Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on March 21st, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Welcome to meeting number five of the Subcommittee on International Human Rights.

Today, we will be starting our study of human rights in repressive states. In other words, we're examining the situation of human rights defenders, journalists and media organizations.

I will give a quick reminder to all those present in the room to please follow the recommendations from public health authorities, as well as the directives of the Board of Internal Economy, to remain healthy and safe. In other words, I'd like everyone present to maintain wearing their masks unless, of course, they are eating or speaking.

I'd like to welcome our first panel of witnesses. We are very pleased to have with us today Ms. Farida Deif, the Canada director of Human Rights Watch. From the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, we're very pleased to have Mr. Yonah Diamond, who is legal counsel at the centre.

Each of you will have five minutes for an opening statement. I'll begin with Ms. Deif, of Human Rights Watch.

We will now commence with your opening statement.

[Farida Deif, Canada Director, Human Rights Watch]

Thank you, Mr. Chairperson and honourable members of Parliament, for inviting me to appear before this committee to discuss the challenges facing human rights defenders, journalists and media organizations around the world. I'll focus my remarks tonight on specific countries of concern, highlighting patterns in terms of the methods and tools being used to silence independent voices.

A key goal of repressive states is to erode the checks and balances on their authority. They all read from the same playbook, and inevitably attack any restraints on their power, such as independent journalists, judges, politicians and human rights defenders. How do they do this? They do this by arresting journalists under the guise of publishing fake news; by branding peaceful dissent as terrorism, to bring criminal charges against human rights defenders; by smearing civil society organizations as foreign agents; and by issuing arrest warrants and imposing punitive travel bans and asset freezes on anyone questioning their authority.

These states also seize opportunities like the COVID-19 pandemic to further consolidate their power. As infections and deaths surged, some repressive leaders threatened, silenced or even imprisoned anyone, including health care workers, who criticized their failed response.

These states also use commercial spyware, a powerful tool to monitor and silence anyone who exposes their abuses. Governments have used the spyware Pegasus, developed by the Israel-based company NSO Group, to hack devices of journalists, opposition figures and activists in 45 countries, including a staff member at my organization, Human Rights Watch. This company has been allowed to operate with impunity in the face of overwhelming evidence of abuse.

I'll begin with a few crisis settings of particular concern—namely, Afghanistan, Ethiopia and Venezuela. In Afghanistan, after the Taliban takeover in August, they immediately rolled back women's rights and media freedom. The Taliban beat and detained journalists. Nearly 70% of all Afghan media outlets closed. Others were operating under threat and self-censoring.

In Ethiopia, journalists reporting on the Tigray conflict faced intimidation, expulsion and arrest. