|
International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group
Coalition pour la surveillance internationale des libertés civiles
January 6, 2024 - 6 janvier 2024
| |
Canada must end potential genocide complicity by suspending arms exports to Israel | |
|
Rideau Institute 05/01/2024 - On 29 December 2023, South Africa filed an 84-page application with the International Court of Justice (ICJ) accusing Israel of committing genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza.
Established by the Charter of the United Nations as the principal judicial organ of the United Nations, the ICJ rules on disputes between countries that have consented to the jurisdiction of the Court. Both South Africa and Israel did so when they ratified the Genocide Convention, which was written in the aftermath of the Holocaust.
South Africa justifies its standing to bring the case on the basis of its obligation to prevent genocide pursuant to Article I of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, binding on both Israel and South Africa, adding that this "also gives rise to obligations binding on Israel not to commit genocide, and to punish those who directly and publicly incite to genocide."
South Africa is also relying on the erga omnes partes doctrine, which allows a State party to a treaty protecting common legal rights to enforce those rights even if the State is not directly affected by the violation. The South African court application maintains that Israel’s actions since the war began on 7 October 2023: "are intended to bring about the destruction of a substantial part of the Palestinian national, racial and ethnic … group in the Gaza Strip." That charge fits squarely under the definition of genocide in the Genocide Convention.
In an excellent commentary on the case, whatever one’s views of the hugely influential — and equally controversial — American international relations scholar of the “realist’ school, John Mearsheimer writes: "The application is a superb description of what Israel is doing in Gaza. It is comprehensive, well-written, well-argued, and thoroughly documented." He outlines the document’s three main components:
- The level of death and destruction inflicted on Palestinians in Gaza since 7 October 2023 and why more is in store for them;
- A substantial body of evidence showing that Israeli leaders have genocidal intent toward the Palestinians; and
- The broader historical context of the Gaza war.
On the issue of intent, Mearsheimer writes:" In essence, the document argues that Israel’s actions in Gaza, combined with its leaders’ statements of intent, make it clear that Israeli policy is “calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza.”" On the broader context, Mearsheimer concludes: "In short, the application makes clear that what the Israelis have done in Gaza since 7 October is a more extreme version of what they were doing well before 7 October."
On the central issue of genocide, Mearsheimer concludes from the South African case that, after the 24-30 November 2023 truce ended and Israel went back on the offensive, "Israeli leaders were in fact seeking to physically destroy a substantial portion of Gaza’s population." The South African court application includes nine pages of evidence of genocidal intent, including calls from Israeli decision-makers and military officials for Gaza to be “wiped out”, “flattened”, “erased”, and “crushed”, and statements such as " [t]here are no innocents in Gaza; the children of Gaza have brought this on themselves; there should be one sentence for everyone there — death."
The application also contends that Israeli authorities have failed to suppress “direct and public incitement to commit genocide” from a host of Israeli politicians, journalists and public officials in direct contravention of Israel’s obligation under the convention to prevent genocide. [...]
For its part, South Africa has asked the ICJ for “provisional measures” — an order, binding on Israel under the treaty — to “immediately suspend its military operations in and against Gaza” as well as all actions relating to the expulsion and forced displacement of Gazans and to the deprivation of their essentials of life. Hearings on that request will occur on January 11 and 12, with an order expected possibly within one month.
Canada expresses strong support for the International Court of Justice
While not commenting on whether Canada had plans to intervene, or whether it would support the court’s ruling, Geneviève Tremblay, a spokesperson for Global Affairs Canada did tell the Globe and Mail that: "Canada strongly supports the role of the ICJ in the peaceful settlement of disputes…. In defending itself, Israel must respect international humanitarian law…. The price of defeating Hamas cannot be the continuous suffering of all Palestinian civilians." France, for its part, was more direct, with Nicolas de Rivière, the French ambassador to the UN telling journalists: "We’ll make sure that we’ll support the outcome of the [ICJ] decision."
Most other Western countries have not commented on the case, and so far only the United States has joined Israel in opposing it. Ceasefire.ca comments: Relying on far less evidence than South Africa has compiled, Canada formally intervened in support of Ukraine’s case against Russia. Now, at the very least, it must indicate, as France has done, that it will fulsomely support the ICJ rulings in the case against Israel."
Whither Canada?
Our last post of 2023 reiterated our call for Canada to immediately halt all arms exports to Israel in light of Canadian-made components being integrated into the Israeli F-35I Joint Strike Fighter, which has reportedly been utilized in the ongoing bombardment of Gaza, in circumstances that could amount to war crimes. Within one month of the mid-January hearing, there is a strong possibility that the ICJ will issue a provisional order that Israel immediately suspend its military operations in Gaza, due to plausible allegations of genocide. To avoid any possibility of complicity in genocide, Canada must suspend all Canadian military exports to Israel immediately.
We urgently call for the Government of Canada to avoid any potential complicity in genocide by immediately suspending military assistance and arms sales to Israel. We also call on Canada to follow up its welcome statement of support for the International Court of Justice with a statement of intent to actively and fulsomely support the decisions of the Court in the South Africa case. Noting the tangible contribution that ceasing arms exports would make to this end, we reiterate our call on Canada to take tangible states to help bring about an immediate humanitarian ceasefire. Read more - Lire plus
CJPME Letter to Minister Joly: Canada must support South African's ICJ application to prevent genocide in Gaza
South Africa’s legal effort to declare Israel’s actions ‘genocidal in character’ poses dilemma for Canada
11 ways for Canada to end complicity with Israel’s crimes
Ploughshares' Special Report: Fanning the Flames: The grave risk of Canada's arms exports to Israel
IJV Welcomes Canada’s Ceasefire Vote, Calls for Sustained Pressure on Israel
World Leaders and Intellectuals Sign ‘Declaration on Gaza Genocide’
Israeli public figures accuse judiciary of ignoring incitement to genocide in Gaza
NEW ACTION: Arms Embargo parliamentary petition E-4745
MANY NEW ACTIONS in one place: including an email action calling for an arms embargo
NEW ACTION: Take Action: the NDP should oppose genocide & express support for South Africa's submission to the ICJ
NEW ACTION: Amnesty International to world leaders: call for an immediate ceasefire
SUNDAY JAN 7: Ottawa rally for Gaza - Meet on Parliament Hill @ 2 PM
“Utterly Illegal”: U.N. Special Rapporteur Slams Netanyahu’s “Voluntary Migration” Plan for Gazans
“Absolutely Unimaginable”: Children in Gaza Face Amputations Without Anesthesia, Death & Disease
“The Hostages Weren’t Our Top Priority”: Israel’s “Bombing Frenzy” Endangered Hostages Held in Gaza
Israel-Palestine war: Palestinian detainees from Gaza die in Israeli custody, says report
Rights Monitor Demands Probe of Israel's 'Guantánamo-Like' Prison
Labor Demands a Ceasefire: UAW, Electrical & Postal Workers Call for Israel’s Assault on Gaza to End
ICLMG ACTION: Canada Must Oppose Genocide in Gaza and Defend Free Expression at Home! + Share on Facebook + Twitter + Instagram
ACTION: Canada needs to take immediate action
ACTION: Email your MP to call for a ceasefire
ACTION: Send a message to demand Canada stop arming Israel and push for an immediate ceasefire
ACTION: Phone and email to Demand a Ceasefire Now
NDP: Help Us Draft and Pass the Nakba Bill To Stand for Peace and Justice in Palestine
| |
CJPME condemns arbitrary limitations on Gaza family reunification and bigoted statements from Canadian officials | |
|
CJPME 04/01/2024 - Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) condemns the arbitrary restrictions that the Canadian government has imposed on its family reunification measures vis-à-vis Gaza, which were announced on December 21, 2023. At the time, Immigration Minister Marc Miller revealed that Canada would offer 3-year temporary residence to the extended family members of Canadian citizens and permanent residents. However, it has since been reported that these measures will only be extended to a maximum of 1,000 individuals, while another Canadian minister has suggested this limitation is because the government sees Palestinians as a threat.
“Canada’s 1,000-person quota on Palestinian family members from Gaza is unfairly small, completely arbitrary and unjustifiable, and should be immediately removed,” said Michael Bueckert, Vice President of CJPME. “Rather than imposing arbitrary limits on who is deserving of safety, Canada should be maximizing its humanitarian response to the unfolding genocide in Gaza and supporting friends and family of Palestinian-Canadians,” added Bueckert.
CJPME notes the asymmetry with Canada’s emergency travel measures for Ukrainians following Russia’s invasion in 2022, per the Canada-Ukraine authorization for emergency travel (CUAET). That program, which similarly provided 3-year temporary status, imposed no cap on applications, and at least 616,000 individuals were approved. The government also provided financial support and up to two weeks of temporary accommodations – something not accorded to applicants from Gaza. Further, the program was not restricted to the family members of Canadians – as per the program for Gaza – but any Ukrainian national and their family members could apply. “This discrepancy exposes a clear double standard, sending a message that some lives are worth more than others,” said Bueckert. “Forcing Canadians and their relatives in Gaza to compete over a small pool of visas, based on a scarcity which is entirely arbitrary, demonstrates a real lack of humanity.”
CJPME further expresses outrage over provocative comments from Canadian officials which suggest that they view the family members of Palestinian Canadians as an inherent security threat. In a statement published to Instagram on December 22, 2023, Minister of Mental Health and Addictions Ya’ara Saks responded to “concerns” by explaining that the reunification program is “a limited program, the security concerns are well understood and the security requirements are strict and follow reviews from Israeli authorities.” After several sentences emphasizing security and eligibility requirements, Minister Saks’ statement ended, “I understand the concerns I’ve heard from community members. Security is always the number one priority and we will be vigilant.”
CJPME condemns Minister Saks’ statement and urges it to be retracted. “This statement from a minister significantly undermines the government’s humanitarian message, by catering to the racist prejudices of those who see all Palestinians as terrorists and promising vigilance and distrust toward the very people whom we are trying to assist,” said Bueckert. Finally, CJPME also takes serious objection to the role that Canada has given Israeli authorities in vetting the Palestinian family members who can take advantage of this program, as detailed in the statement from Minister Saks. “Israel is a belligerent occupying power which is killing and starving Palestinian civilians in Gaza,” asserts CJPME’s Bueckert. “Israel should have absolutely no role in deciding whose family members are allowed to leave, and who must stay and risk being killed.” Source
NEW ACTION: Canada Must Issue Permits to Leave Gaza for 4 Grandchildren of Canadian Family
NEW ACTION: Please support the Alhalees and other Canadian families with loved ones in Gaza
How a Palestinian Injured in a Drone Strike Came to Canada
'Chilling effect': People expressing pro-Palestinian views censured, suspended from work and school
Toronto Police Violently Arrest Palestine Solidarity Protester On Human Rights Day
Ontario government screened law students who signed pro-Palestine letter
NEW ACTION: Drop the Charges against the ‘Peace 11’ Indigo Protestors!
