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International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group
December 4, 2021
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Join us for a great online discussion between Dr Pamela D. Palmater, Azeezah Kanji and Alex Neve, moderated by ICLMG's Tim McSorley.
Monday December 13th, 2021 at noon ET
Register here to get the zoom link
December 2021 marks the 20th anniversary of the adoption of Canada’s first Anti-terrorism Act in 2001. This panel will reflect on the ongoing impacts of the ATA and the so-called War on Terror, including the need for accountability for human rights violations, the intersections with Islamophobia and systemic racism, and the expansion of national security laws to police and criminalize Indigenous land defence and assertion of sovereignty. This event will also give us the chance to look forward, towards alternatives to expanding and entrenching anti-terrorism law in our efforts to address other societal challenges. Organized by the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group.
The event is free. A recording of the panel will be sent to all registrants after the event. Click below to read the panelists' bios and to register and get the zoom link.
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ICLMG's 2021 Statement of Solidarity with the Wet'suwet'en Nation | |
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ICLMG 03/12/21 - The International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group (ICLMG) once again condemns the RCMP’s ongoing repression and criminalization of Wet’suwet’en land defenders, their supporters and journalists.
The coalition has long-expressed its concerns about how national security is used to stigmatize and criminalize land defenders. The ICLMG opposes the ongoing use of the country’s national security apparatus to enforce an injunction to remove Wet’suwet’en land defenders from their territory, and to force the Coastal Gas Link natural gas pipeline through Indigenous territory without free, prior and informed consent. Over the past decades, provincial and federal governments have increasingly positioned resource development and the extraction of fossil fuels as superseding Indigenous law and rights, and have painted the defense of those rights as threatening Canada’s “national security;” which they define as including Canada’s “financial stability” and “economic interests.”
Not only are the RCMP, the BC and the federal governments violating Wet’suwet’en law and Canadian law, they are also violating international law, namely the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and their right of free, prior and informed consent regarding extractive projects on Indigenous lands. Given all this, the actions of the RCMP, supported by the BC and Canadian governments, continue to violate rights, liberties and the law by treating Indigenous land defenders and allies as a national security threat. These most recent actions by the RCMP cannot be separated from the historical context of the RCMP’s predecessor, the North-West Mounted Police, being created as part of Canada’s colonial project in order to assert sovereignty over Indigenous peoples and their lands. For Canada to truly break with this history, it must take immediate action to respect the Wet’suwet’en’s sovereignty over their territories and withdraw the RCMP.
The ICLMG believes that the security and safety of people living in Canada will be achieved through the respect of fundamental rights and liberties, including the respect and recognition of Indigenous rights, and not through the criminalization of land defenders under the guise of “national security” and the use of armed invasions and arrests. Read more - Lire plus
For more information, to take action & support:
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Pam Palmater: RCMP still clearing Indigenous lands for corporate interests
Gidimt’en land defender Sleydo’: “C-IRG and the RCMP need to be abolished”
B.C. Civil Liberties Association demands RCMP ‘stand down’ and leave Wet’suwet’en territory
RCMP tracked photojournalist Amber Bracken in active investigations database
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Canadian civil society groups call on Canada to protect Palestinian human rights defenders | |
ICLMG has signed the NCCM's letter below alongside 78 other civil society groups. | |
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NCCM 01/12/2021 - We write to you on behalf of various Canadian civil society groups who have collectively noted a refusal to respond by your office after the unjust designation of six Palestinian human rights organizations by Israeli authorities. These six groups were illegitimately designated for their work in documenting ongoing human rights violations at the hands of Israeli authorities. These organizations have been instrumental to the documentation of human rights abuses in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) and are critical aspect of the pursuit of justice and lasting peace. The Palestinian human rights groups that have been unlawfully targeted are as follows:
- Al-Haq Law in the Service of Man (Al-Haq)
- Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC)
- Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees (UPWC)
- AddameerPrisoner Support and Human Rights Association
- Bisan Center for Research and Development
- Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCI-P)
These organizations have had their leadership targeted and are now effectively outlawed. The UN High Commissioner on Human Rights, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have all resoundingly denounced this action by Israeli authorities and have publicly called for a reversal of this decision. A number of our allies have also denounced this decision. Israeli authorities have weaponized counter-terrorism laws to effectively end human rights investigations on the part of Israeli forces targeting Palestinian families, individuals, activists and households. These groups have been critical to providing services to Palestinians that range from documenting Palestinian prisoners being abused in Israeli jails, supporting Palestinian farmers, women’s rights organizing, and child rights advocacy.
