Galloway, quoted in the National Post, Oct. 4, 2010: “I was a boxer in my youth. Maybe Mr. Kenney would like to go five rounds with me.” Photo: Mike Cassese/Reuters
It’s official. The much anticipated, cross-Canada tour by George Galloway begins in Montreal Nov. 17. By the time it’s over, he’ll have visited 10 cities, bringing his message of free speech, free Afghanistan and free Palestine to thousands of Canadians. It’s a message Canadians need to hear, again and again, and we should be pleased that Galloway is demonstrably up to the challenge. Tour details are available here.
Freedom of speech in Canada is in danger, especially on the subject of Palestine. According to a recent statement by Independent Jewish Voices,
“The Harper government is sponsoring a conference of the ‘Inter-Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Anti-Semitism’ (ICCA) – the CPCCA’s international counterpart – in Ottawa on November 8 and 9. The CPCCA and ICCA have an agenda to attack free speech and to silence legitimate criticism of Israel by falsely conflating this with anti-Semitism.”
The IJV is hoping to mobilize opposition to this conference and what it represents, and deserves the support of every Canadian who treasures the right to speak our minds on any topic without fear of repression.
Another way of resisting attempts to restrict free speech is to promote and attend George Galloway’s speeches. Between now and the time he sets foot in Canada, we can confidently expect there will be attempts to discredit Galloway and distort his message. Our support for the tour will not only counter these reactionary diatribes; it will help raise funds for the local peace coalitions and Palestine solidarity campaigns across Canada that are sponsoring Galloway’s tour.
Tags: George Galloway, Human Rights
This, just in, from Independent Jewish voices . . .
A TIME TO SPEAK OUT: DAY OF ACTION TO DEFEND FREE SPEECH ON NOVEMBER 8
FREE SPEECH UNDER ATTACK
The Harper government is sponsoring a conference of the ‘Inter-Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Anti-Semitism’ (ICCA) – the CPCCA’s international counterpart – in Ottawa on November 8 and 9. The CPCCA and ICCA have an agenda to attack free speech and to silence legitimate criticism of Israel by falsely conflating this with anti-Semitism.
Independent Jewish Voices is deeply concerned about the threat to free speech and civil liberties posed by the Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Anti-Semitism’(CPCCA). It is legitimate and ethically necessary for Canadians of conscience to criticize Israeli human rights abuses and to support non-violent remedies.
A NEW MCCARTHYISM
The Harper government has already slashed funding to NGOs that dared to express support for Palestinian rights, brutally attacked and abused G20 demonstrators, barred British MP George Galloway from entering Canada because of his aid to the people of Gaza, and attacked CUPE, CUPW, and Israeli Apartheid Week activities. The list doesn’t end there.
The CPCCA, with Minister of Censorship and Deportation Jason Kenney as one of its driving forces, aims to entrench these attacks on free speech in the federal parliament.
The CPCCA held hearings this past year to try to paint a veneer of credibility on its transparent intention to attack free speech in Canada. It ignored many critical submissions, including those from Independent Jewish Voices. Even the CPCCA witnesses from Canadian universities and the police confirmed that there is no rise in anti-Semitism and called on the CPCCA to respect free speech.
The ICCA conference is intended to distract from this embarrassing result. At a cost of over $451,280 in federal funds, the ICCA conference is closed to the public and the media, and makes no pretence of unbiased research.
STAND UP, FIGHT BACK
1. Raise your voices for a day of action for free speech on Monday, November 8. Organize locally – get in touch with the nearest IJV chapter, human rights groups, free speech advocates and Palestine solidarity coalitions. Local events for the day of action could include press conferences, protests, teach-ins, or other creative ideas to build the movement to defend free speech. IJV will release a 10 minute video on Nov. 8, which will be posted on YouTube and the IJV web site. Feel free to use it in your events. Please let us know what actions you’ve taken: Contact Independent Jewish Voices at ijv@magma.ca.
2. Contact your MP and the federal party leaders and demand they reject any attempts to silence or criminalize legitimate criticism of Israel, and to stand up for the principle of free speech in Canada. www.webinfo.parl.gc.ca.
