Surveillance, Security and Human Rights

By Alex Neve, Secretary General of Amnesty International Canada. 

Human rights or security?  In Canada and around the world the debate rages on; but it is an utterly false debate.  We must, finally and firmly, reject the assumption and assertion that more of one necessarily leads to less of the other.  There is no security without human rights.

A few years ago I was in West Africa with an Amnesty International research team looking into a range of human rights violations associated with counter-terrorism laws and operations in Mauritania.  The sister of an army officer who had “disappeared” while in prison summed up perfectly the absurdity of the notion that there is any sort of rights and security trade-off.  As she told me, “if they truly want us to feel more secure, they should start by stopping violating our rights.”

The following statement was read by Monia Mazigh, Maher Arar's wife, as a press conference earlier today.

I welcome today's announcement by the RCMP to lay criminal charges against Colonel George Salloum who was directly responsible for my torture while I was detained at the Palestinian Branch of the Syrian Military Intelligence.

Since I launched my complaint in 2005, I gave the RCMP investigating team, during the many interviews I had with them, the information they needed to advance their investigation. This lengthy international investigation took the officers overseas to gather evidence. As a result, they were able to better understand the nature of interrogations in Syrian detention centers. Upon their return, the investigators were able to pass on their knowledge to other RCMP staff. 

I believe this is vital for the RCMP to grasp given the increased urge to share information even with regimes who don't respect our understanding of basic human rights.

UPDATE May 7, 2015: After a temporary stay while an Alberta court ruled on the government's unsuccessful attempt to seek an injunction, Omar Khadr was released today on strict bail conditions including electronic monitoring and a curfew. Omar Khadr spent over 12 years in prison following his capture by US forces in 2002, mostly in the notorious Guantanamo Bay facility. He was transferred to Canada in 2012. You can send a message to Omar here.

By Alex Neve, Secretary General, Amnesty International Canada. Follow Alex on Twitter @AlexNeveAmnesty

It is easy to lose sight of the number of Canadian judges that have, over the past decade, ruled in favour of Omar Khadr.  It has truly become staggering and includes justices of the Supreme Court of Canada (not once, but twice), the Federal Court of Appeal and Federal Court numerous times, and the Alberta Court of Appeal. 

Amnesty International USA has gone to court, represented by the ACLU, because in a world under threat of constant, all-encompassing surveillance, our work to protect human rights is made much harder.

The U.S. surveillance machine is thwarting Amnesty International USA’s ability to protect people from human rights violations: including governments that torture, kidnap and extrajudiciallly kill people for their non-violent protest, dissent and activism.

Here are 8 facts you need to know about how Amnesty International works – and why mass surveillance harms our ability to protect human rights:

1. Amnesty International bears witness to brutality, violence and atrocities. We send researchers into conflict zones. We are on the ground in places throughout the world to collect evidence of human rights abuses.

We ask people to tell us the horrors they saw – whether they are the witnesses or the lone survivors.

By Alex Neve, Secretary General, Amnesty International Canada. Follow Alex on Twitter: @AlexNeveAmnesty

There is so much packed into the government’s current national security law reform, it is hard to know where to focus.  Bills C-44 and C-51, currently before Parliament, constitute the most substantial and controversial overhaul of Canada’s national security landscape since the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The weeks to come will see much debate about the human rights consequences of CSIS’ unprecedented new powers to act to reduce security threats and to apply for Federal Court warrants authorizing Charter violations as part of that process. 

There will be discussion of the vagueness of the new criminal offence of advocating or promoting the commission of terrorism offences in general and the certainty that this will both intrude on and chill free expression in the country. 

by Alex Neve, Secretary General of Amnesty International Canada. This article was orginally published in Slaw, Canada's online legal magazine. Human rights violations are always most likely to occur when no one is watching over the police, soldiers and guards who have the power and potential to commit abuses. That is certainly even more the case when secrecy is prevalent; which obviously describes the world of national security investigations and operations. That is why human rights organizations, experts and bodies – national and international – have long stressed that effective review and oversight must be central to the imperative of ensuring that human rights protection is not sacrificed in any country’s rush to uphold national security.

By Omar Khadr, former Guatanamo Bay detainee

Ten years ago the Canadian government established a judicial inquiry into the case of Maher Arar. That inquiry, over the course of more than two years of ground-breaking work, examined how Canada’s post-Sept. 11 security practices led to serious human rights violations, including torture.

At that same time, 10 years ago and far away from a Canadian hearing room, I was mired in a nightmare of injustice, insidiously linked to national security. I have not yet escaped from that nightmare.

As Canada once again grapples with concerns about terrorism, my experience stands as a cautionary reminder. Security laws and practices that are excessive, misguided or tainted by prejudice can have a devastating human toll.

A conference Wednesday in Ottawa, convened by Amnesty International, the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group and the University of Ottawa, will reflect on these past 10 years of national security and human rights. I will be watching, hoping that an avenue opens to leave my decade of injustice behind.