We note that in a recent statement on your official Twitter account, dated November 15, 2021, you indicated that you were “looking forward to speaking soon with representatives of the Palestinian Authority to discuss Canada’s resolve to support the conditions for peace between Palestinians and Israelis.” What is hoped for is that your office will also be issuing a statement condemning this flagrant abuse of power and reiterating Canada’s commitment to supporting the rights of civil society groups to document and advocate on behalf of Palestinian human rights. We urge the Canadian government to make an immediate public statement, alongside our allies, in defense of human rights and decry this designation of these six Palestinian civil society organizations. We also urge the government to meet with and speak to Palestinian community members, and advocacy groups here in Canada that are pushing for International human rights norms to be upheld and for Palestinians’ rights to be respected. We look forward to hearing from your office soon. Read more - Lire plus
TAKE ACTION: New Parliamentary petition for Canada to call upon Israel to immediately rescind the terror designations against Palestinian human rights defenders
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CUPE support gives Cihan Erdal strength in his fight for freedom | |
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CUPE 25/11/2021 - Wrongfully detained CUPE member Cihan Erdal says the solidarity and support of CUPE members gives him the strength he needs to keep fighting for his freedom. You can help end his ordeal in Turkey and bring him home to Canada. Take action now. “I feel much stronger than when I was arrested,” Erdal told convention delegates in a video message from Istanbul. “I would like to thank each and every member of CUPE whose presence I have felt by my side from the first moment I was detained. Your support gave me tremendous strength and resilience, and your support also showed that unions matter.”
Erdal is a CUPE 4600 member who has been unjustly detained on unfounded charges in Turkey since September 2020, when he was swept up in a mass arrest of politicians, activists, and academics in Istanbul. CUPE has had Erdal’s back since day one, demanding his release and safe return home, and mobilizing our members to take action. Our first campaign after his arrest drew thousands of supporters and put Erdal’s case on Ottawa’s agenda. Now, there are new actions the Canadian government can take to bring him home. Send a message to Canadian officials now.
There have been important developments in Erdal’s case. In October 2021, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD) recognized Cihan’s detention as arbitrary and unlawful. The working group found numerous violations of Erdal’s human rights as protected by international law and is calling for hisimmediate and unconditional release. A Canadian permanent resident, Erdal has also applied to become a Canadian citizen. Erdal’s ordeal has prevented him from pursuing his research and building his promising academic career in Canada. He was jailed for nine months, including time in solitary confinement, before being conditionally released in June 2021. However restrictive bail conditions limit his freedom, and he cannot leave Turkey. Erdal left delegates with an optimistic message about the power of collective action, saying “I do believe that we can win against all forms of political evil around the world. Let’s keep fighting and hoping together.” Read more - Lire plus
NEW ACTION: Free Cihan Erdal
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Father of Canadian man held in Syrian detention camp calls for federal assistance | |
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CTV News 02/12/21 - The parents of a Canadian man who has been held in a detention centre in northeastern Syria since 2017 are once again calling on the Canadian federal government for help to repatriate their son. Jack Letts, named "Jihadi Jack" by the British media, was a bright teenager in Oxford, U.K., with a knack for learning languages, his dad, John Letts told CTVNews.ca. Jack Letts, who was baptized Catholic, converted to Islam in his teens. “There wasn't any issue of radicalization as the papers have said or anything like that,” John Letts said, adding that at the time, he and his wife “met all of [Jack’s] friends” who were religious. “We weren’t particularly concerned,” he said. In 2014, Jack Letts moved to Kuwait to study Islamic studies -- a move John Letts said he and his wife supported.
“He went to Kuwait, registered, lived in a place and the course was getting going,” John Letts said. “And then the next thing we knew was a phone call that he was in Syria.”
John Letts said he never got an explanation about why his son left Kuwait for Syria, but said Jack would “regularly” tell him during phone calls that he was “the same” kid, and was not a part of the “system” in Syria. John Letts said allegations purported by British media that his son left for Syria to join ISIS are “complete rubbish.” “I mean, where’s your evidence for any of that?” he said. “All I can say is when he left I didn't have concerns like that,” John Letts said. “And he also then reassured us that he was not involved with ISIS when he did make phone calls.” In 2017, Letts was picked up by Kurdish forces. He has been detained at a camp in northeastern Syria ever since. According to a 2020 report published by Human Rights Watch, for months before he was captured, Jack Letts told his parents he had been trying to leave Syria. The report said that in prison interviews with British media, Jack Letts admitted to living under ISIS, but denied being a member, adding that the group had imprisoned him three times for opposing its practices.