3. Contact university presidents and human rights offices in your city and ask them also to issue a statement affirming the right of students and faculty to free speech.
4. Sign our anti-CPCCA petition at http://ijvcanada.org/sign-signez-petition-cpcca-hearings/ which will be released to the press and all MPs on Nov. 8.
5. Send a photo to ijv@magma.ca of yourself holding an anti-CPCCA sign (perhaps with duct tape over your mouth) or a sign saying “I support free speech.” We will post it on line with a title “The is what Democracy looks like.”
6. Donate to IJV to help fund our campaign for free speech: Please send donations to IJV, P.O. Box 23088, Ottawa, Ontario K2A 4E2.
For more information, visit Independent Jewish Voices at www.ijvcanada.org.
Tags: freedom of speech
by Yves Engler
In a stunning international rebuke Stephen Harper’s government lost its bid for a UN Security Council seat last week. The vote in New York was the world’s response to a Canadian foreign policy designed to please the most reactionary, shortsighted sectors of the Conservative Party’s base — evangelical Christian Zionists, extreme right-wing Jews, Islamophobes, the military-industrial-academic-complex, mining and oil executives and old cold-warriors.
Over the past four year Harper’s government has been offside with the world community on a whole host of issues. Canada was among a small number of countries that refused to recognize the human right to water or sign the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. On two occasions Ottawa blocked consensus at the Rotterdam Convention to place chrysotile asbestos, a known toxin, on its list of dangerous products and in November Finance Minister Jim Flaherty refused to even consider British PM Gordon Brown’s idea of a global tax on international financial transactions.
Close to the companies making huge profits on the Tar Sands, the Conservatives repeatedly sabotaged international climate negotiations. They angered many in the Commonwealth by blocking a resolution calling for a “binding commitment” on rich countries to reduce emissions and at a UN climate conference in Bangkok last year, many delegates from poorer countries left a negotiating session in protest after a Canadian suggestion to scrap the Kyoto Protocol as the basis of negotiations.
Israel’s best friend
The Conservatives extreme “Israel no matter what” position definitely hurt its chance on Tuesday. “It’s hard to find a country friendlier to Israel than Canada these days,” explained Israeli Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, who emigrated from Moldova when he was 20 but still feels fit to call for the expulsion of Palestinian citizens of Israel.
The Conservatives publicly endorsed Israel’s 2006 attack on Lebanon, voted against a host of UN resolutions supporting Palestinian rights and in February Ottawa delighted Israeli hawks by canceling $15 million in funding for the UN agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). The money was transferred to Palestinian security reform.
For the past three years Canada has been heavily invested in training a Palestinian security force designed to oversee Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and “to ensure that the PA [Palestinian Authority] maintains control of the West Bank against Hamas,” as Canadian ambassador to Israel Jon Allen was quoted as saying by the Canadian Jewish News. According to deputy Foreign Affairs minister Peter Kent, Operation PROTEUS, Canada’s military training mission in the West Bank, is the country’s “second largest deployment after Afghanistan” and it receives “most of the money” from a five-year $300 million Canadian aid program to the Palestinians.
At the same time as Canadian “aid” strengthens the most compliant Palestinian political factions, the Conservatives have refused any criticism of Israel’s onslaught against the 1.5 million people living in Gaza. Canada was the only country at the UN Human Rights Council to vote against a January 2008 resolution that called for “urgent international action to put an immediate end to Israel’s siege of Gaza.”
Later in 2008 Israel unleashed a 22-day military assault on Gaza that left 1,400 Palestinians dead. In response many governments condemned the bombing and Venezuela broke off all diplomatic relations. Israel didn’t need to worry since Ottawa was prepared to help out. The Canadian embassy now represents Israel’s diplomatic interests in Caracas.
Threatening Iran
While Brazil and Turkey tried to dissipate hostility towards Iran, Harper used his pulpit as host of the G8 to pave the way for a possible U.S.-Israeli attack. A February 17 Toronto Star article was headlined: “Military action against Iran still on the table, Kent says.” The junior foreign minister explained that “it’s a matter of timing and it’s a matter of how long we can wait without taking more serious preemptive action.”