NEW ACTION: Boycott Indigo Books & Music Inc.
MPP Joel Harden sends letter to Ottawa Mayor to denounce the outrageous fines given to pro-Palestinian protesters in effort to silence dissent
NEW ACTION: Ottawa: Drop the Fines: Don't Silence Palestinian Voices!
ÉVÈNEMENT EN LIGNE: Voix palestiniennes, voix pour la Palestine : profilage et censure au Canada depuis 1960, le 11 janvier à 12h45 HE
Legal Training: Special Measures for Temporary Residence in Gaza for Extended Family of Canadian Citizens
Palestinian deaths count for less in Canada’s newspapers. Data proves it
| |
Jeremy Scahill: This Is Not a War Against Hamas | |
|
The Intercept 11/12/2023 - [...] It has become indisputably clear over these past two months that there are not actually two sides to this horror show. Without question, the perpetrators who meted out the horrors against Israeli civilians on October 7 should be held accountable. But that is not what this collective killing operation is about. And journalists should stop pretending it is.
Any analysis of the Israeli state’s terror campaign against the people of Gaza cannot begin with the events of October 7. An honest examination of the current situation must view October 7 in the context of Israel’s 75-year war against the Palestinians and the past two decades of transforming Gaza first into an open-air prison and now into a killing cage. Under threat of being labeled antisemitic, Israel and its defenders demand acceptance of Israel’s official rationale for its irrational actions as legitimate, even if they are demonstrably false or they seek to justify war crimes. “You look at Israel today. It’s a state that has reached such a degree of irrational, rabid lunacy that its government routinely accuses its closest allies of supporting terrorism,” the Palestinian analyst Mouin Rabbani recently told Intercepted. “It is a state that has become thoroughly incapable of any form of inhibition.”
Israel has imposed, by lethal force, a rule that Palestinians have no legitimate rights of any form of resistance. When they have organized nonviolent demonstrations, they have been attacked and killed. That was the case in 2018-2019 when Israeli forces opened fire on unarmed protesters during the Great March of Return, killing 223 and wounding more than 8,000 others. Israeli snipers later boasted about shooting dozens of protesters in the knee during the weekly Friday demonstrations. When Palestinians fight back against apartheid soldiers, they are killed or sent into military tribunals. Children who throw rocks at tanks or soldiers are labeled terrorists and subjected to abuse and violations of basic rights — that is, if they are not summarily shot dead. Palestinians live their lives stripped of any context or any recourse to address the grave injustices imposed on them.
You cannot discuss the crimes of Hamas or Islamic jihad or any other armed resistance factions without first addressing the question of why these groups exist and have support. One aspect of this should certainly probe Netanyahu’s own role — extending back to at least 2012 — in propping up Hamas and facilitating the flow of money to the group. “Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” Netanyahu told his Likud comrades in 2019.
But in the broader sense, a sincere examination of why a group such as Hamas gained popularity among Palestinians or why people in Gaza turn to armed struggle must focus on how the oppressed, when stripped of all forms of legitimate resistance, respond to the oppressor. It should be focused on the rights of people living under occupation to assert and defend their self-determination. It should allow Palestinians to have their struggle placed in the context of other historical battles for liberation and independence and not relegated to racist polemics about how all Palestinian acts of resistance constitute terrorism and there are not really any innocents in Gaza. Israel’s president said as much on October 13. “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible,” Isaac Herzog declared. “It is not true this rhetoric about civilians not being aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true. They could have risen up. They could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza in a coup d’etat.”
The notion that the Palestinians of Gaza could end all of their suffering by overthrowing Hamas is just as ahistorical and false as the oft-repeated claims that the war against Gaza would end if Hamas surrendered and released all Israeli hostages. “Look, this could be over tomorrow,” Blinken said December 10. “If Hamas got out of the way of civilians instead of hiding behind them, if it put down its weapons, if it surrendered.” That, of course, is a crass lie. With or without Hamas, Israel’s war against the Palestinians would endure precisely because of Blinken and his ilk in elite bipartisan U.S. foreign policy circles.
Throughout the years of U.S. support for Israel’s apartheid regime, it has consistently facilitated Israel’s “mowing the grass” in Gaza. This is not a series of periodic assaults on Hamas — it is a cyclical campaign of terror bombings largely aimed at civilians and civilian infrastructure. The Biden administration is not — and Biden personally has never been — an outside observer or a friend encouraging moderation during an otherwise righteous crusade. None of this slaughter would be occurring if Biden valued Palestinian lives over Israel’s false narratives and its bloody ethnonationalist wars of annihilation repackaged as self-defense. We should end the charade that this is an Israeli war against Hamas. We should call it what it is: a joint U.S.–Israeli war against the people of Gaza. Read more - Lire plus
College Students Could Never Give Hamas As Much Money As Netanyahu Did
EU: Hamas ban plan sparks concerns of crackdown on pro-Palestinian action
Cisjordanie : l’armée israélienne arrête une députée palestinienne
Exclusive: Israeli military censor bans reporting on these 8 subjects
Human Rights Watch: Meta: Systemic Censorship of Palestine Content
Bernie Steinberg: For the Safety of Jews and Palestinians, Stop Weaponizing Antisemitism
Monia Mazigh: Don’t Palestinian Women (and Their Children) Need Saving?
Anti-Palestinian racism in Canada: CJMPE's 2022 report
| |
Canada Has Quietly Announced Plans to Buy Killer Drones | |
|
World Beyond War Canada 19/12/2023 - After Parliament adjourned for the holiday season, the Canadian government just quietly released plans to purchase their first fleet of military armed drones for both domestic surveillance and attacks overseas. They're hoping we won't notice their sneaky announcement.
The military's own brief lays out horrifying scenarios for how these drones are to be used. One describes surveillance of peaceful protest in Canada. Another features a drone bombing “Fighting Age Males” in the Middle East after spotting one of them “holding a radio or cell phone."
Canada is already selling drone parts to Israel, including the engines for the IDF's Heron TP (Eitan) combat drones currently used in Gaza. The last thing we need is for the Canadian military to begin purchasing its own fleet of armed drones to wreak terror around the world. Source
ACTION: No armed drones! + Share on Facebook + Twitter + Instagram
Canada Requires Peace Groups to Support War If They Want Charitable Status
| |
Stop Moe Harkat's deportation to torture today! | |
Advocates urge full public consultation on controversial AI legislation | |
|
ICLMG 14/12/2023 - Today, 30 civil society organizations, experts, and academics — including the ICLMG — released an open letter to the House of Commons Industry Committee, urging them to hit the reset button and fully scrutinize the government’s controversial Artificial Intelligence and Data Act (AIDA). They recommend a full public consultation and redrafting of AIDA, starting with splitting AIDA from the other parts of Bill C-27, which deal with unrelated privacy matters, so that it can be subject to the careful democratic scrutiny it requires.
Highlighting what they describe as ISED’s mishandling of “a process biased heavily toward narrow industry interests”, the signatories call on MPs to ensure that any future public consultation is not stewarded exclusively by ISED. The call comes two weeks after Industry, Science, and Economic Development (ISED) Minister François-Philippe Champagne published a beefy, 38-page package of proposed amendments to AIDA, rivaling in size the text of the original bill, and fundamentally altering its shape and implications halfway through the committee’s study and after many witnesses have already testified — worsening the already problematic parliamentary process around this bill.
AIDA has been subject to fierce criticism since it was first introduced in June 2022, without the public consultation process that typically precedes similar legislation. Key concerns include:
- Its failure to recognize fundamental human rights, such as privacy and free expression, that AI must be designed and deployed to respect;
- Its lack of any independent oversight or enforcement, instead placing its AI & Data Commissioner under the authority of the Industry Minister, who sponsors and subsidizes the AI industry;
- Its failure to address the societal level risks of AIDA, including risks to marginalized communities;
- Its light-touch, mark-your-own-homework approach to regulating the AI industry, which is inconsistent with the serious potential dangers of AI;
- Its failure to consult the public, instead heavily prioritizing industry input;
-
Its broad exemptions for private sector AI tech developed for government intelligence, defence and national security purposes, giving a free pass for some of the most potentially harmful AI tools. Read more - Lire plus
ACTION: Canada: Remove the national security exemptions from Bill C-27!
Globe and Mail: Federal consultations on AI regulations heavily skewed toward businesses, industry groups, say critics
The Wire Report: Civil society groups call for AIDA to be considered separately from C-27
Bill S-210: The Most Dangerous Canadian Internet Bill You’ve Never Heard Of Is a Step Closer to Becoming Law
Freezing out: Legacy media's shaping of AI as a cold controversy
Human rights protections…with exceptions: what’s (not) in the EU’s AI Act deal
UK Police to be able to run face recognition searches on 50m driving licence holders
Police across UK equipped with live facial recognition bodycams
| |
UPR4: Which recommendations should Canada reject, which should it accept and how to implement them | |
|
ICLMG 13/12/2023 - On Dec 6, ICLMG participated in a consultation process intended to gather the views of civil society regarding the recommendations received by Canada at the United Nations on Nov 10 in the context of its 4th Universal Periodic Review (UPR).
Through the UPR, the Human Rights Council reviews, on a periodic basis, the fulfilment by each of the 193 UN Member States of their human rights obligations and commitments.
