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International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group

Coalition pour la surveillance internationale des libertés civiles

October 28, 2023 - 28 octobre 2023

ICLMG: Canada must support human rights and civil liberties in Gaza and at home!

ICLMG 17/10/2023 - The ICLMG is deeply alarmed by the growing reports of incidents of Islamophobia and antisemitism since the recent attack by Hamas and other armed groups in Israel and the Israeli government’s devastating, ongoing response in Gaza. As throughout all our work, we oppose all targeting of civilians and join the calls for an immediate ceasefire.

We are also monitoring with concern Canadian officials’ statements regarding protests and political expression, and reiterate the importance of not conflating support for the human rights of Palestinians and the residents of Gaza with support for terrorism. Already, governments internationally have moved to criminalize or outright ban protests and restrict speech in support of Palestinian human rights and against the decades long Israeli occupation.

These actions and sentiments are disturbingly similar to those we saw in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, and in response to the protests against the so-called “War on Terror” that followed. Governments – including the Canadian government – used a climate of fear and division to justify limits on freedom of expression and assembly, to drastically increase surveillance, and to undermine the civil liberties of vast swaths of the population, particularly Muslims and Arabs.

We urge officials to act with caution and forethought in order to uphold the free expression and other human rights of all people in Canada and to support human rights, respect for international law, and justice globally. Source

ACTION: Canada must support human rights & civil liberties in Gaza and at home!

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Déclaration de la CSILC: Le Canada doit soutenir les droits et libertés à Gaza et ici!

ACTION: Le Canada doit soutenir les droits et libertés à Gaza et ici!

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ACTION: Send email to all MPs: Canada Needs To Call for an Immediate Ceasefire Today!

ACTION: Ontario NDP reinstate Jama

NCCM Islamophobia incident report form

Message from Canada’s Special Representative on Combatting Islamophobia on the situation in the Middle East

More than 30 MPs — including 23 Liberals — call for ceasefire in Israel-Hamas war

50 Canadian civil society, faith, Arab, Jewish, labour, and peace and justice organizations: Ceasefire now, end the siege, for a just and lasting peace

“A Textbook Case of Genocide”: Israeli Holocaust Scholar Raz Segal Decries Israel’s Assault on Gaza

Azeezah Kanji: The Architecture of Anti-Palestinian Elimination: Legal Fallacies, False Analogies, and Inverted Realities

Yellowhead Institute 25/10/2023 - As the conditions for genocide in Israel-occupied Gaza continue to unfold – more than 6,500 killed as of writing; 1,500 more including 800 children trapped screaming under the rubble; 2 million deliberately cut off from food, water, fuel, and electricity, unrelieved by the constricted trickle of aid finally allowed through; orders for the “evacuation”-cum-depopulation of the Strip delivered; children preparing for their own deaths by writing their names on their arms and legs so their corpses can be identified; schools, homes, refugee camps, churches, and hospitals turned into mass graves – it is clear that the prevailing international complicity in Palestinians’ annihilation is not due to an absence of information, but the active production of narratives to justify it. 

More insidious than the circulation of overtly “fake news” – for instance, the unsupported reports of Hamas “beheading children,” uncritically reproduced by news media and US President Joe Biden – are the deeply embedded frameworks normalizing and rationalizing mass Palestinian dispossession, devastation, and death in ostensibly neutral, legally-authoritative terms. The semantic pillars of this ideological architecture of anti-Palestinian elimination include:

“Terrorism”:

Is there any act of terror imputed to Hamas in its horrific October 7 attack, that is not also a long-documented practice of Israel’s occupation against Palestinians?

• Mass killing: ex. “Israeli forces have killed and injured thousands of Palestinian civilians in the OPT [Occupied Palestinian Territories] since 1967, often in circumstances suggesting that the killings were systematic, unlawful and arbitrary, and with near total impunity” (Amnesty International, 2022); “Over 1400 Palestinians, including some 300 children were killed by Israeli forces during the [2009 Gaza] conflict … To date, only four Israeli soldiers have been indicted on criminal charges relating to the Gaza action and only one has served prison time (for credit card theft). Israel has failed to investigate those higher up in the chain of command – those who designed, planned, ordered and oversaw the engagement policies” (Amnesty International, 2011); Total number of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces between September 2000 and September 26, 2023: 10,555, including 2,270 children; Total number of Israelis killed by Palestinians during the same period: 881 civilians, 449 soldiers (Israeli human rights NGO B’Tselem, September 2023).

• Execution of civilians: “B’Tselem’s investigations have found that soldiers and police routinely shoot and kill Palestinians even when they pose no danger” (B’Tselem, 2022); ex. “Israeli forces shoot and kill three Palestinians on the grounds that they intentionally ran over Israelis – in incidents that never occurred” (B’Tselem, 2018); “Israeli soldiers fatally shoot Mahmoud Nakhleh, 18, in the back from 80 meters away, and deny him medical aid” (B’Tselem, 2019); “Israeli settlers execute Muhammad ‘Abd al-Fatah; military covers up their deed” (B’Tselem, 2019); “Israeli settler shoots and kills Palestinian; soldiers arrive only 30 minutes later, to disperse Palestinians defending their land” (B’Tselem, 2023).

• Attacks against children, the elderly, and disabled: ex. “An Israeli army officer who fired the entire magazine of his automatic rifle into a 13-year-old Palestinian girl and then said he would have done the same even if she had been three years old was acquitted on all charges by a military court yesterday” (The Guardian, 2008); “After shooting a Palestinian with Down Syndrome, Israeli soldiers fled without looking back” (Haaretz, 2016); “Israeli soldiers who bound, gagged 80-year-old Palestinian American before he died won’t be charged” (Haaretz, June 2023); “Israeli officer who killed autistic Palestinian in 2020 acquitted … Al-Hallaq’s counselor, Warda Abu Hadid, who was with him in the shed when he was shot, said she tried to protect him but that the police officers ignored her when she told them he had special needs” (Haaretz, July 2023); “Israeli soldier fatally shoots Palestinian toddler Muhammad Tamimi in the head while child is in a car next to his home” (B’Tselem, July 2023); “The Israeli military and border police forces are killing Palestinian children with virtually no recourse for accountability” (Human Rights Watch, August 2023). [...]

Evidently, “terrorism” is defined not by the nature of the acts, but by the identity of the perpetrators: a hallmark of racist and colonial reasoning. Now that it is once again the Palestinians who are being massacred, the wall-to-wall TV coverage has retracted and it’s back to the “regularly scheduled” news programming of Britney Spears’ “bombshell” memoir, zoo animals’ Halloween costumes, and viral cat videos. There is no half-mast Canadian flag for the mounting thousands of dead Gazans, no Parliament Hill lit up in the Palestinian colours of red, black, white, and green. On the contrary, it is the critique of Israel’s state violence – even when expressed using the legally accurate terminology: “occupation,” “apartheid,” “war crimes” – that is assiduously condemned, punished, and repressed in Canada and other “liberal democracies” as “hate,” “extremism,” even “terrorism” itself. All of this is necessary to enforce the hierarchy of existence that enshrines this grotesquely differential valuation as compulsory “common sense.”

(Erasure of) “Occupation”:

Operating according to this “common sense,” government and media representations fixate on Hamas’s terrorism, while the structural terror of Israel’s occupation is systematically disappeared. Discussions of Israel now possibly “re-occupying” Gaza obscure that Gaza, a massive “open-air prison/concentration camp,” has been occupied by Israel all along – as corroborated repeatedly by the UN, the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, and Canada’s own official foreign policy. The ubiquitous references to Hamas’s attack as “Israel’s 9/11” – pervasive across the political spectrum – perform a similar function: deleting the pre-existing relationship of occupation, and the multiple “9/11s” that occupied Palestinians have been made to endure. Even more absurd are the analogies a la Joe Biden likening Hamas with Russia and Israel with Ukraine (as if it is the Indigenous Palestinians who, like Russia in Ukraine, are the occupiers!) – managing to not simply equate the occupier and the occupied but invert them altogether.   

The very fact that Israel could so quickly turn Gaza into a mass execution chamber, sealed off from food, water, and other necessities and without any pathways of escape, is proof that its totalizing control over Gaza has never ceased. To say that Gaza is not occupied is like saying that a prisoner has “freedom” because they are free to move anywhere they like within their cell. And yet, out of approximately 340 Globe and Mail items on the current violence as of October 23, only twelve even bother to mention Gaza’s occupied status: an objective fact under international law. Several other Globe pieces state explicitly and inaccurately that Gaza is not occupied. The illegality of the occupation and its practices of land annexation and apartheid, re-confirmed by a recent UN study, is never mentioned at all. As the UN committee’s report points out, no occupation lasting longer than 10 years has been found to be legally legitimate; Israel’s has lasted for 56 so far.

