International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group
Coalition pour la surveillance internationale des libertés civiles
July 25, 2024 - 25 juillet 2024
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The News Digest will be back later in August - La Revue de l'actualité sera de retour plus tard en août | |
Groups representing minorities say they're alarmed by foreign interference legislation |
CBC News 23/07/2024 - Groups representing minority communities are warning that a recently introduced law giving Canada's intelligence agency and the federal government new powers to counter foreign interference is open to abuse. Bill C-70 received royal assent on June 20.
The law introduces new criminal provisions against "deceptive or surreptitious acts" done "for the benefit of or in association with, a foreign entity," to prejudice Canadian interests or with the "intent to influence ... the exercise of a democratic right in Canada." It also allows for broader sharing of sensitive information among national security agencies, and establishes a foreign influence transparency registry.
C-70 amends the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) to allow the Immigration Minister to ask the courts for the detention and removal of a permanent resident or other non-Canadian citizen if their actions are deemed injurious to "international relations." IRPA previously provided the minister with that same authority, but only in cases where someone was inadmissible to Canada on grounds of security, human or international rights violations, or criminality. That section is alarming the National Council of Canadian Muslims and the World Sikh Organization of Canada. Nusaiba Al-Azem, director of legal affairs at the NCCM, told CBC News the organization is troubled by "the vagueness of the international relations piece."
The WSO's legal counsel, Balpreet Singh, agreed. "International relations is the reason that four decades of Indian interference targeting Sikhs in Canada has gone completely unknown in the mainstream," he said. "Canada has on many occasions ignored Indian operations targeting Sikhs in order to preserve trade relations and trade talks with India. That's really been at the expense of the Sikh community."
In a petition that is still online, the NCCM warned that the "international relations" provision could lead to the expulsion of "Ukrainian dissidents, Uyghur activists, or Palestinian citizens." C-70 also amends the Security of Information Act, which deals with crimes against national security. The previous version of the law gave authorities such as the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) the ability to charge individuals who use "threat, accusation, menace or violence" in association with a "foreign entity or terrorist group" to harm Canadian interests, with penalties ranging up to life imprisonment.
The new law adds "intimidation" to the list of potential misdeeds. The NCCM and WSO said the law doesn't define "intimidation" — a lapse the WSO says "raises concerns about potential misuse against activists." "That could have real concerns for, for example, civil liberties groups who are often levied with charges that their protest behaviours may amount to intimidation," said Al-Azem. Read more - Lire plus
Mark Johnson: On foreign interference, we need to regain perspective
Ronny Tong: Canada’s vague and harsh new security law reflects contentious geopolitics
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LNG is an intelligence operation | |
TC Energy has spies, soldiers, even a former CIA director pushing pipelines and fracking in B.C. But they’re not invincible. | |
Dogwood BC 10/07/2024 - Facing “hostile complex threats” on foreign soil, a team of American spies deployed as a “force multiplier” to help TC Energy’s 16 local lobbyists achieve victory.
No, it’s not a Tom Clancy novel about special forces soldiers in some faraway jungle or desert. This covert operation, first revealed by The Narwhal, took place in sleepy Victoria, B.C.
“In the next few years we’ll see savings of hundreds of millions of dollars in compliance costs,” said Edward Burrier, an ex-White House staffer turned pipeline executive, on a leaked tape.
He’s talking about a high-stakes push by TC Energy’s “Geopolitical Intelligence and Research” team to protect pipelines from a new B.C. government policy to reduce emissions. “Successful shots fired” is how Burrier describes the Washington, D.C.-based team’s efforts to weaken regulations at both the federal and provincial level in Canada. If it sounds like a war, that’s because to them it is. “We’re on the battlefield trying to work every day to protect the TC tower,” said Julia Nesheiwat, former Homeland Security Advisor to President Donald Trump, in the same recording.
TC Energy is hiring special agents, intelligence officers and soldiers to help expand oil and gas infrastructure, and protect its profits, in the face of growing opposition. They claim to have shaped the public’s perception of fracking, swayed government regulators, put words in politicians’ mouths, and won billions in tax exemptions for their shareholders. Their latest mission? To convince the Nisga’a Nation to buy the risky Prince Rupert Gas Transmission pipeline, before the expiry of a key project certificate makes it worthless.
Money is ammunition
Nesheiwat and her fellow TC Energy executive Michael Evanoff built their careers in the ‘War on Terror’. Nesheiwat was a military intelligence officer after 9/11. Evanoff led a team of 75 agents charged with protecting Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during the U.S. war on Iraq. Both would have been steeped in the counterinsurgency doctrine developed at that time by U.S. general David Petraeus. Petraeus later served as Director of the CIA before joining Wall Street as head of intelligence for private equity firm KKR.
KKR specializes in buying troubled assets – for example, pipelines opposed by Indigenous communities in Mexico or Canada – and finding ways to make them profitable. In 2019 KKR used pension funds to buy a majority stake in TC Energy’s troubled Coastal GasLink pipeline project, then proceeded to “de-risk” it using a textbook counterinsurgency campaign. You can learn more about the tactics used by Petraeus’s private mercenaries against Indigenous land defenders in this panel from last year’s Peace and Unity Summit.
One of Petraeus’s catchphrases from Iraq and Afghanistan was “money is ammunition”. In other words, military objectives can be achieved by buying off the right people, rather than shooting them. He calls this “reconciliation”. TC Energy, guided by high-level veterans of U.S. foreign policy, has discovered that the same principles apply to forcing pipelines through Indigenous lands in a place like British Columbia.
