Torture Planet: Canada's Complicity

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PEJ News - C.L. Cook - In a little more than a half-hour from time of writing, across Canada gathered citizens will bow their heads for a moment's remembrance of those fallen in the wars of the 20th century. Here, we used to call it Armistice Day, and the remembrance was originally meant as a warning to the would-be victims of future military adventurism that the peace MUST be recalled and protected: "Lest We Forget."

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Torture Planet: Canada's Complicity
C.L. Cook

PEJ News
November 11, 2005


But, today the admonition is a forgotten message, subsumed by flags, cannonades and firing squads. Today, Canada is a fully paid member of the new world war, George W. Bush's so-called "War on Terror." Canadian soldiers ship out over there to Afghanistan and Haiti and Iraq. Canadian sailors patrol the trade routes for the loot senior partner America extracts from the battlegrounds, while Canadian death squads, in the form of the secretive JTF2, and spooks assist the great "Project" promised to last a century.

In Ottawa, quisling politicos too are doing the bidding of their D.C. masters, aiding and abetting the illegal transport of prisoners from this country into the hands of America's burgeoning torture centres around the globe.

On November 9th, two days before the masses were beckoned out to again "remember," the United Nations issues a blistering condemnation of several nations taking part in what they term the "outsourcing of torture," and to our collective shame Canada's name appeared prominently alongside bastions of freedom and liberty Uzbekistan, Syria, Algeria, and Egypt. Fine company to be now keeping for the country once known for peacekeeping.

The U.N.'s accusations come in the wake of a 15 page report, 'Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment' presented to the General Assembly detailing the U. S. Central Intelligence Agency's global gulags. Manfred Nowak, special rapporteur on torture says: "Several governments, in the fight against terrorism, have transferred or proposed to return alleged terrorist suspects to countries where they may be at risk of torture or ill-treatment."

This runs counter to international law, as Article 3 of the United Nations' Convention Against Torture clearly states: "No State party shall expel, return ('refouler') or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be [in] danger of being subjected to torture."

How countries like Canada, the United States, and even gentle Sweden have circumvented the precisely worded prohibition is through the agency of "diplomatic assurances" and "formal guarantees" from "host" nations. These assurances coming from some of the most dispicable regimes on the planet are merely a wink and nod, understood by all to be absolutely meaningless. As Nowak says: "[D]iplomatic assurances are unreliable and ineffective in the protection against torture and ill-treatment and such assurances are sought usually from States where the practice of torture is systematic." Adding: these "assurances" have no standing in law and therefore: "they carry no legal effect and no accountability, if breached, and the person whom the assurances aim to protect has no recourse if the assurances are violated."

In George W. Bush's America this process has been formalized and granted the euphemism, "extraordinary rendition." But that sobriquet is misleading as the extraordinary becomes commonplace, as Francis A. Boyle, professor of international law at the University of Illinois describes the "reprehensive policy known euphemistically as 'extraordinary renditions'" that involve both the "enforced disappearances of persons" and torture, as "widespread" and "systematic." Citing Article 7 of the Rome Statute for the International Court, Boyle says this constitutes a "crime against humanity."

Boyle believes these crimes should be prosecuted, if not in the current political climate, at a future date (he notes these transgressions have no "statute of limitation") and all those taking part in this process, including White House legal counsel "legitimizing" these actions, should too stand in the dock, saying: "[A]ll Bush Jr. administration lawyers at the White House, the Department of Justice, and the CIA, inter alia, who signed off on 'extraordinary renditions' must also be prosecuted for aiding and abetting crimes against humanity, war crimes, torture, enforced disappearances, murder, and kidnapping."

So here we have Canada's Prime Minister, and the scions of our legal system criminals, serving an illegal, immoral, and indefensible policy of torture and murder in our names, today soberly laying wreaths to the lost generations of the past, while promising more of the same for the future.

Remembrance be damned!



Chris Cook is a contributing editor to PEJ News. He also hosts Gorilla Radio, a weekly public affairs program, broad/webcast from the University of Victoria, Canada. You can check out the GR Blog here.

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