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International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group
Coalition pour la surveillance internationale des libertés civiles
November 26, 2022 - 26 novembre 2022
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Press conference: Justice for Hassan Diab | |
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ICLMG 07/11/2022 - On the eighth anniversary of Dr. Hassan Diab’s extradition to France, human rights advocates call for government to end this miscarriage of justice.
Speakers:
• Don Bayne (Hassan Diab’s Canadian lawyer)
• Roger Clark (Former Secretary General of Amnesty International Canada,1988-1999, and member of the Hassan Diab Support Committee)
• Rob Currie (Professor of Transnational Criminal Law at the Schulich School of Law, Dalhousie University)
• Tim McSorley (National Coordinator of the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group) Watch - Visionnez
Watch the video of the Rally in Support of Hassan Diab in Ottawa on November 13, 2022
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MPs to review Canada's extradition system in coming justice committee hearings | |
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The Canadian Press 14/11/2022 - The House of Commons justice committee is getting set to review Canada's extradition system -- a move welcomed by critics who have long called for reforms to the process for sending people to face incarceration and prosecution abroad. Although hearing dates have yet to be set, the committee plans to hear from witnesses in at least three sessions that could begin before the end of the year.
"There have been lots of academics and human rights organizations that have made very concrete proposals about what needs to happen," said New Democrat MP Randall Garrison, a committee member who proposed the study. "And so my idea was that we should get them before the justice committee and let them make those proposals and, hopefully, we can generate some enthusiasm from the government for moving on this."
Legal and human rights experts say Canada's extradition procedures need a thorough overhaul to ensure fairness, transparency and a balance between a desire for administrative efficiency and vital constitutional protections.
In a report released last year, voices calling for change highlighted a number of problems with how proceedings unfold under the 1999 Extradition Act, criticizing the system as inherently unjust. In the Canadian system, the courts decide whether there is sufficient evidence, or other applicable grounds, to justify a person's committal for extradition.
When someone is committed to be extradited, the justice minister must then personally decide whether to order the individual's surrender to the foreign state. Critics say the committal process compromises the ability of the person sought for extradition to meaningfully challenge the foreign case against them, reducing Canadian judges to rubber stamps and permitting use of unreliable material.
In addition, they argue the surrender decision made by the justice minister is a highly discretionary and explicitly political process that is unfairly weighted toward extradition.
Advocates of reform highlight the case of Ottawa sociology professor Hassan Diab, a Canadian citizen who was extradited to France and imprisoned for more than three years, only to be released before even going on trial.Despite all this, Diab, who has returned to Canada, is slated to face trial in France in April next year for a 1980 bombing of a Paris synagogue.
Hassan Diab is not the only one "to suffer through this broken process," said Tim McSorley, national co-ordinator of the Ottawa-based International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group. "Multiple studies have already shown that there are deep problems in Canada's extradition system, and multiple experts have already proposed clear solutions," he said. "We hope the committee takes this opportunity to develop concrete legislative solutions that will help the government quickly move to introducing amendments to the Extradition Act.""
[NB: The article states "Diab, who has returned to Canada, is slated to face trial in France in April next year for a 1980 bombing of a Paris synagogue. Diab denies any involvement, and his supporters have long argued there is an abundance of evidence demonstrating his innocence. They want the Trudeau government to flatly deny any new extradition request from France." To be clear, Diab's supporters are not arguing there is an abundance of evidence demonstrating his innocence - the French judges investigating Hassan's case have found solid evidence that Hassan was in Lebanon during the bombing in France - and that is why they closed the case and ordered he be released and sent back to Canada in 2018. Hassan's innocence is a proven fact.] Read more - Lire plus
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Watch: Advocates Call for Repatriation of Canadians Detained in Syria, feat. ICLMG | |
Independent agency probing CSIS after claim that operative smuggled teenage girls into Syria | |
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CBC News 24/11/2022 - An independent government agency is reviewing how Canada's spy agency handles human sources after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised in August to follow up on claims that an ISIS member who was also working as a CSIS operative smuggled three British teenagers into Syria in 2015. The three teens — Shamima Begum, Amira Abase, both 15, and Kadiza Sultana, 16 — left east London for Syria in 2015. Sultana and Abase are believed to be dead. Begum is at a detention camp in northeastern Syria. The National Security and Intelligence Review Agency (NSIRA) has confirmed that it agreed to undertake a review of the case in response to a written request in September from Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino.
NSIRA said the review is looking into how the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) handles "human source operations" and is "following up on earlier… studies related to how risks are managed and the minister is informed." The Prime Minister's Office said Trudeau asked Mendicino to look into the matter. Trudeau faced questions in August about claims coming from U.K.-based writer Richard Kerbaj's book The Secret History of the Five Eyes and from an investigation by the BBC's Joshua Baker. The book claims Syrian-born Mohammed al-Rashed was working for ISIS and wanted to start a new life in Canada so he applied for political asylum in Canada. CSIS learned about al-Rashed from the embassy in Turkey and brought him on as an intelligence asset for CSIS, the book said.
The trio of teenage girls from London went missing in 2015 and a manhunt was underway to find them. U.K. authorities later found out the teens flew to Turkey and were then smuggled by al-Rashed into Syria to join ISIS, the book said. The book also said it was only after CSIS learned al-Rashed had been arrested in Turkey — and the case would go public as a result — that two CSIS officers travelled to London to reveal the agency's involvement in the case to local police investigating the teens' disappearance. Kerbaj's book claims the meeting was for "self-serving purposes" and that CSIS "hoped the police force's investigation would not force CSIS to be questioned or be held accountable." [...]
Security consultant and former senior CSIS intelligence officer Huda Mukbil calls CSIS's alleged handling of Begum's case "shameful." The Globe and Mail has reported that al-Rashed broke a CSIS rule that bans paid agents from engaging in illegal activity, including human trafficking. Steven Blaney, the Conservative public safety minister at the time, wasn't aware of the operation and did not approve it, the Globe and Mail reported. CSIS learned about the teens' whereabouts four days after they crossed the Turkish border and informed British intelligence within 48 hours, the Globe and Mail reported.
"The buck stops at trafficking minors," said Mukbil, who worked for CSIS for 15 years, including a stint as a CSIS agent in the U.K. from 2005 to 2006. "The moment that the source was aware these were minors … he had every obligation to ensure they are not trafficked into that territory." She's now calling on the U.K. to reinstate Begum's citizenship and said Canada must launch a public inquiry into CSIS's handling of the case.
"We need to ensure this doesn't happen again," said Mukbil, author of the forthcoming book My Life Fighting Terrorists, Spies and Institutional racism. After Mukbil took part in a discrimination lawsuit, CSIS admitted in 2020 that systemic racism existed at the agency. Mukbil ran in the last federal election for the NDP and says she's speaking out to improve institutions.
Baker, an investigative journalist at the BBC, has travelled to the detention camp multiple times to speak directly with Begum for his podcast I'm Not a Monster. He started investigating the case in 2015. Baker said Begum told him she had no idea that the man who smuggled her from Turkey to Syria in 2015 was an asset for Canadian intelligence and that without him she would have struggled to get into Syria. "But what she has said is that she feels it would have been impossible for her, and indeed others like her, to reach Syria without the help of smugglers like Mohammed al-Rashed," he said. Baker said he obtained documents that show al-Rashed was part of a network moving men, women and children to Syria for ISIS long before Begum left the U.K. Two CSIS handlers at the embassy in Jordan were dealing with al-Rashed, but it's "difficult to know" if CSIS knew he was going to transport the teenage girls to Syria, said Baker.
The Prime Minister's Office told CBC News on Tuesday that "CSIS must abide by Canadian law and is subject to rigorous review by oversight bodies." But the PMO also said that "any activities that occurred prior to 2017 would not have benefited from this oversight regime." That year, roughly two years after Begum travelled to Syria, the government introduced the National Security Act, which led to the introduction of an intelligence commissioner to oversee the spy agency's sensitive activities, Mendicino's office said. Read more - Lire plus
Ex-Canadian spy calls for Shamima Begum's UK return after spy agency 'cover up'
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The Taxpayers' Ombudsperson's tells Senate he cannot access critical information in investigation of prejudiced CRA audits | |
CJPME welcomes government's decision to not conflate criticism of Israel's human rights abuses with "Ideologically Motivated Violent Extremism"
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Twitter 24/11/2022 - CJPME is pleased to learn that the Canadian government has decided NOT to endorse the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security report's Recommendation 20, which had threatened to conflate criticism of Israel's human rights abuses with "Ideologically Motivated Violent Extremism."
CJPME had written to Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino and met with Parliamentary Secretary Pam Damoff to express our concerns with the recommendation, which we argued would be used to undermine human rights reporting and activism in support of Palestinian human rights.
Now, we are glad to see that the govt's response to the report only "takes note" of Recommendation 20, but does NOT endorse or express agreement with it. That said, the response unfortunately repeats Canada's existing support for IHRA and the conflation of BDS with antisemitism.
In a letter to CJPME, Public Safety explains that "the considerations you raised regarding the possible effects of fulling accepting [Recommendation 20] were taken into account," and we are pleased to see that this has resulted in Canada's decision to decline to endorse it. Read more - Lire plus
Revealed: Canada's rejection of Amnesty's apartheid report not based on specific evidence, according to ATIP request
TAKE ACTION: Urge Your MP to Support JUSTICE For Palestinian Children!
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Israeli weapons company Elbit Systems has launched a new micro-'suicide-drone' | |
Opinion: The CSIS Act threshold on ‘threat to the security of Canada’ in the Emergency Act must be met | |
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The Globe and Mail 23/11/2022 - A curious thing is happening before the Rouleau Commission inquiry into the use of the Emergencies Act. Federal government witnesses are testifying that the phrase “threat to the security of Canada” in the Emergencies Act does not mean the same thing as “threats to the security of Canada” in the Canadian Security Intelligence Services (CSIS) Act. This is in spite of the fact that the Emergencies Act states unequivocally that it relies on the CSIS Act definition. This peculiar position led the director of CSIS to support the invocation of a public order emergency while assuring cabinet that no threat to the security of Canada existed. How did this happen? CSIS Director David Vigneault testified that lawyers from the Department of Justice advised him that in the context of the Emergencies Act, the definition is broader.
This belies both the text of the statute and everything we know about the drafting of the Emergencies Act. Under the Emergencies Act, three threshold criteria must be met for the government to declare a public order emergency. First, the invocation of emergency powers is contingent on there being no other laws available to respond effectively to the emergency. Emergency powers, in other words, are only available as a last resort. This is true for the declaration of any of the four types of emergencies spelled out in the act. The evidence from most of the relevant actors appearing before the Rouleau Commission, including the RCMP Commissioner, is that not all legal tools were exhausted before the declaration of a public order emergency in February 2022. The additional measures available following the declaration, the OPP Commissioner explained, were helpful but not necessary to resolve the blockades.
Second, in the specific context of a public order emergency, these extraordinary powers are available only if the emergency arises from a threat to the security of Canada and is so serious as to be a national emergency (another defined term). The text is explicit: when the phrase “threat to the security of Canada” is used in reference to a public order emergency, it is assigned the same meaning as in section 2 of the CSIS Act. Other pieces of national security legislation, such as the Security Offences Act, make the exact same move.
What falls within the CSIS Act definition? Section 2 includes four broadly conceived but specific threats: espionage or sabotage, foreign-influenced activities, subversion and terrorism/violent extremism. The final one, which the government relied upon to invoke the Emergencies Act, includes activities anywhere in the world, directed toward or in support of acts or threats of serious violence. Those acts or threats can be directed at either persons or property so long as they are done to achieve a political, religious or ideological objective. But as the commission has heard, CSIS made it clear to the government that the convoy protests did not meet its definition of a threat to the security of Canada.
When drafted, the purpose of the Emergencies Act was to narrow the availability of emergency powers previously available under the discredited War Measures Act. For this reason, many criticized the incorporation of threats to security from the CSIS Act. They argued that CSIS’s definition was too sweeping given the types of powers unleashed by declaring a public order emergency. Perrin Beatty, the defence minister at the time and the sponsor of the Emergencies Act, reassured those critics that what would trigger a public order emergency was far narrower than what falls within CSIS’s mandate. To be a public order emergency, not only does a threat to the security of Canada need to exist, it must also rise to the level of a national emergency, meaning it has to be urgent, critical and temporary in nature; seriously threaten the lives, health and safety of Canadians; and exceed the capacity or authority of the provinces to deal with it. Beatty referred to this as a “double test.”
But in the past week, the CSIS director, the clerk of the Privy Council and the National Security and Intelligence Advisor testified that cabinet is of the opposite view: the CSIS Act definition is too narrow, and the Emergencies Act demands a more contextual understanding of national security threats. Relying on this broader interpretation, cabinet determined that the freedom convoy protests met the definition of threat to the security of Canada. Yet the Emergencies Act requires as a starting point that a threat to the security of Canada as defined by the CSIS Act not only exists – but that the national emergency arises from that threat. The evidence provided by the CSIS witnesses on Monday made it clear that no such threat existed. Instead the testimony is that the failure to resolve the blockades created the potential for serious violence. They’ve flipped the test on its head.
The worst part is we have no idea about the reach of cabinet’s new definition. What else could give rise to a public order emergency under their interpretation? We know it is “broader,” but we have no idea how broad because witnesses have been unable to articulate how cabinet and its legal advisers came to their reasoning in the first place. This move has made the Emergencies Act susceptible to the very abuse it was intended to prevent. The dangerous overreach that was feared at the time it was drafted is not only present, but expanding. Read more - Lire plus
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Monia Mazigh: Racial bias and profiling in security intelligence: what we’re learning from the Rouleau Commission | |
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rabble 16/11/2022 - For decades, Muslim and Sikh communities in Canada were considered the primary threats to national security. They were consistently identified as such in the Canadian Security Intelligence Service’s (CSIS) annual reports. Not only is this a flagrant example of racial and religious profiling, but it is doubly problematic since it humiliates members of these communities and misleads Canadians with biased assessments of security threats.
Who is considered a threat?
Terms like ‘Shia Islam’, ‘Sunni Islam’ and ‘Sikh (Khalistani)’ extremism, were commonly, if not frequently, used in the elaboration of these reports until 2018. The 2011 report employs the words of Vic Toews, the then-Public Safety Minister who summarized the situation as: “violence driven by Sunni Islamist extremism is the leading threat to Canada’s national security.” These type of references remained present in national security reporting until 2018 when Ralph Goodale, the then-Minister of Public Safety, declared: “Words matter. We must never equate any one community or entire religions with extremism.” While Muslim and Sikh communities were unjustly targeted over the years, the increasing number of violent white supremacy-motivated attacks, and neo-Nazis, incel (short for involuntary celibate) and other anti-government groups, were rarely mentioned or described as posing real threats to our national security.
The Toronto van attack inspired by incel ideology killed 11 people and injured 15 others; the Islamophobic attack at the Quebec City mosque killed six men and injured 19 others; the London, Ontario van attack killed four Canadian-Pakistani Muslim family members.
These are clear and tragic outcomes of ideologies that flourished when left undisturbed while the full scrutiny of the security apparatus was directed at so-called Sunni, Shia or Sikh terrorism. Before going any further, I want to be clear. I am not trying to argue that dangers posed by some individuals associated with the aforementioned religious denominations should be taken less seriously than other groups or individuals with violent ideologies. My point is to emphasize the reckless attempts by some intelligence agencies in shaping the narrative of who Canadians should fear, while their neglect gave other violent groups an implicit ‘carte blanche’ to operate.
Coded language persists
In a 2019 move to distance itself from its past, CSIS introduced new terminology. The word ‘terrorism’ which was mainly understood by the agency, and even the media, as violence committed by Muslims, was changed to ‘violent extremism.’ The Service came up with three separate categories: religiously-motivated violent extremism, politically-motivated violent extremism and ideologically-motivated violent extremism. Even though I personally find this terminology a better description of the threats we are facing, it still carries some heavy and obvious racial and religious connotations. What is the line between religious, political and ideological threats? Many times, we can see how one easily slips into another or how one feeds into another. Take the example of white supremacy, considered by CSIS as politically motivated violent extremism. It isn’t a secret that this ideology has been historically associated with some extremist Christian groups where some white Christians are considered morally superior to Black, Indigenous, Jewish, and Muslim people. So why is it considered politically motivated violent extremism rather than religiously or ideologically motivated?