We shared which recommendations we think should be prioritized, in the context of ICLMG's mandate:
46: Make official information about the implementation of UPR recommendations, accessible to the public and communicate such information to the Parliament
76: Continue to strengthen the legislative and institutional foundations to combat discrimination against Indigenous Peoples, migrants, refugees, people of African descent and minorities, and to combat Islamophobia
117 (118, 119 and 120): Take effective steps to address racial and religious profiling and oversurveillance by police, security agencies and others, which frequently target Muslims and Arabs, or those perceived to be Muslims or Arab
128: Repatriate all its nationals from the camps and the related facilities in the northeast of the Syrian Arab Republic, in line with international law
300: End ongoing militarization of Indigenous lands and the criminalization of Indigenous defenders to protect their original settlement
301: End the ongoing militarization of Indigenous lands and the criminalization of Indigenous human rights defenders in the Trans Mountain and Coastal GasLink pipelines
326: Put an end to the policy of detaining children seeking asylum, refugees, or migrants in irregular situations
- Ratify the Convention on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (CED) (recommended by 15 states)
- We also support numerous recommendations from multiple states regarding Israel and Palestine, specifically: We are encouraged by the fact that Canada has finally called for a ceasefire. However, calling for a ceasefire while continuing to support Israel militarily is contradictory and counter-productive. Canada should thus stop all forms of support of the Israeli apartheid colonial settler regime that enable it to commit war crimes and genocide against the Palestinian people – including putting a stop to all sales and transfers of arms to Israel.
We also flagged two recommendations that Canada should NOT be accepting:
62: Stop all forms of support for terrorist activities that operate under the pretext of alleged humanitarian work
138: Further strengthen the domestic framework to prevent misuse of freedom of expression for inciting violence and disallow activities of groups which are promoting extremism
Click below for more details on why these recommendations should be rejected as well as how the prioritized recommendations should be implemented. Read more - Lire plus
| |
Amnesty International Says CGL and the RCMP Violated Indigenous Rights | |
|
The Tyee 12/12/2023 - An investigation by human rights organization Amnesty International has found that Coastal GasLink, its private security firm, the RCMP and Canadian and B.C. governments all violated the Indigenous rights of Wet’suwet’en who oppose the pipeline project.
“What emerges clearly from our report is that the intimidation, the harassment, the unlawful surveillance and the criminalization of Wet’suwet’en land defenders were part of a concerted effort to remove them from their ancestral territory in order to allow the pipeline construction to proceed,” Ketty Nivyabandi, secretary general of Amnesty International Canada’s English-speaking section, said at a news conference Monday.
Amnesty’s researchers were also surveilled while conducting its investigation on Wet’suwet’en territory, according to France-Isabelle Langlois, executive director for the organization’s francophone section.
“Indigenous Peoples are entitled to give or withhold their consent to project proposals that affect them,” Langlois said. “The Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs, on behalf of the clans, have consistently withheld consent for the Coastal GasLink pipeline project. Nevertheless, construction of the pipeline has proceeded without their free, prior and informed consent.” The 94-page report, “Criminalization, Intimidation and Harassment of Wet’suwet’en Land Defenders,” outlines how the pipeline company failed to properly consult Wet’suwet’en hereditary leaders and then obtained a civil court injunction to remove those who blocked access to the pipeline route.
Wet’suwet’en hereditary leaders have voiced opposition to pipelines through the territory since before the Coastal GasLink project was proposed. The RCMP’s Community-Industry Response Group, which was formed in 2017 to address opposition to pipelines and other natural resource projects, has undertaken several high-profile police actions on Wet’suwet’en territory under the injunction. Dozens of people have been arrested over the past five years, several of whom await trial on criminal contempt charges. Amnesty’s report comes 26 years after a Supreme Court of Canada decision affirmed that the Wet’suwet’en and neighbouring Gitxsan Nation had not relinquished title to their traditional territories, which together cover 58,000 square kilometres in northwest B.C. The successful appeal decision, known as Delgamuukw-Gisday’wa for the Hereditary Chiefs who fought the court case, came Dec. 11, 1997.
“Twenty-six years after this landmark decision, our research findings reveal that the Wet’suwet’en Nation continues to suffer severe violations of its internationally recognized rights,” Nivyabandi said, including the right to self-governance, the right to free, prior and informed consent and the right to make decisions related to its territory and its resources. She added that the violations should be considered together with “centuries of Canadian government policies aimed at removing Indigenous people from their ancestral territories.” Nivyabandi cited examples, including forced evictions, Indian residential schools, mass incarceration, forced sterilizations and the child welfare system. Read more - Lire plus
Three defenders of Wet’suwet’en territory face criminal prosecution and jail sentences in trial beginning January 8, 2024
The Petraeus Playbook: A comic connecting the dots behind RCMP violence on Wet'suwet'en territory and U.S. counter-insurgency military tactics used across borders
| |
Secret Indian memo ordered "concrete measures" against Hardeep Singh Nijjar two months before his assassination in Canada | |
|
The Intercept 10/12/2023 - The Indian government instructed its consulates in North America to launch a “sophisticated crackdown scheme” against Sikh diaspora organizations in Western countries, according to a secret memorandum issued in April 2023 by India’s Ministry of External Affairs. The memo, which was obtained by The Intercept, lists several Sikh dissidents under investigation by India’s intelligence agencies, including the Canadian citizen Hardeep Singh Nijjar.
“Concrete measures shall be adopted to hold the suspects accountable,” the memo says. Nijjar was murdered in Vancouver in June, two months after being named as a target in the document, a killing the Canadian government said was ordered by Indian intelligence. The memo addresses India’s growing concerns about its reputation due to activism from Sikh dissident organizations and portrays its political enemies as extremist or even terrorist organizations. Titled “Action Points on Khalistan Extremism,” using the name Sikh activists use for a separatist state, the document lists several Sikh activist organizations it blames for engaging in “anti-India propaganda,” as well as acts of “arson and vandalization” targeting Indian interests in North America.
The document instructs officials at its consulates to cooperate with Indian intelligence agencies to confront the groups Sikhs for Justice, Babbar Khalsa International, Sikh Youth of America, Sikh Coordination Committee East Coast, World Sikh Parliament, and Shiromani Akali Dal Amritsar America. It suggests that Nijjar and several other “suspects” are affiliated with one of these groups, Babbar Khalsa International. Babbar Khalsa International is proscribed as a terrorist organization in the U.S. and Canada, but the other organizations named in the document are considered legal in both countries.
A leader of one of another of the listed groups, Sikhs for Justice, was the target of an Indian assassination plot, according to federal prosecutors in the U.S. The indictment, unsealed last week, accused Nikhil Gupta, an Indian national, of working with Indian officials to kill Sikhs for Justice general counsel Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, an American citizen based in New York.
The leaked April memo from India’s Ministry of External Affairs does not explicitly order the killings of Sikh activists. Instead, it calls on Indian consular officials operating in the U.S. and Canada to work in cooperation with India’s Research and Analysis Wing, a foreign intelligence agency; the National Investigation Agency, a counterterror police force; and the Intelligence Bureau, an internal security agency akin to the FBI. Aside from Nijjar, a number of people accused in the document of having ties with BKI are believed to be based in Pakistan or currently incarcerated in India. The Indian government did not respond to a request for comment prior to publication of this story. Following publication, the Indian government released a statement saying “there is no such memo.” “We strongly assert that such reports are fake and completely fabricated,” Indian spokesperson Shri Arindam Bagchi wrote. “This is part of a sustained disinformation campaign against India,” the spokesperson continued, also questioning The Intercept’s previous reporting: “The outlet in question is known for propagating fake narratives peddled by Pakistani intelligence. The posts of the authors confirm this linkage. Those who amplify such fake news only do so at the cost of their own credibility.”
While the U.S. and Canada have both now charged India with orchestrating assassinations against Sikhs in the West, the secret document obtained by The Intercept is the first public evidence showing that the Indian government was targeting these specific Sikh diaspora organizations and dissidents. Those involved in Sikh diaspora advocacy said that the Indian government frequently characterizes any political activity by Sikh separatist organizations as militant or extremist in nature. “The Indian government and media consistently aim to manufacture a narrative that describes any type of political advocacy for Khalistan or Sikh sovereignty as ‘Sikh extremism’ as a pretext to justify a repressive security-based response,” said Prabjot Singh, an activist and editor of the Panth-Punjab Project, a digital platform focusing on Sikh politics and sociopolitical issues. “It’s important to recognize that this is a strategy that India employs in Punjab to justify crackdowns on Sikh political organizing, while misusing diplomatic resources abroad to try and enlist other countries as partners in this effort.” Read more - Lire plus
India ask FBI to share intelligence on Sikh separatists: Reuters source
India: Damning new forensic investigation reveals repeated use of Pegasus spyware to target high-profile journalists
Voices Unite: Solidarity Pours in at NewsClick Founder Prabir Purkayastha’s Book Event
| |
Dennis Edney, lawyer for former Guantanamo Bay prisoner Omar Khadr, dead at 77 | |
|
CBC News 02/01/2024 - Dennis Edney, a lawyer who played a critical role in the release of former Guantanamo Bay prisoner Omar Khadr, has died at 77. An obituary published in the Edmonton Journal said Edney had dementia and died Saturday. The soccer-player-turned-lawyer took on many high-profile cases throughout his career. But his Scottish accent became known across the country as he spent more than a decade acting in defence of Khadr, who was detained in the infamous U.S. military prison in Cuba as a teen.
"Dennis was a great lawyer and friend. In all my years in the legal profession, I've never met a lawyer more dedicated to his clients," said Alberta Court of King's Bench Justice Nathan Whitling, who was a lawyer on Khadr's legal team with Edney. Edney was born in Dundee, a coastal city in eastern Scotland. A Scottish tabloid profile of Edney in 2012 said he was a lorry driver's son. "What has made me a fighter, taking on governments, is my own Scottish character. We don't like to see the underdog being picked on," Edney told the Daily Record. He left home at 17 and became a low-level professional soccer player in San Francisco. He was also a truck driver and a carpenter before he set his sights on law and went to Northumbria University in England. Edney was nearly 40 in 1987 when he became a criminal lawyer and made Canada his permanent home. His obituary said he embraced Edmonton as his home for most of the last 45 years.
"Dennis put his heart and soul into everything. His legal practice reflected his passion for justice and his indomitable spirit," the obituary said. Edney's legal practice focused on criminal and human rights law and he appeared in front of the Supreme Court of Canada numerous times. Edney and Whitling were widely celebrated as paragons of pro bono — or unpaid — work. He was a co-recipient of the 2008 National Pro Bono Award. Edney became a constant irritant to Ottawa officials when he took on the legal representation of the young Guantanamo Bay detainee, often calling out then-prime minister Stephen Harper and his Conservative government. "Mr. Harper doesn't like Muslims," Edney said in 2015 after a Supreme Court hearing.
