Palestinians in Israel’s Prisons: Interviewing Sahar Francis

http://www.zcommunications.org/palestinians-in-israels-prisons-by-sahar-francis

Sahar Francis is a lawyer and human rights advocate in the Occupied Territories. She works with Addameer (www.addameer.org) in Ramallah in the Occupied West Bank on political prisoner’s rights campaigns. In April 2005, she was part of a North American tour organized by Sumoud (http://sumoud.tao.ca) to raise issues of Palestinian prisoners internationally. I interviewed her in Toronto.

Justin Podur (JP): Can you introduce us to your organization, Addameer?

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Colombian government acts quickly to stop a crime spree!

A crime epidemic has affected Colombia! But not to worry. Despite accusations that it is selective in its application of justice, Uribe’s administration and its military and paramilitary apparatus have come to the rescue.

Continue reading “Colombian government acts quickly to stop a crime spree!”

My weekend in London (Ontario)

I attended the London (Ontario) Palestine Film Festival over the weekend. There were some great films shown. I was there to visit friends and to be on a panel on media coverage of the Israel/Palestine conflict. The panel was shown after the film ‘Peace, Propaganda, and the Promised Land’ (I follow Bollywood convention and abbreviate this film to P3L). All of the films were, in my opinion, excellent. In the order that I preferred them, from excellent to superb, here are some brief descriptions.

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Reporters without borders is a sham

There is something peculiar about the way colonialism works today. The most sophisticated colonial projects use the rhetoric of human rights, democracy, and even anti-racism in their favour. This has a profoundly immobilizing effect on those who are actually trying to support struggles for self-determination. All the ‘democracy promotion’ that’s been going on at the hands of the US in recent years is a case in point. A very important example is ‘Reporters Without Borders’. Take a look at Salim Lamrani’s article on that institution, and you will see what I mean. Serious anti-imperialists are going to have to do some serious thinking about how to deal with all this stuff. It is very important in demobilizing our potential constituency.

Thanks Kole for holding it down over the past few days.

Status For All – By the Numbers

I was suprised to read in the French daily Liberation this morning that the Spanish government is set to regularize some 600,000 non-status people in that country. The number falls short of the 800,000 initially promised by the Zapatero government – or the demand by immigrant/refugee rights movements to grant ‘Status for All’ – but it is still something to consider in the Canadian context. The numbers themselves tell a pretty convincing story as to the feasibility of such an initiative in Canada. Let’s hope Immigration Minister Joe Volpe is taking notes on the Spanish experience!

Consider the following: Spain’s population currently stands at an estimated 40,341,462 (July 2005 est.). The country has a GDP of $937.6 billion (2004 est.) or $23,300 (2004 est.) per capita and an unemployment rate of 10.4% (2004 est.). Spain’s total land area stands at 499,542 sq km, accounting for a population density of some 80.8 persons per sq km (2005 est.).

Canada, on the other hand, has a smaller population, standing at 32,805,041 (July 2005 est.). However, it has a GDP of $1.023 trillion (2004 est.) or $31,500 (2004 est.) per capita and an unemployment rate of 7% (2004). Canada’s total land mass is 9,093,507 sq km, accounting for a population density of 3.6 persons per sq km (2005 est.).

Given that Canada’s overall GDP is 9% bigger than Spain’s (or 26% times bigger in terms of GDP share per person), that the geographic area of this country is roughly 18 times the size of Spain (with a population density that is 22 times smaller), and that the entire estimated population of non-status people in Canada is only a third of those affected under the Spanish amnesty law (i.e. 200,000 in Canada vs. 600,000 being regularized in Spain), it is hard to believe that the Canadian government is hard pressed to grant the demand of ‘Status for All’ to immigrants and refugees in this country.

The government’s math just doesn’t add up. Even if we accept the erroneous logic of right-wing critics – i.e. that immigration somehow affects jobs (thus flying in the face of the fact that immigrants largely fill jobs that are left empty by resident labour forces) – we still find that Canada is in a much better position than Spain to afford lee-way for non-status people.