According to the family, in 2017, the Kurdish forces said they wanted to hand Jack over to the U.K., but the U.K. government refused to help, claiming a lack of consular presence in the area. In 2019, the U.K. government revoked Jack Letts’ citizenship. John Letts said he and his wife have not directly spoken to their son since his detainment in Syria, receiving only a handful of “sporadic” letters over the years. The most recent letter arrived around Christmas of last year. John Letts said the letter sounded like Jack’s writing, but the contents were “strange” and seemed “formal.” “The honest truth is I don't know if he's mentally still there,” he said. “He has been tortured a lot. One human rights lawyer went in and said Jack told him he'd been tortured 15 times in the torture room.” Letts said that because they don’t receive regular updates, the family is not even sure Jack is still alive. “I’m hoping he’s alive,” Letts said. “I’m assuming he’s alive.” According to John Letts, representatives from Global Affairs Canada (GAC) interviewed his son in the detention centre in Syria shortly after he was captured.
Letts said he has received only part of the transcript from that conversation.
“They never sent me the whole transcript,” he said. “And it's very clear that Jack's talking about being tortured with electricity [and] the hot box they put out in the desert --all these things. So Global Affairs knew all about it and did nothing.” John Letts said early on, GAC said the agency would do what it could for their son, but said the family has not received any support. [...] “I have family and friends in Canada, I understand that fear,” he said. “And the same in the U.K., I know people who were severely injured in the bombings in London. I understand that.” “But, you know, so you just lock up people innocently because they're Muslim, or because they were stupid and 18 and went to Syria?” he continued. John Letts said when Jack returns to Canada, he should face the justice system and be tried in a Canadian court for any crimes he may have committed.
If the court deems he has committed a crime, John Letts said, the family believes he should be punished or rehabilitated. “I don't believe in vigilante justice or witch hunt, and I think that's what's going on,” John Letts said. “So as a Canadian, he should have a right to defend himself against accusations based on zero evidence, except for the fact that he went there and he's a Muslim.” He said he wants the Canadian government to “act according to the law, and according to Canadian values” and “give someone who could well be innocent the chance to prove that.”
In May of 2021, the family’s lawyers submitted a formal complaint to the United Nations, alleging that the inaction and action of both the Canadian and British governments have infringed upon Jack’s right to life. The complaint also argues that the two countries have violated international law by arbitrarily or discriminatorily withholding consular assistance from Jack Letts. The complaint also alleges Canada is acting in “bad faith” and only takes responsibility for its citizens when it suits the country politically. John Letts, who resides in the U.K., is in Ottawa this week to lobby for help for his son. “We've lined up lots of meetings with MPs and senators and journalists in Ottawa,” he said, adding that COVID-19 and quarantine measures have complicated things a bit. First and foremost, John Letts said he wants some “confirmed evidence” that his son is still alive. “That would be really nice as a parent to know he's alive, and that he's not completely mentally crushed,” he said. Read more - Lire plus
Event: Held without Charge: The Call to Repatriate Canadians Detained in Northeast Syria
Canadian woman released from camp for ISIS detainees in Syria arrested at airport
Amnesty International: Repatriate at least 27,000 children held in dire conditions in north-east Syria
Shamima Begum: IS bride insists she 'didn't hate Britain' when she fled to Syria - and now wants to face trial in UK
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CSIS efforts to derail threats to 2019 election sometimes skirted law: watchdog | |
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The Canadian Press 26/11/2021 - Canada's intelligence service sometimes strayed from the law when trying to disrupt threats from hostile foreign states in the 2019 election campaign, the national spy watchdog has found. In a newly released report, the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency sheds fresh light on the Canadian Security Intelligence Service's use of powers, ushered in six years ago, to actively counter threats. Such measures could involve CSIS altering websites, blocking communications or financial transactions, and interfering with tools or devices. The review agency looked at the topical issue of threat-reduction measures, approved in the context of the 2019 federal election, that were intended to ward off threats to Canada's democratic institutions. [...]
The review agency's classified report was presented to the government in February but a version with sensitive material deleted was made public only this week. Any details of specific disruption operations were excised from the document. [...] Most of the measures "satisfied the requirements of the CSIS Act," the report says. But in a "limited number of cases" the spy service's inclusion of people "without a rational link" to the threat meant the measures "were not 'reasonable and proportional' as required under the CSIS Act."
One type of measure — no description was provided — entailed third parties acting on CSIS's behalf. Such a relationship would require CSIS to fully consider the Charter of Rights and Freedoms implications of its measures, and could require the spy service to obtain warrants before taking certain measures, the report says. Overall, while CSIS use of threat reduction "remains limited," the intelligence service has been applying the powers to the full spectrum of national security threats, the report notes. The review agency made recommendations including development of an accountability framework for compliance with legal advice on threat-reduction measures, such as documenting when and why such advice was not followed. Read more - Lire plus
National Security Transparency Advisory Group: How to institutionalize transparency in national security
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World Uyghur Congress urges Canada to take refugees, block Chinese imports | |
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The Globe and Mail 23/11/2021 - The head of the World Uyghur Congress is visiting Ottawa this week to ask the Canadian government to step up efforts to block imports of products made with forced labour in China and to create a refugee stream for Uyghur refugees fleeing Beijing’s repression. Dolkun Isa, president of the umbrella organization for exiled Uyghurs, will meet with Immigration Minister Sean Fraser and is hoping to meet with other decisionmakers during his stay in the nation’s capital, which will include a rally on Parliament Hill with MPs and senators from all major political parties. Mr. Isa was once the subject of a wanted alert, or red notice, by Interpol – a measure that led to criticism the Chinese Communist Party was abusing Interpol to persecute dissidents. This red notice was cancelled in 2018 to much protest from Beijing.