The same blurry line applies to religiously motivated violent extremism. If CSIS is targeting individuals belonging to Al-Qaeda or Daesh, as they claim, they must know that for these groups, religion, as counterintuitive it may appear for some, isn’t the sole motivation for violence. It is rather an ideological or political interpretation of religious texts that is their lethal engine. Osama Bin Laden, the former leader of al-Qaeda in his speech following 9/11, explicitly linked his ‘fight’ to the occupation of Palestine and the illegal and violent presence of American forces in the Middle East. Whether he was being transparent about his motives or not, it is clear that the delineation of what is religious and what is political can be very misleading. So why do we stick the ‘religious’ motive on Muslim groups and categorize other acts of violence differently?
Clear instances of bias revealed in the Rouleau commission hearings
A prime example of this coded terminology at play in reports about the three-week long week occupation of Ottawa earlier this year. The Public Order Emergency Commission investigating the federal government’s use of the Emergencies Act to end the protests, headed by Judge Paul Rouleau, began a few weeks ago. Newly-public information reveals and confirms that police services and intelligence agencies are very biased when it comes to detecting national security threats from groups that are not Muslim or Sikh. Indeed, for years, they have been allocating human and financial resources to target Muslims and as a result they left other threats, coming from white supremacist violent groups in Canada and the United States, unperturbed. Worse, they assessed them with leniency, if not sympathy.
In a video played at the Rouleau Commission, a pastor delivers a fiery sermon to a crowd in a saloon in Coutts, Alberta. He tells them they should be willing to die for their cause, understood here as the vaccine mandate set by the federal government. Wouldn’t that qualify as violent religious extremism? Why didn’t we see any red flags raised or repercussions for this incitement of violence? Why wasn’t this included as an example of religiously-motivated violence extremism? Moreover, even when the risk is flagged by some intelligence agents, there is no action taken. Steve Bell, the top-ranking police officer who replaced the embattled Ottawa Police chief during the convoy, was not able to explain, during his testimony at the Rouleau Commission, how his office failed to foresee the risk that was already flagged by some intelligence reports. I dare to assume here that because the protesters were white and seemed ‘harmless,’ the Ottawa Police Service assumed they would mostly obey the law and leave after the first weekend.
Ottawa convoy assumed to be harmless, at first
Giving protesters the benefit of the doubt should be the norm. However, insisting on giving the occupiers the benefit of the doubt, even when the intelligence reports are indicating otherwise, is hugely troubling. What is even more concerning is that the chief of the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) testified at the inquiry that he saw no ‘credible’ information of a national security threat or extremist violence during the convoy. The same investigation revealed that the RCMP top chief and her OPP counterpart were exchanging texts on how to “calm unnamed cabinet ministers about the situation unfolding in Ottawa.” Would they have the same discussions if the protesters were Muslims, or Sikh, or land defenders from Indigenous communities? I highly doubt it. Read more - Lire plus
John Clarke: The security state’s double standards
Amira Elghawaby: Racism and hate are threats to public safety. Why haven’t we heard this during the Emergencies Act inquiry?
Ottawa People's Commission: Witnesses recount devastating impact of Freedom Convoy, lack of police action
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Minding Your Business: A Critical Analysis of the Collection of De-identified Mobility Data and Its Use Under the Socially Beneficial and Legitimate Interest Exemptions in Canadian Privacy Law | |
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CitizenLab 22/11/2022 - The Government of Canada obtained de-identified and aggregated mobility data from private companies for the socially beneficial purpose of trying to understand and combat the spread of COVID-19. This collection began as early as March 2020, and the information was provided by Telus and BlueDot. It wasn’t until December 2021, after the government issued a request for proposals for cellular tower information that would extend the collection of mobility information, that the public became widely aware of the practice.
Parliamentary meetings into the government’s collection of mobility data began shortly thereafter, and a key finding was that Canada’s existing privacy legislation is largely ineffective in managing the collection, use, and disclosure of data in a manner that recognizes the privacy rights of individuals. In spite of this finding, the federal government introduced Bill C-27: An Act to enact the Consumer Privacy Protection Act, the Personal Information and Data Protection Tribunal Act and the Artificial Intelligence and Data Act and to make consequential and related amendments to other Acts in June 2022 which, if passed into law, will fail to correct existing deficiencies in Canada’s federal commercial privacy law. In particular, Bill C-27 would make explicit that the government can continue collecting information, including mobility data from private organizations, so long as uses were socially beneficial and without clearly demarcating what will or will not constitute such uses in the future.
This report, “Minding Your Business: A Critical Analysis of the Collection of De-identified Mobility Data and Its Use Under the Socially Beneficial and Legitimate Interest Exemptions in Canadian Privacy Law,” critically assesses the government’s existing practice of collecting mobility information for socially beneficial purposes as well as private organizations’ ability to collect and use personal information without first obtaining consent from individuals or providing them with knowledge of the commercial activities. It uses examples raised during the COVID-19 pandemic to propose 19 legislative amendments to Bill C-27. These amendments would enhance corporate and government accountability for the collection, use, and disclosure of information about Canadian residents and communities, including for so-called de-identified information.
Part 1 provides a background of key privacy issues that were linked to collecting mobility data during the COVID-19 pandemic. We pay specific attention to the implementation of new technologies to collect, use, and disclose data, such as those used for contact-tracing applications and those that foreign governments used to collect mobility information from telecommunications carriers. We also attend to the concerns that are linked to collecting location information and why there is a consequent need to develop robust governance frameworks.
Part 2 focuses on the collection of mobility data in Canada. It outlines what is presently known about how Telus and BlueDot collected the mobility information that was subsequently disclosed to the government in aggregated and de-identified formats, and it discusses the key concerns raised in meetings held by the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics. The Committee’s meetings and final report make clear that there was an absence of appropriate public communication from the federal government about its collection of mobility information as well as a failure to meaningfully consult with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. The Government of Canada also failed to verify that Telus and BlueDot had obtained meaningful consent prior to receiving data that was used to generate insights into Canadian residents’ activities during the pandemic.
Part 3 explores the lawfulness of the collection of mobility data by BlueDot and Telus and the disclosure of the data to the Public Health Agency of Canada under existing federal privacy law. Overall, we find that BlueDot and Telus likely complied with current privacy legislation. The assessment of the lawfulness of BlueDot and Telus’ activities serves to reveal deficiencies in Canada’s two pieces of federal privacy legislation, the Privacy Act and the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA).
In Part 4, we identify six thematic deficiencies in Canada’s commercial privacy legislation:
- PIPEDA fails to adequately protect the privacy interests at stake with de-identified and aggregated data despite risks that are associated with re-identification.
- PIPEDA lacks requirements that individuals be informed of how their data is de-identified or used for secondary purposes.
- PIPEDA does not enable individuals or communities to substantively prevent harmful impacts of data sharing with the government.
- PIPEDA lacks sufficient checks and balances to ensure that meaningful consent is obtained to collect, use, or disclose de-identified data.
- PIPEDA does not account for Indigenous data sovereignty nor does it account for Indigenous sovereignty principles in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which has been adopted by Canada.
- PIPEDA generally lacks sufficient enforcement mechanisms.
The Government of Canada has introduced the Consumer Privacy Protection Act (CPPA) in Bill C-27 to replace PIPEDA. Part 5 demonstrates that Bill C-27 does not adequately ameliorate the deficiencies of PIPEDA as discussed in Part 4. Throughout, Part 5 offers corrective recommendations to the Consumer Privacy Protection Act that would alleviate many of the thematic issues facing PIPEDA and, by extension, the CPPA. Read more - Lire plus
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Background Information: Turkish War Against Rojava | |
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Women Defend Rojava 22/11/2022 - For several days now, the Turkish military has been attacking the Rojava region on a massive scale with warplanes. The Turkish government justifies these attacks by claiming that it is fighting terrorism and that security concerns emanate from Rojava. In this dossier, Kongra Star has summarized what the attacks are about and what the real reasons are for the Turkish government’s war against the Kurds. [...]
On the night of November 19-20, 2022, the Turkish military carried out airstrikes in northern Syria, attacking Kobanî, Dêrik, Dirbesiye, the north of Aleppo and other areas on the Turkish-Syrian border. This operation, which began overnight, has been referred to by the Turkish state as “Claw Sword Air Operation” indicating that these attacks are not a one-time operation. The attacks killed eleven civilians during the first night, including a journalist, and wounded six. One Syrian Democratic Forces fighter was killed in Abo Racin. Fifteen Syrian government soldiers lost their lives and three civilians were injured in Kobane.1 These attacks on Rojava are the latest in a series of attacks and wars carried out by the Turkish state against the region. [...]