Nice democracy you have there
Oil industry executives know that time is running out for fossil fuels. So the battle to expand infrastructure, and lock in profits, is an urgent one. TC Energy’s biggest problem is democracy: a growing majority of people in B.C. want our leaders to invest in renewable energy, instead of fracking and LNG projects that make climate disasters worse.
So the company deploys spies and soldiers, lobbyists and lawyers to demonize its opponents, warp the public debate and twist the arms of decision makers at all levels of government, including First Nations.
And they’re clearly not worried about playing fair or following the rules.
Previous reporting by The Narwhal showed Liam Iliffe, a former BC NDP chief of staff hired by TC Energy, laughing about all the ways he dodged B.C.’s lobbying laws. TC Energy is the company that knowingly bulldozed Wet’suwet’en archeological sites, erasing a part of their history forever. Indigenous pipeline monitors risked arrest to reveal systemic violations of fisheries laws and environmental permit conditions by Coastal GasLink crews. TC Energy was fined repeatedly, including for lying to regulators.
When fed-up Wet’suwet’en chiefs evicted the company from their lands, TC Energy pressured the RCMP for arrests. During one police raid, a TC Energy lawyer told RCMP commanders they didn’t need a warrant to breach a cabin door, which they did with an axe and a chainsaw.
Meanwhile TC Energy is working with Canada’s spy agency to loosen federal laws, to allow CSIS to spy on Canadian citizens and share that intelligence directly with corporations. Dogwood is one of the groups challenging this collusion between CSIS and the oil industry in court. The influence of TC Energy over our government regulators, police, spies, media and lawmakers is disturbing – but there may still be time to expel them from the halls of power in B.C. Read more - Lire plus
EDC loans up to $200 million to Coastal GasLink after hearing Wet’suwet’en speak about RCMP C-IRG violence
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Universities, police spread ‘jaw-dropping’ misinformation about encampments | |
The Breach 19/07/2024 - As Katy Anderson drove home from campus that night, she kept checking over her shoulder. Each time she made a turn—six times in total, she remembers counting—two police vans trailing behind her turned as well.
“They followed me all the way until I reached my parking lot at the back alley of my apartment building,” said Anderson, a journalist and PhD student at the University of Calgary.
Earlier that night, she was among several students and community members injured in a police crackdown that, at the behest of the University of Calgary, dismantled a pro-Palestine encampment set up the same day on the campus.
Anderson suffered a concussion, having been hit over the head with police shields, as well as being kicked, pepper sprayed, and stunned by a flash bang grenade that landed next to her. The day after, U of Calgary president Ed McCauley wrote in a statement that “the police report no injuries.”
Three weeks later, Calgary Police Chief Mark Neufeld told a police commission hearing that he still couldn’t answer questions about injuries that night. The Alberta Serious Incident Response Team—made up of police and “civilian investigators”—was investigating, he said, whether “social media accounts and reporting of serious injury…are, in fact, accurate.”
While the raid in Calgary was one of the most dramatic, the whirlwind of unfounded allegations and police violence that student protestors experienced there played out similarly across the country. It was part of a pattern in responses to encampments, according to interviews The Breach conducted with more than 20 students and organizers from six pro-Palestine encampments.
At universities in Calgary, Edmonton, and York, police did what universities asked of them right away, dismantling encampments on the very first day. At other universities where police didn’t want to step in without a court injunction, universities deployed campus security and hired private security guards to engage in surveillance, in some cases long before encampments sprung up.
According to recordings and documents obtained by The Breach, presidents at universities of McGill and Victoria made false claims about student actions and spread misinformation about violence that students were not responsible for. In another case, a professor at University of Toronto conferred with police after a student made a short presentation about the Israeli massacre of Palestinians in class. In public statements that were frequently amplified by the media, university presidents accused encampments of being unsafe spaces and spreading hatred. But in spite of the heightened surveillance, administrators from Victoria to Toronto have still shared no evidence of their public claims. Read more - Lire plus
NEW Ottawa protest: End the Genocide! Sat July 27 at 2PM
NEW Canada Must Endorse the Latest ICJ Ruling on Occupied Palestinian Territory
Universities, peaceful encampment and the law of trespass: University of Toronto (Governing Council) v. Doe et al.
Cops Arrested Over 3,500 Pro-Gaza Campus Protesters, New Data Shows
USA: Free speech on campus needs to be protected, not attacked, say UN experts
Not Welcome: Jewish & Palestinian Activists Protest Netanyahu’s Address to Congress, 400 Arrested
Draft Israeli law to limit academic speech labelled ‘McCarthyite’
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Feds were warned about setting ‘significant precedent’ with Ukraine visa program | |
The Toronto Star 23/07/2024 - Federal immigration officials warned the government it risked undermining the temporary immigration system with the design of the emergency visa program for war-displaced Ukrainians, newly released court documents show. Immigration Department staff raised the concern in a memo to Sean Fraser, immigration minister at the time, shortly after the program was announced. The memos outline the design of the Ukraine visa program, which allowed an unlimited number of Ukrainians and their family members to come to Canada to wait out the war.
The policy also waived the requirement for fleeing Ukrainians to promise to leave when their visa expires, against the advice of department staff. “Waiving the need for a client to establish temporary intent would set a significant precedent that is not recommended, given that it would undermine a foundational component of the (temporary resident) legal framework,” staff said in the memo to Fraser, which was signed March 14, 2022. Staff cautioned that waiving the requirement — the foundation of the temporary resident program — would set an “expectation that it could be done for other populations, not only those affected by conflict.”