He also wants to ask the Canadian government why it took no action after Parliament adopted a motion earlier this year declaring China’s treatment of Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities to constitute genocide. The same motion said Canada should urge the International Olympic Committee to move the 2022 Winter Olympics from Beijing “if the Chinese government continues this genocide.” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government, like other Western governments, have declined to consider an athletic boycott of the Games, but U.S. President Joe Biden has said he is weighting a diplomatic boycott which would mean no government representatives attend. The Canadian government has not said whether it would follow suit. “We will continue to discuss this matter with our closest partners,” Syrine Khoury, a spokeswoman for Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly said last week. Canada also has not to date demonstrated much success in intercepting imports made with forced labour from China.
Mr. Isa said he hopes that the House of Commons motion was not “an empty promise bringing nothing.” If Canada was sincere about declaring that a genocide is occurring then that is a sufficiently serious situation to prompt further “concrete action,” he said. He said China will exploit full attendance at the 2022 Games to demonstrate the furor over Xinjiang was not serious. China’s northwestern Xinjiang region, which produces a fifth of the world’s cotton, is where researchers and critics say the Chinese government has committed grave human-rights violations against the largely Muslim population of Uyghurs and other minorities. Allegations include mass incarceration, destruction of religious sites, forced labour, forced sterilization and other forms of population control, as well as torture. Forced labour, they say, is the latest stage in Beijing’s efforts to exert control in an area with a large population of Muslim people that Beijing has described as infected by extremism. Canada was one of seven parliamentary bodies around the world to adopt such a motion and the Biden and Trump administrations in the United States have both said Beijing’s treatment of Uyghur and other Turkic Muslims meet a credible definition of genocide. [...]
Mr. Isa said he’d like Canada to follow through on a recommendation from a House of Commons subcommittee in 2020 that drew up a report urging action by Canada on China’s treatment of Uyghurs. The report recommends the creation of “an exceptional refugee stream to expedite entry” for Uyghurs. No such stream has been created. He noted Canada plans to accept hundreds of thousands of immigrants annually. “A couple thousand Uyghur immigrants is nothing,” he said. There are about 50,000 displaced Uyghurs in Turkey, he said, of which as many as 15,000 to 20,000 lack citizenship documents and are effectively stateless. Canada has done little to stop forced-labour imports from Xinjiang from entering this country. It has only seized one shipment of goods it identified as being made with forced labour in the nearly 17 months since federal law was toughened in 2020 to prohibit imports of items made under coercion. As The Globe first reported last week, the Canada Border Services Agency seized a shipment of women’s and children’s clothing that arrived in Quebec from China, on the belief that it was “manufactured or produced wholly or in part by forced labour.” The date of the interception was October 26, the CBSA said. Mr. Isa said he’d requested a meeting with Mr. Trudeau but had not received confirmation it would happen. The Prime Minister’s Office declined to say whether the Prime Minister would meet with Mr. Isa. Stephen Harper met with Mr. Isa’s predecessor Rebiya Kadeer when he was prime minister. Read more - Lire plus
“Your Family Will Suffer”: How China is Hacking, Surveilling, and Intimidating Uyghurs in Liberal Democracies
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The Intercept 21/11/2021 - Many Democrats, liberals, traditional conservatives, and even some leftists continue to tell themselves that the election of Joe Biden was the first step toward restoring U.S. standing in the world after the damage caused by Donald Trump. And in a variety of ways — many stylistic and some substantive — that perspective has merit. But when it comes to national security policy, the U.S. has been on a steady, hypermilitarized arc for decades. Taken broadly, U.S. policy has been largely consistent on “national security” and “counterterrorism” matters from 9/11 to the present.
The ascent of the charlatan businessman Trump to the presidency in 2016 was a logical — if somewhat on-the-nose — plot twist in the U.S. imperial saga that managed to distill many truths about this nation into a four-year televised and live-tweeted debacle.