“Self-Defense”:

The erasure of the occupation enables Canadian and other political leaders to perpetually portray Hamas as the exclusive “first cause” of violence, and Israel’s onslaughts as an expression of its purported “right” – even “duty” – of “self-defense.” As Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti long ago observed: “It is easy to blur the truth with a simple linguistic trick: start your story from ‘Secondly’ … and the world will be turned upside-down.” 

In reality, under international law, no Occupying Power has a right to invoke military “self-defense” and declare “war” against the people it is occupying. Rather, it has a legal obligation to protect and provide for both its own population as well as that of the occupied; an obligation flagrantly flouted not only by the current bombardment and intensified siege on Gaza but by the sixteen years of continuous siege that preceded it. This included Israel placing Gazans on a “diet” of food entry restrictions specifically calculated to drive them to starvation’s brink. 

As for the Palestinians’ right to defend themselves and resist their occupation – upheld in international legal doctrines – it has been vehemently denied and ruthlessly suppressed. Palestinian human rights work is “terrorism,” Palestinian poetry is “terrorism,” Palestinian journalism is “terrorism,” Palestinian marches and other paradigmatic acts of non-violence on their own lands are “terrorism,” Palestinian flags are “terrorism.” What better indication that the problem, from Israel’s perspective, is not Palestinian violence but Palestinian existence itself?

“War”:

Therefore, words such as “war” and “conflict” — core to the semantic lexicon of elimination — serve to fundamentally distort the situation: in which Palestinians are subject to virtually unlimited violence, but are precluded from legitimately responding with violence or non-violence in return. In international law, “war” connotes a symmetrical relationship in which both sides may legally kill and be killed. Instead, what is being claimed here, as in other previous colonial theaters of atrocity, is a license for unilateral brutalization of the colonized. 

“Civilians”:

Under this paradigm, Palestinian killings even of Israeli soldiers are cast as “terrorism,” while Israel’s large-scale killings of Palestinian civilians are insistently scrubbed from the slate. Destroyed schools, mosques, and hospitals are invariably, according to Israel, “terrorist” installations; those trapped in the zone of carnage are all supposedly “terrorist sympathizers” and “human shields” – no evidence is necessary, when their “guilt” is pre-written on their Palestinian skin.

With the massacre of hundreds of Palestinians at the Al-Ahli hospital, for instance, Israel first claimed it as a strike on “a Hamas terrorist base inside a hospital in Gaza,” before blaming a Palestinian rocket instead – a narrative alacritously accepted by the Canadian and US governments despite the evidentiary contradictions and manipulations identified by independent human rights and media investigators, including the BBC. Either way, somehow, it is the Palestinians who are culpable for their own deaths. Meanwhile, Israel has already incapacitated twelve other Palestinian hospitals and advertises its intention to target more without shame. 

Israel’s elected leaders openly declare: “There are no innocent people in the Gaza Strip,” “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible,” “The children of Gaza have brought this upon themselves.” That is one way to sustain the claim that Israel “doesn’t target Palestinian civilians” – by defining them out of discursive existence, before physically obliterating them wholesale. Read more - Lire plus

Genocide Scholars and 100 Palestinian and International Civil Society Organisations Call on International Criminal Court Prosecutor Khan to Issue Arrest Warrants, Investigate Israeli Crimes and Intervene to Deter Incitement to Commit Genocide in Gaza

Human rights organizations join the open call for an immediate physical and digital ceasefire in Gaza, and for Palestinians globally

Islamophobia Kills. Protect Your Neighbors

FBI targets Muslims and Palestinians in wake of Hamas attack, civil rights advocates warn



Hundreds of Legal Community Members Demand Action To Stop Racist Targeting of Palestine Advocates and Safeguard Fundamental Rights

The US Senate condemns student groups as backlash to pro-Palestinian speech grows

Amnesty International: Ban on protests supporting Palestinians is disproportionate attack on the right to protest in France

'Just bizarre': British-Palestinian doctor says family in London harassed by anti-terror police

To guarantee our rights, Canada's privacy legislation must protect our biometric data

SR Institute 24/10/2023 - Much ink has been spilled dissecting Bill C-27, Canada’s Digital Charter Implementation Act, which was proposed in June 2022. The bill includes the Consumer Privacy Protection Act (CPPA), which revises guidelines around the private use of citizens’ data, the Personal Information and Data Protection Tribunal Act, and the Artificial Intelligence and Data Act (AIDA), which will become the first legislation governing artificial intelligence (AI) in Canada. [...]

Amidst today’s broad social impacts of datafication, we must pay specific attention to the risks posed by the collection of biometric data and how this information can be leveraged by facial recognition technology. The CPPA’s neglect of the risks posed by facial recognition technology—most notably, the challenges these tools pose for human rights—suggests that the bill has an unstable grasp on our tricky technological present. [...]

Perhaps most disconcerting amidst such uses is the collapsing of public and private boundaries. Law enforcement and national security comprise key clientele for FRT companies like Clearview AI and NEC. Though Canada’s privacy laws are divided along public and private lines, those lines are blurry when AI is in the mix, and the law might struggle to traverse these uncertain barriers given the role public contracts play in developing private sector AI.

Why is facial recognition technology so concerning?

The use of facial recognition technology for monitoring and identifying Canadians raises important concerns for our rights to privacy, especially when existing legislation is too outdated or vague to protect our uniquely identifying biometric information. To guarantee the rights of Canadians, our legislation needs to better protect citizens’ biometric data.

These protections are especially important when we consider the negative impacts FRT can have. Deploying FRT in certain contexts—such as surveilling protests—can deter individuals from speaking and acting freely, dampening one’s right to freedom of association, assembly, and expression. Furthermore, the use of FRT is prone to function creep, in which data intended for one purpose, such as a driver’s license photo, can be leveraged for criminal investigations. This challenges Canadians’ ability to consent to how our data is used—and meaningful consent is part and parcel with meaningful privacy.

There are also important concerns regarding bias and misidentification when it comes to FRT. Though companies are intent on dispelling such claims, researchers continue to demonstrate that FRT can exacerbate racial disparities. As numerous stories have revealed—especially those from people of colour—FRT has led to unjust and unwarranted contact with the criminal justice system due to misidentification.

These factors demonstrate that unrestricted use of FRT can pose a genuine risk to our rights, especially for those who are most vulnerable. If we continue to accept inadequately regulated FRT as a fixture of our society today, we risk accepting increasing levels of surveillance as normal. Establishing FRT as innocuous because it unlocks our phones, or enables playful filters on social media, risks blurring our ability to judge how intrusive FRT really is.

How to craft legislation to meet the challenge

Canada lacks clear and comprehensive legislative frameworks for governing the use of facial recognition technologies. Our public sector privacy legislation is woefully out of date, and recent initiatives to modernize the Privacy Act have seemingly stalled. Canada’s current private sector privacy legislation, PIPEDA, does not provide specific protections for the highly sensitive biometric data that fuels FRT. 

That means it falls to Bill C-27 to establish bulwarks against FRT’s encroaching creep. However, Bill C-27 makes no explicit mention of FRT and is ill-equipped to protect against its use. This massive oversight means that the CPPA cannot keep pace with the threats FRT poses to human rights, equity, and fundamental freedoms such as the right to privacy, freedom of association, freedom of assembly, and the right to non-discrimination.

If new technologies are to truly benefit society, we need clear legislation to prevent FRT from scuppering human rights. Through my recent advocacy work as part of the Right 2 Your Face coalition, I believe that there are three key ways Bill C-27 can accomplish this. First, we need to define biometric information as sensitive and in need of stronger protection. Second, legislators must remove the carveout for private entities to use FRT under the auspices of “legitimate business purposes.” Third, we need to bolster Bill C-27’s acknowledgment of individual harm with provisions for collective harm. Read more - Lire plus

ACTION: Tell your MP: Get the AI regulation puzzle right!

ACTION: Dites à votre député: Réglementez l’IA correctement!

LDL: Pas d’identifiant numérique sans débat ni transparence

UK - MPs and peers call for ‘immediate stop’ to live facial recognition surveillance

An AI firm harvested billions of photos without consent. Britain is powerless to act

Bodily harms: how AI and biometrics curtail human rights

Open letter: European Parliament must stand strong on AI Act fundamental rights protections

Access Now urges robust civil society participation in Congressional AI policymaking

Fahad Ahmad & Baljit Nagra: India’s accusation of ‘terrorism’ is a ploy to hide its own human rights abuses

The Conversation 15/10/2023 - Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has accused India of being involved in the assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Canadian Sikh leader, on Canadian soil. Narendra Modi’s right-wing Hindu nationalist Indian government is defiant and denies involvement. Indian officials have instead admonished Canada for being a “safe haven” for Sikh “terrorism,” a pejorative for Sikh self-determination.