In the area of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), Turkey conducted over 89 drone attacks in the year 2022 alone. In these strikes, at least 71 people were killed and 124 were injured. Again and again, civilians, children and young people were being hit. Particularly on the border with Turkey, there were repeated cross-border attacks by Turkish border guards towards people living in Syria. Most of the victims were farmers who cultivate their fields near the border. At least thirteen people were killed in these attacks in 2022, three of whom were minors. A further twenty people were injured.
At the end of May 2022, Erdoğan declared that he wanted to launch a “new phase” of his incursion, and purge Rojava/Northern Syria and Southern Kurdistan/Northern Iraq of “terrorists,” i.e., YPG/YPJ. This is to be followed by several other regions up to 30 km deep in Syrian territory. A member of alJabat al-Shamiya, a Turkish mercenary force, also made it abundantly clear who the real target of the mission is: “The Kurds have to get out of here, it’s not their territory”. Here, Erdoğan’s hypocritical game is obvious. He claims that the YPG/YPJ defense units and the PYD political party belong to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is banned in Turkey. When attacking Syrian territory as well as Southern Kurdistan/Northern Iraq, Turkey defends its actions using the logic of self-defense. However, if we take a closer look at the people who have been murdered by Turkish attacks, the picture is different. Again and again normal civilians, even children, are the ones killed or injured. In other cases, Turkey specifically targets internal security structures of the AANES. In July, four members of the Internal Security Forces (Asayîş) were killed by a drone attack in Ain Issa, Raqqa Governorate. As the Asayîş are a part of the internal security of the Autonomous Administration region, framing them as a threat to Turkey makes absolutely no sense. However, Erdoğan seems to reliably follow through on his threats. Since July 2022, his low-intensity war is getting much more intense as he seems unwilling to wait any longer and is ramping up the attacks.
Since 1992 Turkey has also been regularly attacking Southern Kurdistan/Northern Iraq under the pretext of fighting terrorism. Since 2018, the Iraqi government has recorded more than 22,700 Turkish violations of Iraqi sovereignty. Since 2021, Turkey bombarded the Metina, Zap and Avaşin-Basyan regions especially hard, as well as the Duhok and Erbil Governorates. In these aggressive offensives, they also use chemical weapons in violation of both international law, and the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), a convention which bans the use of chemical weapons that Turkey itself has signed. However, Western governments and international organizations such as the UN or NATO have stayed silent.
So far, there has been no open criticism from NATO, of which Turkey has been a member since 1952, of Erdoğan’s war policy. This shows that so-called common values such as freedom and democracy only apply when they serve Turkey’s own imperial interests. Turkey’s power has even increased as a result of the Ukraine war, in which Erdoğan has managed to establish himself as a “neutral mediator” between Russia and Ukraine.10 Turkey’s power is also evident in its blocking of Sweden and Finland’s admission to NATO. Erdoğan sees humanitarian aid from these countries to Rojava/Northern Syria as “terror aid”, and Kurds who organize themselves in these countries as “terrorists”. After repeated negotiations, it appears that Turkey has gotten its way.11 In exchange for the two countries being able to join NATO, Kurdish activists will now be deported to Turkey. [...]
Since the uprisings of 2011, the people of Rojava, a majority-Kurdish (but multicultural) region in northern Syria, took advantage of the power vacuum to put their years of grassroots organizing into practice. On July 19, 2012, the revolution was declared, first in Kobanê and then in other parts of northern Syria. This was the start of the revolution in Rojava/Northern Syria. Since then, the people have administrated themselves autonomously, based on the principles of direct democracy, ecology and women’s liberation. While the liberated territories initially consisted of the cantons Cizre, Kobanê and Afrin, the area that today comprises the Autonomous Administration of North and East has now expanded. As ISIS was pushed back and defeated, and majority-Arab regions were liberated and incorporated into the Autonomous Administration. Today it comprises almost a third of Syria’s territory.
The self-administration is based on the concept of Democratic Confederalism developed by Abdullah Öcalan, who has been in solitary confinement in Turkey since 1999. The goal of the self-administration is therefore not a separate (Kurdish) nation-state, but the grassroots democratic self-administration of all inhabitants of North and East Syria. Four years ago, the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria28 was established. It is an administration that, through the struggle of the women’s movement, is building a grassroots democratic, multicultural, multiethnic, and egalitarian administrative system. Over the past decade, women have become involved in all aspects of life, socially, politically, legally, economically, educationally, and they have played a pioneering role in building a free society: a society that manages itself. The system of co-presidency (one man, one woman in the executive seats) in AANES and all its institutions is mandatory. There is a 50% gender quota in all government bodies and structures. According to the social contract of North and East Syria, all ethnic or social groups have the right to organize and represent their own interests. [...]
Turkey is not only pursuing an anti-Kurdish policy at home and abroad, but is also waging a war in the region to prevent the democratic aspirations in the region. Read more - Lire plus
Turkey Is Starving the Rojava Revolution
Turkey’s Warplanes Are Attacking North East Syria. We Must Stop Yet Another Invasion.
Turkey Kurdish strikes: A population living in fear
Britain must not criminalise Kurdish symbol of national identity and struggle
Swedish parliament met Turkey’s demands with constitutional amendement and anti-terror law
Kurdistan and Sweden, Finland’s NATO Membership
TAKE ACTION: Make a Call to Stop Turkey’s Attacks
TAKE ACTION: Stop chemical warfare in Kurdistan!
TAKE ACTION: Justice for Kurds!
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UN Counterterrorism and Technology: What Role for Human Rights in Security? | |
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Just Security 23/11/2022 - The first meeting of the United Nations Security Council Counter-Terrorism Committee (CTC) held outside of U.N. headquarters in New York since 2015 marked important advances in engaging with civil society and experts who have questioned the embrace of counterterrorism approaches that too often backfire or result in human rights violations. But the Delhi Declaration that emerged reflected little of that input. Prepared mostly in advance, the meeting’s outcome document merely confirmed the trend towards further expansion of the U.N. counterterrorism agenda related to the use of new and emerging technologies, with little attention to the abuses committed by governments in the process.
The Oct. 28-29 meeting, conducted in India, was convened to discuss a specific element of the fight against terrorism: “Countering the use of new and emerging technologies for terrorist purposes.” The Security Council has sought for more than 20 years to address the perceived exploitation of information and communications technology (ICT) and related technologies for terrorist purposes. Adopted in the wake of the 9/11 attacks of 2001, Security Council resolution 1373 referred from the beginning to ICT and the abuse of communications technologies by terrorists.
Most notably in the last five years, the Security Council has adopted a series of resolutions under Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter, imposing legally binding obligations on all U.N. member states to introduce biometrics technologies at borders for counterterrorism purposes; to develop capabilities to collect, process and analyze travelers’ data, such as Advance Passenger Identification (API) and passenger name record (PNR) data; and to take action to prevent, investigate, and prosecute terrorism financing.
These resolutions have led to a significant expansion of surveillance powers by member states, often introduced without an adequate domestic legal framework and human rights safeguards. For example, Privacy International (Tomaso’s organization) has documented the human rights abuses stemming from biometric data identification systems across the globe since the Security Council adopted resolution 2396 in 2017. In its December 2021 analytical briefing on biometrics and counter-terrorism, the U.N. Counter-terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (CTED) noted how “the use of biometrics for counter-terrorism purposes – notably in the context of border management and security – has become increasingly widespread.” CTED’s own assessments show that many states “still lack sufficient legal and regulatory frameworks, data management and processing protocols, risk and impact assessment practices, and rigorous access controls and records for technology-based systems, including those based on AI.”
In addition, the Security Council has sought to address incitement to terrorism, including through the use of ICTs. Resolution 1624 (2005) contained a clear obligation for States to prohibit incitement to commit terrorist acts. At least in that case, it contains a strong human rights clause, including an explicit reference to the right to freedom of expression as reflected in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In 2010, the Security Council turned its attention for the first time to the use of the internet, including to incite terrorists as well as to finance, plan, and prepare terrorist actions.
