State of (in)security

All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always—do not forget this [...]—always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler [...]
1984, George Orwell

I was born into a world of 1984.
A special year.
And a special read.

It was, and is to some exten world where "Big Brother" constantly watches, where fun and sexuality is suppressed, where suspicion is the new religion, and where the Party controls all thoughts and all movements. There is one truth, and that is a manufactured truth packaged and sold through the media. There is one lie, and that lies in the power of resistance, of individuality, which cannot be tolerated in the utopian society of sham freedoms and suppression.

But people are told, and reminded again and again, through propoganda, through torture, through confinement, or worse, that "Slavery is Freedom", that "War is Peace", that "Ignorance is Strength". In the name of security and unity, we are subject to fear, to distrust one another, and the 'Other', and to place our utmost faith and commitment to the State. Only then can we are one. Only then there is peace. Only then there is freedom. Only then there is strength.

You would think what I just described is a distant world, far away from the comforts of our consumerism and civil liberties we take for granted. Perhaps, you would think the state of 1984 exists in certain 'undesirable' country belonging in the Axis of Evil. But the United States, and many Western countries are getting close to such a State of (in)security. In an age of terror, and the all-out 'War on Terror', nothing seems unjustified. Nothing seems illegal. Basic rights, held so high for so long, defended and affirmed repeatedly in triumphs for individual freedoms, are slowly being eroded. Encroaching our liberties, a goliath of a State, with as its overreaching and overarching security measures, agents and bureaus as its limbs.

And the situation is no more different in Canada. Draconian measures are slowly being put in place, and a secret service that few within and with-out Canada know of is at work. The victims? Foreign-born minorities generally, and Arabs or Muslims more specifically.

The story of Adil Charkaoui is telling, and disturbing. An ordinary Permanent Resident originally from Morrocco, who has been living in Canada with his family since 1995. One day in 2003, he was surrounded by police, and handed a "Security Certificate" signed by the Ministry of Public Safety and Minister of Immigration. On the basis of an investigation by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS-- the Canadian secret service), Charkaoui is said to be "a member of the terrorist organization of Osama Bin Laden and that he has engaged, is engaging or will engage in terrorist activities."

Charkaoui was thrown in jail, without charge or trial for almost two years. When the case came to trial the "evidence" against him is so secretive that it cannot be revealed for him to defend against. Charkaoui was later released on bail, but under strict conditions. He is forced to wear a GPS device, cannot leave area of Ile de Montreal, cannot use the internet, cannot leave his home without being accompanied by a family member (who must submit a 'monthly report' on Charkaoui). And the police can search his house without a warrant at any time. In effect, despite being out of prison, Charkaoui is a prisoner at home, at home, his every move and word in everyday life constantly surveilled and watched.

Below is an exchange between Charkaoui and his four year old son:

- Daddy, daddy …
- Yes, little one.
- What are you wearing around your neck?
- Around my neck! Nothing.
- No - there!
- Ah! You mean around my ankle.
- That's the neck of the foot, the ank... ?
- Ankle.
- But you haven't said what it is.

- Well, that, it's a bracelet.
- How long have you worn it?
- Three years.
- Why do you always wear it?
- Because i've got to, it's a present.
- Who gave it to you?
- It was tonton.
- Which tonton?
- Okay…it was uncle Sam…
- Who is uncle Sam?-
- Really, you ask too many questions. It was somebody who gave it to me ...uncle
Sam, uncle Stephen, uncle Security. It doesn't really matter, you don't know him.
- Ok, but why is your bracelet black?
- Because those who gave it to me have white faces but black hearts.
- Why isn't it gold like Mommy's?
- Because the people who gave it to me don't have golden hearts, little one.
- But why are you the only one to wear it in Quebec, Daddy?
- Not for long, you should get used to it. Pretty soon it will become a fashion, like tatoos: everyone will have one. Already in cell phones, in cars, for workers, for daddys, for babies, for dogs ... Uncle Sam doesn't have a heart of gold, but he forgets no one.

For a number of years since his arrest, Charkaoui and his family has been threatened with 'deportation' to Morocco, even despite very high risk of torture or being killed if deported--a fact that the Canadian authorities admit is the case.