The documents were disclosed as part of a proposed lawsuit against the federal government by three Afghan Canadians, who allege Canada discriminated against Afghan refugees by treating them differently than it did Ukrainians fleeing the Russian invasion. The lawsuit hasn’t yet been certified by the court.
“The government knew that what they were doing was unfair,” said Nicholas Pope, one of the lawyers representing the Afghan Canadians. “That’s just what we’re arguing in this case. That it’s unfair, it’s discriminatory, and there’s not a good reason why protections shouldn’t be applied to people who aren’t from Europe.” The lawsuit was filed by Canadians who served as language and culture advisers to the Canadian government and NATO during the war in Afghanistan, but haven’t been allowed to bring family members in Afghanistan to safety.
Canada has approved some 962,600 emergency visas for Ukrainians since the 2022 Russian invasion, which allow people fleeing the conflict to work and study while the war rages. The program was generally well received in Canada, where people opened their homes to Ukrainians and donated clothes, furniture and other essentials to help them settle during their stay. Roughly 298,000 actually made the trip to Canada, though it’s unclear how many have stayed, and how many have since applied for permanent residency.
Two full pages of legal considerations outlined by the department were blacked out in the documents provided to the court. Fraser ultimately agreed with the department’s recommendation not to publish the policy publicly, given the “unprecedented and exceptional nature” of the approach. Pope seized on that point Tuesday. “Why would you not publish a policy if you’re proud of it, and you think that it’s fair, and you think that it’s just and you think that it’s Charter compliant?” he asked. “I think they really understood the problematic nature of this.”
The offices of Fraser, now housing minister, and the current immigration minister, Marc Miller, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The government has emphasized that the Ukrainian program is intended to be temporary, and has encouraged those without family ties to Canada to apply for permanent residency through traditional means if they hope to stay. Since Fraser announced the visa program, the government has faced accusations of unfairly limiting temporary refuge to people attempting to flee conflicts in Sudan and the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Read more - Lire plus
Canada’s response to Sudanese humanitarian crisis reflects systemic racism
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The spy who kept notes: Pulling back the Cold War curtain on Canada’s ignominious history of anti-communism | |
Canadian Dimension 24/07/2024 - Frank Hadesbeck tried and failed to write his life story for years, yet none of his attempts came close to conveying his experience in pivotal events of the 20th century, from the Spanish Civil War to the Cold War. Hadesbeck was no Dashiell Hammett, though his life, the subject of Dennis Gruending’s new biography, is almost a mirror-image of Hammett’s, the celebrated mid-century American writer of hardboiled detective fiction and Hollywood screenplays (The Thin Man, The Maltese Falcon).
Whereas Hammett’s experience working as a Pinkerton detective in San Francisco in the 1930s supplied rich material for his books and scripts, his evolving sympathies with the trade unionists and other subjects of his surveillance brought him to the attention of US Senator Joseph McCarthy’s House Un-American Committee, which censored his writing and landed him in prison in 1951. Hadesbeck, by contrast, fought alongside communists in the Spanish Civil War and on his return to western Canada was enlisted by the RCMP to spy on them. Only his RCMP handlers knew him as “S.A. 810,” or “Secret Agent 810” when he joined the Alberta and then Saskatchewan Communist parties to snoop and trade in party documents, especially membership lists of names and addresses, and to track members, associates, and fellow travellers for nearly 40 years. He kept tabs on, among other things, those involved in the formation of Medicare in Saskatchewan, viewed initially as a “communist plot.” Against all RCMP norms and injunctions to the contrary, Hadesbeck kept detailed notes.
How the notes came into Gruending’s hands, described in the preface, is a story almost as riveting as Hadesbeck’s spying in the unlikely landscapes of the southern prairies and the foothills of Alberta. Gruending’s reputation rests chiefly on several previous books, among them biographies of more respectable figures like former Supreme Court Justice Emmett Hall, who shaped Medicare as a national program, and Allan Blakeney, a civil servant in the Tommy Douglas Saskatchewan CCF government and then NDP premier from 1971 to 1982. In taking on the life of Hadesbeck, Gruending has an entirely different kind of subject on his hands, a shady and conflicted character who informed on the very communities that produced Hall, Blakeney, and Gruending himself, briefly a Saskatchewan NDP Member of Parliament in 1999-2000. Perhaps most sensationally, Hadesbeck compiled “Watch Out” lists of communists and associates and their addresses to be monitored by the RCMP for potential unlawful activity, the more readily to be rounded up without warrants and on short notice in the event the Cold War became a hot one, as it did at the outbreak of the Second World War when over 100 Communist Party members were interned across Canada. [...]
Gruending overcomes his own ambivalence about Hadesbeck’s opportunism and dishonesty by using the domestic spy’s story to broach another: the story of how national security threats are calculated and miscalculated, then and now. In among his research and Hadesbeck’s notes, Gruending weaves brief but critical accounts of the historical context, including, notably, the Indigenous context, with the effect of revealing suggestive linkages, or at least intersections, with the founding myths of Medicare and the RCMP. [...] Gruending is especially strong on the apparently seamless shift in national security interest from communists and communism in Hadesbeck’s time to its current focus on Indigenous and environmental activists opposed to practises of resource extraction, particularly the building of oil pipelines and other ‘critical’ infrastructure. [...]
As Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler might have written it, in a crumpled, trench-coated, world-weary voice-over at the end of a convoluted tale, it is perhaps to Hadesbeck’s credit that he couldn’t write the story himself. He couldn’t take sides in telling the story of how he played both sides—that double-voicing is the work of novels, which in fact he attempted but failed to write. We can commend his writing and preservation of the notes, however, and Gruending for putting them to work illuminating Hadesbeck’s strange life and the many otherwise unknowable episodes of recent history in which he played a part. The notes open a view of the RCMP and, by extension, other security agencies now mandated to protect Canada from threat, as possibly susceptible to conflicts of interest as profound as those that kept Hadesbeck from writing his story. As Gruending puts it, whose side are they on? Are they on the side of maintaining the status quo only, as Hadesbeck figured out was the case with the RCMP he worked for? And if so, how can national security attention be re-directed towards what truly threatens us? Climate change and barriers to the free access to information are two threats cited by Gruending that are more immediate and menacing than Soviet-style communism in the southern prairies ever was. Read more - Lire plus
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Anti-Terrorism Laws Are Being Used Against Environmentalists | |
Foreign Policy 15/07/2024 - Eufemia Cullamat was inspired to join the Philippine Congress after three people were killed in 2015 while protesting mining in her hometown of Lianga, on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao. Instead of finding justice, she’s now stuck in Manila, barred from returning home.
In 2020, Cullamat was among a group of opposition lawmakers who lodged a petition objecting to the country’s controversial anti-terrorism law. Then, in 2021, she and other progressive representatives questioned a planned increase in funding for the Philippines’s anti-communist task force, which has used the country’s expanded definition of terrorism to label activists as communists, a dangerous practice called “red-tagging.”
The next day, Cullamat said, that same task force pressured leaders in Lianga to declare her “persona non grata,” a nonbinding yet dangerous declaration that she is unwelcome in her community, meaning she has been labeled a communist and cannot return home for fear of facing persecution. She has been stranded in Manila ever since.
“My mind is still with my community. I still keep on thinking of them,” said Cullamat, now a spokesperson for the Sandugo Alliance, an Indigenous movement. “I can’t do my work with them anymore.”
When the anti-terrorism bill was still being debated, colleagues who supported its passage promised Cullamat that it was not meant to target progressive groups—or even communist groups themselves—and would not affect activists or ideological opponents of the government. Yet that’s exactly what it has done. The law has thus far been used not to capture terrorists but to arrest farmers.
Calling activists terrorists is common in the Philippines and in much of the global south. Former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte made such accusations by the hundreds against environmental and Indigenous rights defenders, including Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, then the U.N. special rapporteur on Indigenous rights.
But the anti-terrorism law has given a newfound legal bite to these accusations and one that could serve as a disturbing model for other states. For starters, calling people terrorists has an immediate rhetorical impact. “You can’t say you’re pro-terror. It’s a word that can only mean a negative thing,” said Dan Berger, a historian of social movements and the carceral state.
Last March, Michel Forst, the U.N. special rapporteur on environmental defenders, cautioned the French government after Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin labeled climate protesters “eco-terrorists.” Months later, in June, Darmanin issued a decree outlawing the climate group Earth Uprising, and French police arrested 18 of its members after several violent clashes.
Germany and the United Kingdom have also started surveilling and arresting activists using harsher laws. German police conducted nationwide raids on the direct action group Last Generation in May 2023, and Metropolitan Police arrested dozens of Just Stop Oil protesters in London immediately after the country enacted new anti-protest laws in October.
In the United States, dozens of people involved in protesting the construction of a police training campus in Atlanta have been indicted for allegedly violating the state of Georgia’s anti-racketeering law, which was originally designed to fight organized crime. Five people also face domestic terrorism charges. And in 2017, the Intercept reported that U.S. authorities worked with a private firm to use counterinsurgency tactics, such as surveillance and intimidation, against opponents of the Dakota Access Pipeline.
The recent use of anti-terrorism laws has “renovated and reinvigorated” an existing pattern of targeting radical opposition in the United States, Berger said, passing through eras including McCarthyism in the 1950s and the Black Panthers of the 1970s and up to the surveillance and arrests of environmental activists in the 2000s.
Some scholars, Berger included, question the utility of anti-terrorism laws in the first place; they “often make illegal things that are already illegal,” he said, and open the doors wide to abuse. Perhaps as a result, governments have found them useful in other ways. Under Duterte’s successor, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the existing practice of red-tagging political opponents has become far more methodical.
After the anti-terrorism law was passed, the country’s Anti-Terrorism Council (ATC) declared that the Philippine Communist Party and its armed guerrilla unit, the New People’s Army, were terrorist groups, despite sponsors earlier assuring Cullamat that there were “measures and safety nets” to avoid abuse against activists along with those two groups, she said.
For more than 50 years, communist rebels have sought to overthrow the Philippine government in an armed rebellion. But the authorities have also used the rebellion as an excuse: People from sympathizers to unrelated progressives are often thrust under the same umbrella and subject to legal persecution as supposed terrorists. This gives authorities a wider selection of tools with which to harass activists. For instance, they can be branded communists and exiled from their own communities, as Cullamat was while still in Congress.
The ATC can also designate citizens as “terrorist individuals,” as it did last June to four leaders of the environmental and Indigenous rights group Cordillera Peoples Alliance. The four had faced terrorism charges until just one month earlier, when a court threw the charges out. But the new designation has allowed authorities to keep the organization from functioning, and scare away its members, without filing criminal charges.
“The ATC is not a court, but it’s making court decisions,” said Windel Bolinget, one of the four leaders. Their bank accounts were frozen the day after the council’s designation, he said, cutting off access to foreign donors and forcing them to cancel some ongoing programs. The United Nations has expressed concern over the situation, Bolinget said, and local officials have passed resolutions supporting the Cordillera Peoples Alliance. But now that they’ve been labeled as terrorists, they can be detained indefinitely, “and there’s no way to challenge it,” he said. “If this goes badly, it opens the floodgates.”