“Preemptive action” is a euphemism for a bombing campaign. Canadian naval vessels are already running provocative maneuvers off Iran’s coast and by stating that “an attack on Israel would be considered an attack on Canada,” Kent is trying to create the impression that Iran may attack Israel. But it is Israel that possesses nuclear weapons and threatens to bomb Iran, not the other way around.
While Ottawa considers Iran’s nuclear energy program a major threat, Israel’s atomic bombs have not provoked similar condemnation. The Harper government abstained on a number of near unanimous votes asking Israel to place its nuclear weapons program under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) controls and in September Bloomberg cited Canada as one of three countries that opposed an IAEA probe of Israel’s nuclear facilities as part of an Arab led effort to create a nuclear-weapons-free Middle East.
Cold war throwback
Not content with taking on Iran, the military-minded Conservatives turned on Russia. Harper referred to Russia as “aggressive” and in a throwback to the Cold War, Defence Minister Peter MacKay added that Ottawa would respond to Russian flights in the Arctic by flying Canadian fighter jets near Russian airspace. Making sure that Moscow got the message, during a July 2007 visit to the Ukraine MacKay said Canada would help provide a “counterbalance” to Russia.
Haiti
Ottawa even prioritized the military over aid in the face of the incredible suffering caused by Haiti’s earthquake. Two thousand Canadian troops were deployed while several Heavy Urban Search Rescue Teams were readied but never sent. Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon explained that the teams were not needed because “the government had opted to send Canadian Armed Forces instead.”
Overthrown in February 2004 by a joint U.S./France/Canada destabilization campaign, Haiti’s most popular political party, Fanmi Lavalas, has been barred from participating in elections. The Conservatives supported Fanmi Lavalas’ exclusion, congratulating Haiti’s puppet government for bringing “a period of stabilization” good for “investment and trade.” Ottawa backed up its words with deeds, adding tens of millions of dollars to a Haitian prison and police system that has been massively expanded and militarized since the 2004 coup.
Honduras
Ottawa gave its tacit support to the Honduran military’s removal of elected president Manuel Zelaya in June 2009. Mexico’s Notimex reported that Canada was the only country in the hemisphere that did not explicitly call for Zelaya’s return to power and Canadian officials repeatedly criticized Zelaya at the Organization of American States (OAS). The ousted government complained that Ottawa failed to suspend aid to Honduras, which is the largest recipient of Canadian assistance in Central America. Nor did Ottawa exclude the Honduran military from its Military Training Assistance Program.
The Harper government opposed Zelaya’s move to join the Hugo Chavez led Alba, the Bolivarian Alliance for the People of Our Americas, which is a response to North American capitalist domination of the region. Canada has actively supported the U.S.-led campaign against the government of Venezuela. In mid-2007 Harper toured South America “to show [the region] that Canada functions and that it can be a better model than Venezuela,” in the words of a high-level foreign affairs official. During the trip, Harper and his entourage made a number of comments critical of the Venezuelan government.
Colombia si. Venezuela no.
After meeting only members of the opposition during a trip to Venezuela in January, Peter Kent told the media that “democratic space within Venezuela has been shrinking and in this election year, Canada is very concerned about the rights of all Venezuelans to participate in the democratic process.”
Venezuela’s ambassador to the 34-country OAS, Roy Chaderton Matos, responded: “I am talking of a Canada governed by an ultra right that closed its Parliament for various months to (evade) an investigation over the violation of human rights — I am talking about torture and assassinations — by its soldiers in Afghanistan.”
Despite the move to the left among the majority of the region’s governments Harper moved closer to Latin America’s most right-wing state. Colombia’s terrible human rights record did not stop Harper from signing a free-trade agreement that even Washington couldn’t stomach.
The trade agreement as well as the Harper government’s shift of aid from Africa to Latin America was designed to support Canadian corporate interests and the region’s right-wing governments and movements. Barely discussed in the media, the main goal of the shift in aid was to stunt Latin America’s recent rejection of neoliberalism and U.S. dependence.
