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International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group
Coalition pour la surveillance internationale des libertés civiles
April 22, 2022 - 22 avril 2022
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ICLMG video: Canada must reform its extradition laws now! | |
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Canada’s extradition system is broken. It has led to grave harms and rights violations, as we’ve seen in the case of Canadian citizen Dr Hassan Diab and many others. It needs to be reformed now!
Watch our new video summarizing the issues with the Extradition Act, using Hassan Diab’s case as a frame, and presenting the recommendations of the Halifax Proposals to reform what Gary Botting – one of the country’s leading authorities on extradition law – has called: “the least fair law in Canada”.
Please click on the button below to urge the Canadian government to reform the Extradition Act before it makes more victims.
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The ICLMG signed this CCLA statement alongside 14 other groups. | |
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CCLA 13/04/2022 - The Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) is joining with a diverse group of civil society organizations to call on the Federal Government’s inquiry to have broad terms of reference and include the power to compel witnesses and the production of documents.
“Let’s be crystal clear: an inquiry that does not include the sworn testimony of the major players involved and the production of documents is a sham,” said Cara Zwibel, Director of Fundamental Freedoms for the CCLA. “The people of Canada deserve to hear from their officials about why they took the steps they did. They deserve accountability and Canadians are owed the truth as to why their civil liberties were suspended.”
“We need broad terms of reference and for the inquiry to truly be independent—Cabinet should consult with opposition parties and seek their approval for who will be appointed. The government should also be prepared to invest the resources necessary for a full and thorough inquiry and report. Moreover, the inquiry must be transparent and its proceedings must be open to the public,” she concluded. Read joint statement from the Coalition of Civil Society Groups here. Source + Share on Facebook + Twitter
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Muslim charity seeks court shutdown of federal audit, alleging systemic Islamophobia | |
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The Canadian Press 14/04/2022 - Canada's largest grassroots Muslim organization is asking a court to halt a federal audit of its activities as a registered charity, alleging the probe is discriminatory and violates its charter rights. The Muslim Association of Canada is filing a notice of application in Ontario Superior Court in a bid to shut down the Canada Revenue Agency process initiated seven years ago. The association, which promotes community service, education and youth empowerment, says over 150,000 Canadians use its mosques, schools and community centres each year.
The association claims in the court filing that since the revenue agency audit began in 2015, it has been "tainted throughout by systemic bias and Islamophobia." The association says in a news release that although no decision has been made, the resulting audit report, which has not been made public, threatens the charity "with extreme sanctions that are completely unjustified by the findings" of the revenue agency. The revenue agency, which will have an opportunity to respond in court, has previously said it does not select registered charities for audit based on any particular faith or denomination, adding it is firmly dedicated to diversity, inclusion and anti-racism.
The Muslim Association's charter challenge will explore instances in which the revenue agency has attempted to apply standards to the association that would not be applied to any other community of faith, said Geoff Hall, a lawyer for the charity. "This audit is a textbook example of prejudice and discrimination." The association objects to several revenue agency allegations, including that:
— the association's activities, such as Eid celebrations, are not religious but rather social;
— its sports, social, and recreational activities directed at youth do not provide a charitable benefit;
— there are purported links between the association and foreign entities, a finding based on four emails out of tens of thousands reviewed by the agency.
"In each of these examples and others, the CRA perceives such perfectly normal interactions as sinister and deceptive," the news release said. The court filing alleges the audit would never have been approached this way had the organization in question been affiliated with any other major world religion. The association stresses that the audit report did not find any evidence the charity is involved in terrorist financing or affiliated with terrorist organizations. "Nevertheless, the audit report relies upon Islamophobic sources and discredited newspaper articles to support its allegations." The court application seeks an order halting the audit on grounds that it violates the association's charter guarantees of equality and freedom of religion, expression and association. Alternatively, it wants the revenue agency to complete the audit in a way that does not violate the association's rights. [...]