The United Nations Human Rights Committee has cautioned the Canadian government about the potential breaches of Canada's international obligations to protect fundamental human rights and the arrest, detention and expulsion of non-citizens and refugees on (so-called) "national security grounds". When Charkaoui challenged the legality of the Security Certificate, the Supreme Court of Canada held that such a document and the entire process of trial and detention without charge or justification was "unconstitutional". Indeed, the highest court in Canada even held the Security Certificate violated key provisions of Canada's much championed Charter of Rights and Freedoms. These include the "right to life, liberty and security of the person" (S. 7), and rights not to be arbitrarily detained or arrested (S.9), and the rights to be informed of the reason of arrest (S. 10).

Despite this court victory, the Conservative government of Canada is seeking to bypass the judgement, and spearheading legislation that is basically a carbon copy of the old law, albeit with even more draconian measures. This so-called new legislation, Bill C-3 in effect:

"...re-introduces this perverse security certificate process virtually untouched beyond the inclusion into the hearings of a "special advocate" who would have access to the so-called evidence but who would still not be allowed to share it with the suspect.

Although the "special advocates" would be able to challenge the intelligence report, they would not be able to cross-examine the source of this intelligence, for instance a detainee in a foreign jail or an agent from another government.

In other words, Bill C-3 sustains a two-tier justice system in Canada – with one set of rights for citizens and another, reduced set of rights for non-citizens. It also, strangely enough, sets up two different standards of proof with the weaker standard applied to what many people believe to be the more serious suspicion of terrorism.

Security certificate cases rely on a much lower standard of proof than do criminal prosecutions. A judge ruling on the case of a non-citizen subject of a security certificate only needs "reasonable grounds to believe" that they represent a risk as opposed to "proof beyond a reasonable doubt" in a criminal case.

Bill C-3 would maintain a process whereby, on intelligence conclusions from CSIS, individuals who are considered a risk to national security are deported to their countries of origin."

In fact, the Canadian bill would simply be introducing a system which has been condemned even in the UK House of Comons and House of Lords' Joint Committee on Human Rights, which wrote that the introduction of a so-called 'special advocate' system to a person detained without charge:

"has absolutely nothing to do with the traditions of adversarial justice as we have come to understand them in the British legal system." Indeed, we were left with the very strong feeling that this is a process which is not just offensive to the basic principles of adversarial justice in which lawyers are steeped, but it is very much against basic notions of fair play as the lay public would understand them."

Both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have also identified this as an area of grave concern.

What has been just outlined above is not the case of Mr. Charkaoui. Other Muslims, all accepted refugees living in Canada, are facing similar ordeals and threats of deportation based on shoddy evidence and travesties of justice. Hassan Almrei, Mahmoud Jaballah, Mohammad Mahjoub, Mohamed Harkat, and the famous Guantanamo detainee Abdullah Ahmed Khadr face similar fates of being singled out, detained, harrased, and accused of crimes the evidence of which are so secret it cannot even be produced in court, let alone defended against.

"The worse enemy of secrcy is publicity", a determined Charkaoui said in today's public lecture.
What I have outlined are prime examples of what the worse excesses of racial profiling reveals the institutioalised two-tiered justice a prime Western democracy is underpinned by. Why else would a judge of the Supreme Court of Canada blurt out that "Al Qaeda members are not from Sweden" and that they are "not Buddhists, but Muslims".

But there are other victims too. The democratic society, with our freedoms guaranteed under the rule of law, the very freedoms of thought, movement, and privacy can one day be threatened too. Simply by the arbitrary evidence of hearsay or some obscene evidence extracted from torture, anyone of us could be the target of a smear campaign against your good name and character, whereby the burden is reversed on you to prove yourself innocent, and until then, you are guilty before the State, before the media, and before an increasingly unfair and biased judicial system.

Today it is the Muslims.... but can it not just as easily be labour unions, or students with 'subversive' thoughts and actions? And could it not just as easily be you, or me, or you and me?

[...] Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face … for ever.
1984, George Orwell

I see a future, a future with a human face. It need not necessarily be beneath a boot. But for the sake of our liberties, it must speak and shout. Back at the boot, back at power, and show that the human face is anything but an enemy. Most of all, it must speak and shout back, and show that a human face is anything but helpless.