（Joint Annual Meeting of the Law and Society Association and the Canadian Law and Society Association）

Montreal, May 29, 2008

Secretary General, Amnesty International Canada

Here is perhaps one of the saddest ironies of our time. World governments are talking about security at every turn; spending billions of dollars to boost security; launching wars to defend security. Yet in many ways insecurity seems only to deepen and intensify. How can that be? One key part of the answer, certainly the aspect I intend to focus on this afternoon is that in the world’s mad-cap dash for greater security, human rights – in many respects the surest guarantee of true security – are being left behind.


Let me begin by reminding us what is at stake.

The interrogator told me to take off my jacket, shoes and socks. He told me to lie on the floor with my stomach down, my head on the floor, my hands behind my back and my legs up. They lashed the soles of my feet and it felt like they were pouring lava on me. I flipped because of the pain and they ordered me to lie back on my stomach. One person stood on my head, the other on my back, and they took turns beating my feet and kicking me with their wooden-soled shoes. They questioned me while they beat me. They would occasionally pour cold water on my feet and legs, and then ask me to stand and jog on the spot before lying on my stomach for more beating. I think that was to ensure I could still feel the pain from the beating. The torture continued until I told them what they wanted to hear — I lied and told them I knew Osama Bin Laden.


These harrowing words are, sadly, nothing new to anyone who spends time following the ongoing sorry state of human rights in our world. They are ugly, disturbing words that could describe the vicious scourge of torture in jail cells in any one of a multitude of countries. What is relatively new though – for me, a Canadian human rights activist – is that there is a deeply troubling Canadian link to the horrors described in these words.


These are the words of Abdullah Almalki, a Canadian citizen, who was arrested upon arrival for a family visit in Syria in May 2002. He remained imprisoned for 22 months; was never charged or brought to justice in a legitimate court proceeding. He was held in abysmal prison conditions. And he was subjected to severe, lengthy, frequent and very painful torture. Abdullah Almalki is but one of 4 Canadians - all of whom were of some degree of interest, sometimes peripheral, in the course of Canadian national security investigations - who were arrested in Syria, held in the same detention centre, and beaten and whipped by the same Syrian torturers between late 2001 and early 2004. In all of their cases there is credible evidence that supports the conclusion that there was some degree of complicity on the part of Canadian law enforcement or security agencies in their fate.


Today I am going to talk about the “insecurity of human rights” with a particular focus on Canada – not perhaps a country that would usually come under the spotlight in the course of exploring such a theme. I’m going to be talking about insecurity, ironically, at a time when world governments, including Canada, have been devoting considerable money, political will and attention to beefing up security. But, doing so in ways that most unfortunately have at best given human rights imperatives only passing thought; and at worst have done so in ways that quite blatantly and cavalierly undermine and violate a wide range of fundamental, universal human rights. In doing so, I will argue, Canada and other governments have done no favour either to the cause of security or the cause of human rights. #p#分页标题#e#


I am going to focus on Canada, but my comments arise in a wider global context. Which is where I want to start – with some reflections about the wider global context, as we can’t properly situate and understand developments in Canada without a global perspective.


And I’ll begin with perhaps the obvious: security. We hear a great deal about security concerns in this post September 11th world of ours. Security. Insecurity. Homeland security. Internal security. Terrorism. Counter-terrorism. Anti-terrorism. It’s on all the agendas: municipal, domestic, regional, international. Politicians, policy-makers, journalists, ordinary women, men and youth. Everyone is worried about security. Talking about security. Demanding security. Laws have been enacted; government departments like Homeland Security in the United States and Public Safety in Canada have been established or reorganized; wars are being waged; treaties have been negotiated; and bilateral deals concluded between governments that would make for the most improbable of bedfellows. All in the name of security.


And there is no doubt about it, this world of ours is in need of security. But as I begin I want us to remember that “security” is not and cannot just be about more bomb-checks, no-fly lists, police screens and military battalions. Our only concern about security cannot, of course, be suicide bombings in western urban centres or attacks that target westerners or western interests – as horrible, cruel and completely unacceptable as those attacks are and may be. We have to be concerned far beyond those fears and possibilities. For September 11th 2001 was not a wake up to insecurity for the vast majority of people on this planet. Security is precisely what millions upon millions of women, young people and men who live lives of fear and hunger, of violence and illness, of racism and poverty crave. Reslient, remarkable, courageous individuals but who face the battering of war, famine, terrorism, AIDS, torture and so many other ugly social ills, day in and day out.


* In Darfur and neighbouring Chad, where I’ve just completed a 2 week Amnesty International fact-finding mission, in those 2 countries alone close to 3 million people are still afraid to return to the homes from which they were chased in the midst of a frenzy of mass rape, killings and pillage.


* In the Middle East where the vicious cycle of occupation, human rights abuses, suicide bombings and retaliation has left so much hatred, death and injury in its wake and ripped apart a heartwrenching, endless number of families. In Gaza, Tel Aviv, Iraq, south Lebanon.