We spoke with Tim McSorley who is with a coalition of civil society groups called the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group. They put out one of two independent studies on the subject last year. McSorley says after Canada boosted attempts to counter terrorist financing post 9-11, a division within the CRA profiled and targeted Muslim charities. From 2008 to 2015 they found that post-audits 75% of the charities that had their status revoked were run by Muslim groups. He says the system is unfair and not based on actual evidence. Rather one that places suspicion on a charity simply because they are Muslim led. “It also appears that Muslim charities face harsher consequences for the penalties… than other charities have faced as well,” says McSorley. “That needs to be explored more, but it’s one of the things that we’re very concerned about.” Read more - Lire plus
Watch CTV news segment feat ICLMG: MAC files a Charter challenge against the CRA
NDP National Revenue Critic Niki Ashton: We must eliminate Islamophobia and all forms of racism from our systems of government
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Inadmissible: How a U.S. policy is wreaking havoc on the lives of Iranian-Canadians | |
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Global News 20/04/22 - Ali Movassagh watched on FaceTime as his 79-year-old father took his final breaths in a California hospital. He was on life support after months of battling multiple illnesses and the treatment that kept him alive was causing him pain. “I was with him on the last day, FaceTime, but I could not give him a hug. That’s something that I will never forget,” said Movassagh, apologizing for his tears. “I think my parents, my father, had the right to see his oldest son before he died.” Despite an urgent letter to the U.S. Consulate General from his father’s doctor, Movassagh was not granted a waiver to see his father before he passed away on Jan. 4.
Movassagh, a Vancouver resident born in Iran, was deemed “inadmissible” to the United States in June last year when he tried to visit his parents who are American citizens. A Canadian citizen since 2010, he couldn’t understand why at first, but as time passed, Movassagh learned he wasn’t alone. Since 2019, scores of Iranian-Canadian men – Canadian citizens with no criminal records – have been deemed inadmissible to the U.S. after lengthy interviews with Customs and Border Protection officials. Some have lost lucrative jobs in the U.S. and had Nexus cards revoked. Others have faced interrogation in other countries or been denied entry altogether. Wives, children and in one case, a mother and girlfriend, have been blacklisted too, just for being connected to them. Apart from their country of birth, these men share two things in common: they were conscripts in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps; and a decade or more after discharge, they’ve become casualties of a geopolitical conflict that doesn’t involve them. [...]
Trump’s blacklisting of the IRGC holds sweeping implications for Iranians, even those with Canadian citizenship. It effectively bans anyone with a past or present tie to the IRGC from stepping foot on American soil, including conscripts, and in some cases, their families. Juneau, who studies Iran’s relations with North America, described the policy as “overreach” – a tool so “sweeping” it wastes resources on barring law-abiding Iranian-Canadians who have done nothing wrong. “Actually enforcing this measure – as opposed to just making it in a symbolic way – is practically impossible because hundreds of thousands of Iranians have served in the IRGC,” the associate professor at the University of Ottawa’s Graduate School of Public Policy and International Affairs explained.“Many of them were only cooks, clerks, drivers, mechanics. They were conscripts, so enforcing penalties against them is not only unfair, but in practice undoable.” [...]
Global News spoke with 20 former IRGC conscripts and three wives of former conscripts in British Columbia, Quebec, Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, whom the U.S. deems inadmissible. All said they suffered personal and professional consequences; some had to move and start new careers in Canada, and others are out thousands of dollars in legal fees that failed to remedy their inadmissibility. The men said they left after completing the mandatory minimum service time of between 18 and 24 months, and insisted they had nothing to do with any task that resembles terrorist activity. “I was not part of any active military service. All I did, two weeks a month, was see patients, other conscripts in IRGC,” said Dr. Ardalan Ahmad, a Toronto urologist who completed his conscription more than 15 years ago. “I was not even allowed to interact with the official personnel of IRGC.” Men in Iran face harsh penalties for failure to complete their conscription; according to the federal government’s aggregation of data on Iran, deserters face ineligibility to obtain a passport, a driver’s licence and many government or high-paying jobs. Former conscripts interviewed by Global News added arrest, imprisonment and never being able to marry or obtain a university degree to the list of probable consequences.
The physician said he moved to Canada within a month of completing his conscription in 2005. He lived in New York and California for nearly eight years conducting medical research and training, and obtained Canadian citizenship in 2019. He said he was gobsmacked when he was stopped by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) on Jan. 15, 2020, at Pearson International Airport. About to begin a full-time teaching position at the University of Florida, he said he presented the necessary paperwork, but was told he could go no further after revealing his brief time served in the IRGC. “It’s upsetting because I’m an ordinary person,” said Ahmad. “One of my goals was to be in academia and try to be in a teaching position … Unfortunately, I lost that position.”