The Toronto-born Khadr was 15 when he was captured by U.S. troops in 2002 following a firefight at a suspected al-Qaeda compound in Afghanistan that resulted in the death of an American special forces soldier. Khadr was accused of throwing the grenade that killed the soldier. Edney has said he cold-called Khadr's family in Toronto to ask if they had legal representation when the boy was initially detained. Edney travelled to Guantanamo and met Khadr, whom he described as shattered and withdrawn. Khadr later said he pleaded guilty to get out of Guantanamo Bay, where he was the youngest detainee. A Supreme Court of Canada decision later found Canadian intelligence officials obtained evidence from Khadr under "oppressive circumstances," such as sleep deprivation, during interrogations at Guantanamo Bay in 2003, then shared that evidence with U.S officials. The Canadian government would later provide a $10.5 million settlement and an apology for breaching Khadr's constitutional rights.
Edney was appointed as a foreign attorney consultant by the U.S. Pentagon to participate in Khadr's legal defence at the naval base in Cuba. He continued to represent the young man when Khadr returned to Canada in 2012 to serve out the rest of his sentence. When Khadr was freed on bail three years later, he moved in with Edney and the lawyer's wife. Patricia Edney told CBC soon after that Khadr was welcome in their home and could stay as long as "he wishes."
The obituary said the lawyer and his wife were soulmates from the beginning. They met in 1986 and married six weeks later. The best man at their wedding predicted to Patricia Edney that life would never be dull, the obituary said. The couple had two sons, Cameron and Duncan. Edney loved talking over the dinner table, going to hockey arenas and ski hills, and spoiling the family dogs, the obituary said.
"His ultimate and enduring passion was family." Source
| |
Head of RCMP's advisory board resigns, citing frustrations with federal government | |
|
CBC News 21/12/2023 - Pointing to his frustrations with the federal government, the head of the RCMP's Management Advisory Board has resigned after less than a year in the chair. Kent Roach, a well-known critic of policing and author of Canadian Policing: Why and How it Must Change, was appointed chair of the 13-member civilian body in January. His appointment followed years of claims by critics that the board was too secretive at a time when major policing issues were dominating headlines.
In his September resignation letter, released to CBC through an access to information request, Roach said he was stepping down "with regrets." "I took this position on the understanding that the government was committed in the minister of public safety's mandate letter to 'enhancing the Management Advisory Board to create an oversight role over the RCMP,'" he wrote to Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc. "Unfortunately, I have seen no signs of such a commitment."
According to the government, the Management Advisory Board (MAB) was created in 2019 "to provide expert external advice and guidance to the RCMP Commissioner on key modernization and management matters." In his partially redacted resignation letter, Roach questioned the board's independence and powers. "Four years after its creation by amendments to the RCMP Act, the MAB is still financed from the RCMP's budget and relies upon staff that work for the RCMP," he wrote. "The MAB has no formal role in the selection of a commissioner or its senior leaders."
Roach also argued he was left out of a crucial conversation about the future of RCMP contract policing. The federal government is reviewing the RCMP's contract policing obligations. Some municipalities have been considering ditching the Mounties for their own police forces. Mounties are assigned to contract policing in roughly 150 municipalities, all three territories and in all provinces except Ontario and Quebec. The RCMP's current policing agreements — municipal, provincial and territorial — expire in 2032. [...]
Roach, a professor of law at the University of Toronto, also cited "irreconcilable tensions" between his role as an academic who studies and comments on policing issues and "what my former colleagues see as my role as MAB's chair." During his tenure with the oversight body, Roach helped to launch a website to post updates on the board's work and granted media interviews. Before Roach was appointed chair, the MAB routinely rejected journalists' requests for information and referred them to the RCMP. But even that website came with struggles, Roach said in his letter. "The MAB has been able to launch its own website, but at this time has still been unable to post its reports or written advice to the commissioner because of a lack of capacity to comply with Treasury Board requirements with respect to accessibility," it says. Read more - Lire plus
| |
The US's "Global War on Terror" never ended | |
|
GZero 10/12/2023 - Presidents Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden all pledged, on some level, to narrow the scope of the global war on terror and reduce US overseas military commitments.
In 2013, Obama said the US should not define its fight against terrorism “as a boundless ‘global war on terror.’” In 2019, Trump said: “Great nations do not fight endless wars.” And on the campaign trail the same year, Joe Biden vowed to “end the forever wars in Afghanistan and the Middle East.”
Yet, the number of countries where the US conducts counterterrorism operations and training has largely remained steady under all three presidents, according to data from the Costs of War project at Brown University. The study includes an array of factors, such as where troops involved in combat or potential combat were stationed, where air and drone strikes occurred, and countries where the US offered counterterrorism training or assistance.
Costs of War found that under Biden the US has conducted air and drone strikes in at least four countries – Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and Syria (and likely Yemen). Its latest report also shows that from 2021 to 2023, US service members engaged in combat and detention, using force on the ground against militants/terrorism suspects in at least nine countries: Afghanistan, Cuba, Iraq, Kenya, Mali, Somalia, Syria, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Comparatively, the data from 2015 to 2017 showed 15 countries hosted US combat troops involved in counterterrorism operations, and air and drone strikes occurred in seven.
The forever war continues. Biden did pull US troops from Afghanistan, ending the longest conflict in US history, but the war on terror still grinds on in other countries under his watch – though often in far more covert ways than when the military campaign first began. American taxpayers continue to foot the bill of this war, which has already cost more than $8 trillion. Meanwhile, there hasn’t been a terror attack in the US on the same scale as 9/11 in the time since, but critics of the war on terror say it’s locked America into an unwinnable, never-ending conflict. Read more - Lire plus
| |
Riseup4Rojava calls for an immediate response to Turkish attacks on Northern and Eastern Syria | |
|
ANF News 27/12/2023 - The Riseup4Rojava Network issued a statement condemning the Turkish attacks on Northern and Eastern Syria. The statement said: "On 23 December, the Turkish state launched a brutal bombing campaign against civilian infrastructure in Rojava (Northern Syria). With the area still struggling to recover from the attacks it suffered in early October, this new series of raids is preventing any stabilization of the region.
In October, a first Turkish attack targeted the vital infrastructure of Rojava (gas, electricity, water, sites for the production of essential goods, etc.), causing massive damage and endangering the livelihoods of millions of people. The new air raids just launched by the Turkish state are targeting the same vital infrastructure and are also targeting workplaces and production sites. The new air raids just launched by the Turkish state are targeting the same vital infrastructure and are also targeting workplaces and production sites. No matter what the consequences of these attacks (which are still ongoing) will be, it is already certain that we are facing a catastrophe in Rojava with winter approaching and electrical & fuel production severely damaged."
The statement continued: "In the mountains of southern Kurdistan (northern Iraq), the guerrillas have launched a series of victorious actions against the Turkish occupation forces, which are far from succeeding in weakening the resistance to the Turkish occupation despite the use of weapons that are banned under all international conventions. Having suffered numerous casualties, the fascist Turkish state is now turning its rage to the people of Rojava. The civilian population and their livelihoods are being targeted in order to punish the people and weaken the bond between the people and their self-defense forces.
While the region is regularly struck by drones targeting representatives of self-administration structures, self-defense forces and the civilian population, this new offensive aims to dissociate the people from democratic confederalism structures by instilling fear in society. These attacks target a political project put forward by the peoples of the region. A stateless, democratic, ecological, multi-ethnic and multicultural society, driven by the vanguard of women. Turkey’s genocidal policy is aimed at displacing the people, essentially ethnic cleansing."
The statement added: "In the face of this situation, we call on all revolutionary forces, anti-fascists, democratic and freedom-loving people around the world to organize and put pressure on Turkey wherever it may be. Let us not forget that the Turkish state often wages its dirty war with political support and with Western weapons and technologies. From spreading information to protests in front of Turkish embassies to other forms of direct action and civil disobedience, there are countless means. What we need now is a quick response to stop the attacks immediately!" Source
| |
Brian Toohey: The greedy jaws of national security | |
|
Pearls and Irritations 14/12/2023 - With some honourable exceptions, most of the media and the parliament enthusiastically support almost everything the Director General of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Mike Burgess has to say. Although Burgess is not an extreme hardliner in the Australian intelligence world, many of his statements should not go unchallenged.
Earlier this year, Burgess said foreign intelligence services from multiple countries are aggressively seeking Australian secrets about medical advances, academic and think tank research, and key export industries, as well other more obvious targets. Medical advances should always be in the public domain, not kept secret. Sharing new discoveries with researchers around the globe is the best way to make breakthroughs that lead to widespread benefits for humanity. Some pharmaceutical companies impose patents for much longer than required to make a reasonable return on their initial research funding. Keeping that sort of research secret should not be a job for ASIO.
Nor should ASIO prevent collaborative academic research between countries. A statement by the Group of Eight leading research universities says international collaboration is the foundation of most of the world’s major research breakthroughs. “This enables the best minds in each field to collaborate, regardless of nationality or location, in the pursuit of common goals – delivering the best research to solve global problems.”
Yet Australia’s universities have effectively agreed with ASIO to restrict research collaboration with China, although it now has the largest number of citations in scientific journals in the world. While some leading academics pussyfoot around the problem, Monash’s then Vice Chancellor Margaret Gardner responded to the Morrison government’s further intervention in universities by saying she couldn’t think of other universities in advanced democracies that were subject to a similar level of intervention. “It’s the sort of thing you see in authoritarian dictatorships,” Gardner said.
Why foreign intelligence agencies would seek secrets about key Australian export industries is not obvious. Most of this information is already in the public domain as a normal consequence of how markets operate. Otherwise, these wealthy enterprises have sufficient resources to keep their secrets with no need for ASIO to be involved. [...]
ASIO had over 2000 staff and budgetary resourcing of $800 million in 2022-23. How this can be justified is hard to discern. Gareth Evans has said that in the 13 years, he was in Cabinet he found little of stuff from ASIO and the Australian Secret Intelligence Service “added value to our understanding of what was going on, let alone vital to our security”. A former deputy head of defence in charge of strategic analysis, Alan Wrigley, said “none of [the] massive volume of intelligence material that crossed his desk over a 10 year period was of any significant value to policymakers”.
Maybe ASIO has improved. But it is difficult see why it puts so much emphasis on countering foreign operatives supposedly trying to influence Australian policy. Americans are the key ones but are not monitored. Burgess himself says parliament would not be susceptible. There is no reason to believe the judiciary would be any more at risk, nor the military leadership and so on. These people have minds of their own. [...]