The continued media drumbeat that Trump remains the gravest enduring threat to U.S. democracy is fueled by legitimate concerns over Trump’s frantic efforts to use the office of the presidency to overturn the election results, which came to a head with the violent demonstrations at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. These dangerous actions, taken in concert with ongoing Republican efforts at voter disenfranchisement and the peddling of false conspiracy theories, merit serious concern. The Trumpist movement, especially its members in Congress, poses a clear threat to the democratic process. But even in the face of this threat, the bipartisan imperial consensus was so strong that the Democrats continued to increase Trump’s national security powers throughout his presidency. This reflexive bipartisan militarism stands in stark opposition to the Democratic Party’s sweeping and fallacious rhetoric that the bad face of the U.S. emerges only when Republicans seize executive power — and that the sole remedy is electing Democrats. Civilian victims of Barack Obama’s drone strikes might have another view. Before Trump, according to Democratic doctrine, the evils of U.S. policy originated with George W. Bush and his “co-president” Dick Cheney. Yet under both Trump and Bush, the rhetoric from many Democrats was pathologically disconnected from their support for ever-expanding militarist and surveillance policies.
The Democratic party, in its self-tailored version of history, has always been a steadfast force of resistance against GOP excesses and abuses. The Democrats appear to see no contradiction between fighting Republican attacks on voting rights and their own enthusiastic embrace of empire in foreign policy. Without support from the leadership of the Democratic Party — and votes from rank-and-file congressional Democrats — many of the worst national security policies of the past two decades would have been impossible to implement or would have required enormous political battles or an even greater, and abusive, use of executive power to accomplish. Read more - Lire plus
War Helps Fuel the Climate Crisis as U.S. Military Carbon Emissions Exceed 140+ Nations
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The U.S.-led bombing that ended the ISIS "Caliphate" killed scores of civilians | |
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The Intercept 18/11/2021 - In the cold, final months of 2018 and early 2019, the U.S.-led coalition ramped up its bombing and artillery campaign in eastern Syria as part of a final effort to strip away from the Islamic State any land the group still controlled. The air campaign had two aims: Weaken the ISIS forces on the ground, and push the remaining fighters and civilians south along the Euphrates River. Kurdish fighters, the coalition’s allies, would then take control of the bombed-out villages. The last ISIS fighters had finally been corralled in March 2019 in a small village called Baghuz, between the Euphrates and the Iraqi border. ISIS made its last stand there, the fighters mixed together with family members and civilians trapped by the conflict as the U.S.-led coalition pummeled the village from the air. “It’s hard to imagine how anybody can survive,” said CBS News reporter Charlie D’Agata, who watched airstrikes from the ground near Baghuz in March 2019.
In an investigation published last weekend, the New York Times told the story of one those assaults. On March 18, 2019, the U.S. Air Force dropped a 500-pound bomb, followed by two 2,000-pound explosives, on a crowd of women and children near the river in Baghuz. “Who dropped that?” a Defense Department analyst monitoring a drone typed in a secure chat, according to the Times story. “We just dropped on 50 women and children,” another analyst responded. The Times described the airstrike as “one of the largest civilian casualty incidents of the war against the Islamic State.” It came to light only after investigations, including by the independent inspector general and the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, had been blocked or buried. But this bombing of women and children was not a tragic accident in an otherwise controlled and closely monitored aerial campaign. The bombing was in fact one of the final strikes in a monthslong string of attacks that killed scores of civilians. I know this because I was in touch almost daily with an American who lived through these bombings until he was killed by an airstrike in Baghuz, likely just before the bombing the Times described.
Russell Dennison, who was among the first Americans to join ISIS as a fighter, secretly sent me more than 30 hours of recordings from August 2018 to February 2019. Dennison’s later recordings captured the roar of airstrikes he and his small family witnessed, and Dennison regularly sent me photographs of the aftermath. I tell Dennison’s story, including his descriptions of the U.S.-led coalition’s bombing campaign, in “American ISIS,” an eight-episode Audible Original documentary podcast released in July from The Intercept and Topic Studios. While the specific bombing the Times described shows that Defense Department officials knew that they’d killed civilians and then made efforts to keep the bombing from public scrutiny, it was clear at the time that the coalition’s campaign was not sparing civilians. “But these bombings were not well covered by the international media at the time,” said Chris Woods, director of the London-based Airwars, which tracks civilian harm in war zones in Iraq, Syria, and Libya. The U.S.-led coalition disclosed earlier this year that it estimated at least 1,417 civilians had been killed in airstrikes in Syria and Iraq, though Airwars estimates that number could be more than 13,000.