Even those who have taken steps to clear their names after being banned from the U.S. have been beset by problems while travelling. After being deemed inadmissible on Dec. 18, 2019, Montreal businessman Javad Mokhtarzadeh appealed to the Department of Homeland Security’s Traveler Redress Inquiry Program, and in April 2020, he received a letter assuring him corrections had been made to his file. He was issued a Redress Control Number, allowing the U.S. Transportation Security Administration to quickly access the results of his case. He also followed the advice of Public Safety Canada and obtained Canadian Travel Numbers for his family – a similar measure used in Canada’s screening process to help “ensure travellers are not accidentally flagged and face delays at the airport.” Nevertheless, Mokhtarzadeh said the Canada Border Services Agency interviewed him both before leaving Montreal for Frankfurt on Dec. 17, 2021, and upon his return on Jan. 21. With quads on his and his wife’s boarding passes, he said their belongings were searched, a CBSA officer made insulting insinuations, and he was asked to produce an Iranian passport after having produced a Canadian one. “They don’t believe we are Canadian enough. They don’t fully accept us,” he told Global News. “If there is a problem with us, why has the Canadian government granted citizenship to us?” [...]
While top Canadian officials have maintained Canada has “no role” in America’s admissibility decisions at the border, the Ottawa-based International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group argues there’s still something the federal government can do for its inadmissible citizens. “Canada has a close relationship with the United States. I don’t think it would take a lot of political capital to raise this as part of other discussions and to make sure that there’s an understanding that this has an impact,” said national coordinator Tim McSorley. “There’s also something else in terms of the Canadian government’s response, and that’s to assure Iranian-Canadians that they won’t be facing future repercussions in Canada.” [...] In Vancouver, meanwhile, Movassagh said he will rely on FaceTime to communicate with his widowed mother – his family “locked up” in Canada until Biden and the U.S. Congress approves a change, or Prime Minister Justin Trudeau instigates a conversation. Read more - Lire plus
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OPC not consulted, privacy experts concerned on cell phone border search bill | |
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The Wire Report 14/04/22 - A new Government-backed Senate bill now seeks to establish a new framework for the search of digital devices like phones and laptops by Canada’s border agents, 1.5 years after the Alberta Court of Appeal ruled that the search of a traveler’s electronic devices at the Edmonton airport was unconstitutional. In launching the bill in late March, the Government said in a release that Bill S-7 would “strengthen the framework governing the examination of personal digital devices by Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) officers and United States Customs and Border Patrol preclearance officers operating in Canada” and would ultimately safeguard travellers’ rights.
Rather than simply codifying the authority under which border officials can search phones and laptops, the new bill establishes a new standard for the searching of devices that is “so novel, so untested, and so low,” according to Brenda McPhail, the director of the privacy, technology and surveillance program at the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. McPhail said that even before it becomes law the bill is “inviting people to think about how they would challenge that threshold.” In developing the legislation, the Government also did not correspond with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner despite the OPC’s offer of its own expertise and request to be kept informed, according to a spokesperson from the commissioner’s office.
Section 1 of Bill S-7 amends the Customs Act to allow border guards to search documents, emails, text messages, receipts, photographs or videos stores on a personal device if an officer has a “reasonable general concern” that a Canadian law “has been or might be contravened in respect of one or more of the documents.” That new standard, of “reasonable general concern”, is a “shockingly low and completely legally novel threshold,” McPhail said in an interview with the Wire Report, adding that the words ‘reasonable general concern’ do not appear in established jurisprudence, and are lower than the more common ‘reasonable suspicion’ or ‘reasonable cause to believe’ thresholds. “The lower the threshold for these searches, the easier it is for individual officers exercising their discretion to use their search authority in ways that are potentially discriminatory or racist, based on their own implicit, hidden bias – not even necessarily maliciously or on purpose,” McPhail said.
The bill has its roots in an October 2020 decision by the Alberta Court of Appeals, known as R v. Canfield, which was an appeal of a criminal conviction for child pornography that resulted from the search of a digital device at the Edmonton airport. In the decision, the court determined that the search of digital devices under the Customs Act – which governs the authorities of border officers – violated the right to be free from any and all unreasonable searches and seizures under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In the decision, however, the court declined to establish the threshold itself, and gave Parliament a year to “craft a solution that addresses and balances the various competing interests.” In 2019 – before the court decision in Canfield – the OPC released the results of an investigation following a series of complaints about searches of personal digital devices by Canada Border Service Agency (CBSA) officers at borders. The OPC found that the CBSA had violated the Privacy Act, and made a number of recommendations for CBSA officers governing such searches.
The OPC also recommended that the Customs Act be updated to “recognize that digital devices contain sensitive personal information and that these devices are not mere ‘goods’ within the meaning” of the act; that the act be amended to establish a clear legal framework for device searches; and that any legislation should elevate the threshold for such searches to a “reasonable grounds to suspect.” The CBSA disagreed with each of the OPC’s legislative recommendations. In the case of the OPC’s recommendation for an elevated threshold for searches, the CBSA wrote that it “is in the very nature of the border environment that there is a lack of prior knowledge or control over goods before they reach the border. With no prior knowledge or information, it can be impossible to formulate reasonable suspicion relation to goods.”