The Congo
One issue mentioned in a number of media reports about Canada’s loss last week had to do with the Congo. At the G8 in June the Conservatives pushed for an entire declaration to the final communiqué criticizing the Congo for attempting to gain a greater share of its vast mineral wealth. Months earlier Ottawa began to obstruct international efforts to reschedule the country’s foreign debt, which was mostly accrued during more than three decades of Joseph Mobuto’s dictatorship and the subsequent war.
Canadian officials “have a problem with what’s happened with a Canadian company,” Congolese Information Minister Lambert Mende said referring to the government’s move to revoke a mining concession that Vancouver-based First Quantum acquired under dubious circumstances during the 1998-2003 war. “The Canadian government wants to use the Paris Club [of debtor nations] in order to resolve a particular problem”, explained Mende. “This is unacceptable.”
The mining industry increasingly represents Canada abroad. Canadian miners operate more than 3,000 projects outside this country and many of these mines have displaced communities, destroyed ecosystems and resulted in violence. This doesn’t bother the Harper government, which is close to the most retrograde sectors of the mining industry. Last year they rejected a proposal – agreed to by the Mining Association of Canada under pressure from civil society groups — to make diplomatic and financial support for resource companies operating overseas contingent upon socially responsible conduct. Despite countless horror stories suggesting the contrary, the Conservatives claim that voluntary standards are the best way to improve Canadian mining companies’ social responsibility.
Afghanistan
Finally, the Conservatives have knowingly supported torture in Afghanistan and embraced an increasingly violent counterinsurgency war. Apparently, Canadian Joint Task Force 2 commandos regularly take part in nighttime assassination raids, which are highly unpopular with the Afghan population.
Losing the Security Council seat will hopefully cost the Conservatives some votes and temper their more extreme international positions. But, for those of us working to radically transform Canadian foreign policy the consequences of the loss may be much greater. There has probably never been a bigger blow to the carefully crafted image of Canada as a popular international do-gooder, a mythology that blinds so many Canadians to our country’s real role in the world.
Yves Engler is the author of The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy and Canada and Israel: Building Apartheid. He’ll be touring in Mid November to speak on “Why Canada lost its bid for a Security Council seat.” Anyone interested in organizing a talk please e-mail: yvesengler (at) hotmail.com.
Tags: United Nations, Yves Engler
Dear Premier Selinger,
To put it politely, I am deeply upset by your decision to deepen economic ties with the State of Israel. The ongoing violation of the basic human rights of the Palestinian people by the State of Israel has made Israel, deservedly, a pariah among nations. Because of this, individuals, organizations, companies and even governments are banding together in a nonviolent campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel in the hope that Israel will recognize the rights of Palestinians and seriously work for peace.
Surely you are aware of the 1400 Palestinians (including 300 children and hundreds of civilians) who were killed during the 18-day invasion the Israelis called Operation Cast Lead. If not, please follow this link to a report by Amnesty International.
You must have heard of the widespread misery and deprivation that persists in Gaza because of the Israeli blockade. Possibly you are too busy to follow these matters in any depth, but I hope you will take the time to read the UN Human Rights Council report on the Israeli attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, and the murders perpetrated against unarmed peace activists during that attack. These people were murdered because they were bringing humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza, people prevented by the blockade from rebuilding after the devastating Israeli invasion.
All too commonly in this country, affluent and ill-informed people are willing to turn a blind eye to injustice. The injustice against Palestinians began with their expulsion from their land in 1948. Systematically and relentlessly Israel has reduced the land available to Palestinians to a few small patches, hemmed in by Israeli soldiers, checkpoints and growing Israeli settlements. The situation of Palestinians is not unlike that of blacks in South Africa during the apartheid years. It is no accident that the term “Israeli apartheid” is heard more and more.
Is Manitoba in such desperate straights that our government sees a need to do business with such a repressive regime? What were you thinking?