A number of groups in Canada are mobilizing with the demand for the regularization of all non-status persons, an end to deportations, an end to the detention of migrants, immigrants and refugees, and the abolition of security certificates. Solidarity Across Borders and No One is Illegal in Montreal are planning a 200 km march from Montreal to Ottawa this June 18-25 to press for these demands. To find out more about this and other campaigns for immigrant and refugee right currently active in Canada click here, here, and here.

Report from (just outside) the shareholder’s meeting of a Canadian war profiteer

I have had the honour of participating in a so-far small but I believe politically important campaign against Canadian war profiteering, focusing on a corporation called SNC-Lavalin. I gave a long talk to a group about the topic, with some information on the corporation and some thoughts on related issues, a few months ago. Today, the shareholder’s meeting of SNC-Lavalin in Toronto, was, in a sense, our first test.

The action started at 10am, since the meeting started an hour later. Turnout was small, and there are several reasons for this. The first and most obvious is that Canadian war profiteering, despite being a long tradition, is not well known and indeed, while most Canadians are against the war and occupation in Iraq, most Canadians also think Canada isn’t participating in the war and occupation in Iraq. So there’s the chicken-and-egg problem of needing to do actions like this to raise the issue, and that such actions will be limited in size so long as the issue is not well-known…

There are also serious organizational and resource limitations. I know personally many of the organizers of today’s event, and I can tell you that they are a bunch of fanatically devoted hard-working people who are stretched to the gills with the amount of work they are doing, with essentially no resources. Along with organization there’s also logistics – the shareholders might be able to go to the meeting during business hours. The only demonstrators who could go were folks who work in the afternoon or evening, or students, who were most of the demonstrators.

Adding to these difficulties was the appalling behaviour of the police. This is to be expected, and is taken for granted, unfortunately, but there were a few dozen people mobilized to raise issues that are of life-and-death for millions of people (and death for tens of thousands already), and the police responded with horses, paddy wagons, special surveillance equipment, and plenty of plain nastiness. They made several arrests that seemed to me to have been motivated by pure vindictiveness (and possibly training, wanting to try out violent techniques on more or less helpless people in a street setting). One of the arrests was far closer to a kidnapping, with several huge armed men nabbing a kid after the demonstration had already ended and speeding off in an unmarked vehicle. It was shameful for the macho posturing and for the political message conveyed – no the two are doubt related. The organizational and personal costs of these arrests are high, especially since those singled out for arrest were some of the most energetic and inspiring people who will now have to deal with whatever trumped-up charges the state will come up with.

For something to set against all these costs, I believe the demonstration was a political victory. Indeed, the costs might have ‘overshadowed’ the victory for us, but according to the Canadian Press article about the meeting, SNC’s first-quarter profit was ‘overshadowed’ by our protest.

The CEO of SNC-Lavalin, Jacques Lamarre, also provided (perhaps unwittingly, perhaps perfectly wittingly) proof, as if it was necessary, that Canada’s participation in the Iraq occupation should not be considered to be merely a matter of corporate participation, but was in fact official government policy. “As long as the Canadian government tells us you can sell to the U.S. government, we will do it,” he was quoted on the newswires saying. “We never make any sale . . . which is not 100 per cent approved and reviewed by the Canadian government.”

Tells something about the relationship between a corporation like SNC and the state, if the violently disproportionate behaviour of the police was insufficient to do so.