Following the release of the OPC’s report, according to an OPC spokesperson, the OPC “subsequently offered our privacy expertise to assist with the development of legislative amendments and requested to be kept informed.” “The government did not do so,” the spokesperson wrote in a statement emailed to the Wire Report. The OPC’s recommendations in the 2019 report echoed recommendations in a 2017 report from the House of Commons Ethic committee report into border device searches. In that report, the committee wrote that the CBSA’s existing threshold – that a search may occur if a “multiplicity of indicators that evidence of contraventions may be found on the digital device or media” – was insufficient, and that a “reasonable grounds to suspect” threshold be adopted.
Bill S-7, however, appears to lower the threshold, according to McPhail. “It is ironic that what the policy directives that [border officials] have been acting under has a better threshold, a higher threshold, than the one that’s currently proposed in legislation,” McPhail said. Tamir Israel, a staff lawyer at the University of Ottawa’s Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC), said that S-7 is a “very poor solution” to the problems highlighted by the OPC and the House of Commons Ethics committee. “There has been no public consultation on this at all. This came out of nowhere. We were surprised to see the bill,” Israel said in a phone interview with the Wire Report.
“The OPC is definitely on the list of bodies who it would be critical to get some advance input from when you’re tabling legislation like this. They not only have the expertise but have applied that expertise in very thoughtful ways and have heard complaints on this and have testified in parliament about this issue.” “It’s really surprising that the government has cut them out of the development process on this issue again,” Israel said. It remains unclear which Senate committee will examine S-7, and whether that committee will have an expertise on privacy and legal matters, or on matters of national security. “I hope this is referred to the law and justice committee (LCJC) rather than the national security committee (SECD), because it truly requires the type of legal scrutiny that the former body is expert at, given the new legal standard they are trying to invent here,” Israel said. Read more - Lire plus
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Family living in London, Ont., for 5 years fears being deported to Egypt will tear them apart | |
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CBC News 13/04/22 - A man who was sentenced in absentia in Egypt to life in prison over his pro-democracy efforts says he and his family are fearful of being deported and forced to leave their London, Ont., home of five years after being denied refugee status in Canada. "The whole family is feeling anxiety, depression and sadness," said Mohamed Ibrahim. In recent weeks, Ibrahim said, the family received a deportation order after Canada turned down their attempt for refugee status in 2019.
The 45-year-old works as a medical equipment supplier. On Tuesday, a spokesperson for Sean Fraser, minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), told CBC in an email that Ibrahim applied for an open work permit last November that was approved in March and is valid until March 2023. But while he's able to work in Canada, it does not make him or his family permanent residents, said Aidan Strickland. Ibrahim said the entire situation has prompted him and his wife to have daily conversations with their children, who are trying to make sense of a life torn between two countries.
Ibrahim, tried as a civilian by a military court in Cairo, was among 71 people accused of betraying the Egyptian government in a 2016 mass trial. The documents state Ibrahim faces a life sentence and the equivalent of a $1,370 Cdn fine for being a member of the Freedom and Justice Party, the political wing of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. It briefly formed Egypt's first democratically elected government a year after the 2011 spring uprising, only to be overthrown by the military in a 2013 coup. Since then, the regime has been cracking down on dissidents, jailing thousands of people, including human rights advocates, health-care workers and a Canadian journalist.
Ibrahim was denied refugee status because, according to the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) decision in the case reviewed by CBC News, his story of attempted arrest and escape from Egypt suffered from a lack of supporting evidence. For that reason, and for fear of what would happen to the Ibrahims in Egypt should they be deported, CBC News has decided not to publish the other family members' names and to blur out their faces in photos. Ibrahim said the IRB decision was made because of an error on the part of his lawyer, who didn't submit the Egyptian military court documents showing he was condemned to life in prison by the court in Cairo. "My lawyer did a huge mistake. She didn't submit this evidence, the life sentence decision," he said, noting the family received the deportation order from the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) in the last few weeks.