Israel’s continued oppression of the Palestinian people is an affront to all who cherish human rights and social justice. Those who do business with such a regime are complicit in this ongoing horror show.
I expect better of my provincial government and I expect better from you.
Please cancel your upcoming trip to Israel and reverse your policy of economic and cultural cooperation with Israel until such time as it shows serious commitment to redressing the injustices it has committed against the Palestinian people.
Sincerely,
Paul Graham
Winnipeg
Dear Reader,
Please do your part to remind Mr. Selinger that it will not be acceptable to do business with Israel until it makes peace with Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank and dismantles the ugly apartheid system it has set up.
Tell him Manitoba should be a part of the global boycott, divestment and sanctions for Palestine movement, rather than a partner in apartheid.
Greg Selinger’s email address is premier@leg.gov.mb.ca.
Tags: boycott divestment sanctions for Palestine, Israeli apartheid, Premier Greg Selinger
It is disgusting to admit it, but Manitoba’s Premier, Greg Selinger, is traveling to Israel this month to “sign partnership agreements, help promote the Royal Winnipeg Ballet 70th anniversary tour of Israel and dedicate a park designed to promote peace . . .” He’s taking a couple of cabinet ministers as well as a freshly minted “special representative for Manitoba to Israel for economic and community relations.”
In the wake of Israel’s murders of Gaza Freedom Flotilla crew members, Operation Cast Lead, and the ongoing oppression of Palestinians in Gaza and on the West Bank, the premier’s decision to deepen ties with Israel is unbelievably stupid and sickening.
Photo: Al Jazeera. See Al Jazeera’s feature entitled Gaza: One Year On
Had any of Selinger’s predecessors opted to visit South Africa during its apartheid era, the outcry would have been deafening.
Do your part to remind Mr. Selinger that it will not be acceptable to do business with Israel until it makes peace with Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank and dismantles the ugly apartheid system it has set up.
Tell him Manitoba should be a part of the global boycott, divestment and sanctions for Palestine movement, rather than a partner in apartheid.
Greg Selinger’s email address is premier@leg.gov.mb.ca.
Tags: boycott divestment sanctions for Palestine, Israeli apartheid, Premier Greg Selinger
Thanks to we move to canada for ongoing, persuasive arguments in support of war resisters, including this latest: soldiers have rights too: the human right of conscience applies to everyone.
While you are at it, check out On Harper’s hatred for the troops, and the medicalization of trauma, a timely offering from your heart’s on the left.
I just got an email from Jason Kenney entitled Conservatives and Liberals Help Defeat Military Deserter Law. For the uninitiated, he is referring to a humanitarian bill introduced by Liberal Gerrard Kennedy and seconded by NDPer Bill Siksay to amend the refugee act to enable conscientious objectors to seek refuge in Canada, aka, C-440.
I’m not sure if he is delusional or dishonest? You decide.
Here is his email . . .
On 05/10/2010 1:56 PM, Kenney.J@parl.gc.ca wrote:
You have all emailed or written me at some point to express your views on the issue of US military deserters and recent legislation to give them a special pathway for permanent residency.
As you may know, with bipartisan support from Michael Ignatieff’s Liberal Party caucus, the government succeeded in defeating the Bill. Here is a YouTube video of a question I answered during Question Period on the subject.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCeUrJHlJps
Yours sincerely,
Jason
And my response
Mr. Minister, are you a congenital liar? “Bipartisan support from Michael Ignatieff’s Liberal Party caucus”? Most members in the Liberal Caucus voted in support of Bill C-440. In fact, in case it didn’t register, you almost lost the vote.
Party | Yeas | Nays | Absent |
---|---|---|---|
CONSERVATIVES | 0 | 140 | 3 |
BLOC QUÉBÉCOIS | 43 | 0 | 5 |
NEW DEMOCRATS | 36 | 0 | 0 |
LIBERALS | 57 | 1 | 18 |
INDEPENDENT | 0 | 2 | 0 |
TOTALS | 136 | 143 | 26 |
% | 44.5% | 46.8% | 8.52% |
Grand Total | 305 |
Source: How’d They Vote?