In an unlikely move three years ago, the Morrison government appointed a senior lawyer Grant Donaldson as the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor– the fourth to hold the job. His term ended on 3 December 2023. In November, he released a tough review of the operation and effectiveness of the National Security Information Act. His recommendations highlight the gulf between the laws which once guaranteed Australia was a liberal democracy and those which have since been introduced in the NSI Act and other laws recommended of intelligence bodies and departments such as Attorney Generals and Home Affairs. The harsh new laws put much less emphasis on individual liberty and a lot more on the requirement to adhere to the constraints of a national security state. Yet they were endorsed by both Labor and the Coalition – something that would’ve been unthinkable under their leaders for most of the post-war period.
Donaldson said his first objective was to enhance “open justice”. He recommended repealing provisions of the NSI Act, which impose closed court hearings. He also wants to remove mandatory directions in the Act that prohibit judges making principled decisions to prioritise the requirements of a fair trial. He recommends changing the NSI law to ensure the “foundational principles of criminal justice” – the presumption of innocence and the prosecution bearing the burden of proof – are not undermined.
Donaldson said the “secrecy of the Alan Johns case is a shameful tale”. Johns (a pseudonym) was also known also as witness J. He is a former Australian intelligence official who was charged, convicted and jailed in complete secrecy in 2018. Not even his mother could be told he was in jail. [...] A former NSW Supreme Court judge Anthony Whealy asked if we are now “a totalitarian state where people are prosecuted, convicted and shunted off to prison without they, or the public, having any notion of what happened? He also asked if Johns was “another victim of the greedy jaws of national security”. [...]
The government clearly committed a crime in ordering the Australian Secret Intelligence Service to enter Timor-Leste on false passports and bug the cabinet offices of that impoverished country to gather commercial information to benefit Woodside Petroleum. This act of foreign interference by ASIS contrasts with ASIO’s extensive use of its resources to combat foreign interference.
Donaldson was unable to consider a recent court case where a whistle blower David McBride claimed his oath as a military officer gave him a duty to leak information in the public interest. The court found that his only duty was to follow orders. Unsurprisingly, this drew a response that the judgement nullified the principles underpinning the Nuremberg trials. It could also dishonour decent members of the of the Australian Defence Force who have refused to obey orders where there was a risk of killing children.
The Australian Law Council has made an outstanding contribution to trying to ensure Australia retained some vestiges of a liberal democracy, despite the hurdles. It lost its attempt to prevent the inclusion of reporting and commentary on “economic and political relations with another country” in the definition of a national “national security offence’”. Donaldson said he shared the view of many who made submissions that the concept of “economic relations with foreign governments, and international organisations should never have been in the definition of national security information. It is far too broad”.
Donaldson pushed hard on an issue of continuing relevance after he found the Home Affairs department had suppressed a report for “operational security reasons” it had commissioned on terrorism risk assessment tools. The report, by Dr Emily Corner, found that the tools the department used for terrorism risk assessment lack. a “strong, empirical foundation, have poor reliability and questionable predictive validity”. Donaldson ordered Home Affairs to give him a copy of the 150 page report, which he read and then released because it did not contain “operationally sensitive information”. Donaldson emphasises the difference between punishing people for crimes they have committed and punishing them for the contentious possibility that they might commit one in future. Read more - Lire plus
A Merry AUKUS Surprise, Western Australia!
Morrison government failed to give Howard-era national security cabinet papers to national archives
| |
UK supreme court rules Guantánamo ‘forever prisoner’ can sue the government under English law – here’s why it matters | |
|
The Conversation 21/12/2023 - The UK supreme court has ruled that a detainee in Guantánamo Bay can sue the UK government under English law over its alleged involvement in his detention and torture. This is the first case concerning the UK government’s liability for its participation in abuses committed by the CIA during the “war on terror”.
Abu Zubaydah brought a claim for damages against the UK government in 2020. The court has not yet ruled on the merits of this claim. Rather, it has ruled on an important, though obscure, part of the case to do with which country’s law applies – English law, or those of foreign countries. The answer, according to the court, is English law. This means the case can now proceed to trial. It also has implications should the UK ever decide to cut ties with international legal mechanisms like the European convention on human rights (ECHR). [...]
This case is an important example of “satellite litigation”. Legal frameworks in the US and other countries prevent detainees like Zubaydah from suing the US in US and foreign courts. Instead, they can only bring proceedings against complicit states. Zubaydah has already successfully sued Lithuania and Poland (two locations of CIA black sites) at the European court of human rights. While it may appear to be a technical issue, the question of applicable law is significant. There is an inherent peculiarity in applying foreign laws to acts committed by UK officials in their London offices.
This is particularly true because of the countries involved. Afghanistan’s legal system is shaped by the Taliban. Guantánamo is part of sovereign Cuban territory, leased to the US in 1903 and currently the subject of an international dispute. We therefore do not know which system of law applies there – pre-communist Cuban law, current Cuban law, or US law.
There is another reason why this case is important. The UK government has discussed the possibility of withdrawing the UK from the European convention on human rights. The now-withdrawn bill of rights bill aimed, among other things, to exclude the application of the convention to overseas military operations. Should this ever become law, tort claims would be the only legal avenue to compensate victims of British military and security services’ wrongs committed overseas. This supreme court judgment underscores the importance of English law in such cases. In other words, it is a reminder that English law is still a viable avenue to pursue human rights cases. Read more - Lire plus
From America’s Guantánamo to Saudi Arabia’s Guillotine
DeSantis’ Guantanamo torture allegations follow him to Iowa
Biden signs defense budget, but slams Guantánamo closure prevention
Four more months of Section 702 snooping slipped into $890B US defense budget bill
| |
Prevent: Rise in climate activists referred to anti-terror scheme | |
|
BBC 23/12/2023 - The number of climate activists referred to the Prevent anti-terrorism programme has increased following the emergence of disruptive environmental protests, the BBC has learned. The UK government's Prevent scheme aims to stop people becoming terrorists.
Critics say Prevent curbs human rights by stifling non-violent political beliefs and should be reformed. The government says it has never advised referring people to Prevent for lawful climate activism or protest. Anyone can contact the police or a local authority to make a Prevent referral, which usually involves filling out a form to explain a concern about someone deemed to be at risk of radicalisation.
Since 2015, institutions including schools, universities, hospitals, local authorities, police, and prisons have had a legal duty to consider the risk of radicalisation. The Home Office told the BBC Prevent interventions were legitimate for those who could be radicalised into terrorism in the name of environmental causes. But climate activists say the government's definition of extremism is too broad and authorities are confusing extremism with non-violent civil disobedience in too many cases. Sir Peter Fahy, a former national police lead for Prevent, said it was "inappropriate" to treat non-violent climate activists as potential terrorists.
He said the fear of being flagged to police in a Prevent referral could deter people from protesting, and argued the rise in environmental cases reasons "shows how confused we've become about all of this". The BBC has spoken to one climate activist who was assessed by Prevent. They said they did not wish to be named in this report because they feared they would lose their job. The climate activist was referred to Prevent by their employer after being arrested at an Extinction Rebellion protest. The person has been cautioned by police and convicted for public order offences committed at disruptive environmental protests. The BBC has seen a copy of the form used to refer the climate activist to Prevent. The form says they were referred "due to being a member of Extinction Rebellion and other splinter groups". [...]
A controversial strand of the UK's counter-terrorism strategy, Prevent was set up by Tony Blair's government in the 2003 following the 9/11 attacks. A key moment in its evolution came in 2015, with the introduction of the legal duty on schools and other institutions to report those deemed at risk of radicalisation. Human rights activists have long accused Prevent of demonising Muslims, and having a chilling effect on freedom of expression. Earlier this year, Amnesty International urged the UK government to scrap the Prevent duty in a report condemning its impact on human rights. "People are being referred to Prevent for non-violent political beliefs," said Ilyas Nagdee, Amnesty International UK's racial justice director. Read more - Lire plus
| |
Greece: Report on National Intelligence Service's activities: Demonisation of migration and targeting organisations defending human rights | |
|
Legal Center Lesvos 12/12/2023 - “Illegal” immigration is described as the fourth in a row threat to the country’s security by the National Intelligence Agency (EYP) in its 2022-2023 activity report recently published by the Agency.
In the first ever report in its history that it has compiled, although, as it says, “for a number of reasons that refer to our troubled history of civil wars and dictatorial, or even authoritarian, regimes, the EYP still has a lot of work to do to attain in the common consciousness the position it should have as a national state institution in the service of the state and the people as a whole”, the Agency again seems to adhere to the logic of fabricating internal enemies that threaten the security of the country.
Thus, successively, following external threats, espionage activities, terrorism and violent extremism, it is “illegal” immigration that threatens the security of the country, in fact, ahead from organized crime and cybersecurity. According to the Agency, this threat lies in the “instrumentalization of the drama of thousands of people seeking a better fate by unscrupulous traffickers and illegal organized crime rings, acting with the tolerance, encouragement or cooperation of third parties, both governmental and non-governmental,” thus leading to “difficult to manage situations with a wider social and deeply human dimension”.
It is indeed of concern that an Agency whose purpose is “to prevent, deter, contain and neutralize the espionage and militant threat in order to protect the country and defend national interests” includes “illegal” immigration as one of the main threats to the country’s security. This is all the more so when this irregular – ‘illegal’ according to the Service – immigration leads to the granting of international protection status to 66.5 % of all applicants, according to the official data available, in fact from the first instance procedure, and has a broader social and profoundly human dimension.
The Agency even boasts that “during the period covered by this report, … it has been instrumental …. in documenting and establishing the controversial, even criminal, role of certain members of NGOs.” Moreover, although the Agency states that it was primarily concerned with “attempts to infiltrate migrant populations with terrorist elements, their radicalizing tendencies and their use for destabilizing actions”, two of the three examples which it mentions in the report that it provided its services relate to cases of criminalization of NGO members’ actions.
As members of the Civil Society who are fighting, struggling and supporting the right to asylum of all persecuted people who peacefully attempt to seek protection in our country and consequently throughout Europe, we cannot but be concerned by the targeting, once again, of organizations involved in supporting refugees and migrants by state agencies, especially by the EYP. The equation of NGOs involved in supporting refugees and migrants with external threats, espionage activities, terrorist organizations or organized crime cannot but infuriate us.