Canadian-born son to be deported with family. "When I look at my baby child, it's really unfair to remove him from his home country," Ibrahim said of his youngest son, who was born in London. Read more - Lire plus
ACTION: Urgent Action to Stop the Deportation of Mohamed Ibrahim and his Family
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Ottawa tracked Mohawk-Wet’suwet’en links, feared repeat of 2020 blockades: memo | |
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APTN News 08/04/22 - Federal officials feared links between Mohawk activists and Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs could spark a repeat of 2020’s countrywide solidarity blockades, an unclassified internal memo shows. The briefing document, obtained through access to information laws, was prepared for Daniel Quan-Watson, deputy minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations, prior to a meeting with the Privy Council Office (PCO) last fall. The officials were slated to discuss the “escalation of protests in Wet’suwet’en territory” in northwestern British Columbia and opposition to old-growth logging at Fairy Creek on Vancouver Island. “Hereditary Chief Woos (Frank Alec) has invited people through social media to travel to the territory and help defend the land,” says the Oct. 18, 2021 memo. “Those who have responded to his call include approximately forty Mohawk ‘warriors’.”
The PCO is the bureaucratic arm of the Prime Minister’s Office that helps the government implement its agenda. Its leader, or clerk, serves as Canada’s top public servant, policy adviser to the prime minister and secretary to the cabinet. The agency has an intelligence wing responsible for advising the prime minister on national security. The memo anticipates potential questions about the Mohawk-Wet’suwet’en alliance, offering Quan-Watson a point to register if asked about it. “Certain Mohawk individuals are known to use protest opportunities to leverage support online, and in the mainstream media,” the memo says. “We can expect that these relationships will continue to develop, to the extent that they are able to support each other’s objectives.” While the memo doesn’t name these “certain Mohawk individuals,” it quotes an Oct. 15, 2021 post by Skyler Williams, who is Mohawk from Six Nations of the Grand River in southern Ontario. The post shows Williams and musician Logan Staats, also of Six Nations, marching with their fists in the air alongside hereditary chiefs Na’Moks and Smogelgem in the streets of northern B.C. [...]
Williams said the memo reveals a “typical” government response, which is to criminalize and spy rather than resolve the underlying land claims and title issues that drive standoffs and resistance movements. “When people are being criminalized and brutalized in the way that Indigenous folks across the country are, we need to be able to make those stands together,” he said. “When you see the federal government keeping an eye on things like that, it’s because they know they’re in the wrong.” Williams fronts an ongoing Haudenosaunee-led land occupation that has thwarted a planned subdivision in Caledonia, Ont., for nearly two years. It’s slated to return to court this summer. He pointed out the Haudenosaunee Confederacy Chiefs Council, the traditional government of the Six Nations, pledged “unwavering support” for the Wet’suwet’en during an Oct. 9, 2021 council meeting. “That’s an obligation that we have as Haudenosaunee people,” said Williams, who suspects “it’s fear” driving Ottawa’s concerns. “The federal government knows we’re in the right. We have every right to be making stands for these lands.” Read more - Lire plus
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People being held in Syria are in conditions that 'meet the standard of torture', UN says | |
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ABC News 17/04/2022 - The United Nations has warned the Australian government that 46 Australian citizens, including 30 children, being held in squalid camps in north east Syria are enduring conditions akin to torture. A letter from the UN's Human Right's Council lists the names of numerous Australian women and their children, some as young as two years of age, who are being held in makeshift detention in north-east Syria, including Al-Hol and Roj, following the fall of Islamic State.
"These individuals… have been deprived of their liberty in conditions that we believe constitute a violation of a number of human rights, and meet the standard of torture or other cruel inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment," the letter states.
"We understand with concern that some of those detained, including children, are being deprived of their citizenship by the Australian authorities." On the list is Western Sydney woman Mariam Dabboussy, who was holidaying in Lebanon in 2015 when she was taken to Syria by her ISIS fighter husband, along with her three children, aged eight, five and four. The letter also says many detainees in the camps have complex and urgent health concerns, including "shrapnel in different parts of their bodies, including the head, which cannot be extracted given the lack of proper medical facilities in the camps".
They suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder and malnourishment, according to the UN, and the medical situations are "extremely worrying". "Due to malnourishment, dire housing and sanitary conditions and other serious deficiencies to which they have been subjected in recent years, the children, many of whom are very young, present diversified and disturbing medical conditions including anaemia, asthma, skin irritations, chronic infections, and grave dental problems," the letter states. "Owing to their repeated exposure to violence and insecurity, they show signs of trauma, including psychological and behavioural disorders, as well as chronic fatigue and acute stress."
It adds that some of the women may have been coerced or trafficked into Syria.
The UN urges the Australian government to repatriate its citizens from Syria, saying it's the only "legal and humane response" to the situation. Ms Dabboussy's father Kamalle has seen the conditions first hand, having travelled to the Syrian camps previously to see his daughter and grandchildren. He said the Australian government must act urgently to get them and the other Australians home. "This is 10 specialist UN agencies, in a pointed letter that Scott Morrison can't ignore," Mr Dabboussy told the ABC. "It's not overstated — stop playing politics with the lives of defenceless Australian children. Read more - Lire plus
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Ottawa faces blowback for plan to regulate internet | |
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The Globe and Mail 22/04/2022 - While some groups that submitted comments in last year’s consultation made their views public, many submissions were kept private. The government has refused to release the documents voluntarily.