(On a more personal note, I had an odd verbal exchange with a police officer who I at first thought was merely trying to run me over with his bicycle, but turned out had come over to call me an ‘anti-semite’ for mentioning Israel/Palestine during my brief turn at the megaphone. You see, from what we’re able to tell, SNC-Lavalin is involved in building highways and settler-only roads in Israel and the occupied territories, and is thus helping apartheid and occupation there as well. I mentioned this role, and mentioned as well the well-documented and widespread use of torture by Israel against the Palestinians, showing how occupation and torture go together in Israel/Palestine as in Iraq. The officer said something like: ‘You know, I am just here to do a job, I didn’t have any problem with you people, but then you bring this anti-Jewish stuff into it. You’re a bunch of anti-semites’. I replied that it wasn’t about Jews. He said, approximately, that I didn’t know anything about it, because I hadn’t been there. I said I probably knew more than he thought, and that I’d been to Jenin. He said he’d been to Israel and that they were fighting a war there (suggesting, perhaps, that he was a volunteer in the Israeli army?) I knew nothing about. (He was quite wrong. I’ve seen his war. ) This went on for a while – I suppose I am sensitive to being called a racist, even when the person making the accusation is a violent racist himself. My friends thought I was putting myself in unnecessary danger talking to him. I suppose the image that came to my mind when he was talking to me wasn’t so much the wreckage that he and the people he identifies so strongly with have wrought on the people he has such contempt for that he can’t even acknowledge they exist – see Junaid Alam’s article, linked just above, for an interesting discussion of this – but Neta Golan, at the Qalandiya checkpoint, trying to reason with a similar fellow saying and doing similar things. That was a long time ago now, and I’m not Neta. But enough about that all.)

Threats from the smugglers and the drug people

Lots on Northern Cauca coming – Uribe’s made his political countermove, trying to undermine the indigenous organization. I’ll get some stuff on ACIN’s response soon.

Meantime though, let me report on a rather bizarre experience I had on the weekend. I attended the Council on American-Islamic Relations-Canada (CAIR-Can) fundraiser on Saturday evening. CAIR-Can is an advocacy organization. It does media relations work, tries to educate Canadian society about Islam and Muslim-Canadians, and raises some civil liberties as well. That was my interest, and the interest of the group I was with that attended. In particular, we went to hear Maher Arar speak. Maher Arar, you’ll recall, is the Syrian-Canadian who had the misfortune of traveling through the United States, which was enough to get him shipped off to Syria for 10 months of torture. He gave a speech critical of the federal government’s bill C-36, Canada’s own ‘anti-terrorism’, anti-civil-liberties law. The head of CAIR-Can gave Maher Arar an award. He made a nice little speech at that point about the difference between ‘advocacy’ and ‘activism’. Maher Arar had said he wanted to be called an ‘advocate’ not an ‘activist’, because Arar considers himself unworthy of the title ‘activist’. So the head of CAIR-Can said he was obliged to call Arar an ‘activist’ because to him, an ‘activist’ was someone who suffers personally and makes sacrifices for the cause, while an ‘advocate’ is more detached. That makes Arar an activist (and I suppose it makes me an advocate!)

None of that was the bizarre part. The bizarre part was who else was speaking. Among the attendees was Lloyd Axworthy, former Canadian Foreign Minister. Some people I talked to thought Axworthy’s speech was completely incoherent. I disagreed. I think Axworthy’s speech was a coherent intellectual formulation of Canadian imperialism. In order to create such a formulation, Axworthy had to engage in some serious myth-making. But that was no problem for the established politician.

Axworthy began by telling a story of how he was in Egypt the week before. Egypt’s (I’ll just insert a little reminder that Egypt is a client state of the US with little pretense of any democracy whose President ‘wins’ elections by margins of 99%) Foreign Minister talked about the ‘flowering of democracy in the Middle East’ (that would be one of the myths) and asked ‘where is Canada’?

Lloyd challenged the audience with that question. He suggested Canada had been too isolationist since the trauma of 9/11 (that would strike me as another myth – for one, Canada wasn’t struck by 9/11, and I don’t think there was much national trauma there, and for another, that ‘national trauma’ didn’t stop Canada from occupying Haiti – but we’ll get back to Haiti in a second). He then discussed how Ethiopia and Eritrea are having a border conflict that is devastating, and how Canadians got obsessed with their border too.