Polling indicates that 64 per cent of Canadians support allowing American war resisters to seek refuge here.
You are on the wrong side of this issue and so many others. You will pay the price at the next election.
That said, thank you for writing and making it absolutely clear how out of touch with reality you and your party have become.
Sincerely,
Paul Graham
Winnipeg, Manitoba
Tags: Bill C-440, Jason Kenney, Michael Ignatieff, war resisters support campaign
Daniel Ellsberg has been a hero of mine for close to 40 years. He’s the whistle-blower who destroyed the tissue of lies surrounding the U.S. war against the people of Vietnam, and what he uncovered has much to teach us about the origins of today’s wars.
The Academy-Award-nominated documentary about Daniel Ellsberg, “The Most Dangerous Man in America,” will be premiering on PBS on Tuesday, Oct. 5, 2010. Check your local listings for details. If you live in Winnipeg and get KGFE (Prairie Public Television, Grand Forks, ND) the program starts at 8:30 p.m.
PBS Synopsis
In 1971, Daniel Ellsberg, a leading Vietnam War strategist, concludes that America’s role in the war is based on decades of lies. He leaks 7,000 pages of top-secret documents to The New York Times, a daring act of conscience that leads directly to Watergate, President Nixon’s resignation and the end of the Vietnam War. Ellsberg and a who’s-who of Vietnam-era movers and shakers give a riveting account of those world-changing events in POV’s The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers by award-winning filmmakers Judith Ehrlich (The Good War and Those Who Refused to Fight It) and Rick Goldsmith (Tell the Truth and Run: George Seldes and the American Press). A co-production of ITVS in association with American Documentary/POV. (90 minutes)
Read the full film description »
Tags: Daniel Ellsberg, vietnam war
Michael Ignatieff and Co. can’t get enough criticism for their desertion of Bill C-440 to suit me. But let’s not deny the Tories their fair share of the shame. Against the will of most Canadians, the Tories have conducted a campaign of persecution against American war resisters since coming to power. In their slavish admiration of American imperialism, they ignore important aspects of international law. In their eagerness to crawl into bed with war criminals, they are complicit in some of the most horrendous crimes against humanity of this century.
The Tories spare no effort to prevent war resisters from exercising their right to conscientious objection. Wednesday’s defeat of Bill C-440, to which they unanimously voted “nay” is just the most recent example. Because the War Resisters Support Campaign web site is replete with examples of the Tory pogrom against conscientious objectors, I won’t deal with that here.
Instead, I want to address the standard Tory refrain that war resisters are “cowards” or “deserters” who should shut up, stay in the army and keep killing or rot in an American prison.
Nazis, Nuremberg and Numb Tory Memories
Despite their “Conservative” label, the Tories have forgotten important aspects of our shared history, chief among them the Second World War and the trials of Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg in 1945 and 1946. In 1950, the UN International Law Commission codified the legal principles that emerged during these trials. The Tories would do well to acquaint themselves with the Nuremberg Principles because they are key to understanding why American war resisters should be granted sanctuary in Canada.
Principle VI states,
“The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under international law:
(a) Crimes against peace:
(i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances;
(ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i).(b) War crimes: Violations of the laws or customs of war which include, but are not limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation of slave labor or for any other purpose of the civilian population of or in occupied territory; murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the Seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.
(c) Crimes against humanity: Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhumane acts done against any civilian population, or persecutions on political, racial, or religious grounds, when such acts are done or such persecutions are carried on in execution of or in connection with any crime against peace or any war crime.”
A “war of aggression” is a military conflict waged without the justification of self-defense or the sanction of the United Nations. Under the Nuremberg Principles, a war of aggression is a “crime against peace.” The invasion of Iraq, perpetrated by the U.S. and its allies under the guise of protecting the world against non-existent weapons of mass destruction meets the definition of a “crime against peace.”
I have italicized those portions which apply to this invasion, a crime of overwhelming proportions which resulted in the destruction of a nation, the displacement of almost four million people and the death of an estimated 1.3 million. War resisters are refusing to participate in this crime, and who can blame them?