But University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist obtained the submissions through an access to information request and posted the documents online Thursday.
The federal government released a report in February summarizing the feedback it received. That report said the responses were largely negative.
Mr. Geist said in an e-mail to The Globe that the newly released documents show the criticism was more extensive than the summary report suggested. He added that the level of secrecy related to the submissions was inappropriate, and that it contradicts the government’s stated commitment to transparency. “Requiring an access to information request should not be the standard,” he said. Criticism of the government’s proposals came from many sources, including internet service providers, privacy advocates and groups representing marginalized communities that the measures are supposed to help. [...] Several of the responses took issue with a section of the proposal that would amend the CSIS Act to give Canada’s spy agency, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, expanded warrant powers to quickly obtain basic subscriber information from private companies.
The National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM) wrote that it supports the general framework in the proposed legislation and that online hate poses an existential threat to Canadians. But it warned that it would likely have to publicly oppose the bill unless sections related to terrorist content are removed. The council wrote that proposed wording related to forcing companies to notify law enforcement and CSIS about terrorist content risks “absurd consequences.” The letter says it “could mean that Canadian Muslims who talk about Palestine, Afghanistan, or stand in solidarity with diverse movements could be implicated. Clearly, this is unacceptable.” NCCM CEO Mustafa Farooq said on Thursday that his organization welcomes the government’s recent decision to delay the plan in favour of more consultation. “We’re at least hopeful that the process will result in something positive,” he said. Read more - Lire plus
Not an Outlier: What the Government’s Online Harms Secrecy Debacle Says About Its Internet Regulation Plans
Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation: Missing Pieces: A Note on Terrorism Legislation in the Online Safety Bill
45 organizations and cybersecurity experts sign open letter expressing concerns with UK’s Online Safety Bill
Vietnam’s new social media take-down rules will intensify state censorship — they must be revoked
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Arming Apartheid: Canada's arms exports to Israel - New report | |
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CJPME 13/04/2022 - This analysis explores the problem of Canada's arms exports to Israel, given that the latter stands accused of significant human rights abuses and of maintaining a regime of apartheid against Palestinians. The analysis examines Canada’s exports of military goods to Israel, including the current values and historical trends, and the potential risk that these exports may contribute to a deteriorating situation for human rights and international law. This analysis also reveals that there is precedent in recent Canadian history for restricting sales to Israel over concerns about human rights and military aggression.
The report recommends that Canadian officials take immediate and proactive measures to eliminate the risks associated with its arms exports to Israel, by:
1) suspending all military trade with Israel until it ends its military occupation of Palestinian territories, dismantles its apartheid policies, and complies with international law; and
2) launching a parliamentary study to determine whether past and current Canadian arms exports have been used against civilians in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) or in airstrikes on Gaza. Read more - Lire plus
ACTION: Tell Trudeau: Stop Arming Apartheid!
“Colonial Violence Is the Norm”: Israel Raids Al-Aqsa Mosque, Injuring 160+, Arresting Hundreds
ACTION: Urge the Canadian government to condemn the attacks on Al-Aqsa mosque
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Stop Turkish war in Kurdistan! | |
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Women Defend Rojava 18/04/2022 - Throughout Kurdistan, the situation is currently escalating and the Turkish war is intensifying immensely. There have been repeated announcements that Erdoğan might expand his occupation war in the shadow of the war in Ukraine. Where the war in Kurdistan already took place in front of everyone, but still undisturbed, all attention is now lacking. After plans for a new major offensive were recently published, the Turkish state has now launched bombardments, air landing operations and helicopter attacks on southern Kurdish areas. The large-scale invasion of Turkey in collaboration with the PDK in South Kurdistan (Northern Iraq) has been in sight for a long time and has now begun. On Friday, the prime minister of the PDK party, which is ruling in South Kurdistan, met Erdoğan and the head of the Turkish secret service MİT. Now it is reported that the Turkish war planes are taking off from military bases in South Kurdistan, which only further confirms the cooperation of the Turkish state and the PDK. Together with Turkey’s war, there is now also a long feared intra-Kurdish war.
