The Human Rights Research and Education Center of the University of Ottawa (HRREC) was the host of a roundtable on the issue of the criminalization of dissent and its impacts on human rights and environmental defenders. The panel presentations was followed by an exchange with the audience on the legal dilemmas and challenges faced by human rights and environmental defenders as a result of this increasing trend.
A Co-Presentation with Toronto’s Aluna Theatre of ‘The Last Walk of Adolfo Ich’ and a panel discussion with a Guatemalan human rights defender and local guests about the criminalization of dissent. With Jen Moore from Mining Watch, Ian Thomson from Kairos, Roch Tassé from ICLMG, Brittany Lambert from APG-CCIC and Lolita Chavez from the K’iche People’s Counsel.
This essay is a response to Margaret Wente’s troubling column “Can you ever argue about torture?” published in The Globe and Mail on February 1, 2013. The Globe and Mail declined to publish ICLMG’s response.
Remembering history does not mean accepting the horrible acts and the violations of the rule of law and civil liberties perpetrated for a “good cause”. Canada has ruined many lives in its involvement in the war on terror by adopting lax attitudes towards torture, using information obtained through torture, and abandoning individuals in countries where they were tortured because of erroneous information provided by our police and intelligence agencies. To this date, Canada still refuses to apologize and compensate the victims: Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad El Maati, Muayyed Nureddin, Benamar Benatta, and Abousfian Abdelrazik. Our cause, however good we think it might be, becomes morally bankrupt as soon as we use terrorizing and life shattering methods such as torture. We become who we are fighting against.