Syria’s Deir el-Zour province, where Baghuz is located, is a remote part of the world, and ISIS’s control on the ground and the coalition bombs dropping from the air made access to the area nearly impossible for journalists and international monitors. As a result, the full extent of civilian death in the area may never be known. Dennison may have been the only witness on the ground in Deir el-Zour who documented the bombing campaign in real time. He sent me recordings and pictures following each night’s attacks. What he described and photographed over months in Deir el-Zour suggested that the U.S.-led coalition must have been aware that civilians were perishing in large numbers. Read more - Lire plus
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Human Rights Groups Call on Pentagon to Reinvestigate Civilian Deaths in Yemen | |
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The Intercept 30/11/2021 - On Tuesday, the Yemen-based group Mwatana for Human Rights and the Columbia Law School Human Rights Clinic asked Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to open new investigations of past U.S. attacks in Yemen, apologize for the deaths of civilians whom the U.S. has already acknowledged killing, and provide compensation to their families. “The Department of Defense should do more to show it takes the prospect of accountability for civilian deaths and injuries with the seriousness it deserves,” wrote Radhya Al-Mutawakel, the chair of Mwatana, and Priyanka Motaparthy of Columbia in a letter sent to Austin and shared exclusively with The Intercept. “The recent New York Times report on civilian deaths in Baghuz, Syria indicates serious gaps in how the Department has ensured accountability. These events have raised serious concerns that there may be significant shortcomings in how the military responded to reports of civilian harm from Yemen, as well.”
A report by Mwatana released earlier this year examined 12 U.S. attacks in Yemen, 10 of them so-called counterterrorism airstrikes, between January 2017 and January 2019. The authors found that at least 38 Yemeni civilians — 19 men, six women, and 13 children — were killed and seven others injured in the attacks. A June Pentagon report on civilian casualties acknowledged one of those incidents, the death of a civilian in Al-Bayda, Yemen, on January 22, 2019. Mwatana’s investigation found that the attack killed Saleh Ahmed Mohamed Al Qaisi, a 67-year-old farmer who locals said had no terrorist affiliations. The U.S. had previously acknowledged four to 12 civilian deaths in another incident chronicled by Mwatana, a raid by Navy SEALs on January 29, 2017, that was first exposed by The Intercept. Both Mwatana and The Intercept reported a higher death toll. Regarding the remaining allegations, Central Command, which oversees U.S. military operations in the Middle East, told Mwatana in an April 2021 letter: “USCENTCOM is confident that each airstrike hit its intended Al Qaeda targets and nothing else.”
But the Pentagon gives short shrift to investigations of civilian harm. Mwatana’s 156-page analysis of the 12 incidents was based on four years of investigations, often including site visits soon after attacks, by researchers who conducted nearly 70 interviews. It also drew on government documents, medical records, photographs, and videos. In 2017, however, there were reportedly just two full-time staff members at CENTCOM responsible for assessing reports of civilian harm caused by U.S. strikes in Yemen, Syria, and Iraq. A 2020 analysis of 228 U.S. military investigations of civilian casualty incidents found that site inspections were carried out in just 16 percent of those investigations. “The U.S. military continues to refuse to conduct investigations of civilian harm where it can, and it never talks to victims and witnesses,” said Marc Garlasco, once the chief of high-value targeting at the Pentagon and now the military adviser for PAX, a Dutch civilian protection organization. Read more - Lire plus
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Durbin Introduces Amendment to End 'Legacy of Cruelty' by Closing Guantánamo | |
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Common Dreams 30/11/2021 - Recounting some of the "atrocities committed shamefully in the name of our nation" during the ongoing so-called War on Terror, Sen. Dick Durbin on Tuesday said he has introduced an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would close the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba "once and for all."
"Since the first group of detainees was brought to Guantánamo in January of 2002, four different presidents have presided over the facility," Durbin (D-Ill.)—a longtime proponent of closing the prison—said during a speech on the Senate floor. "In that time the Iraq War has begun and ended, the war in Afghanistan—our nation's longest war—has come to a close," he continued. "A generation of conflict has come and gone yet the Guantánamo detention facility is still open and every day that it remains open is an affront to our system of justice and the rule of law." "In the wake of 9/11 the [George W.] Bush administration tossed aside our constitutional principles as well as the Geneva Conventions," Durbin contended, calling Gitmo a place "where due process goes to die."
"Military officials, national security experts, and leaders on both sides of the aisle have demanded its closure for years," he said. "The facility was virtually designed to be a legal black hole where detainees could be held incommunicado beyond the reach of law and subjected to unspeakable torture and abuse." [...] Durbin called on President Joe Biden—who has signaled his intention to close Gitmo—to appoint a special envoy on detainee transfers and to pursue a "swift resolution to the remaining cases" in civilian courts. "The use of torture and military commissions that deny due process have hindered our ability to bring terrorists to justice," he said. "Our federal courts have proven more than capable of handling even the most serious and complex terrorism cases." Read more - Lire plus
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US lifts Colombia’s FARC ‘foreign terrorist’ designation | |
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Al Jazeera 30/11/2021 - The United States revoked its designation of the Colombian group the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia as a “foreign terrorist organisation”, allowing US officials to work with members of the group as they shift into political life. The move, which Congress had been notified of earlier in November, comes days after the Marxist rebels and Colombia’s government celebrated the five-year anniversary of a peace deal, which ended five decades of violence. In 2018, the group took part in a United Nations-supervised decommissioning of the last of its accessible weapons.