At the same time, the daily attacks in Northeastern Syria continue uninterruptedly. In recent days, there have been massive artillery attacks, especially in the Christian region of Til Temir, destroying several homes and other buildings, such as the church in the Assyrian village of Til Tawil. We don‘t accept this ongoing war by Turkey! The achievements of the revolution in Kurdistan, which places women’s liberation at the centre of their struggles, are a thorn in the side of the authorities. It is our responsibility to oppose this war and to defend the women’s revolution wherever we are. We oppose the Turkish war! We stand side by side with the people of Kurdistan! Defending Kurdistan means becoming aware of the responsibility here, let’s make resistance visible everywhere! It’s time to get active! Together we will defend the women’s revolution! Against the war in Kurdistan! For a world in which all people can live together in solidarity and equality! Source
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U.S. didn't expect major explosions when it bombed a Daesh bomb factory | |
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The Intercept 08/04/2022 - When the U.S. military was planning an airstrike on an Islamic State bomb factory in Iraq, it failed to adequately consider the possibility of secondary explosions from munitions stored there, according to military documents that have been hiding in plain sight for several months. The bomb factory in the city of Hawija reportedly contained more than 18,000 kilograms of explosive material — and secondary explosions from the 2015 airstrike killed scores of Iraqis and damaged or destroyed thousands of homes. One of the survivors later told an interviewer from the Iraqi NGO Al-Ghad League for Woman and Child Care, “I thought it was a nuclear bomb.”
In the wake of the carnage, the chief of targets for U.S. Central Command insisted in an email, included in a detailed follow-up assessment of the attack by military investigators, that the strike had been conducted by the book, including the pre-attack “collateral damage estimate,” or CDE. “My targeteers actually spent hours working and reworking this target just to make the CDE ‘executable,’” he wrote in the email. “This was a perfectly accurate CDE call,” he insisted, emphasizing in another email that “CDE Methodology does not account for secondary explosions.” The emails and other investigation documents are included in 73 pages of post-strike assessments of the Hawija attack that are part of a 5,400-page archive of the Pentagon’s confidential reviews of civilian casualty allegations resulting from U.S.-led airstrikes in Iraq and Syria. The archive was published in December by the New York Times, which obtained the documents through the Freedom of Information Act. The documents, part of the Times’s award-winning “Civilian Casualty Files” series, offer an unvarnished glimpse of the faulty intelligence and inaccurate targeting that led to thousands of noncombatant deaths. They also offer a look into little-known policies and procedures — such as the failure to factor secondary explosions into estimates of potential collateral damage from an attack on a bomb factory.
“It is stunning that secondary explosions aren’t factored into collateral damage estimation — especially in this case, where the target was an explosives factory,” said Annie Shiel, the senior adviser for U.S. policy and advocacy at the Center for Civilians in Conflict. “It’s also illustrative of the broader ways the U.S. and its partners have failed to address not just direct civilian deaths and injuries, but also the wide range of reverberating harms that devastate communities for years to come, as civilians in Hawija have experienced firsthand — things like loss of livelihoods and essential services, displacement, public health crises, food insecurity, and long-term psychological trauma.” The U.S.-vetted attack on the vehicle-borne improvised explosive device, or VBIED, factory in Hawija was outsourced to two Dutch F-16s that struck the site on the night of June 2-3, 2015. The attack and secondary explosions killed at least 85 civilians, may have injured 500 or more people, and reportedly damaged 1,200 businesses and 6,000 homes, according to a new report by researchers from Al-Ghad, PAX (a Dutch civilian protection organization), and Utrecht University. “Overnight, I lost my soul, my body, my family, everything,” Abdullah Rashid Saleh, whose five children and two wives were killed in the strike, recalled in a 2021 interview with the research team that’s included in the report. “I want to meet the person who killed my family and ask him why did he do that?” Read more - Lire plus
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'Why don't we just kill them?': New book details CIA rendition and torture programme | |
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MEE 11/04/2022 - In the early years of America's war on terror, during an undisclosed meeting of the top brass of the US's Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), senior intelligence officials gathered to discuss what to do with the individuals subjected to rendition and "enhanced interrogation techniques". After looking at a number of options, including keeping them in detention, sending them to another country, and prosecuting them, one senior official asked, "Why don't we just kill them?" The details of that meeting were revealed on Monday, in a virtual panel with author and journalist Cathy Scott Clark, whose book The Forever Prisoner offers an in-depth look into the CIA's controversial torture programme.
