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On Wednesday, the BBC reported that Canada ordered its intelligence agency to use information that they may have extracted through torture, if public safety is at risk. According to the report, the directive was from 2010. Previously, a 2009 order issued by the Conservative government instructed the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) that it mustn’t knowingly rely on information derived from torture. However, the 2010 directive by the Public Safety Ministry adds that it may not be possible to determine how a foreign agency obtained information and in “exceptional circumstances” it may represent “an unacceptable risk to public safety” to ignore it. In fact, there’s little new in the report. For years, it’s been an open secret that detainees kept without formal charges in NATO and US facilities like the notorious Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo prisons were tortured. Every such report tended to raise an outcry among human rights activists, but little has changed since then. Oh, no, the US administration HAS changed, but not its practices.
What’s new in the report from Canada is the fact that practises adopted by the USA (to which the world has grown accustomed) are used by countries having a much more liberal and milder image that their “elder brothers”. Therefore, in Canada, the report caused a row. Members of the Government, like Public Safety Minister Vic Toews tried to play down the graveness of the report and justify the use of torture by saying, “Can one safely ignore it (the fact that the information obtained came from torture: author) if Canadian lives and property are at stake?” Nevertheless, the opposition called the use of torture “repugnant”. An MP for the opposition New Democratic Party, Jack Harris, said the policy would only encourage countries that used torture. The Toronto Star, citing legal experts, pointed up that the directive issued by the Conservative government condoned torture and breaks federal law and Canada’s international commitments. Stuart Hendin, an expert in the law of armed conflict and human right laws from the University of Ottawa, said, “We’re a signatory to the UN Convention Against Torture and there’s an absolute prohibition against torture, period”.
The report also became a powerful tool for the West’s bitterest opponent, Iran, to fire back. The English-language Iranian channel Press TV stated, “The use of torture to obtain information isn’t just a Canadian or US policy alone. It’s an imperial policy designed to terrorise people and it reflects the criminal nature of the duo’s (the USA and Canada’s) imperial controllers”. Indeed, there’s been so much talk about infamous “double standards” that sometimes it seems useless to appeal to the notion. However, what else can we do, if the West demonstrates its furious readiness to attack anyone whose only fault is that they’re weaker, under the pretext of “human rights violations” and “massive tortures against their own people”, but at the same time they publicly acknowledge that they’re in no way different from those they attack?
Actually, with the USA this is commonplace. Its bombing of civilians in sovereign countries (not necessarily the ones it’s at war with, like Afghanistan or, lately, Iraq), its use of torture and indefinite imprisonment without trial change little in Uncle Sam’s overall picture. However, what does it do to Canada, a country claiming to be a part of Europe in the Western hemisphere? Indeed, one can only wonder how far the US’ younger brother might go in order to copy their elder. It’s very much doubtful that legalisation of torture by the Canadian government is worth the tarnished image… not only of the government, but also of the whole country.
9 February 2012
Boris Volkhonsky
Russian Institute for Strategic Studies
Voice of Russia World Service
http://english.ruvr.ru/2012/02/09/65694288.html