The report on the activities of the EYP is yet another attempt to demonize and devalue the work of those who attempt to defend human rights in our country. Treating immigration as a threat to the security of the country provides an alibi for further targeting and criminalizing the actions of individuals and organizations defending human rights, targeting migrants and refugees, dangerously fostering xenophobia and racism, and undermining the right of access to asylum, thus damaging the foundations of the post-war rule of law. Read more - Lire plus
| |
Somalis Whose Relatives Were Killed by U.S. Strikes 'Have Yet To Receive Acknowledgement' | |
|
Forever Wars 18/12/2023 - A coalition of Somali and international human rights groups have informed the Pentagon that even in cases of "civilian harm confirmed by the U.S. government," Somalis who have lost loved ones to U.S. military strikes have received no acknowledgement—let alone recompense—from Washington.
"Even as we have contacted [the U.S. government] in every way we know how, we have never been able to even start a process of getting justice. The U.S. has never even acknowledged our existence," said Abubakar Dahir Mohammad, surviving brother of Luul Dahir Mohammad and surviving uncle of Luul's 4-year old daughter Mariam Shiloh Muse, whom a U.S. drone strike killed on Apr. 1, 2018. His quote was given to the African publication The Continent. Twenty-four human rights groups from Somalia and abroad included his quote in a letter they delivered to the Pentagon on Monday morning. The letter, seeking redress, underscores the casual manner with which the U.S. leaves gaping emotional and material wounds in people caught in the maw of the open-ended War on Terror long after slaying their relatives. A copy was shared with FOREVER WARS.
Somalia is absent from pretty much any U.S. attention back home. There is no Discourse about Somalia, despite extensive, persistent U.S. intervention. With occasional bursts of interest—and important exceptions, like the journalism of Nick Turse—that's been the case since post-9/11 U.S. involvement in Somalia began in 2006. That involvement started with the (first) U.S.-backed Ethiopian invasion, which overthrew the Islamic Courts Union only to see its place taken by al-Shabab, whom the U.S. has fought ever since. I remember learning during the Trump administration that the House Armed Services Committee never did a study of the U.S. war in Somalia. In REIGN OF TERROR, I wrote that you can't even really call Somalia a forgotten war, since that implies it once had Americans' attention. Next year this war will be old enough to vote.
"The Department of Defense has at its disposal $3 million of annual funding provided by the U.S. Congress to make ex gratia payments to civilian victims and survivors of U.S. operations. We know of no cases in which those funds have been used in Somalia," write the human-rights groups, "despite the fact that in numerous cases confirmed by the United States, the identities of civilian victims and survivors are known and their contact information has been made available through their own reporting or through civil society representatives."
And it's of course not just the lack of reparations. It's the lack of basic U.S. acknowledgement to the families that the U.S. killed their relatives. That is a grimly consistent feature of the War on Terror. In 2016, I interviewed several relatives of people killed in U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen. The hurt they expressed concerned not only their dead loved ones, but the refusal of the Americans to even acknowledge what they did to them. The human-rights groups' letter notes that the military indifference is in violation of a stated August 2022 Pentagon policy to "acknowledge and respond to civilian harm when it occurs and to treat those who are harmed with dignity and respect." We'll see if the Pentagon even responds to this letter, let alone to Abubakar Dahir Mohammad and all the other Somalis whom it placed in his excruciating position. Read more - Lire plus
| |
In a Major Snub to Obama, Biden Is Sticking With Trump When It Comes to Cuba Policy | |
|
The Intercept 16/12/2023 - Putting my reporter hat back on, I have a new scoop related to the migration crisis: As one of his final foreign policy acts as president, in January 2021 Donald Trump added Cuba to the list of “State Sponsors of Terror,” reversing the Obama administration’s 2015 determination that the designation was no longer appropriate. The incoming Biden administration pledged to Congress it would start the process of overturning Trump’s redesignation, which by statute requires a six-month review process. Yet in a private briefing last week on Capitol Hill, State Department official Eric Jacobstein stunned members of Congress by telling them that the department has not even begun the review process, according to three sources in the room.
In the briefing, Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., inquired as to the status of the review. In order to remove Cuba from the list, statute requires at least a six-month review period. The news that the State Department had not even launched the review came as a surprise to McGovern and others in the room, and meant that the delisting couldn’t occur before mid-2024 at the earliest. McGovern pressed Jacobstein, noting that Congress had previously been assured that a review was underway. Jacobstein, according to sources in the room, said that perhaps there had been some misunderstanding around a different review of sanctions policies that State was undertaking.
“I don’t think they were prepared to respond to how upset members were,” said one Democrat, who was granted anonymity to discuss the private meeting. “They were furious.” Vedant Patel, a spokesperson for the State Department, declined to comment on a closed-door meeting in Congress, and additionally declined to directly confirm or deny whether a review was ongoing. “We’re not going to comment on the deliberative process as it relates to the status of any designation,” said Patel. “Any review of Cuba’s status on the SST list — should one ever happen — would be based on the law and criteria established by Congress.” McGovern, however, had already been told that such a review was ongoing, according to multiple sources who heard directly from McGovern about the State Department’s messaging.
Biden’s refusal to even review Cuba’s status marks a strong rebuke of one of the Obama administration’s signature foreign policy achievements, the move toward normalizing relations with Cuba. The Trump administration’s rationale for redesignating Cuba as a sponsor of terror relied heavily on the country having hosted representatives from FARC and ELN, two armed guerrilla movements designated by the U.S. as terror groups. But in October 2022, Colombian President Gustavo Petro, in a joint press conference with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, noted that Colombia itself, in cooperation with the Obama administration, had asked Cuba to host the FARC and ELN members as part of peace talks. The move by the Trump administration was “an injustice,” he said, and ought to be undone. “It is not us [Colombia] who must correct it, but it does need to be corrected,” added Petro, himself a onetime guerrilla.
“When it comes to Cuba,” Blinken said at the press conference, “and when it comes to the state sponsor of terrorism designation, we have clear laws, clear criteria, clear requirements, and we will continue as necessary to revisit those to see if Cuba continues to merit that designation.” Blinken’s public claim — “we will continue as necessary to revisit” the designation — coupled with private assurances from the State Department left members of Congress certain that a review was underway. Blinken was also asked about Cuba’s status in a hearing in March 2023 and said that Cuba had yet to meet the requirements to be removed from the list. “In both of these instances the Secretary was reiterating what we’ve said previously — should there be rescission of the SST status, it would need to be consistent with specific statutory criteria for rescinding a SST determination,” Patel said. The terror designation makes it difficult for Cubans to do international business, crushing an already fragile economy. The U.S. hard-line approach to Cuba has coincided with a surge in desperate migration, with Cubans now making up a substantial portion of the migrants arriving at the southern border. Nearly 425,000 Cubans have fled for the United States in fiscal years 2022 and 2023, shattering previous records. Instead of moving to stem the flow by focusing on root causes in Cuba, the Biden White House has been signaling support in recent days for Republican-backed border policies. Read more - Lire plus
| |
FTC Must Investigate Meta and X for Complicity with Government Surveillance | |
|
Brennan Center 12/12/2023 - When you created your Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter account, did you think you were signing up to have the government spy on you? That your personal information — who you are, what you say, what you do, your friends, and your political views — could be tapped by surveillance companies and sold to police, deportation agencies, and other local, state, and federal forces? In 2016, the ACLU of Northern California blew the whistle on how private surveillance vendors were using Facebook and Twitter to help police target Black Lives Matter activists. As a result of advocacy by the ACLU of Northern California, MediaJustice, and Color of Change, both Facebook and Twitter strengthened their anti-surveillance policies and cut off access to social media surveillance companies.
In the years that followed, both companies have repeatedly gone on record, as recently as 2021, to reassure the public that they do not give surveillance companies special access to users’ personal information. But are Meta and X keeping their promises? Documents uncovered in further investigations show that there are still strong causes for concern. That’s why the ACLU of Northern California, the Brennan Center, and the ACLU are calling on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether Meta and X have broken their anti-surveillance commitments. If they have, it could qualify as a deceptive business practice under Section 5 of the FTC Act. And it could also violate separate consent orders placed on the companies by the FTC.
The world of social media is very different than it was in 2016. Both Meta and X have been rocked by scandal and tumult (and they’ve also changed their names). On the technological side, the explosive growth of artificial intelligence has the potential to supercharge surveillance, posing serious dangers to the safety of immigrants, overpoliced Black and brown communities, activists, LGBTQ+ people, and those in need of abortions and reproductive care. It’s more important than ever that the FTC takes a hard look at whether Meta and X are actually following their policies and keeping their promises to the public. Here are three questions that should lead the agency’s investigation.
Can people trust the promises that Meta and X have made to protect them from government surveillance?
The strongest evidence that Meta and X aren’t following their own anti-surveillance policies comes from surveillance vendors themselves. Companies like Dataminr (an official “partner” of X), Babel Street, Skopenow, Media Sonar, and ShadowDragon publicly claim that they have access to data from Meta and/or X. Those companies sell their services, data, and products — which appear to operate at extraordinary scale — to police and other government agencies through contracts that can be extremely lucrative.
Investigations and public records requests and lawsuits by the ACLU of Northern California, the Brennan Center, and others have uncovered marketing materials, emails, training manuals, and contracts between surveillance companies and government agencies. These materials suggest that law enforcement agencies are getting deep access to social media companies’ stores of data about people as they go about their daily lives. Something’s not right. If these companies can really do what they advertise, the FTC needs to figure out how.
How are surveillance vendors accessing people’s personal social media information?
The scale and scope of social media surveillance products are frightening. They potentially give the government the power to compile and analyze many millions of social media posts and user activity, a mind-boggling amount of data. It’s unlikely that these surveillance systems could operate at this scale without Meta and X allowing some kind of special access to user data. The public deserves answers, and the FTC must investigate how surveillance vendors are still accessing user data.
Surveillance companies stand to make millions off government contracts. We know their clients include local and state police departments, the Department of Defense, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the Department of Homeland Security and its component agencies, Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. And as we describe in our letter to the FTC, we’ve seen the government use social media in ways that cause intolerable harm to communities already in harm’s way.
Do Meta and X have enough dedicated staff to enforce their policies and ensure that developers aren’t using their special access for surveillance?