India is using the rhetoric of “terrorism” seemingly to imply that if the West can engage in extrajudicial killings, India can too. The tactic also deflects attention from the Modi government’s well-documented abuses of religious minorities, caste-oppressed and Indigenous people, journalists, activists and academics in India. Deploying “terrorism” as such mirrors a long history of its use by colonial powers to suppress political dissent.

Terrorism: A contested concept

While the use of “terrorism” is ubiquitous, it has no agreed-upon definition. The Criminal Code of Canada defines terrorism as an act committed “in whole or in part for a political, religious or ideological purpose, objective or cause” with “the intention of intimidating the public.” “Terrorism” also signifies illegitimate or immoral violence, which legal definitions do not capture.

The so-called War on Terror, initiated after the 9/11 attacks in 2001, gave new life to anti-terrorism legislation globally. This is when Canada incorporated the above definition of “terrorism” into the Criminal Code. As security agencies focused on “terrorism” by Muslim-identified groups, anti-terrorism laws disproportionately targeted Muslims. Canadian critical race scholar Sherene Razack argues that counter-terrorism uses “race-thinking” to maintain narrow notions of nationhood. This results in marginalizing certain groups that can then be legitimately subject to repressive and unconstitutional laws.

Terrorism and state violence

The term “terrorism” is intertwined with a colonial history of state violence. The British empire routinely invoked “terrorism” to suppress political dissent within colonies. In the name of national security, “terrorism” was used in Canada to justify state violence against Indigenous people as well as against feminists, labour movements and other political dissidents. The War on Terror resulted in the American-led invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, causing death and displacement of millions, as well as the securitization of Muslim citizens.

State violence could once itself be considered terrorism, but in recent decades, the term has come to exclude state violence. Terrorism is now understood as illegitimate violence by non-state entities. This is odd considering states themselves can engage in immoral violence on a scale that cannot be matched by non-state organizations. State violence is often ideologically motivated, with the intention to induce widespread fear and behavioural change. This has prompted some scholars to make the case for reconsidering state violence itself as terrorism.

Colonial techniques of power

The Indian government’s use of the term “terrorism” to squash political dissent borrows from the playbook of colonial powers. India’s national security laws — the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) and the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) — set the stage for widespread human rights and civil liberties violations. The Modi government’s 2019 amendment to the UAPA made it possible to designate citizens as terrorists without following formal judicial processes.

These laws have been abused to imprison activists, journalists, human rights defenders, caste-oppressed communities and religious minorities. Claiming terrorism has provided justification to suppress self-determination in Kashmir, the most militarized zone in the world. Concerns for national security have also dominated new policies in India, like the Citizenship Amendment Act and National Registry of Citizens, that aim to create a monolithic Hindu supremacist state. Read more - Lire plus

Gar Pardy: The Canadian ship of state leaks again

The Hill Times 23/10/2023 - The Canadian ship of state is leaking again, and as with previous leaks, it is at the top. The pattern this time is much the same as before: officials frustrated by policy made by those elected to do so surreptitiously use the media to force policy into conformity with their views. It’s not a healthy direction for our democracy. [...]

Sept. 18 was also significant because it was the first day of operations for the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference in Federal Electoral Processes and Democratic Institutions. The inquiry had been announced 10 days earlier, to be headed by Marie-Josée Hogue, a judge with Quebec’s Court of Appeals. The creation of the inquiry followed months of controversy based on leaks from national security officials, alleging China’s involvement in Canada’s two most recent federal elections. The leaks became part of the political process, and it was only with reluctance that the government announced the inquiry. In the interval, the media gave full voice to the leaks, with The Globe and Mail giving one of the unnamed officials with the opportunity to provide his rationale for the leak. 

The official who wrote the rationale was not identified, nor the others who may have been involved. The media have not identified their sources, legitimately stating to do so would subject them to prosecution. However, the lack of such information eliminated the possibility that readers could reach their own conclusions on the legitimacy of the leaked data. The dangers in not doing so were tragically demonstrated 20 or so years ago when the media published leaked reports from national security officials on the involvement of several Canadians in terrorism. Then, the leaks related to the supposed actions of individual who, in the view of security officials, were making common cause with various Middle East organizations, and in one headline were labelled “collectively … as Canada’s al-Qaeda.”

In the two-year inquiry by Commissioner Dennis O’Connor on the “Actions of Canadian Officials in Relation to Maher Arar,” he concluded that, over time, government officials “intentionally leaked classified information” and “used the media to put a spin” on Arar’s activities. Commenting on one press story of the time, O’Connor wrote, “the apparent purpose behind this leak is not attractive: to attempt to influence public opinion against Arar at a time when his release from imprisonment in Syria was being sought by the Government of Canada, including the prime minister” (For full details on this period of leaks, see Kerry Pither’s book, Dark Days: The Story of Four Canadians Tortured in the Name Fighting Terror).

In the years since O’Connor completed his investigation, another commission of inquiry under Justice Frank Iacobucci made much the same conclusion on the leaked data affecting other Canadians. Millions of dollars have been paid to the victims of these leaks by government officials of malicious and erroneous information. There are expectations more will be paid. The reality of the leaking ship of state is once more on offer through the media as Canada seeks to establish the identity of those responsible for Nijjar’s death. [...] 

It is a comfortable stratagem to transfer blame onto other countries when your own failures are so evident and tragic. In the meantime, we stumble in the dark with unverified information leaked by the responsible Canadian organizations, seeking to transfer their own failures far from our shores. In the world of today, with tens of thousands of people seeking security and personal safety within our borders, it should not be surprising that, as in the past, some come with the grievances and troubles causing their migration. Sadly, we have not created the security and policing organizations capable of dealing with what these disparate dangers represent. Instead, the security and policing agencies use the leak to demonstrate their relevance. The muddle of policy, both domestic and foreign, confuses all. Source

When Political and Judicial Factors Collide: Dr. Hassan Diab tells his story

Carleton University 19/10/2023 - The Second Year Sociology community engagement class invited Dr Hassan Diab to share his story.

The class has been involved in actively understanding and practicing strategies of community engagement used to promote community well-being, and as a way to appropriately meet the needs of community members.

In 2008, Dr. Diab, who was teaching in the sociology departments at Carleton and at the University of Ottawa, was wrongfully accused of an antisemitic terrorist attack which involved the bombing of a synagogue in Paris in 1980. In 2014, Dr. Diab was extradited from Canada to France, where he spent over 3 years in prison. In 2018 Doctor Diab was released after 2 French investigative judges, who thoroughly examined the case, concluded that there was no evidence to justify a trial. They dropped all charges and released Doctor Diab without conditions.

A 3 week trial in April of 2023 that brought forward no new evidence and relied on secret intelligence declared Dr Diab guilty. Dr. Diab is currently living under constant risk of extradition while trying to proceed with a normal life, supporting his family of 4 and progressing with his career. Dr Diab will discuss how political realities in France subsequently resulted in a wrongful conviction. Watch - Visionner (The talk starts at the 25 minute mark - Use password: 4d?$ms2G to watch)

NEW ACTION: Justice for Dr. Hassan Diab

Podcast: Judge rules CRA audit of Muslim charity biased but fails to stop it

Red Eye 15/10/2023 - A recent ruling by the Ontario Superior Court marks an important acknowledgment in the ongoing battle against systemic Islamophobia.

In September, Justice Markus Koehnen recognized that the Muslim Association of Canada faced differential and biased treatment faced during a Canada Revenue Agency audit.

However the judge stopped short of intervening in the federal examination. We speak with Nabil Sultan, Communications and Community Engagement Director at the Muslim Association of Canada. Listen - Écouter

Exploring Systemic Islamophobia in Canada

Centre for Free Expression 25/10/2023 - Join a panel of leading experts who examine how Islamophobia is enabled, perpetuated, and even rendered respectable in Canada. What can be done to help Canada fulfill its promise of being an inclusive democratic society?

Panelists:

Anver Emon, Professor of Law and Director, Institute of Islamic Studies, University of Toronto

Syed Adnan Hussein, Associate Professor, Department for the Study of Religion, Saint Mary’s University

Naseem Mithoowani, Barrister & Solicitor, Mithoowani Waldman Immigration Law Group

Moderator:

Fahad Ahmad - Assistant Professor of Criminology, Toronto Metropolitan University.