These resolutions then served as building blocks for several subsequent resolutions. Those expanded attempted regulation of terrorist narratives, and instructed member States on how to counter the use of the internet, other ICTs, and other emerging technologies for terrorist purposes. ARTICLE 19 (Anna’s organization) has documented how these broad, sweeping provisions have led governments to adopt laws criminalizing “extremist” speech that does not amount to incitement; to block, filter, or ban websites; and to remove or restrict certain online content in a manner that violates freedom of expression and the right to privacy. The CTC’s special meeting in India and the preparatory technical meetings that preceded it proved no different in the committee’s approach. The focus of the debate in most of the panels was on the real and perceived threats of abuses of ICT by terrorists; human rights got short shrift, as did even legitimate questions about the credibility of evidence cited for the alleged terrorist abuses.
A notable exception to this trend was a civil society roundtable organized by CTED on Oct. 12, in which participants pointed to some of the most significant human rights concerns raised by government counterterrorism measures. At the special meeting itself, the CTC also for the first time allowed the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Counter-Terrorism and Human Rights to address one of its formal meetings and invited civil society representatives to participate. This allowed CSOs, including ours (Privacy International and ARTICLE 19, respectively), to deliver their messages directly to members of the CTC, other member States, CTED, the U.N. Office of Counter-Terrorism, and other U.N. representatives. This level of access is highly welcomed, and it hopefully will set a precedent for future engagement between the CTC and civil society.
Key Takeaways and Shortcomings of the Declaration
In terms of substance, the Delhi Declaration covers three topics in relatively broad fashion: “Countering terrorist exploitation of ICT and emerging technologies,” “Threats and opportunities related to new payment technologies and fundraising methods,” and “Threats posed by misuse of unmanned aerial systems (UAS) by terrorists.” Of these three topics, the abuse of ICT and emerging technologies by terrorists is the least defined. It could be interpreted to cover a vast range of measures — anything from content moderation to social media monitoring, from limiting the use of encryption to resorting to hacking for surveillance – all in the name of countering terrorism. It essentially encourages governments to introduce counterterrorism measures with a view to addressing abuses of ICT that will likely end up undermining human rights, particularly the right to privacy and the right to freedom of expression.
Ironically, such abuses ultimately will undermine national security itself. In our intervention at the special session, Privacy International expressed its concerns at the expansion of new technologies employed for the surveillance of public spaces, whether online or offline, in the name of countering terrorism. It noted that social media monitoring is often justified as a form of content moderation for counterterrorism purposes, but that it is also abused to surveil peaceful assemblies and profile people’s social conduct. Privacy International also noted how attempts by governments to access encrypted communications to identify potential terrorist threats risk introducing vulnerabilities into the systems; the result could be indiscriminate surveillance of digital communications, compromising the privacy and security of potentially all users of digital communication services. Read more - Lire plus
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20 Years Later, It’s Time to Overhaul the Department of Homeland Security | |
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ACLU 21/11/2022 - Twenty years ago, President George W. Bush signed legislation authorizing the largest reorganization of the federal government in more than half a century — piecing 22 offices from five departments into one enormous bureaucracy: the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
In a paper published this week, we set out 15 reforms to DHS for the Biden administration and Congress to consider. We call for important fixes to the way DHS operates–but its problems run deep, and this moment requires a serious reckoning, which includes a fundamental restructuring. Twenty years later, it’s past time to seriously reconsider DHS. Its abusive practices aren’t just antithetical to our values — they are a waste of taxpayer dollars and a distraction from serious problems facing people in our country. From the beginning, creating DHS was a bad idea — and many of the people who helped make it happen had misgivings. When Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman proposed it, White House conservatives reportedly balked because it would mean a vast new federal bureaucracy. But President Bush reportedly decided it was “politically expedient” to sign the bill. So Congress and the White House essentially wrote a blank check –one of many that spawned a post-9/11 national security state that threatened to put the country on a permanent war-time footing — and wrongly treated the “homeland” as if it was under continuous, existential threat.
Into the new agency went components of immigration, intelligence-gathering and disaster management; DHS also swallowed the Coast Guard and the Secret Service. “The process for deciding which existing agencies would be moved to DHS, and which ones would stay in other departments, was haphazard at best,” wrote journalist Dara Lind. A former high-level DHS official likened it to a “shotgun marriage” among agencies “some of whom still don’t recognize the department as a department.” The result was poor management and accountability, even as the agency’s budget and staffing continued to balloon. The sprawling agency was intended to be united around a mandate to “protect the American homeland” — a framing that begs the question, protect from whom? The answer became clear over the last two decades: Activists and peaceful protestors, immigrants with deep community and family ties, people seeking refuge in this country, non-citizens encountered on the high seas, anyone going through the airport. In truth: Potentially anyone.
This overbroad and elastic mandate was always a danger to civil liberties. Back in 2002, we warned that DHS would reach into every nook and cranny of our lives and liberty. We called the initial blueprints for the agency constitutionally bankrupt. And in many ways, our fears have been realized. “DHS’s overbroad mandate and unchecked powers have turned it into a tinderbox, now ignited by a president willing to trample on the constitutional limits of presidential powers,” ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero wrote in August 2020. In July, the Trump administration had sent DHS personnel to racial justice protests across the country — as we collectively reckoned with the killing of George Floyd and our nation’s history of police brutality and racism. Many of us remember the startling news reports from that summer: DHS agents beat demonstrators, grabbed individuals and forced them into unmarked vans, and unlawfully arrested dozens.
“If there is one thing we have learned from the authoritarianism on display in Portland, it’s that we have to remove the loaded weapon that sits on the proverbial coffee table in the Oval Office,” our Romero warned. We called for the dismantling of the department into its component parts and for a reduction of its budget to “allow for more effective oversight, accountability and public transparency” and ensure “the spun-off agencies will have clearer missions and more limited functions.” For many observers, DHS attacks on protestors were the tip of the iceberg — and not far below the water’s surface was the recent horror of DHS separating parents from their children at the border (some of those children are still missing); the cruelty of DHS claiming legal authority to deny soap, toothbrushes, and sleep to children in its care; and the blatant xenophobia and racism of the Muslim and African travel bans. The Biden administration has shifted away from the Trump administration’s use of DHS to police protests and abandoned several abusive programs. But in too many ways, DHS remains on course to continue imperiling civil liberties. Read more - Lire plus
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Senate Committee Finds FBI Response to White Supremacist Violence Woefully Inadequate | |
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Brennan Centre for Justice 22/11/2022 - Last week, a Senate committee issued a scathing appraisal of the government’s response to white supremacist violence. This conclusion from the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee isn’t a surprise. The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Homeland Security, the agencies primarily responsible for investigating domestic terrorism and gathering intelligence to prevent it, have been repeatedly criticized for their inattention to white supremacist violence. Even stalwart defenders of the FBI have recognized that its failure to treat far-right violence as a serious concern contributed to the lack of preparation for the January 6 Capitol attack and have called on the bureau to conduct an internal review of its domestic terrorism program.
But the new Senate report makes clear that the FBI is not willing to critically examine its performance in combatting white supremacist violence and instead has taken steps to obscure the data necessary to conduct such an appraisal. Public concerns regarding far-right violence increased in the aftermath of the 2015 racially motivated mass shooting at the Mother Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopalian Church in Charleston, South Carolina, which then-FBI Director James Comey refused to call an act of terrorism. Concerns intensified after law enforcement failed to stop multiple incidents of white supremacist violence committed at the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and a leaked FBI report revealed it had created a new domestic terrorism category called “Black Identity Extremists” that labeled Black activists protesting racist police violence as threats.
Congress took note, and starting in 2018, several committees began holding hearings focused on white supremacist and far-right militant violence, the first since the FBI and DHS declared counterterrorism their number one priority in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. Throughout this time, the FBI failed to provide basic facts about its domestic terrorism program that would enable an assessment of whether it was appropriately targeting its counterterrorism resources. This lack of transparency triggered several egislative efforts to compel the FBI to publish data documenting each domestic terrorism incident, the number of investigations it initiated, and the number of convictions, all broken down by the various categories the FBI used to manage its work, which then included white supremacists, so-called Black Identity Extremists, animal rights extremists, and others.
Even before the law requiring the FBI to produce this data was enacted in 2019, bureau managers took measures to prevent Congress from getting the information it sought. The FBI rearranged its domestic terrorism categories, combining white supremacists with Black Identity Extremists and far-right militants with anarchists, reorganizations that made little operational sense but would obscure which groups in each category committed the most deadly violence and which the bureau most frequently targeted for investigation.