Then the – ahem – BS started to flow fast and furious. He described what he called the ‘turmoils’ in Iraq, ‘the Middle East’ (don’t say ‘Israel’, Lloyd, much less ‘Palestine’), Sudan, Congo, Uganda. He described a world where ‘threats’ like a disease nobody knew could reach Toronto. He described the framework he built as foreign minister, one of ‘human security’, because individuals face threats. These threats?

The fanatics, the warlords, the drug people, the smugglers. An underworld of power. Information technology can bring them into your living room, to rip society, overwhelm security, and destroy the young.

(The whole rant was worthy of Tom Ridge when he used to declare those orange alerts, really).

So to deal with these ‘threats’, Lloyd formulated ‘human security’ and ‘the Responsibility to Protect’. The test case for this was Kosovo, where they took responsibility and protected the people (by bombing). An interesting test case, that, and one I won’t go into here (there’s an archive at ZNet if you’re looking for some)

‘Responsibility to protect’, Lloyd said, would protect small states from big ones (like it protected Iraq from the US? Or Haiti from Canada/France/US? Or the Congo from Rwanda? Or…) The ‘Responsibility to Protect’ was the antidote to those who wanted to divide the world into ‘civilizations’ (I guess Lloyd was talking about Huntington), divide the world into those ‘inside’ and ‘outside the law’ (I guess he was talking about the US with their concept of ‘enemy combatants’, but he certainly didn’t say so). We shouldn’t let 9/11 force us to draw inward, he said (strange way of being drawn inward, ousting governments and occupying countries), but we should open the door to the future.

Really, ‘Responsibility to Protect’ is just another term for ‘White Man’s Burden’.

By now you’re probably wondering why I called this coherent. There’s a reason. Now I just read Walden Bello’s ‘Dilemmas of Domination’ and its effect was the opposite of the one the author intended. He was arguing that the empire is weak: it made me think that the empire is stronger than he thinks. I don’t think the collapse is going to happen any time soon, and I think when it comes it could very well take all of us with it. But I suspect that well before that happens, there will be some testing of strategic alternatives. The Bush people are a particularly nasty kind of imperialism – they offer nothing to their subjects, very little even rhetorically. Lloyd sketches out a kinder, gentler seeming way. The same dirty deeds can get done, but without the clumsy (or is it just brazen?) contempt for the pretense of legitimacy exhibited by the Bush people. Canada’s historic role in imperialism, exemplified in the Vietnam war, has always been like this. Canada’s the good cop – a better analogy would be the doctor who shows up to help keep the torture victim alive so the torture can proceed for longer.

A testament to Lloyd’s incoherence, as opposed to his being understood for what he was really saying: he got a standing ovation.

Cauca Update

There is a great deal going on in Colombia even beyond Cauca. I am a bit backlogged in terms of article writing, but an article updating and explaining the situation throughout Colombia is definitely on the agenda. Meanwhile, some more information on the military and political situation in Northern Cauca.

I forgot to link here to the article I did a few days ago. on the topic. There is also an op-ed by Daniel Garcia-Pena Jaramillo, a very good analyst with long experience with the FARC and the government from when he was peace commissioner during the negotiations in the 1990s. His piece is on the political failure of the FARC. His last line expresses a disbelief that is widely felt.

Even worse than not speaking though, is not listening. I don’t understand a guerrilla organization that is indifferent to what the people say can aspire to be the army of the people.

Since he wrote his piece and I wrote mine the military confrontation continues. On April 28 the Colombian daily El Tiempo reported new combats in the towns of Jambalo and Tacueyo, which neighbours Toribio (I visited Jambalo briefly last year during my trip to Cauca and have several photos of Tacueyo in the photo essay on the movement). In Tacueyo three minors were injured by a pipe bomb.

