spectrum of possible answers. Some of them are quasi-rational and are articulated in the effluvia continually generated by the U.S. foreign policy apparatus. But I’ve come to believe that we can’t stop there, and a deeper, more accurate explanation can only be found in the murky psyches of the people like Rumsfeld at the top of U.S. society.

Rumsfeld himself wrote a memo months before 9/11 in which he explained the core problem facing the U.S. after the collapse of the Soviet Union: There were now “new regional powers” that were “arming to deter us from bringing our conventional or nuclear power to bear in a regional crisis.” In other words, we did not face the threat of being attacked; rather, we faced the threat of being deterred by other countries when we wanted to attack them.

The same perspective was expressed at great length in “Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” a famous paper produced in 2000 by the neoconservative think tank Project for the New American Century. First of all, it stated, all in bold, “At present the United States faces no global rival. America’s grand strategy should aim to preserve and extend this advantageous position as far into the future as possible.”

But there was a snake in this Garden of Eden. Technological developments might “soon allow lesser states to deter U.S. military action. … When their missiles are tipped with warheads carrying nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons, even weak regional powers have a credible deterrent. … America and its allies, rather than the Soviet Union, have become the primary objects of deterrence. … Projecting conventional military forces or simply asserting political influence abroad, particularly in times of crisis, will be far more complex and constrained.” This was too brutal a worldview for American politicians to articulate. But it at least was logical: We’re going to run the world for as long as possible, and it’s therefore impermissible for countries we don’t like to prevent us from bombing them.

Things went downhill from there, however. In a 2004 Esquire article, a “senior [Bush] administration official” explained why the U.S. had needed to invade Iraq. It turned out that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s continued existence in power “resulted in a very bad message to the world, including to Islamic terrorists, that America … could be defied.” This emotionalism about Saddam was bipartisan. In 1993, the Clinton administration proclaimed that Iraq, having been defeated in the 1991 Gulf War, had tried to assassinate former President George H.W. Bush while the elder Bush was taking a victory lap in Kuwait. This later turned out to have been made up in exactly the same way as all the tales about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. Nonetheless, Clinton officials were filled with rage about it. As the New Yorker reported at the time, they were furious about Saddam’s “near-suicidal defiance of American pressure. … Many officials in the Pentagon and the State Department had become increasingly angry with Iraq in the early months of the Clinton Administration, feeling that Saddam Hussein had been ‘getting away with things.’”

This is clearly not the language of adults discussing how to deal with other adults. Rather, it’s the mindset of frustrated parents whose children won’t do what they’re told. Even this, though, was more sober than the quasi-sexual perspective of others in the U.S. foreign policy establishment. Thomas Friedman, the three-time Pulitzer-winning New York Times columnist, famously explained in 2003 a few months after the invasion of Iraq, “We needed to go over there, basically, and take out a very big stick right in the heart of that world. … Well, suck on this! [That] is what this war was about. We could have hit Saudi Arabia. … We could have hit Pakistan. We hit Iraq because we could.” Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s similar worldview was described in journalist Bob Woodward’s book “State of Denial”:

“Why did you support the Iraq war?” [Bush aide Michael] Gerson asked him.

“Because Afghanistan wasn’t enough,” Kissinger answered. In the conflict with radical Islam, he said, they want to humiliate us. “And we need to humiliate them.”

Why are all these people lost in these disturbing fantasy worlds? After witnessing the last two decades, I’d suggest that we need to understand a peculiar quirk of human psychology: The powerful always loathe those with less power. My grandfather was a historian who spent his life studying the Spanish conquest of the so-called New World, and as he put it:

The hostility of those who have power toward those who can be called inferior because they are different — because they are others, the strangers — has been a historical constant. Indeed, at times it seems to be the dominant theme in human history.

The “it,” then, that Rumsfeld wanted to destroy on 9/11 was almost certainly every frustration he felt at the rest of humanity. This started with Al Qaeda and easily extended to Saddam and Iraq. But we can be sure that he also hoped to cow all the non-white people around the globe who were generally failing to comply. Next he could overwhelm the obstinate Europeans with their affectations to a higher morality. Obviously the Democrats, who continually tried to steal his money, would have to be crushed. And then at long last his daughter, going to Oberlin and dating that white guy with dreads, would see the error of her ways. Of course, this doesn’t make “sense” in the way we want to think of it. But neither has the “war on terror.” It’s been 20 years of mindless violence, cruelty, and waste, the U.S. lashing out like a gigantic beast without a functioning frontal cortex, visiting numberless 9/11s on innocents as it staggered around the globe. But that does make sense if you ignore all the speeches and op-eds and instead start from the presumption that the political class running this country is overflowing with the primate wrath of the powerful who are nonetheless not omnipotent.

In the weeks after 9/11, I told friends who didn’t live in New York that Al Qaeda had really put the terror back in terrorism. But the fear I experienced that terrible day does not begin to compare with the dread I’ve developed since. On September 11, 2001, I realized that I was on Al Qaeda’s list. Since then, I’ve learned that I’m also on the list of the far more mighty people in charge of America, just a little further down. Even with the most concrete dangers facing us — the destruction of a livable biosphere, an enduring pandemic, and much more — they are absolutely committed to following the same path, driven onward by complex delusions. Power tends to corrupt, not just in a standard moral sense but also intellectually and emotionally, and they’ve held extreme power for a very long time. What I know now that I didn’t know then is that if we let them, their corruption will surely destroy us all. Read more - Lire plus

The 9/11 Wars: The Intercept Article Collection

The Throughline From the War on Terror to Donald Trump

What the War of Terror Has Cost Us (webinar)