In the end, it mattered little, as the report notes, because the FBI simply refused to comply with the requirements of the law. In reports filed in 2021 and 2022, the FBI argued that while it could provide topline statistics regarding the number of investigations it opened, it couldn’t provide data regarding domestic terrorism incidents because the bureau didn’t collect it and no law required state and local law enforcement agencies to report it.
The bureau also said it was unable to provide data regarding domestic terrorism prosecutions because “the number of federal charges with a nexus to [domestic terrorism] is not currently maintained by the FBI or DOJ in a comprehensive manner.” It would be reasonable to assume that an agency that calls counterterrorism its number one priority would want to know how many domestic terrorist incidents occur in the United States each year, and who commits them. Further, an agency that operates 200 Joint Terrorism Task Forces and employs thousands of investigators and analysts across the country presumably has the capability to catalog these incidents. So why doesn’t it?
A clue was revealed at a Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee hearing the following day. When Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) asked what the FBI was doing about reports of violence targeting anti-abortion activists, Director Christopher Wray responded that since the Supreme Court’s June decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, “probably in the neighborhood of 70 percent of our abortion-related violence cases or threats cases are cases . . . where the victims are pro-life organizations.” This answer likely assuaged Scott’s concern, but on its own, it is a meaningless statistic. The evidentiary threshold for opening FBI investigations is extremely low, so agents can open as many investigations as they desire. Without knowing the number of incidents and the number of resulting convictions within different categories of terrorism cases, information about what investigations the FBI is pursuing can give a misleading impression of the prevalence of different types of terrorist activity. More problematically, it can hide the fact that FBI resources are not being allocated toward the greatest threats.
Wray’s response highlights how the lack of data regarding domestic terrorism incidents and convictions allows the FBI to use domestic terrorism investigations as a political tool, wielded to satisfy the demands of politicians or driven by the biases of agents. While recent reports of arsons targeting anti-abortion facilities deserve investigation, serious abortion-related violence has historically been committed predominately by anti-abortion militants, and that trend has only increased in recent years. Whether having 70 percent of the FBI’s abortion-related investigations address violence and threats against anti-abortion activists represents an appropriate division of resources can only be known if we know the number of acts of violence and threats made against pro-choice activists as well. Indeed, far-right militants have increasingly threatened election workers, school administrators, and even members of Congress with violence, so it is important to know which threats draw FBI scrutiny and which do not. Congress can only determine whether the FBI is using its domestic terrorism authorities appropriately and without bias if it has the data to demonstrate it.
The Senate report makes several recommendations to address these concerns. Most importantly, it calls for Congress to require a government-wide examination of federal counterterrorism programs and policies to ensure domestic terror threats are identified and properly prioritized. A comprehensive review of the FBI’s post-9/11 counterterrorism programs, which have been fraught with error and abuse, is long overdue. Clearly, the FBI is unwilling or unable to do this work itself, and it now appears unlikely that the House January 6 committee will release its findings regarding the intelligence failures by the FBI, DHS, and other federal law enforcement agencies. Now Congress must ensure that those records are retained to inform the broader evaluation the committee has called for. Read more - Lire plus
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Somali Prisoner At Guantánamo, Approved For Release A Year Ago, Calls On US Court To Act – OpEd | |
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Eurasia 23/11/2022 - Recently, in London, campaigners for the closure of the prison at Guantánamo Bay held a vigil outside the US Embassy, by the River Thames in Nine Elms, at which, using the slogan, “Free the Guantánamo 20,” they highlighted the plight of the 20 men still held at Guantánamo, out of 35 prisoners in total, who have been approved for release by high-level government review processes, but are still held. As I explained in an article about the vigil, the problem for the men approved for release is that the processes that led to their approval for release — initially, under President Obama, the Guantánamo Review Task Force, and, since 2013, the Periodic Review Boards — are ”purely administrative, and no legal mechanism exists to compel the US government to actually free [them].”
This is a shameful state of affairs, as is apparent from a moment’s reflection about how disgraceful it would be if no legal mechanism existed to compel the government to release people from federal prisons after they had completed their sentences, but at Guantánamo, of course, the men approved for release haven’t even been charged with a crime. As I also explained in my recent article, it seems sadly true that “the lack of any legal enforcement encourages inertia in the Biden administration,” and inertia has long been a reason why Democrats, when in government, have often spent so much of their time doing nothing about Guantánamo. With the prison weaponized by cynical Republicans, dealing with Guantánamo threatens the Democrats with negative publicity, while the benefits appear largely intangible, because most of the mainstream media and most Americans don’t actually care about Guantánamo.
President Biden recently appointed Tina Kaidanow, a former ambassador and a senior diplomat, as the “Senior Representative for Guantánamo Affairs” in the State Department, who is “responsible for all matters pertaining to the transfer of detainees from the Guantánamo Bay facility to third countries,” and it may be that her appointment contributed to the recent release of Saifullah Paracha, Guantánamo’s oldest prisoner, who was sent home to Pakistan, 17 months after he was approved for release by a Periodic Review Board. However, Kaidanow’s job title specifically makes reference to transfers to third countries — for men who cannot be safely repatriated, or whose home countries are on a list of proscribed countries for repatriation in legislation enacted by Congress — and that is clearly a much more complicated matter than simply sending men back to their home countries.
Looking at the cases of the 20 men approved for release, at least eight of them (two Algerians, a Kenyan, two more Pakistanis and three Saudis) ought to involve straightforward issues of repatriation, but for at least ten others (eight Yemenis, a Libyan and a Somali) third countries need to be found that will offer them a safe home.
Last week, lawyers at the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights called on a US court to address the “long-stalled case” of one of these men, their client Guled Hassan Duran (identified by the US authorities as Gouled Hassan Dourad), a Somali seized in Djibouti in 2004 and held in CIA “black sites” as a “high-value detainee” until his transfer to Guantánamo, with 13 other “high-value detainees,” in September 2006, where he has been held, ever since, without charge or trial. When a Periodic Review Board (a parole-type process established under President Obama) approved his release a year ago, he was the first “high-value detainee” to be approved for release by the PRBs, but, as CCR explained in their press release, he is now asking a federal court judge to intervene on his behalf because of “the inaction of both the courts and the Biden administration.” Read more - Lire plus
Iraqi Prisoner Recovering From Emergency Surgery at Guantánamo
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New UK national security law could offer ministers immunity from enabling torture abroad | |
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inews 16/11/2022 - New laws designed to bolster the UK’s national security risk offering immunity to ministers and officials in cases of torture or extraordinary rendition overseas, MPs and campaign groups have warned. The National Security Bill being debated in the Commons on Wednesday will update espionage laws for the modern era, and includes tougher offences for people who collaborate with foreign intelligence agencies. But in a joint letter to Rishi Sunak, a group of organisations, including Reprieve and Liberty, say the Bill’s clause 27, which exempts UK security agencies and the government from committing a criminal offence in assisting foreign agencies, gives legal cover for them tipping off other states in cases of torture or extraordinary rendition.
The calls to remove clause 27 have been backed by a cross-party group of MPs, led by Conservative former minister David Davis and Labour MP and former soldier Dan Jarvis. The contentious measure would make the new laws exempt in circumstances to allow “the proper exercise of any function of the Security Service, the Secret Intelligence Service or GCHQ, or … the proper exercise of any function of the armed forces”.
This could include UK government officials or ministers giving a tip off which leads to the torture of a suspect abroad – which MPs and campaigners say goes against the UK’s centuries-old legal prohibition on torture.
Reprieve say that the clause would be unlikely to apply to UK personnel overseas, including troops or intelligence officers, as they are already protected by Section 7 of the 1994 Intelligence Services Act, meaning it can only be in the Bill to protect the UK government. In their letter to the Prime Minister, the campaigners cite the case of Jagtar Singh Johal, a British blogger facing the death penalty in India based on a confession he allegedly gave under torture, which was reportedly the result of a tip off to the Indian government from MI5 and MI6. Dan Dolan, Reprieve’s director of policy and advocacy, said: “If these amendments don’t pass, MPs will be choosing to give ministers and Whitehall officials ‘get out of jail free’ cards if they enable murder and torture – and making it harder for the victims to obtain redress.