These attacks have taken place since members of the community have begun to return. On April 25 El Tiempo reported that 5000 people who had left Toribio were returning. Mayor Arquimedes Vitonas expressed worries that “now will come the selective assassinations.” On April 26, the indigenous council of Jambalo reported that ‘in a gesture of nonviolent resistance the community of Jambalo has decided to remain in Permanent Assembly so long as the conditions under which they can return to their homes are absent.” (They assembled in the centre of town and camped there overnight – defying the armed actors who told them to leave.)

I believe the most important single piece of news in the area is the statement made by the Association of Indigenous Councils of Northern Cauca (ACIN), whose communique of two days ago demanded that the military organizations ‘silence the guns so words can be heard’. They call for 1) a ceasefire, 2) demilitarization of the region, and 3) commencement of negotiations toward a political solution to the conflict. A translation (I can’t take credit for it) of this communique is below.

URGENT COMMUNIQUÉ: “SILENCE THE GUNS SO WORDS CAN BE HEARD”

In face of the escalation of the war in our territory, and taking into account the difficult situation in which we are living, we the Nasa Paez communities reiterate before national an international opinion – as has already been expressed in the official communiqués of the ACIN beginning on April 15, 2005 (see www.nasaacin.net) – our call to a:

CEASE FIRE, COMPLETE DEMILITARIZATION OF THE AREA, AND THE BEGINNING OF CONVERSATIONS TO SEARCH FOR A NEGOTIATED SOLUTION TO THE ARMED CONFLICT IN COLOMBIA.

We say this taking into account our deep rejection of:

The declarations of Mr. President of the Republic Álvaro Uribe Vélez concerning his firm decision to “eradicate the guerrillas from Cauca” and no dialogue with terrorist groups until they put an end to their military actions (in the same way that has been done with the self-defense groups).

The continued presence and political pressure from the members of the FARC on the dwellers of a wide area of Northern Cauca and their expressed position of strengthening their military control in that territory.

Faced with these radical positions of the actors at war, we the indigenous peoples of the Northern zone of the department reiterate OUR DECLARATION OF A STATE OF HUMANITARIAN EMERGENCY until there exist true guarantees for human rights, international humanitarian law and, above all, for the community process of the indigenous communities.

We openly manifest that we the indigenous population, as a whole and as each individual person, are in imminent danger of being subjected to processes of legal prosecution or execution, currently or afterwards, by any one of the actors involved in the conflict.

“TO CONTINUE WITH ROOTS IN THE LAND”

ASSOCIATION OF INDIGENOUS TOWNSHIPS OF NORTHERN CAUCA (ACIN)
CAHB WALA KIWE

Buy any good languages lately?

Lots to report. New combats in Jambalo; the people of the communities have started returning to their homes; Nicaragua is exploding in protest; the Mexican electoral scandal in which the current President Fox was trying to prevent the leftist favourite for the 2006 election, Lopez Obrador, from being allowed to run, by the most outrageous convoluted procedure, seems to have ended with a total victory for Lopez Obrador (Mexico’s attorney general resigned); but I don’t have time tonight to explain any of it in detail. There will be more stuff on Cauca tomorrow, but if you need stuff on Mexico or Nicaragua you’ll probably have to ask for it in the comments section.

To tide you over for tonight I will pass you this note that I got that part of me simply can’t believe. It’s searingly written, and I haven’t seen anything about it elsewhere. See what you think.

Kahnawake Band Council Sells Mohawk Language to Microsoft

MNN. April 20, 2005. The Canadian government Department of Indian Affairs band council in Kahnawake is launching a “language” auction. They’re selling the Mohawk language to the highest bidder. They’re signing an agreement with multi-national corporation, Microsoft, to “co-develop an innovative Kanienkehaka language project”!

Section 4- Ownership of Work By Microsoft; License To Microsoft Materials states as follows: “The Mohawks” agree to dissolve all rights that we may have to any and all copyrights in the work and assigns all rights, title and interests over to Microsoft including but not limited to . the right to sue for infringements which may occur before the date of this Agreement, and to collect and retain damages from any such infringements..”