Cullamat, who left Congress in 2022 after a three-year term, feels that the anti-terrorism law has only emboldened the state and private mining and logging firms in her homeland. In 2021, six years after the killings that inspired her to join politics, three Indigenous people, including a 12-year-old, were killed in Lianga by the military, which claimed they were members of the New People’s Army. “Our way of living has changed,” she said. Villagers who practiced sustainable agriculture have been displaced by illegal loggers. “People are afraid to protest,” she added. “It’s saddening." Source
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Natasha Lennard: The Only Kind of “Political Violence” All U.S. Politicians Oppose | |
The Intercept 14/07/2024 - A bipartisan sampling of the world’s greatest perpetrators and enablers of political violence has rushed to condemn political violence following the shooting attempt on former President Donald Trump on Saturday.
Politicians swiftly coalesced around the language of “political violence,” rather than terrorism, to describe the assassination attempt, carried out by Thomas Matthew Crooks, who was shot dead at the Western Pennsylvania rally. Taken together, the outpourings of condemnations betray a clear agreement on what constitutes political violence, and in whose hands the monopoly on violence should remain.
“The idea that there’s political violence … in America like this, is just unheard of, it’s just not appropriate,” said President Joe Biden, the backer of Israel’s genocidal war against Palestine, with a death toll that researchers believe could reach 186,000 Palestinians. Biden’s narrower point was correct, though: Deadly attacks on the American ruling class are vanishingly rare these days. Political violence that is not “like this” — the political violence of organized abandonment, poverty, militarized borders, police brutality, incarceration, and deportation — is commonplace.
“Everybody must condemn it,” Biden said of the assassination attempt. And condemn it, most everyone in the Democratic political establishment has: “Political violence is absolutely unacceptable,” wrote Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., on X. “There is absolutely no place for political violence in our democracy,” tweeted former President Barack Obama, who oversaw war efforts and military strikes against Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan with massive civilian death tolls; Obama added that we should “use this moment to recommit ourselves to civility and respect in our politics.” “There is no place for political violence, including the horrific incident we just witnessed in Pennsylvania,” wrote Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.
The chorus of condemnation was predictable and not in itself a problem: There’s nothing wrong with desiring a world without stochastic assassination attempts, even against political opponents. But when you have Israel’s minister of foreign affairs, Israel Katz of the fascistic ruling Likud Party, tweeting, “Violence can never ever be part of politics,” the very concept of “political violence” is evacuated of meaning.
The problem is not so much one of hypocrisy or insincerity — vices so common in politics that they hardly merit mention. The issue, rather, is what picture of “political violence” this messaging serves: To say that “political violence” has “no place” in a society organized by political violence at home and abroad is to acquiesce to the normalization of that violence, so long as it is state and capitalist monopolized.
As author Ben Ehrenreich noted on X, “There is no place for political violence against rich, white men. It is antithetical to everything America stands for.”
Trump and his Republican Party will no doubt remain committed to a political imaginary of apocalyptic race war and paranoid tribalism, which the assassination attempt will likely only feed. Democrats are welcome to perform civility toward the man who has consistently called for their violent overthrow, but they cannot help themselves to the pretense that their well wishes to Trump actually constitute calls for an end to political violence.
Democratic leaders will call for civility and continue to fill the coffers of police departments nationwide, while sending billions of condition-free dollars and bombs to Israel. Within the U.S., these condemnations of political violence now set the scene for even greater violent repression and policing of protest movements and dissent. Read more - Lire plus
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‘Terrorist Organization’ – Israeli Knesset Passes First Reading of Bills to Ban UNRWA | |
The Palestine Chronicle 23/07/2024 - The Israeli parliament has passed the first reading of three bills aimed at shutting down the UN Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) as well as designating it “a terrorist organization.”
The first bill, which would prohibit UNRWA from operating any mission, providing any service or conducting any activity on Israeli territory, was passed by 58-9 votes, The Times of Israel reported on Monday.
The second, aimed at “stripping UNRWA personnel of the legal immunities and privileges” afforded to UN staff in Israel, was passed with 63-9 votes. The third, the paper said, would deem UNRWA “a terrorist organization” and “require Israel to cut ties with it.” The bill was passed 50-10.
The bills will now be returned to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee for further deliberation. They will require two more readings to become law. Last May, the Knesset passed a preliminary motion to approve a bill designating UNRWA as a “terrorist organization.”
Israel has lobbying hard to have UNRWA closed as it is the only UN agency to have a specific mandate to look after the basic needs of Palestinian refugees, reported the Anadolu news agency. According to UNRWA, it is not only the largest humanitarian organization operating in Gaza, but the “backbone” of the aid response in the enclave.
No Proof for Allegations
In January, Israel alleged that some UNRWA workers were involved in the Palestinian Resistance operation on October 7, which was subsequently investigated by an independent panel appointed by the UN. The panel has closed five cases of the allegations amid a notable lack of evidence given by Israel in support of its claims.
According to UNRWA, a total of 195 of its workers have been killed and nearly 190 installations damaged or destroyed, killing more than 500 people seeking UN protection since Israel began its genocidal assault on Gaza last October. Phillippe Lazzarini, the agency’s Commissioner-General, said earlier this month that UNRWA “has paid a terrible price” in Gaza.