“These are not hypothetical scenarios, as shown by the recent revelations about MI5 and MI6’s potential role in the abduction and torture of British blogger Jagtar Singh Johal. This looks awfully like an attempt by the Government to protect itself, following allegations about the role it may have played in the torture of one of its own citizens.” Mr Jarvis said: “The first duty of any government is to protect its people. However, national security should not come at a price of unaccountability. This is why David Davis and I have concerns about the National Security Bill. “It should be the case that Jagtar Singh Johal gets justice. Under the National Security Bill, the UK Government could avoid accountability, even in the civil courts.” Read more - Lire plus
MPs vote through National Security Bill in ‘disaster for free press’
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Algeria lambasted for abusive prosecution of 260 people for alleged terrorism | |
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The North Africa Post 13/11/2022 - Algeria has been lambasted in Geneva for having prosecuted some 260 People for terrorism without any valid proof. About 260 people are prosecuted in Algeria for acts of terrorism although they have not participated in any act of violence, said Karim Salem of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights (CIHRS) on the sidelines of a symposium organized by the center in Geneva.
According to the coordinator in charge of the Maghreb at the CIHRS, which has special consultative status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations, the victims of the prosecution have only participated in peaceful activities.
The UN special rapporteurs and various international human rights mechanisms agree that the incriminated activities do not fall within the definition of the terrorist act, he explained, refuting the allegations of the Algerian regime that there is not only one definition of terrorism.
The broad definition of terrorism means that the authorities are free to act arbitrarily against peaceful expressions of opinion, he said, presenting a non-exhaustive list of personalities who have been or are being detained, including bloggers, journalists, activists and lawyers. The human rights activist referred to the judicial harassment against activists and systematic restrictions imposed on associative and trade union action, deploring the repeated rejections by Algerian authorities of the UN agencies’ requests to visit the country.
Several independent UN experts have repeatedly urged Algeria to revise its anti-terrorism legislation, they described as illegal as it violates both domestic and international law, allows authorities to unlawfully register people on “terrorist” lists. In the absence of effective remedies against these listings, several of the individuals concerned referred their situation to various special procedures mandate holders of the United Nations Human Rights Council to denounce the violation of their rights and fundamental freedoms.
The Human Rights Committee had actually expressed concerns over Algeria’s definition of the crime of terrorism in overly broad and vague terms that would allow for the prosecution of actions that might constitute exercise of the freedom of expression or peaceful assembly. The Council called on the Algerian authorities to ensure that these provisions are no longer used to violate human rights. Read more - Lire plus
Risk of refoulement of asylum seeker in cooperation with Algerian authorities would mark a dangerous turning point for human rights for Tunisia
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Take Action for Justice for Hassan Diab! | |
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Arbitrary detention, solitary confinement, two decades of fighting deportation to torture, 16 years of harassment and intrusive surveillance, secret trials, PTSD: That's not good for anyone's health!
This November 2022, join #MoeVember to demand justice for Mohamed Harkat!
Please send the letter below to Prime Minister Trudeau and Minister of Public Safety Marco Mendicino, urging them to stop the deportation to torture of Mr. Harkat.
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Free Jack Letts and all Canadian Detainees in NE Syria | |
Canada must immediately act to free four dozen Canadian men, women and children left to rot in one of a series of notorious Northeastern Syrian prisons and detention camps described as “Guantanamo on the Euphrates.”
The longest held detainee is Jack Letts, 26, who has been imprisoned for almost 5 years without charge under conditions the United Nations has described as meeting the “threshold for torture, cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment under international law.”
Send an email and call!
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President Biden: Set them free | |
Nearly 800 men have been detained in Guantánamo Bay since it opened in 2002 - but only 12 of them have ever been charged with a crime. As of Oct 2021, these 3 men are cleared for release but remain imprisoned:
- Ahmed Rabbani
- Abdul Malik
- Khalid Qasim
These men should be free. No one should ever be locked up without charge or trial. The wrongful imprisonment of these men has stolen almost 20 years of their lives and exposed them to torture, abuse and ill-treatment. Sign the petition urging Biden to release these men now.
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Stop the Smear Campaigns against Palestinian Advocacy | Recently, we have witnessed an intensified campaign by the pro-Israel lobby in Canada to smear Palestinian activists and their supporters. The National Post ran an online article about Palestinian-Canadian writer Khaled Barakat and the advocacy organization Samidoun. On April 30, the same article was splashed across their front page of their paper and has since been referenced in the Canadian Senate and the Jerusalem Post. Send your letter to Canadian PM Justin Trudeau and Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino to tell them that you join with the 80 organizations that have called to “Stop the Smear Campaigns against Palestinian Advocacy”. | |
Philippines: Hands off labour rights defenders | |
Hundreds of labour rights defenders, workers, and trade unionists in the Philippines have been subjected to various forms of threats and harassment for fighting for labour and human rights.
The attacks against activists have been relentless since former President Rodrigo Duterte declared war against activism, perpetuating the culture of impunity and promoting vilification of activists through 'red-tagging'.
These attacks are bound to continue, if not worsen under the watch of the new president Ferdinand Marcos, the son of the dictator and human rights violator Ferdinand Marcos Sr.
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Allow asylum for Uighur refugees! | |
The targeting of Uighur migrants across 28 countries demonstrates unprecedented transnational repression. Ask your MP to support Motion M-62. This motion proposes to resettle 10,000 Uighur in Canada by 2024. Send an email which makes 2 demands:
- Increase number of incoming Uighur refugees to 30,000.
- Launch the resettlement plan sooner than 2024.
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Save Afghan Women’s Rights Defender! | |
Farzana Denied Entry to Canada! Call/Write for Urgent Permit to Save Afghan Women’s Rights Defender!
Please take 2 minutes to send an urgent email and call (sample messages below) to protest the potentially lethal rejection of Afghan women's rights defender Farzana Adell Ghadiya’s application for protection in Canada.
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The Public Order Bill & the UK government's latest crackdown on protest | The Canadian government is moving nearer to obtaining armed drones, worth $5 billion of Canadian taxpayer dollars. Now is the time to say stop the procurement. Armed drones threaten people’s lives around the world. Rather than making the world safer, they are used in extrajudicial executions, surveillance of targeted populations and other violations of human rights. Take one minute to write to the Canadian Minister of Defence. Tell her it is time to stop militarizing the sky. | |
In 2007, Muhammad Rahim was kidnapped in front of wife and children in Lahore, Pakistan. He was bundled into a jeep, and for 8 months he disappeared into the network of CIA secret prisons where he was subjected to toture. According to the US Senate "torture report", the torture of Muhammad Rahim produced no intelligence. In 2008, the US announced he had been transferred to Guantanamo. The US have stated they have no intention to charge him with a crime, yet declared him a "forever prisoner". Now in his mid-50s, a medical examination found several nodules which a specialist has revealed could be indicative of cancer. After 13 years in prison without charge, he longs to be reunited with his 7 children. | |
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Since the Taliban takeover of a year ago, Canadian aid organizations have faced barriers in sending aid to Afghanistan due to Canadian sanctions and a restrictive interpretation of the Canadian Criminal Code’s anti-terrorism provisions. This is despite the US, the UK, the EU countries and even the UN taking action to ensure sanctions do not interfere with crucial humanitarian assistance.
ICLMG has teamed up with other Canadian organizations to call on Prime Minister Trudeau and the Canadian government to act immediately to remove barriers to the provision of humanitarian assistance. This includes ensuring that sanctions and counter-terror finance and criminal law restrictions do not impede the provision of lifesaving humanitarian aid. This issue isn’t limited to Afghanistan, either, which is why we are also asking the government to address the long-standing issue of ensuring that anti-terrorism laws and sanctions do not interfere with humanitarian assistance. Version française
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Protect human rights defenders in Palestine | |
CJPME - Canada’s inaction in the face of Israeli repression must end! Canada must stand up for human rights defenders by condemning Israel’s actions and putting its support behind the work of Palestinian NGOs
+ NCCM action: Canada must denounce the banning and raiding of Palestinian human rights organizations
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Ban facial recognition technology | Amnesty International - Facial recognition technologies are used to stifle protest and harass minority communities around the world – not just in New York City. These technologies are a global threat to the right to privacy, freedom of peaceful assembly and expression, and to equality and non-discrimination. Call for an end to technologies of mass surveillance. | |
Cuba is Not a Sponsor of Terror! | |
A crucial policy of the Trump administration remains, and that is Cuba’s presence on the State Sponsors of Terrorism list. It is critical to Cuba’s ability to pursue economic, trade and humanitarian activities that it be removed immediately from the list - a power well within Biden’s authority.
Please sign CodePink's petition to the White House calling for Cuba to be removed from the list.