Co-sponsored by Canadian Association for the Study of Islam and Muslims, Institute of Islamic Studies, PEN Canada. Watch - Visionner

MP stopped from boarding Air Canada flight as ‘his name was Mohammad’

The Guardian 23/10/2023 - An MP was stopped from boarding a flight to Canada with other members of parliament “because his name was Mohammad”, the Commons heard on Monday. Mohammad Yasin, Labour’s MP for Bedford, was due to fly to Canada with other MPs from the Commons levelling up, housing and communities committee when he was delayed for questioning “for a considerable period” at airports in both countries last week.

Clive Betts, the chair of the committee, said the incident was unacceptable because of its “racist and Islamophobic nature”, and that he would write to the Canadian high commissioner in the UK. He added that his colleague was asked if he was carrying a knife or any other weapon and where he was born when he was taken aside by officials from Air Canada. Yasin then underwent similar questioning from officials on his return trip to the UK, MPs were told. Betts, who had raised a point of order about the “serious incident”, told the Commons: “When the committee checked in for their flights at Heathrow, all Members got through with the exception of the member for Bedford, who was delayed for questioning for a considerable period. “He was told it was because his name was Mohammad.”

Betts added: “The questioning was undertaken by officials from Air Canada and we believe the Canadian government, and despite him already having been given a visa to enter Canada. After proving he was an MP with the help of my committee clerk, he was eventually allowed through. “At Montreal airport, the same issues were raised by Canadian immigration. On return at Toronto airport on the way back, he was again challenged and got on his flight with the assistance of my consul general, who was very helpful.” Betts went on to say Yasin “has received apologies from the parliamentary secretary to the Canadian minister for immigration and Air Canada” but “given the racist and Islamophobic nature of these challenges”, he plans on “writing to the Canadian high commissioner”.

He added: “I believe it is important to put these concerns on the parliamentary record. It was completely unacceptable for a member of this house to be treated in this way. “But because he was an MP he was allowed on his flight. If, however, he had been one of our constituents who had been so challenged, he might have been refused.” The deputy speaker Roger Gale replied: “I am sure that the whole house will share the dismay at the treatment of the member for Bedford. It is wholly unacceptable under any circumstances. But it is particularly concerning, occurring as it did, in the course of official travel on parliamentary business.” Source

Human rights violations while countering terrorism are systematic across the globe: UN expert

UN OHCHR 23/10/2023 - A UN expert* today identified systematic violations of international law from countering terrorism measures across every region unrelentingly undermine human rights and the rule of law across the globe.

Based on the findings of her recent global study on the impact of counter-terrorism on civil society, Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, the UN Special Rapporteur the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism, established that civil society actors were the consistent targets of abusive counter-terrorism practices. Her report found relentless human rights violations premised on security rhetoric with no meaningful national or international accountability and oversight in place.

Ní Aoláin presented evidence of the systematic misuse of counter-terrorism measures. “The impact of counter-terrorism measures and practices is not singular but layered and multifaceted and is most keenly felt by historically marginalised groups, including ethnic and religious minorities,” she said “Without fundamental review and reform of the global, regional and national architecture of counter-terrorism, the capacity of civil society and human rights defenders to function will be completely undermined, and in some contexts entirely wiped out,” Ní Aoláin said.

The expert added that women-led, the gendered impacts of counter-terrorism measures on civil society are hugely under-estimated. “Women, girls, LGBT and gender diverse persons are at the frontlines of the misuse of counter-terrorism and security measures across the globe, including by the enabling and reinforcing of new technologies’ use in repressive security practices. Women civil society actors are the ‘canaries in the coal mine’ telling us that the costs of counter-terrorism misuse are too high and must be abandoned to address the root causes of violence in society,” she sai. The Special Rapporteur also highlighted systematic violation of human rights related to counter-terrorism detention practices.

Based on her long-standing work on repatriation from detention facilities in Northeast Syria, Ní Aoláin highlighted ongoing egregious violations of the rights of the child in multiple closed camps, prisons and detention facilities including Al-Hol and Al-Roj Camps, Alaya and Panorama prisons, and Orkesh and Houri (“rehabilitation”) Centres, where the vast majority of the detained population are children. She confirmed that these facilities constitute places of detention where no one is free to leave, no process of law exists to justify detention, and where torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment is rife.

Her report underlines practices of enforced disappearances, torture, ill-treatment, and incommunicado detention for men, women and children in detention facilities in Northeast Syria. “The scale, scope and extent of these practices may reach the threshold for crimes against humanity under international law,” Ní Aoláin said. She called on the detaining power to adhere to the fundamental obligations contained in Common Article 3 of the Four Geneva Conventions and ensure consistent humanitarian and independent human rights oversight in every place of detention in Northeast Syria”.

Ní Aoláin found mass arbitrary separation of pre-pubescent and adolescent boys from their mothers in the camps to be particularly egregious and harmful. “The trauma and violence these boys have experienced over the course of their young lives is grievous and must end. Northeast Syria is the largest detention site for children on the grounds of terrorism in the world,” she said The expert identified extreme violations of human rights and humanitarian law occurring in Panorama (Sina’a) prison, which holds approximately 5000 men and 700 boys, including rampant starvation and tuberculosis “The scale and scope of violations in Northeast Syria cannot be ignored or airbrushed away. It is morally and legally unacceptable to use ‘terrorism’ to justify egregious breaches of human rights,” she said. Read more - Lire plus

Position Paper of the UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms while Countering Terrorism on the Rights of Children in Contexts affected by Counter-Terrorism

War on the ‘Women’s Revolution:’ Turkish Drone Strikes Target Feminist Leaders

Kurdish Peace Institute 23/10/2023 - “She was larger than life,” Evîn Basho, chair of the Women’s Board in North East Syria (NES), tells us, her eyes glistening with tears, as she looks lovingly at the pictures of Yusra Darwish on her phone. Darwish was killed in a Turkish drone strike on June 20, 2023, near the city of Qamishli. She was Co-Chair of the Qamishli Canton Council — yet another Kurdish woman in a leadership position within the Autonomous Administration of North East Syria (AANES) fatally targeted by the Turkish state. The three missiles fired from the drone also killed Darwish’s deputy Liman Shawish and their driver, while wounding Darwish’s co-chair, Gaby Chamoun.

Darwish was Basho’s long-time friend and a fellow member of the movement for women’s liberation that has burgeoned since the AANES was founded in 2012. For years, she taught the Autonomous Administration’s political philosophy of democracy, feminism, and pluralism in schools, making it her life-long mission to build a new society in the war-torn region where ISIS rose and fell just a few years ago.

As a Kurd in the ethno-nationalist Syrian Arab Republic and a woman in a gender-conservative society, it is not surprising that Darwish threw herself into the new political project. While the Assad regime and armed opposition forces fueled existing sectarian and misogynist sentiments in the region, the multiethnic coalition in Northeast Syria set out to build a political system imbued with the ethos of peaceful co-existence and women’s empowerment. “Having spent years teaching the Administration’s philosophy, Yusra was one of the people who understood it most deeply and had an unparalleled commitment to see it blossom in practice,” Basho told us. “Turkey has targeted our best women leaders.”

KILLING THE “TERRORISTS”?

Since 2019, when Turkey invaded and occupied Serekaniye (Ras al-Ain) and Tal Abyad, it has increasingly used drones to carry out assassinations in areas of northern Syria remaining under AANES control. Turkey claims it targets individuals affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which it considers a terrorist organization. It claims the Syrian Kurds are linked to the PKK and as such, present a security risk to Turkey. Yet Darwish is only one of many local government officials, activists, and apolitical civilians who have been murdered in Turkish strikes since the last invasion.

The other victims, as documented in a recent report by the women’s organization Kongra Star, include Zehra Berkel, Kobanê co-mayor and co-chair of Kobanê’s Justice Commission; Zeyneb Mihemed, co-chair of the Justice and Reform Office of the AANES; Delila Agit, a journalist; Emine Weysi, a mother of 5; and a group of girls playing volleyball in a schoolyard. The list goes on.

Turkey’s hypocrisy of using anti-terror discourse to legitimize attacks on civilian populations came to the fore with its latest escalation against northeast Syria. On October 5, it launched a blitz of air strikes intentionally targeting civilian infrastructure. After five days of bombardment, half of the region’s power and oil facilities were rendered inoperable, leaving nearly 2 million people without access to electricity and water.

Turkey justified its most significant military escalation since the 2019 invasion as a retaliatory measure following a PKK attack in Ankara. It claimed, without evidence, that the perpetrators of this attack traveled to Turkey through Syria. Falsely accusing the AANES’ People’s Protection Units (YPG) of being complicit in the attack, Turkey unleashed an all-out war on North East Syria’s power and water stations, oil fields, industrial factories, schools, and hospitals, inflicting hundreds of millions of dollars of damage and killing nine and injuring fifteen civilians in the process.