“UNRWA is targeted because of its role in safeguarding the rights of Palestine Refugees, and because it embodies an international commitment to a political solution,” he told a UNRWA Pledging Conference in New York. UNRWA was established by a UN resolution in 1949 and is mandated to provide assistance and protection to refugees in its five areas of operation: Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. Source
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“Blank Check” for Genocide: Court Dismisses Palestinians’ Case Against Biden Admin over Gaza War
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Iraq Hangs 10 'Terror' Convicts | |
AFP 22/07/2024 - Iraq hanged 10 "terror" convicts on Monday, officials said, in the fourth such execution in three months, prompting a rights group to call for an end to the death penalty. Courts have handed down hundreds of death and life imprisonment sentences in recent years to Iraqis convicted of "terrorism", in trials rights groups have denounced as hasty.
Under Iraqi law, terrorism and murder offences are punishable by death, and execution decrees must be signed by the president. A health official said 10 Iraqis "convicted of terrorism crimes and of being members of the Islamic State group were executed by hanging" at Al-Hut prison in the southern city of Nasiriyah. A security source confirmed the executions.
They were hanged under Article 4 of the anti-terrorism law and the health department had received their bodies, the health official told AFP. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue. Al-Hut is a notorious prison in Nasiriyah whose Arabic name means "the whale", because Iraqis believe those jailed there never walk out alive. Iraq has been criticised for the trials, with the "terrorism" offence carrying the death penalty regardless of whether the defendant had been an active fighter.
On May 31, Iraq executed eight people convicted of "terrorism". Eleven people were hanged on April 22 and another such group was executed on May 6, security and health sources said.
In June, UN experts said they were "alarmed by the high number of executions publicly reported since 2016, nearly 400, including 30 this year." "When arbitrary executions are on a widespread and systematic basis, they may amount to crimes against humanity," said the special rapporteurs including the expert on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary execution.
They added that according to official records there are 8,000 prisoners on death row in Iraq.
The experts urged Iraqi authorities to "halt all executions". They also said they were "horrified" by the high number of reported deaths in Nasiriyah prison due to "torture and deplorable conditions".
The experts, who are appointed by the UN Human Rights Council, do not speak on behalf of the United Nations. Rights groups have also denounced the proceedings as rushed, warning confessions were sometimes believed to have been obtained under torture.
"Iraq's continuous implementation of the death penalty -- despite national and international outcry -- means we could be hurdling toward a human catastrophe unfolding on its death row," said Amnesty International's Iraq researcher, Razaw Salihy. She said Iraqi authorities "must halt executions immediately in order to address the gross injustices that landed thousands on death row and the horrendous conditions they languish in". Read more - Lire plus
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Paris Olympics security sweep upends lives | |
Reuters 25/07/2024 - French paramedic Seifelislam Benadda had just dropped off a patient at hospital on July 1, he said, when police informed him he was prohibited from leaving his hometown in the Paris suburbs, saying he was a potential threat to the Olympic Games.
For the next nine days, instead of driving his ambulance, the 28-year-old checked in at the Nogent-sur-Marne police station at midday and fought to overturn the administrative measure, which alleged he posed a terrorist risk.
As part of a vast security operation for the Paris Games, which start on Friday, authorities have turned to powers passed under a 2017 anti-terror law, placing 155 people under surveillance measures that strictly limit their movement and oblige them to register daily with police even though some have never faced criminal charges, according to official data and a Reuters review of cases.
Known as MICAS, the surveillance measures had until recently mainly been used to monitor people after prison sentences. In the context of the Olympics, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said at a news conference on July 17, the powers were only used to target people he described as "very dangerous" and potentially able to carry out attacks.
However, 17 of the cases reviewed by Reuters targeted people without previous terrorism-related convictions or charges. In total, the news agency looked at 27 MICAS cases, using court documents and interviews with more than a dozen lawyers and 10 of the people concerned, finding that in several cases police presented scant evidence to justify the measures.
Other countries have ramped up their use of anti-terrorism powers ahead of major events, including Britain's increase in arrests ahead of the 2012 London Olympics. Reuters has previously documented how French authorities transferred hundreds of squatters and jailed hundreds of people in an effort to clear the streets of hawkers and crime ahead of the Games.
Jean-Francois Morant, a lawyer defending a dozen people hit with MICAS measures before the Olympics, acknowledged the need for precaution given heightened security risks, but called the MICAS programme "excessive and disproportionate." Morant said the government's broader use of the measures preemptively due to an event like the Games was unprecedented.
Such cases, along with the sometimes thin evidence, suggested MICAS were in some incidences imposed opportunistically rather than after solid investigation, he said. Judges have overturned or partly overturned six of the cases reviewed by Reuters, while four have been suspended or partially suspended. At least 24 appeal decisions on MICAS related to the Olympics have been issued since May, according to a Reuters tally of decisions published by courts or provided by lawyers.
On July 9, the Melun administrative court south of Paris paused the measures against Benadda and he returned to work. On Wednesday, it issued a final ruling cancelling the MICAS, saying the Interior Ministry failed to show he was a threat. Before the MICAS order, Benadda had planned to attend the opening ceremony with his girlfriend, who got tickets through her public sector job. "It's once in your lifetime," he said in an interview. But now, "I'm scared of going. If something happens and they say I was there I might have big problems." Read more - Lire plus
With AI, jets and police squadrons, Paris is securing the Olympics — and worrying critics
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Sri Lanka: False Terrorism Cases Enable Repression | |
Human Rights Watch 17/07/2024 - Sri Lankan authorities continue to use the notorious Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) to target perceived opponents and minority communities without credible evidence to support the allegations despite repeated pledges to end the practice, Human Rights Watch said today. While some victims have suffered years of arbitrary detention and torture, others are persecuted even after the case against them is dropped.