There have been layoffs in “trust and safety” and policy programs at the social media companies, raising concerns about whether Meta and X have the necessary staff to enforce their anti-surveillance policies.
It’s not enough to rely on a posted policy alone to deter surveillance vendors. There must be robust implementation, auditing structures, and enforcement mechanisms to comply with these public commitments.
***
We call on the Federal Trade Commission to ensure that what Meta and X tell people publicly lines up with their actual practices. With all the evidence raising serious questions about Meta and X’s anti-surveillance commitments, the agency should act swiftly to ensure people’s privacy is being properly protected. Source
| |
UN travel surveillance system needs “pause and urgent review”, says Special Rapporteur | |
|
The Intercept 29/11/2023 - A UN Special Rapporteur has called for a pause to the roll-out of an UN-sponsored travel surveillance system, and for an urgent review to be initiated. The international exchange of travellers’ information amongst police and border forces is on the rise but access to remedies remains limited, leaving gaps in the protection of individual rights. Azerbaijan, a state that imprisons political opponents and that has been accused of committing genocide, is one of dozens of countries that have received UN assistance. [...]
The UN Countering Terrorist Travel programme, created in 2019, aims to assist member states in setting up API and PNR systems. To support the roll-out of those systems worldwide, the Netherlands donated its travel data analysis software, goTravel, to the UN, for distribution to willing member states.
The software makes it possible for states to: “…obtain passenger data from (airline) carriers and conduct targeted analysis as well as share the findings of their data assessment. Member States adopt the UN-owned and operated goTravel solution to enable the automated analysis of large data volumes on passengers on all inbound and outbound traffic and to remain in compliance with international human rights and privacy standards.”
Human rights out of sight
The Countering Terrorist Travel programme supposedly relies on an “all of UN approach,” but a position paper (pdf) published at the end of October by Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, who recently ended her term as the Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights while Countering Terrorism, says otherwise. “Two of the agencies most directly concerned with the rights of individuals in the border management context, namely the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (‘UNHCR’) and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (‘OHCHR’), were not identified as partners in the programme at its launch,” says the paper. This is far from the only problem highlighted by Professor Ní Aoláin, however – the position paper details a number of ways in which the export and establishment of travel surveillance systems around the world may violate human rights, and gives recommendations on the way forward. [...]
In her position paper, Ní Aoláin highlights that “there are a number of States with extremely concerning records of systematic human rights abuse” that have benefited from the Counter Terrorist Travel programme, and condemns “the provision of powerful data monitoring tools to regimes with histories of such violations.” This “either indicates that rigorous analysis of human rights concerns cannot have been conducted, or, if conducted, cannot have been afforded sufficient weight,” the paper argues.
Lack of access to remedies
While UN bodies are working to develop and deploy the technical and bureaucratic systems required for widespread travel surveillance and passenger profiling, there is no court or supervisory authority at the UN level that can deal with the protection of individual rights. Anyone seeking to contest a decision made on the basis of travel data will have to rely on remedies available at national level, but Ní Aoláin notes that individuals doing so: “…will commonly face considerable obstacles posed by, among other things: lack of legal representations (often exacerbated by ineligibility for legal aid due to foreign nationality), lack of awareness of the State’s administrative or legal system, language barriers, etc.” [...]
The former Special Rapporteur’s condemnation of the UN’s support for surveillance and profiling systems is explicit: “The CT Travel Programme’s API and PNR collection and sharing system was never designed with human rights in mind… [The UN is] placing immensely powerful tools in the hands of States which may misuse them, intentionally or inadvertently, to jeopardize human rights, without any evidence of sufficient prior vetting, and without any practical or legal recourse to prevent or sanction such misuse.”
The Countering Terrorist Travel Programme and UN provision of the goTravel software to member states “represents a profound human rights risk and a serious reputational risk for the UN itself,” says Ní Aoláin’s position paper. She says for the provision of the system “must be paused and an urgent review initiated.”
With her term in office over, and a new Special Rapporteur recently appointed, it remains to be seen whether they will continue to press UN bodies on the issue – and whether those bodies will take note of the critique. Read more - Lire plus
| |
France and six European states unite to authorise spying on journalists | |
|
Disclose 12/12/2023 - France, Italy, Finland, Greece, Cyprus, Malta, and Sweden aim to undermine the first European law aimed at protecting freedom and independence of media in Europe. According to documents obtained by Disclose, in partnership with Investigate Europe and Follow the Money, these seven countries actively advocate for authorizing surveillance of journalists in the name of “national security”.
The tug of war is coming to an end. For over a year, a bill designed to protect media freedom in Europe, the European Media Freedom Act, has been the subject of intense debates in Brussels and Strasbourg. Within this document aimed at ensuring the independence, freedom, and pluralism of the media, one article stands at the heart of tensions between the member states and the European Parliament: Article 4, concerning the protection of journalistic sources, considered as one of the “basic conditions for press freedom” by the European Court of Human Rights. Without this protection, “the vital public-watchdog role of the press as guardian of the public sphere may be undermined.”
Disclose, in partnership with the collective of journalists Investigate Europe and the media Follow the Money, has managed to penetrate the closed-door negotiations. Our investigation unveils the details of fifteen months of negotiations that could lead to a final text on December 15, 2023, after a third round of discussions between the EU Council, the Parliament, and the European Commission. These documents (summarised at the end of this article) reveal the repressive intentions of the French government against the press, actively supported by the far-right Italian government and the authorities of Finland, Cyprus, Greece, Malta, and Sweden.
To understand the ongoing wrestling, we must go back to September 16, 2022. At that time, the European Commission introduced a bill on media freedom. In its Article 4, the text prohibits the use of spyware against journalists and media except in case of ten types of “serious crimes investigations” (terrorism, rape, murder — see box at the end of the article). These technologies, enabling the interception of emails and secure messages, could also be used on a “case-by-case basis, on grounds of national security”.
This was inconceivable for France, which, in an internal document to the EU Council on October 21, 2022, obtained by Disclose and Investigate Europe, stated that it “refuses that issues related to national security would not be addressed within a derogation.” Elisabeth Borne’s government, represented by its cultural advisor, demanded the addition of an “explicit exclusion clause” to the prohibition of monitoring journalists. In other words, France wants to obstruct the work of the press when it deems it necessary in the name of national security. This demand eventually gained support from the silent majority of other member states.
On June 21, 2023, 25 out of 27 EU member states adopted a new version of the law at the Council of the European Union, and triggered outcry of 80 European media organizations and associations. While the text forbids forcing journalists to reveal their sources, conducting searches on them, or spying on their electronic devices, it expands the leeway for intelligence services: spyware could be deployed in investigations related to a list of twenty-two additional offenses punishable by 3 to 5 years of imprisonment. These offenses include sabotage, counterfeiting, corruption, or infringement of private property. Journalists working on these subjects and having relationships with sources targeted by such investigations could therefore be subjected to police surveillance.
Furthermore, the last sentence of the text introduces a very broad derogation: “This Article is without prejudice to the Member States’ responsibility for safeguarding national security”. In other words, surveillance would become legal if a Member State deems its national security threatened. “Any national security reason could be enough to pursue or monitor a journalist”, explains Christophe Bigot, a specialist in press law in France. Read more - Lire plus
| |
Pak court issues arrest warrants to over 100 activists of Imran Khan's party over May 9 violence | |
|
WION 05/01/2024 - A Pakistani anti-terrorism court on Friday issued arrest warrants to more than 100 activists of Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party for their alleged involvement in the attack on the ISI building in Punjab province during the anti-government protests.
On May 9, violent protests erupted after the arrest of Khan, the former prime minister and PTI party chief, by paramilitary Rangers from the premises of the Islamabad High Court in connection with an alleged corruption case. His party workers vandalised a dozen military installations, including the Jinnah House (Lahore Corps Commander House), Mianwali airbase and the ISI building in Faisalabad. The Army headquarters (GHQ) in Rawalpindi was also attacked by the mob for the first time.
"The Anti-Terrorism Court issued arrest warrants of over 100 PTI leaders and workers allegedly involved in the attack on Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) offices in Faisalabad city (some 130kms from Lahore) during riots on May 9, 2023," a court official told PTI here on Friday. The PTI leaders who are contesting next month's general elections from the Faisalabad district are also among those whose arrest warrants have been issued, he said. The wanted men of the PTI have reportedly been hiding since May. The Pakistan Army is already conducting the trial of 102 suspects involved in the attacks on military installations including the ISI building in Faisalabad during violent protests that erupted on May 9 across the country following the arrest of former prime minister and PTI supremo Khan.
PTI central spokesperson Raoof Hasan said that "every draconian measure" has been employed by the state to have the party decimated and Imran Khan deleted from people's memory. "This includes driving Khan out of office using the influence of pelf and power, registering over 180 fake and fraudulent cases against him from corruption to jeopardising national interests, arresting him and convicting him on one count with proceedings moving at an accelerated pace in others, and subjecting him to maltreatment and humiliation." Raoof further said such measures also include exerting pressure on the PTI leaders to leave him, incarcerating them for prolonged periods and thwarting their bail by re-arresting them in other cases, abducting and torturing others to change political loyalties, denying it the right to hold political rallies and depriving it of its election symbol.
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) has expressed deep concern over the deterioration in the state of human rights in the country. “The blatant manipulation of the electoral landscape has been witnessed in which one political party among others has been singled out for systematic dismemberment. The state's clampdown on dissent, whether on freedom of opinion, expression or assembly, has further constricted civic spaces in the country at a time when people must be allowed to express their will freely ahead of the national election next month,” the HRCP said. Currently over 10,000 PTI workers and leaders are languishing in jails in different parts of the country after May 9 events. Imran Khan is also detained at Adiala Jail Rawalpindi since August last in different cases. The PTI alleges that under the 'London Plan' PMLN supremo Nawaz Sharif will be made prime minister in the wake of the February 8, 2024 polls with the blessing of the military establishment and Khan and his party will be crushed. Source
Imran Khan is charged with compromising Pakistan’s secret communications, but a document leaked to The Intercept says that didn’t happen
| |
|
Jurist 01/01/2024 - The Indian Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on Sunday banned the separatist party Tehreek-e-Hurriayt (TeH) Jammu and Kashmir as an “unlawful association” under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 (UAPA) for five years. The ministry says the ban was imposed in response to TeH’s engagement in “fomenting terrorism” and disseminating “anti-India propaganda” in the region of Jammu and Kashmir.
