United Nations’ Human Rights Committee
Reports on Canada’s Violations of Human Rights
In a report released recently, the United
Nations’ Human Rights Committee noted that Canada is violating various human
rights as set out in the “International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights”.
The report opposes the contradictory attitude of the Canadian state towards
human rights. On one hand, it states that the “positive aspects” of Canada’s
human rights record are that it has become a signatory to two more protocols –
one relating to discrimination against women, the other to the rights of
children – and that it “plays an important role in the promotion of human
rights”. On the other hand, the report notes that many of the recommendations
that it addressed to Canada in 1999 “remain unimplemented” and that Canada is
“reluctant to consider that it is under an obligation to implement the
Committee’s requests for interim measures of protection”. In other words, while
presenting itself as a champion of human rights, Canada does not live up to its
commitments to implement the covenants it has signed.
The report also highlights the Canadian
government’s continuing efforts to extinguish inherent Aboriginal rights and
its failure to settle long-standing Aboriginal land claims, as well as the
widespread discrimination and violence against Aboriginal women in canada. It also expresses concern about the Canadian
state’s use of the Anti-Terrorism Act and “security certificates” to violate
the human rights of immigrants and refugees, including their deportation to
countries where they face the risk of torture or cruel , inhuman or degrading
treatment. The report specifically refers to the Canadian state’s complicity in
the illegal transfer of Maher Arar to Syria where he
was subjected to torture. It expresses concern that the Canadian state has
failed to supply the Committee with sufficient information on the cases of
other Canadians of foreign origin who have been detained, interrogated and
allegedly tortured at the hands of foreign security agencies. In addition, the
report cites as violations of human rights Canada’s practice of
imprisoning persons under the age of 18
with adults if they are serving an adult sentence, as well as the large scale
arbitrary arrest and detention of demonstrators in Montreal.
The question of human rights has been a
central issue in the world, especially since the end the Second World War. It
has been an issue both separate from and linked together with the question of
social systems. The capitalist states, led by the United States, waged an
unrelenting ideological campaign to equate socialism and communism with fascism
and totalitarianism, while equating capitalism with democracy and human rights.
This ideological campaign complemented an all-round economic, political and
military pressure to undermine socialism and communism. The degeneration of the
Soviet Union and the countries of Eastern Europe into pseudo-socialist
societies, with hybrid features of both capitalism and socialism, gave further
ammunition to all of the enemies of socialism and communism, who attributed all
of the ills of these countries to socialism and communism.
Even though the regimes in the Soviet Union
and Eastern Europe collapsed in the 1989 to 1991 period, the pressure against
socialism and communism persists. Just recently, on November 9, U.S. president
George W. Bush declared “World Freedom Day” to mark the sixteenth anniversary
of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. His proclamation was filled with the
Cold War jingoism – that freedom and democracy had prevailed over communism and
tyranny. If this were true then the past 16 years should have witnessed a
renewal of peace, prosperity and human rights as 99 percent of the world’s
population lives under the capitalist system. However, this is far from the
case. Rather, the world has gone in the opposite direction in the past 16
years.
The working class and people aspire for a
society without the exploitation of persons by persons. Such a society would
have as its overriding principle the recognition of the human rights of its
citizens and residents. It would recognize that people have human rights by
virtue of being human. Human rights could not be given as privileges or taken
away as punishment. They would exist as an intrinsic quality of being a human
being and as a claim on society, and on the governments that represent that
society, for all that is required to exist as a human being. These needs are
economic, political, social, cultural. They include health care, education, culture
and other necessities of life. This is the kind of society that Karl Marx and
Frederick Engels foresaw. This is the kind of society
towards which the first steps were taken by
Lenin and Stalin in the Soviet Union, and by Enver
Hoxha in Albania. Despite the fact that these first
steps towards building a society without exploitation suffered a setback, and
these countries reverted back to exploitation, the material conditions still
exist for this advance of society. The Canadian government, and George W. Bush,
even though they present themselves as champions of human rights, do not want
to create such a society.