The law, widely known as the PTA, has provisions allowing for extended administrative detention, limited judicial oversight, and inadequate protections against torture. In a 2022 speech to the United Nations Human Rights Council, the then foreign minister pledged a moratorium on its use, but under President Ranil Wickremesinghe, detentions under the PTA have continued. Such is the chilling effect of the law that in September 2023 the International Monetary Fund found that “broad application of counter-terrorism rules” restricts civil society scrutiny of official corruption.
“Sri Lanka’s extensive domestic security apparatus routinely uses baseless accusations of terrorism to target innocent people, silencing critics and stigmatizing minority communities,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Previous international pressure has led to modest improvements, and Sri Lanka’s foreign partners should renew their call to repeal of the Prevention of Terrorism Act.” Following government promises to repeal the PTA since 2015, draft legislation to replace it, known as the Anti-Terrorism Bill (ATB), was published in March 2023. While the new bill contains some improvements, it includes provisions that could facilitate abuse.
Since it first came into force in 1979, the PTA has primarily been used to target members of the Tamil minority during a separatist war led by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which was defeated in 2009. While many long-term PTA prisoners have been released in recent years, in part due to international pressure by the European Union and others, at least eight who were first detained between 1996 and 2011 remain in prison.
In November 2023, police in the eastern town of Batticaloa arrested nine people under the law for commemorating the war dead. They were released on bail a month later, but one of those detained told Human Rights Watch that he remains under intense surveillance and his family has lost its income because of the case.
A former LTTE child soldier said that she was arrested under the PTA in 2019 and held for three years. Because she was a minor at the end of the war, she had been placed in the care of the Red Cross instead of being sent to government “rehabilitation” with adult combatants. She believes that the ongoing surveillance and harassment is because security agencies regard her as “unrehabilitated.” She said: “I am afraid. I don’t know who is watching me.”
Human Rights Watch also interviewed a man who was among several arrested under the PTA in 2019 after receiving financial support from the Tamil diaspora, which the Sri Lankan authorities sometimes construe as “terrorist financing.” “We don’t know why we were arrested,” he said. “The PTA allows them to keep us without any reason.” He faced abuse in prison, including threats at gunpoint by a government minister. Following his release three years later, he still faces intense police harassment. “My freedom of movement is restricted. People are afraid to give me a job.”
Following the 2019 Easter Sunday attacks, when Islamist suicide bombers targeted churches and hotels, killing over 260 people, the authorities detained at least 125 Muslims in the eastern town of Kattankudy under the PTA. Little or no evidence was produced against most of them, a lawyer familiar with the situation told Human Rights Watch. Most spent between one and three years in detention and were then either discharged altogether or released on bail. Twenty-four are facing trial in a proceeding that is expected to continue for years. Former detainees from this group told Human Rights Watch that they had experienced torture and ill treatment in custody, and that the police had made extortion demands on their families for their release.
Following their release due to lack of evidence, they said they had received frequent threatening home visits or phone calls and are under surveillance by security agencies. They have been unable to access banking services, obtain passports, or operate their businesses. “They can’t go abroad for work,” said an activist who works with the community. “They can’t live freely in peace with their families.” In many cases, children have been forced by hardship to drop out of school.
A man who had been held under the PTA for about a year, then discharged, said that while there is a tradition of charitable giving in the Muslim community, security officials warn others not to help affected families, and people are afraid to do so for fear that they may be accused of supporting terrorism. Read more - Lire plus
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AANES releases 180 terrorism-related prisoners in Syria’s Hasakah | |
NPA 22/07/2024 - The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) released on Sunday 180 prisoners detained for terrorism-related crimes from the central prison in Hasakah Governorate in northeastern Syria.
North Press correspondent reported that hundreds of residents gathered in front of central prison gate in the Guweiran neighborhood in Hasakah, waiting for the release of their detained relatives.
He added that about 180 prisoners were released, and the administration of the prison will release them in batches after taking the necessary procedures. On July 17, AANES granted a general amnesty for offenses related to terrorism.
According to an AANES official, approximately 1,500 prisoners are scheduled to be released under the amnesty issued by the AANES. The release process will be carried out throughout the current week.
He pointed out that this amnesty came after continuous demands from tribes and dignitaries in the region, specifically following the tribal meeting in the city on May 25. Source
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Head psychologist defends CIA waterboarding of inmates in 9/11 case | |
Al Mayadeen English 21/07/2024 - The New York Times released a report about the waterboarding frenzy that the CIA went on during its imprisonment of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, the man accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks, detailing how the psychologist who witnessed it 183 times defends it.
During the case hearing this week, Mohammed's attorney, Gary D. Sowards, questioned the psychologist who administered the waterboarding and provided a different version of events. Mohammed is the only prisoner to have been subjected to this technique that many times in US history, and last week's testimony included a clinical overview of how CIA officers frequently employed waterboarding and assessed its effectiveness in a secret jail in Poland in March 2003.
The appointed military court is attempting to determine whether or not torture affected Mohammed's confessions and those of the other defendants from September 11, 2001. If so, their admission at a capital trial would be barred. According to psychologist John Bruce Jessen, Mohammed "yelled and writhed" while the guards "were trying to put him on the waterboard," and Jessen concurred with CIA cables to headquarters. Jessen attested to the fact that Mohammed "would sob when he was taken off the waterboard" throughout the first month of his detention.
