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Hassan Diab: Nothing Less Than a Public Inquiry Will Do
Human RightsHow and why did our former government facilitate the extradition of one of its citizens by withholding critical information that would otherwise have saved him years of torment? Given this egregious irregularity in judicial and government proceedings, and given that Canada’s extradition law offers few, if any, safeguards to protect the requested individual from extradition, it behooves all Canadians to ponder seriously the extent of their civil liberties.
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Settler-colonialism targets youth
Canadian PoliticsAs the world contemplates with horror the United States’ recent policy of separating immigrant and refugee children from their parents and detaining them for attempting to cross the border, it is important to see these disturbing events in a global context and to recognize them for what they are. Although such practices also take place in Canada, the reality is that anti-immigrant sentiment is pure hypocrisy in settler-colonial states like the United States and Canada.
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End Immigration Detention: An Open Letter
Human RightsWe are a group of healthcare providers working in Canada who – like many around the world – have been watching with horror the news of the separation of over 2000 child migrants from their parents in the United States. This cruelty is apparently the newest front of the Trump administration’s war against asylum seekers. We’ve heard audio recordings of young children begging for their parents, and read first person accounts of migrants being told they will never see their children again.
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Immigration: Western Wars and Imperial Exploitation Uproot Millions
Human RightsIn this paper we will discuss the reasons behind the massification of immigration, focusing on several issues, namely imperial wars, multi-national corporate expansion, the decline of the anti-war movements in the US and Western Europe, the weakness of the trade union and solidarity movements. We will proceed by identifying the major countries affected by US and EU wars leading to massive immigration, and then turn to the western powers forcing refugees to ‘follow’ the flows of profits.
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Who is your oppressor?
Human RightsIt’s hard to pinpoint when the bifurcation of all of society into either oppressor or oppressed was first articulated. Hegel noted that “[t]he Catholics had been in the position of oppressors, and the Protestants of the oppressed.” But one could safely argue that many spiritual holy men, from the Buddha to Jesus, have relied on these categories in one way or another to deliver their indictments of the world.
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Israel: Arms embargo needed as military unlawfully kills and maims Gaza protesters
Human RightsIsrael is carrying out a murderous assault against protesting Palestinians, with its armed forces killing and maiming demonstrators who pose no imminent threat to them, Amnesty International revealed today, based on its latest research, as the “Great March of Return” protests continued in the Gaza Strip. The Israeli military has killed 35 Palestinians and injured more than 5,500 others – some with what appear to be deliberately inflicted life-changing injuries.
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Ontario NDP has no answers for Toronto’s homeless death crisis
Canadian PoliticsThere’s no reason why this needs to be viewed as a crisis only for the currently poor, either. The economic shifts and the effects of austerity described by research coalition Homeless Hub, affect all working people in Toronto. In Globalization, Precarious Work and the Food Bank, Lightman, Mitchell and Herd write that with the onset of grinding austerity brought about by the Common Sense Revolution in 1995 , the number of food bank users in Toronto jumped from 115,000 to 170,000.
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BDS Movement Nominated for Nobel Peace Prize
Human RightsNorwegian parliamentarian Bjørnar Moxnes has officially nominated the BDS movement for Palestinian rights for a Nobel Peace Prize. He did so with the support of his party, the progressive Rødt (Red) Party, explaining why BDS “should be supported without reservation by all democratically-minded people and states.” The following is his statement on nominating the BDS Movement for Palestinian Rights for a Nobel Peace Prize.
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Statement on Anniversary of Quebec Mosque Shooting
Human RightsWe are honoured to be part of a growing movement claiming solidarity among diverse peoples and the earth. This is our time and our future. We commemorate the tragic anniversary of January 29th with our hearts and souls. By naming the denial and narrow-mindedness in our nation, we hope to honour the lives of Ibrahima, Mamadou, Khaled, Abdelkrim, Azzeddine and Aboubaker. We will not allow them to be dismissed from our collective memories. We will not forget the suffering of their families.
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‘I won’t fly refugees to their deaths’: The El Al pilots resisting deportation
Human RightsIn recent weeks the Israeli government approved the deportation of refugees to third countries. According to the plan, the Holot desert detention facility, where many asylum seekers are held, will shut down and those who refuse to leave “voluntarily” to Rwanda and Uganda (and perhaps other countries) will be imprisoned indefinitely. According to numerous reports, which Rwanda and Uganda have denied, Israel will pay those countries $5,000 for each refugee they take in from Israel.