Although these attacks violate international law, Turkey got away with them without so much as international condemnation. It declared it was laying waste to infrastructure belonging to the PKK and YPG – a preposterous claim uncritically repeated by most media outlets. The U.S.-led Combined Joint Task Force—the main partner of the AANES in the war against ISIS—swiftly took down a tweet condemning Turkey’s inflicting civilian harm, while Pentagon officials reiterated support for its NATO ally’s “fight against the PKK.” Similarly to Israel’s renewed war on Gaza and Azerbaijan’s recent occupation of Artsakh, Turkey’s anti-terror discourse has turned millions of civilians into legitimate military targets in the eyes of the international community.

The lack of condemnation is nothing new: NATO member Turkey has been largely given carte blanche to carry out its daily attacks on the region since the 2019 invasion. According to the Rojava Information Center, 368 people were killed or injured by Turkish drone attacks since the beginning of 2022 before the latest escalation — not counting hundreds killed and injured in Turkey’s and its Syrian National Army (SNA) proxies’ daily frontline bombardments. 144 victims of drone strikes since 2022 were civilians, including 31 children.

The rest are members of the local security units (asayish) or the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) — the same forces that collaborated with the U.S.-led Global Coalition to defeat the ISIS caliphate and who continue to receive U.S. support in the ongoing efforts to eradicate the group’s remnants in NES. Although the U.S. and the EU have the PKK on their terror lists, they regard the SDF—and its component, the YPG—as a separate organization. That does not prevent them, however, from turning a blind eye to Turkey’s unjustified aggression.

Policy groups have long called on the U.S. and European countries to remove the PKK from their terror lists. Turkey has all too often used its anti-terror discourse to inflict violence on Kurds—including through attacks on Kurdish feminist leaders and the Kurdish women’s movement—both within and outside its borders. The terrorist designation makes it very convenient for Western powers to overlook their NATO ally’s murderous, illegal actions. Read more - Lire plus

Myanmar junta gives 6 men life sentences under martial law

RFA 24/10/2023 - Myanmar’s junta gave life sentences to six men, lawyers told Radio Free Asia on Tuesday. In a five-day military trial ending Monday, a tribunal sentenced the men for alleged acts of terrorism. The punishment is especially harsh because they were sentenced in an area under martial law, one lawyer said. "If they can hire a lawyer for cases like these in civil courts, the maximum prison sentence is just 10 years,” he told RFA.

The Northwestern Military Command tribunal found them guilty of supporting their local People’s Defense Force and related activities prohibited under the country’s notorious counter-terrorism laws. The trial started on Thursday in Sagaing region in northwest Myanmar, where those accused include people from four townships. 

Pale township’s Zayar Myo and Than Zaw Linn, Shwebo township’s Min Khant Kyaw, Banmauk township’s Than Naing Oo and Indaw township’s Hein Min Thu and Zaw Myint Tun all live in areas under harsh military law. Heavy punishments have often been imposed by the military just on suspicion after martial law was declared in Sagaing region, an official of the Yinmabin township’s People’s Defense Force said. 

"If anyone is even suspected of supporting the revolution without participating, severe punishments are handed down. They [the junta] are above the law,” he said. Given the large presence of anti-junta groups in the area, some resistance soldiers say the military has begun arresting people without any due cause. In early September, seven people in Sagaing region were sentenced to lengthy prison terms, including life in prison. One People’s Defence Force officer said the accused had no connection to any local resistance group. In the seven months following the implementation of martial law, the Myanmar military arrested and imprisoned 30 Ayadaw township residents and sentenced 10 Indaw residents to death and life in prison. 

Calls to Sagaing region’s junta spokesperson Sai Naing Naing Kyaw seeking comment on the sentences went unanswered. Fourteen townships in Sagaing region, including Pale, Shwebo, Banmauk and Indaw have been under martial law since February 2023, shortly after the military extended its emergency rule nationwide. Since then, military courts have sentenced 285 civilians to prison terms, according to pro-junta broadcast groups on the messaging app Telegram. Read more - Lire plus

How criminalisation is being used to silence climate activists across the world

The Guardian 12/10/23 - As wildfires and extreme temperatures rage across the planet, sea temperature records tumble and polar glaciers disappear, the scale and speed of the climate crisis is impossible to ignore. Scientific experts are unanimous that there needs to be an urgent clampdown on fossil fuel production, a major boost in renewable energy and support for communities to rapidly move towards a fairer, healthier and sustainable low-carbon future.

Many governments, however, seem to have different priorities. According to climate experts, senior figures at the UN and grassroots advocates contacted by the Guardian, some political leaders and law enforcement agencies around the world are instead launching a fierce crackdown on people trying to peacefully raise the alarm. “These defenders are basically trying to save the planet, and in doing so save humanity,” said Mary Lawlor, the UN special rapporteur on human rights defenders. “These are people we should be protecting, but are seen by governments and corporations as a threat to be neutralised. In the end it’s about power and economics.”

Climate and environmental justice groups report a significant increase in draconian, and often arbitrary, charges for peaceful protesters as part of what they claim is a playbook of tactics to vilify, discredit, intimidate and silence activists. The Guardian has also found striking similarities in the way governments from Canada and the US to Guatemala and Chile, from India and Tanzania to the UK, Europe and Australia, are cracking down on activists trying to protect the planet. The legal contexts vary, but the charges – such as subversion, illicit association, terrorism and tax evasion – are often vague and time-consuming to disprove, while a growing number of countries, including the US and UK, have passed controversial anti-protest laws ostensibly intended to protect national security or so-called critical infrastructure such as fossil fuel pipelines. The systematic criminalisation of environmental defenders is not new. Natural resources on Indigenous land have long been exploited, driving big profits for some but also fuelling violence and inequality. [...]

According to Lawlor, this criminalisation of environmental protestors has since become a global phenomenon, and is now the most common tactic used to silence and discredit defenders. “At its core it’s about maintaining the power structures in place. This is true regardless of whether it’s a dictatorship, democracy or a corrupt narco state, and regardless of the state’s professed commitment to human rights, protecting the environment and combating climate change,” she said. “Smearing defenders as lawbreakers or anti-development distracts from the cause and changes the narrative … What’s clear is that states learn from each other.” [...]

As the UN secretary general, António Guterres, said in April: “Climate activists are sometimes depicted as dangerous radicals. But the truly dangerous radicals are the countries that are increasing the production of fossil fuels. Investing in new fossil fuels infrastructure is moral and economic madness.” The climate crisis is exposing and aggravating economic, political and racial inequalities, but eventually the hotter planet will affect everyone, everywhere. Environmental and climate activists are trying to force governments and corporations to put humanity before profits and power, which is why Lawlor and Forst say arresting Indigenous land defenders in Canada, Greta Thunberg in Sweden, clean energy advocates in Vietnam and water protectors in Guatemala and Honduras are all connected, part of the same fossil fuel playbook to block and delay meaningful action.

This is a dangerous moment globally, says Jorge Santos, the director of a Guatemala-based watchdog that monitors attacks against human rights defenders. “If we don’t stop the endless extraction of natural resources, the environmental and climate destruction will continue, and we’ll see more and more authoritarianism because criminalisation and violence is in the DNA of this economic model.” Over the course of the next few months, the Guardian will be reporting on the criminalisation of climate and environmental activists globally. Read more - Lire plus

Human rights experts warn against European crackdown on climate protesters



Threats to Germany’s climate campaigners fuelled by politicians’ rhetoric, says activist

Greta Thunberg arrested at London oil summit protest

The Fictional Terrorist Conspiracy Being Tried in France

The Nation 26/10/2023 - [A]s the defendants have taken the stand, it would seem that their activism, lifestyle, and class position is what’s on trial. Irregular employment histories, involvement in ecological activism and land occupations, itinerant lifestyles (living in vans or squats), being a vegetarian, being a previous victim of police violence, writing a master’s thesis in literature about representations of war, involvement in a punk scene: These are all things the prosecution has raised in its attempt to make terrorists of the seven defendants.

In court, the defendants have broken down in tears when speaking about the circumstances of their arrests and conditions of their subsequent detention. Bastien A. and William D., both 34, described how they were seized in the middle of the night by an anti-terror squad armed with machine guns and assault rifles, straitjacketed with ski masks taped to their heads, transported to Paris by train, slung into a car with bags over their heads, and brought to a sensory deprivation cell. Panicked and deprived of sleep, medication, water, and food, they were in extremely confused states for their first interrogations. During police questioning, cameras required by law were frequently turned off for “technical pauses,” and defendants claim to have been bombarded with threats and off-record lies about Florian.