In waterboarding, the prisoner is first restrained and then water is poured onto a cloth placed over his face, suffocating him for a sufficient amount of time to cause him to experience the sensation of drowning. It is defined as torture by international law, and the United States has denounced its application to prisoners of war. However, the CIA was given permission to waterboard detainees in its covert foreign network by attorneys working for the George W. Bush administration. After that, President Barack Obama ruled it unlawful.
Dr. Jessen directed Defense Department programs that prepared American personnel to withstand and survive captivity prior to September 11, 2001. He claimed to have witnessed drills in which individual US military members were waterboarded only once. However, he stated in his testimony that he had never done or encountered it before he suggested it to the CIA to employ it on "terrorism" suspects.
Officially, the CIA has acknowledged that it was used on three detainees before their September 2006 transfer to Guantanamo.
During his "enhanced interrogation" in Thailand during the summer of 2002, Jessen doused a prisoner known as Abu Zubaydah. In August 2002, Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded at least 83 times and placed in a coffin-sized box for days on end. [...]
“I had no personal animosities towards Mr. K.S.M.,” Jessen claimed, adding, “But he was a lethal enemy. And my job was to do the best I could, along with the rest of the people, to find out if these attacks were real.” According to Jessen's professional background, "moral compass," and legal counsel, he felt confident that the methods he assisted in developing did not amount to torture.
Jessen worked as a contractor for the CIA as part of a consulting partnership with James E. Mitchell, another psychologist, with whom he conducted interrogations and waterboarding of inmates. They established a company in 2005 for which the US government paid $81 million in order to supply all of the contract guards at the black sites and 80% of the agency's questioners.
According to the psychologists, they aimed to get him to provide specifics about upcoming attacks.
Dr. Mitchell had testified earlier that during his “enhanced interrogation", Mohammed tried to offer information about the 9/11 attacks, which they interrupted by ramming him backward into a wall as they were more interested in getting details of future plots.
Jessen provided a slow-motion demonstration of the "walling technique" on one of Mohammed's attorneys on Wednesday in video evidence from Virginia. He took the lawyer's dark hood off his head and gently wrapped a duct-taped towel around his neck while he stood against a wall in an annex of the courthouse. Subsequently, the questioner gradually pressed the attorney's head, shoulder blades, and back up against a wall. According to interrogators, the towel has two purposes: it shields the prisoner from whiplash and provides a means for a captor to grab hold of a naked or only diapered prisoner when he "bounces off the wall." Read more - Lire plus
Some Guantanamo Bay prisoners have still not gone to trial — and might never
The Americans being held by Taliban to swap for Guantanamo Bay prisoners
Trial in Bombing of U.S. Warship Set to Start 25 Years After Attack
Pakistani Army planning Guantanamo-like centres in Balochistan
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OTHER NEWS - AUTRES NOUVELLES | |
ICLMG ACTIONS DE LA CSILC | |
Uphold rights and liberties at protests and encampments across Canada! | |
Please join us in calling for the following:
- Officials must stop equating Charter-protected expression and dissent with “support for terrorism,” and refrain from calling for law enforcement to forcibly end or prevent protest activities.
- Law enforcement agencies must refrain from acting against protesters exercising their Charter-protected rights, including at encampments.
- The Ontario legislature must immediately reverse the keffiyeh ban.
- Canada must call for a permanent ceasefire and to halt all arms sales, transfers and military aid to Israel.
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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.
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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.
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21 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
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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. | |
December to June 2024 - Décembre à juin 2024 | |
Thanks to the support of our members and donors, so far in 2024 we have been able to work on the following:
- Bill C-20, Public Complaints and Review Commission Act - which would FINALLY create an independent watchdog for CBSA
- Bill C-27, Digital Charter Implementation Act, 2022 - which includes the very problematic Artificial Intelligence and Data Act
- Advocating for the protection of international assistance from anti-terrorism laws after the adoption of Bill C-41
- Bill C-63: The very concerning Online Harms Act
- Bill C-70: The new and highly controversial Foreign Interference legislation
- Parliamentary study on Transparency of the Department of National Defence
- Biometrics guidance & other privacy issues with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
- Palestine and the right to dissent
- Combatting Racism & Islamophobia
- Repatriation of all Canadians detained in Northeastern Syria
- Justice for Dr Hassan Diab
- Mohamed Harkat & Security certificates
- Canada’s 4th Universal Periodic Review
- Work with the international Civil Society Coalition on Human Rights and Counter-terrorism
- The UN Counter-terrorism Executive Directorate (CTED) Canada assessment
- The UN Cybersecurity Treaty & the EU AI Convention
What we have planned for the rest of 2024!
- Pressuring lawmakers and officials to protect our civil liberties from the negative impact of national security as well as opposing the discourse of “countering terrorism” to repress dissent, such as protests and encampments in support of Palestinian rights and lives.
- Opposing the weaponization of concerns around foreign interference to unnecessarily increase national security powers, which will greatly affect rights and liberties of Canadians, and will most likely lead to more harassment and xenophobia
- Ensuring that the Canadian government’s proposals on “online harms” do not violate fundamental freedoms, or exacerbate the silencing of racialized and marginalized voices
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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
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Fighting for Justice for Mohamed Harkat, an end to security certificates, and addressing problems in security inadmissibility
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Ensuring Justice for Hassan Diab and reforming Canada’s extradition law
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The return of the rest of the Canadian citizens and the non-Canadian mothers of Canadian children indefinitely detained in Syrian camps
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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
- 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
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And much more! Read more - Lire plus
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Les opinions exprimées ne reflètent pas nécessairement les positions de la CSILC - The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the positions of ICLMG. | |
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!
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