Mohandas Gandhi You can chain me, you can torture me, you can even destroy this body, but you will never imprison my mind
Benjamin Franklin They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security
As I was reading the hundreds of incidents reports that Canadian Civil Liberties Association has received, I was struck by the common themes: astonishment and fear. People could not believe that such conduct could occur in Canada and they now fear the police.
“The people were sitting down, singing and chanting “peaceful protest”. The police surrounded [...]
The debate about security and human rights is not just about insidious practices like extraordinary rendition and infamous prison camps like Guantánamo Bay. It is not only about the tension between counter-terrorism laws and practices on the one hand and human rights protection on the other. In fact, governments have used arguments about security as [...]
On April 27, Peter Milliken, Speaker of the House of Commons, ruled that Parliament had the right of access to unredacted documents in the Afghan detainee issue, in order to fulfill its constitutional duty to hold the government accountable. As many observers said at the time, this was a landmark ruling, in two senses.
First, it [...]
It is not my role to “second-guess” military authorities here as to the security measures they feel need to be put in place.
With these words, Judge Patrick Parrish, who is presiding over the military commission hearings and trial in the case of Omar Khadr, starkly illustrated the fundamental concern that the proceedings at Guantánamo [...]
On April 23, the Minister of Justice introduced in the House of Commons a bill to reenact the two most contentious powers in the 2001 Anti-Terrorism Act: investigative hearings and preventive arrests. Both powers had been allowed to expire when Parliament refused to renew them in 2007.
At that time, the Conservatives vowed to bring the [...]
Nuclear disarmament is back on the international agenda where it belongs, thanks to the efforts of U.S. President Barack Obama who is determined to earn the Nobel Peace Prize he’s already received. Obama understands that nuclear warheads are a threat to that most fundamental of human rights, the right to live. Nuclear weapons are indiscriminate [...]
On April 6, the New York Times reported that the Obama administration had approved the targeted killing of an American cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki, who is suspected of encouraging and planning terrorist attacks against the United States. The news that the president had decided to kill an American without charges, without a jury, without a lawyer and without a trial has thus far stirred relatively little outcry. By contrast, President Bush’s assertion of the power to detain two Americans without trial — Yaser Hamdi and Jose Padilla — led to two Supreme Court cases and thousands of news articles, op-eds and talk-show debates. On April 13 the Washington Post editorial board defended the targeted-killing policy — even though we know precious little about its asserted legal justifications or scope.
Ottawa has many questions to answer about Canada’s policies concerning the transfer of detainees in Afghanistan. The answer to the most important of those questions — what a rights-respecting transfer policy should look like — could guide other governments struggling with the same issues. Canada is not alone in facing controversy over its transfer policy. [...]
Since 9/11, the question of Canadian complicity in torture has bedeviled the Ottawa security intelligence community. Unlike Canada’s closest ally, the United States, Canadian officials have never been implicated directly in the use of torture, but even hints of complicity and cooperation with those who do torture – including, unfortunately, our American allies under the [...]
Torture is not a country specific phenomenon. It is far too comfortable to say that Syria, or China or Saudi Arabia or Cuba or Bulgaria can be labeled as states that use torture routinely as part of their national policies. As recent history has demonstrated, the fellow travelers on the torture road are numerous and [...]