TeH was founded by late separatist leaders Syed Shah Geelani and Mohammad Ashraf Sehrai in August 2004 after Geelani quit his former party, Jamaat-e-Islami Jammu and Kashmir, which was banned in 2019 by the Indian government. Geelani had been mostly kept under house arrest due to his hardline views following a period of unrest in 2010. Geelani was succeeded by Masarat Alam Bhat as the party’s leader. Sehari died in May 2021 while in police custody, and Geelani breathed his last under house arrest in September 2021.
The ban has been implemented on charges of “fueling secessionist activities” in the state of Jammu and Kashmir. MHA’s notification states that the leaders and members of the TeH have been involved in raising funds for perpetrating terrorism “through various sources[,] including Pakistan and its proxy organizations.” The notification claimed the faction’s activities have been detrimental to the integrity, sovereignty, and harmony of India. Based on these grounds, the government exercised its authority, as conferred by section 3 (1) of UAPA, to declare TeH an “unlawful association.”
UAPA empowers the government to designate organizations and individuals as terrorists based.
Announcing the decision Union Minister of Home Affairs Amit Shah said in a post on X:
The outfit is involved in forbidden activities to separate J&K from India and establish Islamic rule. The group is found spreading anti-India propaganda and continuing terror activities to fuel secessionism in J&K.
Under PM Narendra Modi, zero-tolerance policy against terrorism, any individual or organization found involved in anti-India activities will be thwarted forthwith.
On December 27, MHA imposed a similar ban on the Masarat Alam faction of the Jammu and Kashmir Muslim League (MLJK-MA) for five years for its “anti-national and secessionist activities” in Jammu and Kashmir. Source
| |
Tunisian journalist serving five-year sentence subjected to appalling conditions in prison | |
|
RSF 20/12/2023 - Reporters Without Borders (RSF) denounces appalling conditions in which a Tunisian journalist is being made to serve a five-year prison sentence for refusing to reveal his sources for a terrorism story. He must be released, RSF says.
Radio journalist Khalifa Guesmi has been mistreated since his arrest on 3 September to begin serving the sentence, and those who have seen him in prison describe him as tired, weak and demoralised. A reporter for privately-owned radio Mosaïque FM and previously a reporter for the daily newspaper Al Chourouk and the TV channels Attessia TV and Carthage+, Guesmi distinguished himself by his investigative coverage of security issues. But now he is serving the longest sentence ever passed on a journalist in Tunisia and has come to symbolise the suppression of media freedom in his country.
The 48-year-old journalist has been mistreated ever since being taken to Mornaguia prison, in a southwestern suburb of the capital, Tunis, on 3 September to serve his sentence, RSF has learned. He is verbally attacked by guards, he is forced to share his bed with two or three other detainees, he is held in cells containing dozens of detainees.He is also constantly subjected to other, insidious forms of abuses such as being made to wait for hours to see his wife at her weekly visit. At a press conference organised for Human Rights Day on 10 December, his wife said: “Khalifa is a real journalist who just did his job according to the principles of journalism. He should not be in prison. He should be with his family and at his workplace.” Read more - Lire plus
Al Jazeera journalist Samir Sassi released in Tunis two days after arrest
| |
Philippines: Groups denounce continued attacks vs activists, 'drug war' killings under Marcos | |
|
PhilStar 11/12/2023 - Human rights groups condemned Sunday the continued attacks against advocates and government critics and the killings related to the “war on drugs” under the administration of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.
“The Philippines continues to be a killing ground for perceived political dissidents, community organizers, indigenous people, rights advocates, and alleged drug suspects,” the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines (ICHRP) said in a statement released on the 75th commemoration of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
ICHRP and local watchdog Karapatan stressed that the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020, the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), the police, and the military continue to operate as mechanisms to suppress dissent, derail development and humanitarian work, and violate the rights of Filipinos.
According to Karapatan, there have been 87 alleged extrajudicial killings under Marcos’ counter-insurgency campaign since the start of his term in July 2022. The group has also documented 12 victims of enforced disappearances, 316 victims of illegal and arbitrary arrests, 22,391 victims of bombing, 33,769 victims of indiscriminate firing, 24,670 victims of forced evacuation, 552 victims of forced surrender, and 1,609,496 victimes of threats, harassment and intimidation, including red-tagging. [...]
ICHRP called on the Philippines to rejoin the International Criminal Court and allow it to conduct a probe into alleged crimes against humanity by the Duterte government.
Lawmakers have filed resolutions urging the government to cooperate with The Hague-based court’s investigation, and Marcos said last month that his administration was studying the return of the Philippines to the ICC.
Peace talks
The groups nonethless welcomed the decision to restart peace negotiations between the government and communist rebels after a six-year hiatus. Duterte terminated the talks in 2017. “ICHRP urges the parties to move on and continue their previous work towards a Compressive Agreement on Social and Economic Reforms to be able to address the roots of the armed conflict,” the rights coalition said.
“While we fight for justice, we renew our commitment to the struggle for a just and lasting peace by insisting that previous agreements on human rights and IHL be upheld and that the root causes of the armed conflict be addressed. The GRP-NDFP peacetalks presents this opportunity for the majority of disadvantaged Filipinos,” Karapatan said. Read more - Lire plus
Explainer: How new Supreme Court rules can remedy abuses of anti-terror law
| |
Hong Kong offers awards for arrests of activists abroad for breaching national security law | |
|
AP 14/12/2023 - Hong Kong police accused five overseas-based activists of violating a harsh national security law imposed by Beijing and offered rewards of 1 million Hong Kong dollars ($128,000) on Thursday for information leading to each of their arrests.
The bounties further intensify the Hong Kong government’s crackdown on dissidents following anti-government protests in 2019. Many leading pro-democracy activists were arrested, silenced or forced into self-exile after the introduction of the security law in 2020, in a drastic erosion of the freedoms promised to the former British colony when it returned to China in 1997.
Arrest warrants were issued for Johnny Fok and Tony Choi, who host a YouTube channel focusing on current affairs, and pro-democracy activists Simon Cheng, Hui Wing-ting and Joey Siu. Police refused to say anything about their whereabouts, but their social media profiles and earlier media reports indicate they have moved to the United States and Britain. In July, Hong Kong warned eight other activists who now live abroad that they would be pursued for life with bounties put on them. It was the first such use of bounties under the security law, and the authorities’ announcement drew criticism from Western governments.
Steve Li, chief superintendent of the police national security department, said authorities have received about 500 pieces of information about the eight since those bounties were announced. He said some of the information was valuable but that no arrests have been made. Li said the five activists newly added to the wanted list had committed various offenses including colluding with foreign forces and incitement to secession. “They all betrayed their own country and betrayed Hong Kong,” he said at a news conference. “After they fled overseas, they continued to engage in activities endangering national security.” Li said authorities will try their best to cut financial support to the wanted activists.
Police arrested four other people on Wednesday on suspicion of funding former pro-democracy lawmakers Nathan Law and Ted Hui — two of the eight activists targeted by the police in July — through an “online subscription and crowdfunding platform.” The four were alleged to have provided financial support to others committing secession. The amounts involved ranged from 10,000 to 120,000 Hong Kong dollars ($1,280 to $15,400).
Cheng wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, that he embraced the charges. “Being hunted by China (Hong Kong)’s secret police, under a one-million-dollar bounty, is a lifelong honor,” he wrote. Siu said on X that “I will never back down” and would not be silenced. Hui insisted on X that her advocacy for democracy and freedom would not stop. Sarah Brooks, Amnesty International’s deputy regional director for Greater China, said the tactic of placing bounties on activists appeared to be emerging as a method of choice to silence dissent. Brooks called for authorities to withdraw them. Read more - Lire plus
Jimmy Lai pleads not guilty to national security, sedition charges
A Hong Kong pro-independence activist seeks asylum in the UK after serving time over security law
| |
Canada Must Oppose Genocide in Gaza and Defend Free Expression at Home | |
The UN Genocide Convention – which Canada has ratified – stipulates that “states that have the capacity to influence others have a duty to employ all means reasonably available to them to prevent genocide.” Canada therefore has the obligation to not only call for a permanent and immediate ceasefire, but to immediately halt any arm sales, transfers and military aid to Israel.
| |
Canada: Remove the national security exemptions from Bill C-27! | |
Bill C-27, the Digital Charter Implementation Act, has been introduced by the federal government with the promise that it would enhance privacy protections, adequately regulate artificial intelligence (AI) and protect human rights. The bill, however, is not up to the task. Please join us in denouncing the dangerous national security related exemptions in the bill. | |
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! | |
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.
| |
20 years of fighting deportation to torture: Justice for Mohamed Harkat Now! | |
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 | |
July to December 2023 - Juillet à décembre 2023 | |
|
Thanks to your support, in the second half of 2023, we were able to work on the following issues or with the following entities:
- Bill C-20, Public Complaints and Review Commission Act
- Bill C-26, An Act respecting cybersecurity 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
- Security certificates & inadmissibility
- Combatting Islamophobia
- National Security and Intelligence Review Agency (NSIRA)
- Prejudiced audits of Muslim charities
- Federal anti-terrorist financing consultation
- Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
- Canada’s 4th Universal Periodic Review
- Civil Society Coalition on Human Rights and Counter-terrorism
- UN Counter-terrorism Executive Directorate (CTED) Canada assessment
- UN Special Rapporteur on counter-terrorism and human rights global study on counter-terrorism 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 2024!
Your support, will allow us to continue our work on these issues and much more in the next year:
- 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 accountability and transparency 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!
| |
Les opinions exprimées ne reflètent pas nécessairement les positions de la CSILC - The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the positions of ICLMG. | |
|
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 $10 or more per month (and wanted to be listed) directly in the News Digest. Without all of you, our work wouldn't be possible!
James Deutsch
Bill Ewanick
Kevin Malseed
Brian Murphy
Colin Stuart
Bob Thomson
James Turk
John & Rosemary Williams
Jo Wood
The late Bob Stevenson
Nous tenons à remercier nos organisations membres ainsi que les centaines de personnes qui ont soutenu notre travail à travers les années, y compris sur Patreon! En récompense, nous nommons ci-dessus nos mécènes qui donnent 10$ ou plus par mois et voulaient être mentionné.es directement dans la Revue de l'actualité. Sans vous tous et toutes, notre travail ne serait pas possible!
Merci!
| | | | |