Extreme incarceration conditions are reserved for detainees with a “particularly sensitive” status. Such measures were clearly used to demoralize and intimidate the defendants during their pre-trial detention. They were woken up regularly during the night in intervals as short as two hours. The one female defendant, Camille B., underwent 19 full strip searches in a four-month period—despite this being during Covid, when no physical contact was permitted with visitors. She also claims to have been threatened with sexual assault after having refused to provide a DNA sample. On March 8, International Women’s Day, the court compensated her €200 for two searches the state reluctantly acknowledged as illegal. Florian was detained for 16 months in solitary confinement, despite behavior the penitentiary staff describe as exemplary, and by the 15th month went on a hunger strike for 37 days to protest his condition. He was hospitalized as a result and was ultimately compensated €3,000 for the illegal conditions of his detention.

These people have already had years of their lives taken away. Avoiding a return to prison for an AMT conviction is therefore their attorneys’ first priority. In their closing arguments delivered on October 25, the prosectors requested a mandatory six-year prison sentence for Florian, and a series of shorter and partially suspended sentences for the remaining defendants. But this case is also a test for France’s justice system. Civil liberties and privacy advocates fear that a guilty verdict would establish a number of worrying precedents.

For one, the case posits communicating via extremely common end-to-end encryption applications as evidence of guilt. WhatsApp, for example, has 31 million active users in France, according to a 2023 study. “There’s an old debate surrounding these tools, and we’ve long heard interior ministers say they want to break these encryption services,” says Noémie Levain of the digital rights and privacy advocacy group La Quadrature du Net. “But here we have a concrete attempt to criminalize people who are just trying to protect their private life.”

Politically, the trial of the December 8 group is about dusting off France’s anti-terrorism statutes to target activists on the left. Gérald Darmanin, President Emmanuel Macron’s draconian interior minister, has waged a concerted campaign to harass left-wing groups deemed “anti-republican” and “separatist.” The defendants in this case were arrested amid protests over Darmanin’s controversial global security law, which sought to increase police impunity amid a media campaign about threats to officers’ safety. France’s State Council, the highest administrative court, will soon rule on Darmanin’s order to dissolve the environmentalist collective Les Soulèvements de la Terre, a group he has accused of “ecoterrorism.” In an October 5 parliamentary hearing on violent political groups, he boasted that as many as 10,000 individuals associated with the far left are currently being followed by French intelligence services.

“Anti-terrorist justice has always been in lockstep with the political humors of the day,” says Bonelli. The acquittal of the Tarnac 9 was an embarrassing defeat for officials in France’s anti-terrorist hierarchy. What’s striking to observers this time around is that the state’s sensationalistic case seems even weaker. “For the two weeks I’ve been at this trial, what have we seen? A group of benevolent, humane people who’ve done things that, yes, are not exactly legal, but that have nothing to do with terrorism,” says Olive, Camille’s father. Hearings are slated to draw to a close by October 27, with an initial verdict expected shortly thereafter. Read more - Lire plus

Inculpés du 8 décembre : la fable de l’ennemi intérieur

French interior minister pushes for encryption 'backdoors' in mobile apps

France24 23/10/2023 - In France, following the recent terror attack that saw a French high school teacher murdered, Interior Minister Gérard Darmanin is asking for the implementation of a so-called "backdoor" to access the phone messages of people suspected of posing a threat to national security.

For encrypted messaging services such as WhatsApp, Telegram or Signal, this means creating an exception to end-to-end encryption, which would mean the end of private conversations and data, for activists, journalists and everyone else, as our Science and Tech editor explains. Watch - Visionner

Sandvine Scraps Plan to Market Tool in US That Tracks Encrypted Messages

ACTION: Tell US Congress, Say No to Bad Internet Bills

Cory Doctorow: Why Big Tech, Cops, and Spies Were Made for One Another

The Intercept 16/10/23 - Concentrated sectors of large, highly profitable firms inevitably seek to fuse their power with that of the state, securing from the government forbearance for their own actions and prohibitions on the activities they disfavor. When it comes to surveillance, the tech sector has powerful allies in government: cops and spies.

It goes without saying that cops and spies love commercial surveillance. The very first Snowden revelation concerned a public-private surveillance partnership called Prism, in which the NSA plundered large internet companies’ data with their knowledge and cooperation. The subsequent revelation about the “Upstream” program revealed that the NSA was also plundering tech giants’ data without their knowledge, and using Prism as a “plausible deniability” fig leaf so that the tech firms didn’t get suspicious when the NSA acted on its stolen intelligence.

No government agency could ever hope to match the efficiency and scale of commercial surveillance. The NSA couldn’t order us to carry pocket location beacons at all times — hell, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention couldn’t even get us to run an exposure notification app in the early days of the Covid pandemic. No government agency could order us to put all our conversations in writing to be captured, stored, and mined. And not even the U.S. government could afford to run the data centers and software development to store and make sense of it all.

Meanwhile, the private sector relies on cops and spies to go to bat for them, lobbying against new privacy laws and for lax enforcement of existing ones. Think of Amazon’s Ring cameras, which have blanketed entire neighborhoods in CCTV surveillance, which Ring shares with law enforcement agencies, sometimes without the consent or knowledge of the cameras’ owners. Ring marketing recruits cops as street teams, showering them with freebies to distribute to local homeowners.

And when local activists and town councils ponder limitations on this kind of commercial surveillance, the cops go to bat for Ring, insisting that every citizen should have the inalienable right to contribute to an off-the-books video surveillance grid that the cops can access at will. Google, for its part, has managed to play both sides of the culture war with its location surveillance, thanks to the “reverse warrants” that cops have used to identify all the participants at both Black Lives Matter protests and the January 6 coup.

Distinguishing between state and private surveillance is a fool’s errand. Cops and spies need the surveillance industry, and the surveillance industry needs cops and spies. Since the days of the East India Company, monopolists have understood the importance of recruiting powerful state actors to go to bat for commercial interests. AT&T — the central node in the Snowden revelations — has been playing this game for a century, foiling regulators attempts to break up its monopoly for 69 years before the Department of Justice finally eked out a win in 1982 (whereupon antitrust was promptly neutered, allowing the “Baby Bells” to merge into new monopolies like Verizon). In the 1950s, AT&T came within a whisker of being broken up, but the Pentagon stepped up to defend Ma Bell, telling the Justice Department that America would lose the Korean War if they didn’t have an intact AT&T to supply and operate their high-tech backend. America lost the Korean War, but AT&T won: It got a 30-year reprieve.

Stumping for his eponymous antitrust law in 1890, Sen. John Sherman thundered, “If we will not endure a King as a political power we should not endure a King over the production, transportation, and sale of the necessaries of life. If we would not submit to an emperor we should not submit to an autocrat of trade.” Today, as our snoopy tech firms hide in the skirts of our spies and law enforcement agencies, we have to get beyond the idea that this is surveillance capitalism. Truly, it’s more akin to surveillance mercantilism: a fusion of state and commercial power. Read more - Lire plus

The Federal Government’s Privacy Watchdog Concedes: 702 Must Change

US Regresses on Torture and Guantanamo at Treaty Review

Just Security 26/10/2023 - On Oct. 17 and 18, the United States appeared before United Nations Human Rights Committee as part of the fifth periodic review of U.S. compliance with its obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). All States party to the ICCPR go through this process, which includes (among other related steps): advance reporting from the country undergoing review on the status of implementing the rights that the ICCPR enshrines; an in-person session with the committee; followed by the Committee issuing concluding observations and recommendations.

This is the first time that the United States has been reviewed since 2013-2014. We were in Geneva, one of us representing the Center for Victims of Torture, the other as long-time counsel for Guantanamo detainee Ammar al Baluchi – alongside nearly 150 extraordinary civil society representatives – to help prepare the Committee to question the U.S. delegation, and to urge U.S. officials to answer those questions substantively, candidly, and, where appropriate, with commitments to take the steps necessary to bring U.S. policies and practices into line with the ICCPR.

Civil society presented on issues ranging from Indigenous rights, to reproductive rights, to criminal legal reform, and much more. Our focus was the United States’ failure to reckon with human rights abuses it perpetrated (and in some cases continues to perpetrate) after the September 11, 2001, attacks — in particular, U.S. torture, and indefinite detention at Guantanamo Bay that continues to this day.

As a threshold matter, it is worth noting that the January 2021 report the United States submitted in connection with the review was clearly prepared during the Trump administration, and so – somewhat astonishingly – promotes certain policies that the Biden administration rejected upon taking office. For example, the report states:

E.O. 13823 of January 30, 2018, Protecting America through Lawful Detention of Terrorists, revoked section 3 of E.O. 13492, which ordered the closure of the detention facilities at U.S. Naval Station Guantanamo Bay. The United States has no plans to close the detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay.