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No More F-16’s to Turkey! | We, the undersigned, demand you not approve any more sales of F-16’s or other fighter jets to Turkey. After the release of the report “Civilian Casualties of Turkish Military Operations in Northern Iraq (2015-2021)” we would find it unacceptable that the U.S. would continue selling F-16s to the Turkish military. | |
Tell Biden to Close Guantanamo | |
Now, with growing support in Congress, President Biden has an opportunity to end these ongoing abuses by closing the detention center.
Help us close Guantánamo and ensure the transfer of all cleared detainees to countries where their human rights will be respected.
Act Now to tell President Biden to shut down the Guantánamo Bay detention facility!
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Protecting water is not terrorism: Free Jessica Reznicek | In 2016, Jessica Reznicek took action to stop the construction of Dakota Access Pipeline by dismantling construction equipment and pipeline valves. In 2021 she was sentenced to 8 years in prison with a domestic terrorism enhancement. In 2022 an appeals court upheld her conviction writing that even if the terrorism enhancement was an error it was "harmless" although it increased a 37 months sentence to a sentence of 96 months. Stop the criminalization of dissent! | |
Canada must protect encryption! | |
Canada’s extradition system is broken. One leading legal expert calls it “the least fair law in Canada.” It has led to grave harms and rights violations, as we’ve seen in the case of Canadian citizen Dr Hassan Diab. It needs to be reformed now.
Click below to send a message to urge Prime Minister Trudeau, the Minister of Justice and your Member of Parliament to reform the extradition system before it makes more victims. And share on Facebook + Twitter + Instagram. Thank you!
Regardez la vidéo avec les sous-titres en français + Agir
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This is unconscionable. The RCMP are violently harassing Wet’suwet’en land defenders again for fighting against the sovereignty-violating Coastal Gaslink pipeline. We’ve heard reports directly from land defenders that drilling for CGL is imminent — and the RCMP's specialized unit CIRG (Community-Industry Response Group), is ramping up their enforcement. They have a history of using excessive force and violence against Indigenous people — all in the name of profit.
We know that the BC government and high ranking RCMP officials have the power to deploy — and remove the RCMP. If enough of us fill their inboxes with emails demanding they respect Indigenous sovereignty and call off the RCMP, it could be enough to force them to act and halt all construction. Send a message directly to key decision makers asking them to stop the violence.
+ Wanna do more? Join a group
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China: Free Canadian Huseyin Celil | |
The Chinese authorities accused Huseyin of offences related to his activities in support of Uighur rights. They held Huseyin in a secret place. They gave him no access to a lawyer, to his family, or to Canadian officials. They threatened him and forced him to sign a confession. They refused to recognize Huseyin’s status as a Canadian citizen, and they did not allow Canadian officials to attend his trial. It was not conducted fairly, and resulted in a sentence of life in prison in China. His life sentence was reduced to 20 years in February 2016. Huseyin has spent much of his time in solitary confinement. He lacks healthy food and is in poor health. Kamila needs her husband, and the boys need their father back
+ Urge China to stop targeting Uyghurs in China and abroad
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Urgent Action to Stop the Deportation of Mohamed Ibrahim and his Family | |
Mohamed Ibrahim, an Egyptian national, alongside his wife, Shaimaa, and 5 children - the youngest of whom a toddler who was born in Canada - have been given a removal order by the CBSA and are facing deportation back to Egypt where Mohamed will be facing a high risk of human rights abuses by the current Egyptian regime as a result of his peaceful political activism in Egypt. Mohamed and his family arrived in Canada in 2017 and applied for asylum. However, his claim was rejected due to a legal error of his lawyer.
We call on the Minister of Immigration to give Mohammed Ibrahim and his family protection on humanitarian and compassionate grounds pursuant to section 25(1) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.
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Tell Trudeau: Stop Arming Apartheid! | |
As revealed in CJPME's "Arming Apartheid" analysis, Canada is selling almost $20 million in arms to Israel each year – its highest level in 30 years! At the same time, Israeli forces continue to violently raid Al-Aqsa and across occupied Palestine, and human rights organizations – including Amnesty International – have all recently concluded that Israel imposes an apartheid regime against Palestinians!
There is no excuse for Canada to continue exporting arms to a country practicing apartheid and other abuses. Help us push the Canadian government to suspend arms exports to Israel, and investigate whether Canadian-made weapons have been used against Palestinian civilians! Canada must end its complicity now!
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Email your MP – No more weapons to Saudi Arabia | |
Canada has blood on its hands. Now approaching its seventh year, the war in Yemen has killed over a quarter of a million people. Over 4 million people have been displaced because of the war, and 70% of the population, including 11.3 million children, are in desperate need of humanitarian assistance. The Saudi-led coalition has bombed Yemeni markets, hospitals, and civilians, and yet Canada has exported over $8 billion in arms to Saudi Arabia since 2015, the year the Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen began. Send a letter now calling on the Canadian government to stop sending weapons to Saudi Arabia and stop arming the horrific war in Yemen.
+ Write letter: Canada’s silence on Saudi mass executions deeply troubling
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Canada: End the Safe Third Country Agreement | |
The Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA) between Canada and the United States puts refugees at risk. Under the STCA, refugees who arrive at official ports of entry to seek protection in Canada are sent back to the US, where some have suffered serious rights violations in detention. This encourages refugee claimants to cross the border into Canada between ports of entry, sometimes in perilous conditions.
Despite the constitutionality of the STCA being in question, reports suggest that the government is attempting to expand this agreement.
Take Action now and send a message to Minister Fraser to respect refugee rights by rescinding the Safe Third Country Agreement.
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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
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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.
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OTHER NEWS - AUTRES NOUVELLES | |
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Check out our biannual summary of activities: What We've Been Up To from January to June 2022. Lisez la version française ici.
Here are the issues we plan to work on for the rest of 2022:
- Monitoring the evolution of Bill S-7 – the electronic device border search bill – as it passes through the Senate and House of Commons;
- Ensuring that the Canadian government’s proposals on “online harms” do not violate fundamental freedoms, or exacerbate the silencing of racialized and marginalized voices online;
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Protecting our privacy from government surveillance, including facial recognition, and from attempts to weaken encryption, along with advocating for privacy law reform (including monitoring the new Bill C-27, the Digital Charter Implementation Act);
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Justice for Mohamed Harkat, an end to security certificates, and addressing problems in security inadmissibility;
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Justice for Hassan Diab and reforming the extradition law;
- Greater transparency and accountability for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS);
- The return of the 44 Canadian citizens indefinitely detained in Syrian camps, including 26 children;
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The end to the CRA’s prejudiced audits of Muslim-led charities;
- Pushing for Canadian government action on behalf of Iranian Canadians negatively and unjustly impacted by the US terror listing of the IRGC
- Greater accountability and transparency for the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), including the establishment of a strong, effective and independent review mechanism. This includes evaluating and advocating for improvements to the proposed Public Review and Complaints Commission Act (Bill C-20);
- Monitoring the review of the National Security Act, 2017 (Bill C-59);
- Advocating for the repeal of the Canadian No Fly List, and for putting a stop to the use of the US No Fly List by air carriers in Canada for flights that do not land in or fly over the US;
- Pressuring lawmakers to protect our civil liberties from the negative impact of national security and the “war on terror”, as well as keeping you and our member organizations informed via the News Digest;
- And much more!
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Lire plus + Partagez sur Facebook + Twitter + Instagram
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Les opinions exprimées ne reflètent pas nécessairement les positions de la CSILC - The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the positions of ICLMG. | |
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THANK YOU
to our amazing supporters!
We would like to thank all our member organizations, and the hundreds of people who have supported us over the years, including on Patreon! As a reward, we are listing below our patrons who give $10 or more per month (and wanted to be listed) directly in the News Digest. Without all of you, our work wouldn't be possible!
Bill Ewanick
Mary Ann Higgs
Kevin Malseed
Brian Murphy
Colin Stuart
Bob Thomson
James Turk
John & Rosemary Williams
Jo Wood
The late Bob Stevenson
Nous tenons à remercier nos organisations membres ainsi que les centaines de personnes qui ont soutenu notre travail à travers les années, y compris sur Patreon! En récompense, nous nommons ci-dessus nos mécènes qui donnent 10$ ou plus par mois et voulaient être mentionné.es directement dans la Revue de l'actualité. Sans vous tous et toutes, notre travail ne serait pas possible!
Merci!
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