In a statement, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said removing the “terrorist” designation will make it easier for the US to support the implementation of the accord.
“The decision to revoke the designation does not change the posture with regards to any charges or potential charges in the United States against former leaders of the FARC, including for narcotrafficking,” he said. The FARC group, which fought for five decades in an era of devastating political violence in Colombia – carrying out bombings, assassinations, kidnappings and attacks in the name of redistributing wealth to Colombia’s poor – has been designated a political party in the wake of the peace agreement. The group is guaranteed a share of seats in Colombia’s legislature. Observers increasingly warned that failure to lift the US designation would hobble Washington’s ability to support programmes involving former FARC fighters, including removing land mines and replacing illegal crops.
Lifting the label also allows US agencies to work on peace implementation in parts of Colombia where demobilised FARC soldiers are located. Blinken said former FARC rebels who rejected the peace agreement, and FARC splinter groups that continue to use the group’s name, would remain under the designation. “The designation of FARC-EP and Segunda Marquetalia is directed at those who refused to demobilise and those who are engaged in terrorist activity,” Blinken said, referring to two offshoot groups that continue to operate. According to the Indepaz research institute, some 90 armed groups with some 10,000 members remain active in the country. A US official previously told reporters that keeping those groups on the list “allows us to target the full tools of the US government and law enforcement to go after those individuals who did not sign the agreement and remain active in terrorist activities”. Read more - Lire plus
Egypt - Decision to remove lawyers from syndicate rolls for inclusion on terrorism list could set precedent, lawyers say
Samidoun condemns British “terror” designation targeting Hamas, urges action for Palestinian liberation
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The Intercept 30/11/2021 - A handsome, athletic young man who had been accustomed to being the center of attention since his high school days, Khan — though he had never even been accused of a crime — was now a pariah. He had plummeted into a downward spiral of depression, anxiety, and sleepless nights. Each friendship lost, or rumor about him overheard, had dealt another blow to his self-esteem. Learning secondhand about his childhood best friend’s marriage, to which he would not be invited, was the worst blow yet.
The slow unraveling of Khan’s personal life had begun almost a decade before, with a sudden visit from the FBI. Khan had been an international student attending Northeastern University in Boston to study business management. In 2011, after graduating, he returned to the U.S. on a visitor visa. While staying with family, he was approached by the FBI with an offer to become a paid informant for the bureau. Khan declined. After leaving the country a few weeks later, Khan and his legal team believe he was placed on the U.S.’s no-fly list as well as the terrorist watchlist. “I would say that it is very likely that he is on the watchlist,” said Naz Ahmad, a staff attorney at the Creating Law Enforcement Accountability and Responsibility, or CLEAR, project at CUNY School of Law, who has worked on Khan’s case. Proving his place on a secret watchlist, by its very nature, is impossible without government confirmation, but Ahmad said the harassment of Khan’s associates at U.S. ports of entry as well as comments made to his previous attorney by officials pointed strongly to the listing.
Since the day he left the country, Khan has not returned to the U.S., where he once spent every summer with family in Connecticut, graduated from college, and even became a diehard Boston Celtics fan. “I would say that the five years of my life that I spent in Boston were the best years of my life, hands down. I would recommend Boston to anyone,” Khan said. “I’d been coming to the United States in general since I was a kid, visiting Disney World, traveling all over the country. I loved it. The time I spent there made a big influence in making me the person that I am.” After that fateful FBI visit, many of Khan’s contacts who traveled to the U.S. started to be repeatedly detained at the U.S. border, sometimes for hours. Those stopped included friends and acquaintances in Pakistan, as well as people with whom he was only casually connected on social media. A consistent feature of the stops, something that at least five of Khan’s contacts confirmed, is that they were asked about their relationship with him at the border. The contacts said U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers suggested to them during interrogations that Khan was a dangerous person, a possible terrorist. The officials made it clear that he was the source of their problems at the border.
For many of his friends, the pressure was too much. People whom Khan had known for years started calling him to apologize that they were going to have to unfriend him on social media. At weddings in Karachi, other guests started asking that he be excluded from group photographs. His invitations to events started drying up. Spouses and parents of his friends began telling them that being associated with Khan was not worth the trouble. They even wondered whether, against all indications based on his ordinary life as head of an advertising business in Pakistan, Khan had really done something wrong to warrant all this scrutiny. “They’re harassing all my friends for hours whenever they travel and made it such that even my best friends didn’t want to talk to me anymore,” Khan said. “It’s like I’m in a virtual prison being on this list. The FBI has all this power over you. They own your life. They’re the gatekeepers of your prison, even though you haven’t done anything wrong to justify being put in there.” Read more - Lire plus
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Canada must reform its extradition system now! | |
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!