* In China, where an economic boom may mean more televisions and cars for a burgeoning middle class and more contracts for foreign companies, but where political dissidents languish in jail and the crackdown on ethnic minorities in places like Tibet and Xinjiang and on spiritual groups like Falun Gong continues to claim an ever-expanding human toll. #p#分页标题#e#


* In Haiti – where decades of extreme, relentless poverty, devastating political violence and corruption and a legacy of international neglect and ineptitude have laid the country bear and left generations to grow up in the face of hopelessness and despair.


* And in both Canada and the United States, where we are only just now slowly waking up to a shocking and untold human rights tragedy – the decades of marginalization, discrimination and violence that have claimed the lives of untold numbers of Native women and girls.


Our world does most certainly need security. So just what is it that stands in the way of making that happen? We know the suffering, the inequity. We know the despicable chasm between the global “haves” and the global “have-nots”. What stands in the way? There are of course many answers to that question: some simple, some complex, some cultural, some political, some costly, some relatively cost-free. Some rooted in history. Some very contemporary. One very critical piece of the puzzle, though, and the theme that will run through my remarks this afternoon, is the ongoing, inexcusable failure of this world of ours to recognize that at the heart, the very heart of so many of these unforgivable wrongs – lies human rights.


There has been considerable debate and discussion about security and human rights over the past 6 ? years: within the corridors of power at the UN and national capitals, within police and military forces, opinion leaders and media commentators, and of course the general public, everywhere: in schools, refugee camps, workplaces, at home, with friends. Much of the debate however has been putting human rights on the defensive: we are told that human rights stand in the way of achieving real security and that to be truly secure, truly safe, we may have to give up a bit on all those sacred human rights. We are told that human rights have become a problem and that those of us who are concerned about human rights have to make the case as to why human rights still matter. The assumption is somehow that security and human rights have a zero-sum relationship: add a bit on one side, have to take away on the other.


So how should we approach and understand the relationship between the two? Security. Human rights. What of the short, but ever so important word that lies in between? Security and human rights? Or human rights? Versus human rights? Over human rights? Through human rights? Rarely have conjunctions and prepositions had such significant meaning.


I want to turn the security and human rights debate upside down and approach it from the other side. Our world is absolutely not insecure because we are awash in human rights, because we’ve gone too far in protecting and upholding fundamental freedoms, because we’ve been too preoccupied with ensuring global justice. Quite the opposite. If anything, we are insecure because of the longstanding failure I’ve just described – the refusal, unwillingness and neglect, the fault of all nations and all peoples – to truly, truly commit to what the human rights vision entails. And we’re not going to become more secure by creating an even greater distance from those human rights ideals. #p#分页标题#e#


It is always a dangerous proposition to begin anywhere in history when looking back and charting where human rights have come from. I’ll take that dangerous step though and suggest that we go back 60+ years – to 1945. Sixty-two years ago the Charter of the United Nations was finalized. A rather significant milestone in the creation of the universal human rights order. The world was just beginning to emerge from the unspeakable global horror of WWII, was reeling with the growing understanding of the deep evil of the Holocaust and was struggling to conceive of a way to heal the hatreds that had torn the world asunder for six blood-filled years.


The answer, assembled leaders knew, did not lie in bigger armies, more divisions between peoples or blindly allowing inequities to fester. The answer, they knew, had to lie in bringing the world together, into global community. And right there, at that telling moment in history, and in the first lines of this new global body’s bold Charter: human rights: We the people of the United Nations, determined to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights….


And those leaders came back to human rights three years later when in 1948 they wrote and proclaimed our world’s beautiful human rights testament – the UDHR, which opens with the equally powerful affirmation that: recognition of the inherent dignity and the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world. This was not a na?ve time in the history of humankind. It was a desperate, fearful, terribly insecure and uncertain time. But leaders had the clarity of vision to know that the solution had to be rooted in rights, in justice, in equality.


This first crucial universal human rights document was adopted at a time when the world was painfully aware of the depths of depravity to which human beings can descend, and the extent to which it is overwhelmingly civilians who are the primary victims of the violence and insecurity that results. When governments established the global human rights order they knew that they are often forced to confront horrifying events and take decisive action. They agreed however that their actions must always proceed within a binding human rights framework, which would bar them from violating fundamental rights directly and also require them to take steps to protect their citizens from human rights abuses that others might commit. In taking this step, governments were not somehow selling security short. Rather, they expressly noted that it is “disregard and contempt for human rights” that have “resulted in barbarous acts.” Security would come by embracing and committing to human rights like never before.


As the international human rights system developed, more detailed and comprehensive treaties continued to grapple with these fundamentally intertwined imperatives to protect human rights and ensure security. Some rights were therefore drafted in terms that recognize an inherent balancing which takes into account the need to safeguard national security, public order or the protection of the rights of other people, such as the freedoms of expression, peaceful assembly and association. Other rights are not open to balancing, but can be suspended temporarily if necessary “in time of public emergency which threatens the life of the nation.” This includes the protection against arbitrary arrest, or rights associated with fair trials. Finally, a number of human rights are specifically identified as being of such importance as to never be subject to restriction or derogation, such as the right to life, the protection against torture and cruel treatment, the prohibition of slavery and freedom of religion. #p#分页标题#e#