The Biden administration could have chosen to update the report, but it did not. That choice made their delegation’s responses to the Committee that much more consequential, to distinguish the “human rights presidency” from the previous one. By our count, the Committee asked over 20 questions related to U.S. torture and/or the Guantanamo detention facility, across three separate interventions. With limited exception, the U.S. delegation either didn’t respond at all, or gave answers that contradicted U.S. obligations under the ICCPR. Below is an overview of what the Committee asked, what the United States said, and what we believe the Committee should conclude and recommend going forward. Read more - Lire plus

Malaysian Prisoners Reach Plea Agreements at Guantánamo Bay

Overdue Scrutiny for Watch Listing and Risk Prediction

Brennan Center 19/10/2023 - The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) touches the lives of all Americans — U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents — who board a plane, cross the border into Canada or Mexico, or seek a visa for a loved one to visit the United States.

DHS is likely the largest single U.S. government consumer — and creator — of detailed, often intimate information about individuals’ lives. It stores the data it amasses in vast, interlocking databases to be recycled for purposes far beyond those for which it is initially collected. The systems that house and analyze this data largely determine who is allowed to travel into and out of the country and how they are treated when they arrive. This report addresses two categories of screening, vetting, and risk assessment efforts.

The first comprises programs that check travelers against watch lists and other databases of individualized, assertedly derogatory information. The second consists of programs that identify travel patterns and other behaviors ostensibly related to terrorist or criminal activity and flag for scrutiny individuals whose activity matches those patterns. Fundamental defects plague each of these types of programs. Vague standards draw in people with no connection to terrorism — overwhelmingly Muslims, people of color, and persons of Middle Eastern and South Asian descent. Records are riddled with factual errors. The programs operate without adequate privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties protections and have been used to target political activities protected by the First Amendment. Compounding these problems, the government’s attempts to assess their efficacy have been superficial at best.

As it enters its third decade, DHS, along with other agencies and Congress, must evaluate how these programs function, determine whether they contribute measurably to national security, reckon with their effects on marginalized communities, tailor them to meet objective standards, and demonstrate empirical proof of success commensurate with the resources poured into them. Otherwise, they will continue to operate in a faulty and discriminatory manner that undermines core American values, with scant evidence that they contribute substantially to national security. Read more - Lire plus

Belarus misuses counter-terrorism and anti-extremism legislation to stifle dissent: UN expert

UN 26/10/2023 - The Belarusian authorities are misusing counter-terrorism and anti-extremism legislation to further purge civic space, suppress freedom of expression and eradicate political opposition, a UN expert said “Many opposition figures, civil society activists, human rights defenders, lawyers and journalists have been abusively labelled as “extremists”, detained and prosecuted since 2020. Harassment, repression and fear compelled those who are not behind bars to seek refuge abroad,” said Anaïs Marin, the Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Belarus.

In her report to the General Assembly, Marin noted that Belarusian legislation provides loose definitions of “terrorism” and “extremism” which can be interpreted to include activities related to the legitimate exercise of human rights. The expert warned that convictions for terrorism have multiplied against individuals who sought to document or obstruct the transit of Russian troops and military equipment for the war in Ukraine through Belarussian territory. The scope of the death penalty, applied in Belarus notably for terrorism, has reportedly been extended to include “planned” or “attempted” acts of terrorism, as well as high treason “The weaponisation of legislation is possible because there are no guarantees of fair trial in Belarus, while court hearings behind closed doors and non-disclosure agreements imposed on lawyers are widespread,” the Special Rapporteur said.

“Individuals and organisations accused by the State Security Committee (KGB) of involvement in terrorist or extremist activities are blacklisted, harassed, shamed and sanctioned outside of any judicial process,” Marin said. “The Ministry of Information maintains a list of 'extremist materials' that has grown exponentially in recent years,” she said, “including social networking accounts, websites of human rights organisations, independent trade unions and media, as well as literature or artwork deemed extremist because it is critical of the Government or its policies." The expert stressed that these practices are intended to stifle any dissent in the country, where civic space has been purged in the last two years. She expressed concern about legislative changes that appear to target the hundreds of thousands of Belarusians who have been forced into exile and tried in absentia. “Those found guilty of ‘extremism’ or ‘terrorism’ risk being stripped of their citizenship and having their assets and properties in Belarus seized,” she said. The Special Rapporteur called on the Belarusian authorities to end the misuse of counter-terrorism and anti-extremism legislation and free all those arbitrarily detained or sentenced on politically motivated charges. Read more - Lire plus

Law Council questions continuation and expansion of extraordinary counter terrorism measures

LCA 17/10/2023 - The Law Council of Australia recognises the need to maintain strong counter-terrorism powers to protect the Australian community from the risk of terrorism. However, extension of extraordinary counter-terrorism powers that impose significant restrictions on human rights, and depart from fundamental principles of criminal law, require continuous re-evaluation.

Appearing at yesterday’s public hearing of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS), representatives of the Law Council raised concerns regarding the proposed Counter Terrorism and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2023. The Bill proposes extending the operation of existing extraordinary counter-terrorism powers including law enforcement stop, search and seizure powers; the preventative detention order regime; and renewal of the control order regime, on an expanded basis. “In light of Australia’s terror threat level being reduced, and the extensive range of terror offences, which already capture a wide range of preparatory and ancillary conduct, we would question whether the control order and preventative detention order schemes remain necessary,” Law Council of Australia President, Mr Luke Murphy said.

“In our view, the fact the preventative detention order regime has not been used to date is further evidence that its justified continuance is doubtful. “That is why the primary recommendation of the Law Council is that the preventative detention order and control order regimes should not be renewed when they sunset in December of this year. “As we have maintained, if the control order and preventive detention order schemes are renewed, they should only be renewed for 12 months to allow time for completion of the PJCIS’s ongoing review of related post-sentence orders. It would be premature to expand the range of conditions available under the CO regime, as proposed by this Bill, without consideration of these matters.” During its appearance, the Law Council referred to the findings of recent independent reviews which reinforce the importance of further certainty and safeguards regulating the interoperation of post-sentence orders, including Commonwealth and state and territory schemes.

“The Law Council’s submission to the inquiry raises significant concerns with the absence of safeguards in the proposed control order conditions regarding use of information that is disclosed by a person who may be required to participate in rehabilitation activities or interviews,” Mr Murphy said. “A person subject to a control order should not be put in the position where if they seek to exercise their fundamental right to silence they could be at risk of breaching their control order and being subject to imprisonment. “We also oppose renewing the warrantless powers of search which enables emergency entry to premises without a warrant. We are waiting for the Government to publish its response to the PJCIS recommendation which recommended consideration of the feasibility of a duty judge system, where applications for search warrants could be received and considered for expedited review. Without access to this review, it is difficult to understand why warrantless powers are necessary.” Read more - Lire plus

UN experts say Sri Lanka’s counter-terrorism bill fails to heed their recommendations, status quo fundamentally unchanged

UN OHCHR 18/10/2023 - Sri Lanka’s new proposed counter-terrorism legislation does not go far enough to remedy the defects of the country’s draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), UN experts* said today, urging the Government to ensure the new law meets international human rights standards.

“For many years, UN experts and multilateral organisations have consistently said that the current Prevention of Terrorism legislation in Sri Lanka is in violation of international law with its vague terminology, its lack of protection for fundamental human rights, and a lack of independent oversight,” the experts said. “It is deeply regrettable that the proposed legislation does not remedy any of these defects,” they said.

The proposed counter-terrorism bill is currently under consideration in the Sri Lankan Parliament. It is intended to replace the country’s existing Prevention of Terrorism Act, which has long been plagued by structural elements that enable the perpetration of torture, arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance, and other human rights violations.

The experts noted long-standing concerns about the misuse of anti-terrorism legislation and sweeping emergency powers, often used to crackdown on political critics, dissidents and human rights defenders in Sri Lanka. Under the PTA, detainees have been held for decades without trial in the country.

The UN experts said they had previously laid out a series of “benchmarks” for counter-terrorism legislation in Sri Lanka to be human rights compliant. These include employing definitions of terrorism that comply with international norms; ensuring precision and legal certainty, especially when this legislation may impact the rights of freedom of expression, opinion, peaceful assembly, association and religion or belief; instituting robust measures to prevent and halt arbitrary deprivation of liberty; ensuring preventive measures are in place to prevent torture and enforced disappearance and adhere to their absolute prohibition; and enabling overarching due process and fair trial guarantees, including judicial oversight and access to legal counsel.