NEW Phone PM Justin Trudeau
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NEW Held without Charge: Repatriate Cdns Detained in NE Syria
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December 10, 2021 at 1PM ET on zoom Click below for more details and to register.
Since the fall of the Islamic State in 2019, thousands of foreign nationals have been held in arbitrary and indefinite detention in northeast Syria without charge. Currently, there are at least 40 Canadian citizens, including children, among those detained in degrading and inhumane conditions. We call on the Canadian government to end these arbitrary and unlawful detentions by immediately repatriating all Canadian citizens.
This event will be moderated by Professor Azar Masoumi, and features four speakers: John Letts, Tayab Ali, Monia Mazigh and Justin Mohammed. Organized by Carleton U's Dept of Sociology and Anthropology.
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NEW Canada and the Five Eyes | |
December 15 at 7PM ET on zoom
The US, UK, New Zealand, Australia and Canada “Five Eyes” is a seven-decade old intelligence-sharing framework. With 2,700 employees and a $700 million budget, the Communications Security Establishment is Canada’s main contributor to the Five Eyes. Recently, the NSA-led alliance has been at the centre of Washington's growing conflict with China.
Join Communications Security Establisment expert Bill Robinson, Professor John Price and others to learn more about the Communications Security Establishment and Five Eyes. Moderated by Bianca Mugyenyi from CFPI.
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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.
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NEW Stop the illegal arrests of Canadian journalists | |
On Nov. 19, photojournalist Amber Bracken was arrested by the RCMP while on assignment for The Narwhal on Wet’suwet’en territory. Amber — along with freelance filmmaker Michael Toledano — was held in jail for 3 nights before being released on the condition that she'll appear in court on Feb. 14.
Please call on the federal Minister of Public Safety Marco Mendicino to exercise his oversight responsibility of the RCMP and to complete a full investigation that stops these illegal arrests from happening once and for all.
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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!
NEW Parliamentary petition
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Canada must repatriate Canadians from Syria | Sign this Parliamentary petition calling upon the Government of Canada to immediately begin the process to repatriate Canadian citizens (14 children, 8 women and 4 men) currently being detained in North East Syria. At 500 signatures, the government needs to issue a public response to it. | |
No More Attacks on Afghanistan | World Beyond War - In response to a bombing at the Kabul airport, the US president authorized 2 drone strikes on August 27 and 29 that killed several Afghan civilians, including a family of ten. Official counts indicate that at least 241,000 people have been killed in the Afghanistan and Pakistan war zones. We oppose any further attacks on Afghanistan, “over the horizon” or by troops on the ground. | |
How to Help Afghans in Afghanistan and Canada | |
Muslim Link - The people of Afghanistan are in dire need of humanitarian aid and Canada has committed to accepting 20,000 Afghan refugees.
How can you help? Click below for a list of ways you can support the people of Afghanistan at home and abroad.
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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 | |
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What we've been up to so far in 2021:
- We called on the government to not expand anti-terror laws to fight racism
- We met with many MPs, agencies, policy staff from the Offices of the Minister of Public Safety and Minister of Justice, etc.
- We published a report exposing CRA's Prejudiced Audits against Muslim Charities
- We continue to call for Justice for Dr Hassan Diab and his family!
- We were featured in 85+ news media articles, op-eds and podcasts
- We co-organized and presented in various online events
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We published op-eds, articles & statements ...and much more! More details
During the second half of the year, we will organize activities around the 20th "anniversary" of the beginning of the so-called "War on Terror" and the rushed adoption of Canada's Anti-terrorism Act of 2001, as well as the problematic laws passed and human rights abuses inflicted since in the name of national security.
And we will continue fighting:
- against facial recognition technology, governments' attacks on encryption, and online mass surveillance
- for a review mechanism for the Canada Border Services Agency
- to abolish security certificates and end deportation to torture
- to repeal the Canadian No Fly List
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for justice for Hassan Diab & the reform of the Extradition Act Read more
Version française: Ce que nous avons fait à date en 2021. Aidez-nous à protéger les libertés civiles pour le reste de l'année!
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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 $10 or more per month (and wanted to be listed) directly in the News Digest. Without all of you, our work wouldn't be possible!
Mary Ann Higgs
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Brian Murphy
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Bob Thomson
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Nous tenons à remercier nos organisations membres ainsi que les centaines de personnes qui ont soutenu notre travail à travers les années, y compris sur Patreon! En récompense, nous nommons ci-dessus nos mécènes qui donnent 10$ 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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