"You hear revelations like that, which I found a bit alarming," she said during the event, hosted by the New America think tank. The book, which will be released later this week, focuses on the case of Guantanamo detainee Abu Zubaydah, who was interrogated using techniques that amounted to torture - including being waterboarded 83 times in one month, hung naked from a ceiling, and deprived of sleep for 11 straight days. It covers a number of aspects in the CIA's rendition programme, including interviews Clark had with several top military and intelligence officials. In the process of working on the book, Clark interviewed James Mitchell, one of the architects of the torture programme. Clark also interviewed another person, identified as "Gus" in the book, who orchestrated the entire rendition operation. "Having met and interviewed so many people in the programme, my overall feeling is that it sort of became like a pack mentality - that everybody was in it together," Clark said. "And if someone were to say who's responsible should someone be prosecuted, I don't think you can point to any one person." [...]
During the event on Monday, Clark also revealed that despite denial from US officials, there is a link between the creators - such as Mitchell - of the CIA's torture programme and the gross abuses that took place at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison where detainees endured physical, psychological and sexual abuse, including the use of electric shock and mock executions at the hands of US forces. "The other thing that I put together in great detail in the book is how the CIA's enhanced interrogation programme absolutely, definitely led to abuses in the US military as well," Clark said. "The same people... were involved in putting together training programmes, training materials, training the CIA, training interrogators to go to Guantanamo, training interrogators at Bagram, and then interrogators who went to Abu Ghraib. "Jim [Mitchell] can rightly say 'I didn't design what went wrong at Abu Ghraib', but he has to accept responsibility that he created something that got out of control." Read more - Lire plus
The CIA’s ‘Torture Queen’ Is Now a Life Coach Hawking Beauty Products
John Kiriakou: Torture killed every single avenue for 9/11 terror prosecution
Oxford MP welcomes former Guantanamo Bay detainee Mohamedou Ould Slahi to Parliament
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NEW Urgent Action to Stop the Deportation of Mohamed Ibrahim and his Family
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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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NEW 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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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.” In January 2022, scores of inmates – all arbitrarily detained – were massacred when the camps were attacked by ISIS, followed by an anti-ISIS bombing campaign and vicious counter-attack.
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.”
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This Sunday: Vindicating Hassan Diab: Information and Strategy Session | |
April 24, 3:30PM ET via Zoom
Independent Jewish Voices Canada has been a longstanding supporter of Hassan Diab, the Carleton University professor who was falsely accused of bombing a Paris synagogue in 1980. Join our virtual teach-in and strategy session, with the goals to deepen the knowledge of IJV members and allies about the Diab Affair and provide a forum for strategizing ways of defending Hassan against the prospects of a wrongful conviction in 2023. The event will feature Don Pratt-founding member of the Hassan Diab Support Committee (2008); Rob Currie - Extradition Law expert; Cynthia Wright - co-chair of Faculty for Palestine and Michelle Weinroth - member of IJV Canada.
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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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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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Tell President Biden: 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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Canada: Condemn Israeli Silencing of Palestinian Groups | |
Send an email urging Canada to:
1) Condemn Israel’s wrongful designation of these human rights groups, and
2) Demand Israel rescind such labels over the Palestinian organizations
Protect Human Rights Defenders in Palestine!
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Cihan Erdal is a Canadian permanent resident, queer youth activist, doctoral student, and coordinator of the Centre for Urban Youth Research at Carleton University in Ottawa. He was unjustly detained in Turkey on unfounded charges in September 2020, after being swept up in a mass arrest of politicians, activists, and academics in Istanbul. Send a message to Canadian officials now the Canadian government can take to help bring Cihan safely home. | |
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.
Demand action from Canada in response to the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan
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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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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 Marco Mendicino, 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.
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And don't hesitate to also sign and share this petition!
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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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OTHER NEWS - AUTRES NOUVELLES | |
From July to Dec - De juillet à décembre 2021 | |
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Check out our biannual summary of activities: What We've Been Up To from July to December 2021.
In 2022, we plan to continue our work on the following issues:
- The Canadian government's concerning "online harms" legislative proposal, including its approach on "terrorist content," mandatory reporting to law enforcement and new powers for CSIS;
- Protecting our privacy from government surveillance, including facial recognition, and from attempts to weaken encryption, along with advocating for privacy law reform;
- Justice for Mohamed Harkat, an end to security certificates, addressing problems in security inadmissibility and establishing a long overdue independent review and complaint body for the CBSA;
- Justice for Hassan Diab and launching a video on extradition law reform;
- Greater transparency and accountability for CSIS;
- The return of the 40+ Canadian citizens indefinitely detained in Syrian camps, including 26 children;
- The end to the CRA's prejudiced audits of Muslim-led charities, revealed in our June 2021 report;
- Greater accountability and transparency for the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), including the establishment of a strong, effective and independent review mechanism;
- Monitoring the implementation 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!
Read more - Lire plus and share on 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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