What of the Tory argument that war resisters signed a contract with the U.S. military and therefore should honour their contract (i.e., kill Iraqis in a “crime against peace”)?
Nuremberg Principle 4 provides some guidance. It states: “The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him”.
In other words, to say your were “just following orders” is no defense. War resisters understand this. They have made a conscientious decision to refuse to participate in this massive crime against humanity. War resisters embody the Nuremberg Principles; most Canadians recognize this and welcome them to our country.
Canada’s obligation to protect refugees
Canada is a signatory to, and therefore legally required to follow, the 1951 UN Refugee Convention and 1967 Protocol. Article 33 says:
“No Contracting State shall expel or return (‘refouler’) a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.”
If war resisters are not “political refugees” I don’t know who is. There is no question that they face imprisonment if returned to the U.S. because a number of them have been deported and subsequently jailed. It is clear that Canada is in violation of the UN Refugee Convention.
What now?
Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party are committed to deporting every American war resister they can find, regardless of Canadian public opinion or international law. Harper was an early hawk on Iraq, and there is no reason to believe he has modified his position.
Short of replacing them in the next election, we will not resolve this issue satisfactorily.
The situation is further complicated by the actions of Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff and a small gang of liberal MPs who absented themselves from Wednesday’s House of Commons vote on Bill C-440, thereby dooming it to defeat (143-136). I’m not a Liberal, but I sincerely hope the 57 Liberal MPs who voted for C-440 rouse their party to get rid of him. For more than a few reasons, he’s a liability Liberals can no longer afford.
In the near term, the best we can manage is to provide moral and material support to the War Resisters Support Campaign. That’s plenty enough to keep us busy.
Who killed Bill C-440, An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to permit war resisters to remain in Canada? Well the numbers are in and the culprit is Michael Ignatieff and 17 of his colleagues who voted with their feet and left the House prior to the vote. Here are the numbers.
Party | Yeas | Nays | Absent |
---|---|---|---|
CONSERVATIVES | 0 | 140 | 3 |
BLOC QUÉBÉCOIS | 43 | 0 | 5 |
NEW DEMOCRATS | 36 | 0 | 0 |
LIBERALS | 57 | 1 | 18 |
INDEPENDENT | 0 | 2 | 0 |
TOTALS | 136 | 143 | 26 |
% | 44.5% | 46.8% | 8.52% |
Grand Total | 305 |
Source: How’d They Vote?
C-440 was sponsored by Liberal MP Gerard Kennedy and supported by the NDP, the Bloc Québécois and a huge majority of Liberals. It should have been a slam-dunk; previously, two Parliamentary resolutions supporting war resisters had been passed by the House of Commons. However, it lost by 7 votes, an avoidable defeat if Ifgnatieff had remained true to the words he had uttered two days before the crucial vote when he said:
“Canada has a tradition that goes back to Mr. Pearson and Mr. Trudeau of accepting people that come to Canada with conscientious objection to military service.”
Ignatieff had to have known that the absence of 18 Liberal MPs would doom the bill. If he didn’t want to support the bill, he could have at least emulated Liberal Alan Tonks (York South-Weston), who had the guts to stay in the House and vote against it.
Once more, Iggy fails to appear even remotely Trudeauesque — incapable of channeling the peace-’n-love-Pierre or the more resolute War-Measures-Act-Trudeau.
On a related theme, for those who hope a vote for the Liberals is enough to get us out of Afghanistan next year, think again. In June, Ignatieff announced the Liberals support remaining in Afghanistan until 2014 to train Afghan troops and police, creating a military training institute in Kabul, much like the Royal Military College in Kingston. Dishonestly, in a war where the Taliban have been able to strike in Kabul at will, he says this is not a combat mission.
Michael Ignatieff has betrayed war resisters. More fundamentally, he has betrayed the majority of Canadians who want to end Canada’s military intervention in Afghanistan and to welcome American war resisters into our country.
Tags: Afghanistan War, C-440, Michael Ignatieff
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