EVENTS - ÉVÈNEMENTS

October 08, 2021: The War on Terror Film Festival Weekend 2

October 14: Policing and the “war on terror” – American Friends Service Committee

October 15: The War on Terror Film Festival Weekend 3

Oct. 16: Assange Countdown to Freedom and Assange Defense Present: Stand-Ups for Assange

October 17: Call to Action on F-35s – Wisconsin Justice Groups

October 22: The War on Terror Film Festival Weekend 4

Oct. 24: Assange Countdown to Freedom and Assange Defense Present: Stand-Ups for Assange

October 29: The War on Terror Film Festival Weekend 5

ACTIONS

No More Attacks on Afghanistan

World Beyond War - In response to a bombing at the Kabul airport, the US president authorized 2 drone strikes on August 27 and 29 that killed several Afghan civilians, including a family of ten. Official counts indicate that at least 241,000 people have been killed in the Afghanistan and Pakistan war zones. We oppose any further attacks on Afghanistan, “over the horizon” or by troops on the ground.

How to Help Afghans in Afghanistan and Canada

Muslim Link - The people of Afghanistan are in dire need of humanitarian aid and Canada has committed to accepting 20,000 Afghan refugees.

How can you help? Click below for a list of ways you can support the people of Afghanistan at home and abroad.

Protect our rights from facial recognition!

ICLMG - Facial recognition surveillance is invasive and inaccurate. This unregulated tech poses a threat to the fundamental rights of people across Canada. Federal intelligence agencies refuse to disclose whether they use facial recognition technology. The RCMP has admitted (after lying about it) to using facial recognition for 18 years without regulation, let alone a public debate regarding whether it should have been allowed in the first place.

Send a message to Prime Minister Trudeau and Public Safety Minister Bill Blair calling for a ban now.

+ Take action to ban biometric recognition technologies

Trudeau: 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.

Stop Mohamed Harkat's Deportation to Torture

No one should be deported to torture. Ever. For nearly 19 years, Mohamed Harkat has faced the ordeal of being place under a kafkaesque security certificate based on secret evidence and accusations he cannot challenge, and facing deportation to torture in Algeria.

Please join us and send the letter below to Prime Minister Trudeau and Minister of Public Safety Bill Blair, urging them to stop the deportation to torture of Mr. Harkat.



• Your letter will also go to your Member of Parliament, along with the ministers of Justice & of Immigration.
• And don't hesitate to also sign and share this petition!

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

+ Urge China to stop targeting Uyghurs in China and abroad

OTHER NEWS - AUTRES NOUVELLES

Anti-terrorism laws

Législation antiterroriste

New Zealand - MP speaks of own house raid during counter terrorism law change

9/11’s legacy in Africa: How anti-terrorism laws have become anti-human rights laws

Australia: Since 9/11, we’ve created 92 anti-terrorism laws

Attacks on dissent

Attaques contre la dissidence

Homeland Security gathered intelligence on Portland protesters without legal justification, report finds

What does the murder of activist Mariano Abarca in Chiapas, México say about Canadian government accountability? (webinar)

As UK cracks down on protests, surveillance tech market grows

Hong Kong

Hong Kong man on national security trial over protest chants

Hong Kong top official stops short of saying whether residents marking Tiananmen Square crackdown will breach national security law

National security law: Hong Kong group behind June 4 Tiananmen vigil passes resolution to disband

Hong Kong trade union disbands as impact of security law deepens

Chief administration secretary stresses HK schools' duties in national security education

Hong Kong orders public broadcaster to support national security mission

Migrants and Refugee Rights

Droits des migrant.es et des réfugié.es

Palestinians in Gaza call to end latest UNRWA-US deal

U.S. will no longer deport people solely because they are undocumented, Homeland Security secretary says

Police

They were charged over a Toronto homeless clearance. They say police asked them to sign away their right to protest

Nothing but dead ends: How the complaints process protects the Ottawa police

More than half of US police killings are mislabelled or not reported, study finds

Los Angeles Cops Want $18 Million for Surveillance Software and Snacks

Privacy

Vie privée

Privacy Commissioner of Canada: Notice of consultation and call for comments – Privacy guidance on facial recognition for police agencies

G7: Still coming after encryption, plans to reinforce Interpol and global travel surveillance

100 organizations and cybersecurity experts call on the Belgian Government to halt legislation to undermine end-to-end encryption

Miscellaneous

Divers

Don’t Pursue War, Pursue War Crimes: Michael Ratner’s Decades-Long Battle to Close Guantánamo

“Becoming Abolitionists”: Derecka Purnell on Why Police Reform Is Not Enough to Protect Black Lives

January - June 2021

What we've been up to so far in 2021:

• We called on the government to not expand anti-terror laws to fight racism
• We met with many MPs, agencies, policy staff from the Offices of the Minister of Public Safety and Minister of Justice, etc.
• We published a report exposing CRA's Prejudiced Audits against Muslim Charities
• We continue to call for Justice for Dr Hassan Diab and his family!
• We were featured in 85+ news media articles, op-eds and podcasts
• We co-organized and presented in various online events
• We published op-eds, articles & statements ...and much more! More details

During the second half of the year, we will organize activities around the 20th "anniversary" of the beginning of the so-called "War on Terror" and the rushed adoption of Canada's Anti-terrorism Act of 2001, as well as the problematic laws passed and human rights abuses inflicted since in the name of national security.

And 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 the Canadian No Fly List
• for justice for Hassan Diab & the reform of the Extradition Act Read more

Version française: Ce que nous avons fait à date en 2021. Aidez-nous à protéger les libertés civiles pour le reste de l'année!

Les opinions exprimées ne reflètent pas nécessairement les positions de la CSILC - The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the positions of ICLMG.