A Maori student visiting from New Zealand warned, “Language is a sacred thing not to be appropriated by Microsoft. This is how they co-opt our culture. Microsoft will make a lot of money on this. Now you have no river, no land, you don’t even have your own language. Your language is your essence of being and they are stealing it”. She said that the song of one of their people has been copyrighted by a football team down there. Now they can’t write about it unless they pay money to the football team.

Disgusting giveaway. The band council of Kahnawake is giving away the rights to the Mohawk language which our ancestors have been developing since Sky Woman fell to earth. This is an unprecedented insult. The band council cannot sign away our rights on behalf of us or the generations yet unborn. We will be opening ourselves up to policing and lawsuits by this mega corp which will become the ultimate authority on the use of our language.

No consultation. If Microsoft sincerely wishes to contribute its expertise to the Kanienkehaka people so that it can benefit from the wisdom collected and preserved in our language, it needs to come and meet with us, the People. Microsoft must present its project to a proper traditional consultation process. This agreement was made in secret. It is not legal because there was no valid consultation with the People.

The Kanienkehaka language belongs to the Kanienkehaka people. It has been passed down from one generation to the next since time immemorial – long before Europeans came here to colonize us. The language contains the collective knowledge and wisdom of all of our ancestors. It is our duty to learn it, preserve it and pass it on to the generations to come. It establishes our tie to our land where our ancestors have lived for thousands of years.

Tongue-tied! Most members of the current band council have neglected their duty to learn the language. They do not own it and yet they are selling it. The band council is always signing agreements that continuously put our nation, our people, our lands, and now even our language at risk.

Microsoft represents the conglomerate that massacred our ancestors, put us in concentration camps on our homeland, forced laws and ways meant to eliminate us. Now we are being forced to ask for their permission to speak and use our language!

The Kanienkehaka Onkwawen:na Raotitiohkwa Cultural Center in Kahnawake refused to support the agreement. They accused the band council of “knowingly and unilaterally agree[ing] to sell our intellectual property rights . to a foreign corporate entity that seek sto gain full ownership, monopoly and control of our language”. The band council rejects our traditional governments. They are creatures of the Canadian government created under their illegal Indian Act. The councilors commit themselves to defend and uphold the laws of Canada. This is proof that they have discarded their responsibility to their people.

Residential schools. From the time the Europeans arrived, our people have been subjected to colonization. Our children were forced into residential schools and denied the right to speak our language! In some schools almost 100% of the children died. Overall, around 50% did not come out of these institutions alive. Those who did lost their languages. In Kahnawake there were nuns and priests who had the same job, to force the Indian out of us. Kanienkeha is who we are. It is our identity. It defines our ties to the land and to each other. No one has ANY right to sell us! We the Kanienkehaka of Kahnawake must stand up now and defend ourselves

Tongue tax. As the agreement states, “In the event that taxes are required to be withheld on payment made under this Agreement by ANY government authority, Microsoft may deduct such taxes from the amount owed the Mohawks and pay them to the appropriate taxing authority”. In other words, Microssoft has agreed to be an instrument of colonization parasiting on our heritage. They want to cook our tongues for breakfast. The band council has agreed to chop off bits of our flesh to give to whatever bandit demands a slice of the action. And people called us “cannibals”! We Kanienkehaka will now be forced to pay taxes on the unique way we flip our tongues. Nothing is more quintessential to Kanienkehaka identity than the Kanienkeha language. The colonizers stole our land and now they are trying to steal our language. They will be selling our language to other people. It’s a product to them. They will have a market for it in Germany and elsewhere.

How do we stop this? This is one of the richest corporations in the world. They have all the lawyers they want at their beck and call. We can’t afford any. But we have tongues to speak for ourselves. Everyone should email Microsoft to complain. Otkon! Microsoft! Go ahead and sue me. You might get some more choice Mohawk words from me.

Kahentinetha Horn
MNN Mohawk Nation News
Kahntineta@hotmail.com