“Regrettably, only limited changes have been made to the expansive definition of terrorism contained in the legislation,” the experts said. “It is worrying to observe new categories of terrorism including acts related to a “place of public use” rather than the much needed pruning of counter-terrorism powers,” they said. They also expressed concerns about the considerable expansion of police powers in the new legislation, with less judicial oversight of intercepting telecommunications. They were dismayed by provisions that weaken the legal basis to arrest individuals suspected of or “possibly” engaged in, any offence under the legislation. The experts said the legislation fails to provide sufficient powers to magistrates to prevent torture by ensuring all detainees are moved from places of detention as soon as allegations of torture, inhuman or degrading treatment emerge. The counter-terrorism bill also limits the right of access to lawyers for persons charged under the law.

“This is a highly regressive step and it disregards the long-documented violations of human rights occurring in Sri Lanka for persons arrested, detained or convicted of terrorism related offences,” the experts said. “These provisions run contrary to a rule of law-based approach to countering terrorism in society and is not an improvement on the status quo,” they said. They expressed regret that previous proposals for an independent review panel to adjudicate human rights violations while countering terrorism were rejected in the current draft of the legislation. The experts welcomed Sri Lanka’s recognition that new legislation is necessary and referred to some positive inclusions in the proposed bill, including the express exclusion of opinion, legitimate criticism, satire, parody made in good faith in the definition of “encouragement of terrorism.” They also welcomed the decision to refrain from making offences under this legalisation punishable by death.

“Root and branch reform of Sri Lanka’s counter-terrorism legislation is long overdue. UN human rights experts have provided a roadmap to that end, and we urge the Government to meet the minimum requirements of due process and human rights compliant counter-terrorism legislation they previously identified,” the UN experts said. They pledged to strongly support the adoption of legislation that is fully compliant with international human rights standards, as set out by the UN experts, and aligns the EU GSP+ scheme. Read more - Lire plus

CPJ calls on Sri Lanka to reconsider bills likely to undermine press freedom

ICLMG ACTIONS & EVENTS

Canada: Do not purchase armed drones

The ICLMG is a member of the No Armed Drones campaign

In the government's proposal seeking bids for its drone program it laid out disturbing scenarios for Canadian military drone use: One scenario described drones being used to surveil activists protesting a (theoretical) G20 Summit in Quebec, helping the security team intercept and identify the occupants of a vehicle, who are “anti-capitalist radicals” intending to “hang a banner concerning global warming.” Another scenario modeled after US drone strike programs features a drone bombing “Fighting Age Males” in the Middle East after spotting one of them “holding a small radio or cell phone." The initial cost estimate is $5 billion with billions more to operate the drones over their 25-year lifespan.

CSIS isn't above the law!

In recent years, at least three court decisions revealed the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS) engaged in potentially illegal activities and lied to the courts. This is utterly unacceptable, especially given that this is not the first time these serious problems have been raised. CSIS cannot be allowed to act as though they are above the law.



Send a message to Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino demanding that he take immediate action to put an end to this abuse of power and hold those CSIS officers involved accountable, and for parliament to support Bill C-331, An Act to amend the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act (duty of candour). Your message will also be sent to your MP and to Minister of Justice David Lametti.

Canada must protect Hassan Diab!

Send an email using ICLMG’s one-click tool and share widely!

Letter in English + Lettre en français

Sign and share the LeadNow petitions to protect Hassan from further injustice

Petition in English + Pétition en français

For more information on the case of Hassan Diab, read our webcomic, watch our animated version of the comic, or visit justiceforhassandiab.org.

Canada must repatriate all Canadians detained in NE Syria now!

On January 20, 2023, Federal Court Justice Henry Brown ruled that Canada must repatriate Canadians illegally and arbitrarily detained in northeast Syria. On February 6, 2023, the Canadian government filed an appeal and asked that the Brown ruling be set aside and placed on hold while the appeal plays out. This is unacceptable. 

Every day the government fails to bring these Canadians home, it places their lives at risk from disease, malnutrition, violence, and ongoing military conflicts, including bombing by Turkey’s military. United Nations officials have even found that the conditions faced by Canadians in prison are akin to torture. Please click below to urge the federal government to repatriate all Canadians illegally & arbitrarily detained in northeast Syria without delay.

Please share on Facebook + Twitter + Instagram

20 years of fighting deportation to torture: Justice for Mohamed Harkat Now!

December 10, 2022 - ironically Human Rights Day - marked the 20th "anniversary" of the arrest of Mohamed Harkat under Canada's rights-violating security certificate regime. For Mr. Harkat, it's been two decades of fighting deportation to torture, 16 years of harassment and intrusive surveillance, arbitrary detention, solitary confinement, secret trials, PTSD: enough is enough! We call for justice for Moe Harkat now! Watch - Visionnez

TAKE ACTION: Stop Moe Harkat's deportation to torture!

ACTION: Arrêtez la déportation vers la torture de Mohamed Harkat!

Reform Canada's extradition law 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!

Version française: Le Canada doit réformer la loi sur l'extradition! + Partagez sur Facebook + Twitter + Instagram

Phone PM Justin Trudeau

TAKE ACTION: Justice for Hassan Diab!

Just Peace Advocates' action: Write a letter to Prime Minister Trudeau: Say “No" to a second extradition of Hassan Diab

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

Protect our rights from facial recognition!

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.

OTHER NEWS - AUTRES NOUVELLES

Criminalization of dissent

Criminalisation de la dissidence

Hong Kong to introduce own national security law in 2024

Hong Kong national security police arrest jailed activist, 2 lawyers for allegedly trying to take complaint letter out of prison

Freedom of expression

Liberté d'expression

ACTION: Tell the Ukrainian Government to Drop Prosecution of Peace Activist Yurii Sheliazhenko

Police

Toronto police’s secretive ‘no-knock raids’ leave scars for a lifetime

NYPD cops sued for misconduct cost city millions in settlements - then get promotions

Whistleblowers

Lanceur.ses d'alertes

Former ambassador and Assange advocate Craig Murray detained under UK terror laws

Members of US Congress make new push to free Julian Assange

Miscellaneous

Divers

Professor Ben Saul appointed as United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counter-terrorism

CSIS warned Inuit leaders that foreign adversaries could gain a foothold in Canada by offering to fill infrastructure gaps in the North

Webinar: U.S. Forever Wars: Shining A Light On The War Profiteers (video)

TNI report: Climate crossfire: How NATO’s 2% military spending targets contribute to climate breakdown

Amnesty International Campaign: Write For Rights

January to June 2023 - Janvier à juin 2023

Here is what we worked on so far this year thanks to the support of our members and donors:

• Bill C-20, Public Complaints and Review Commission Act
• Bill C-26, An Act respecting cyber security and amending the Telecommunications Act
• Bill C-27, Digital Charter Implementation Act, 2022
• Bill C-41: International assistance and anti-terrorism laws
• Canadians detained in Northeastern Syria
• Justice for Dr Hassan Diab & reform of the Extradition Act
• Combatting Islamophobia
• Countering terrorist financing & prejudiced audits of Muslim charities
• National Security and Intelligence Review Agency
• CSIS accountability and duty of candour
• CSE, surveillance and cyberwarfare
• Facial Recognition Technology (FRT)
• “Online harms” proposal
• Canada’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR)
• Civil Society Coalition on Human Rights and Counter-terrorism
• UN Counterterrorism Executive Directorate Canada assessment
• UN Special Rapporteur on counter-terrorism and human rights global survey on counterterrorism and civic space

For more details on each item and to see all the media articles we were mentioned in or were interviewed for, click here.

What we have planned for the rest of 2023!

• Ensuring that the Canadian government’s proposals on “online harms” do not violate fundamental freedoms, or exacerbate the silencing of racialized and marginalized voices
• Protecting our privacy from government surveillance, including facial recognition, and from attempts to weaken encryption, along with advocating for good privacy law reform
• Addressing the lack of regulation on the use of AI in national security, including proposed exemptions for national security agencies
• Fighting for Justice for Mohamed Harkat, an end to security certificates, and addressing problems in security inadmissibility
• Ensuring Justice for Hassan Diab and reforming Canada’s extradition law
• The return of the rest of the Canadian citizens and the non-Canadian mothers of Canadian children indefinitely detained in Syrian camps
• The end to the CRA’s prejudiced audits of Muslim-led charities
• Greater accountability and transparency for the Canada Border Services Agency
• Greater transparency and accountability for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service
• 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
• 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
• Publishing a collection of essays written by amazing partners on the work of the ICLMG for our 20th anniversary
• And much more!

Version française: Ce que nous avons fait jusqu'à présent en 2023

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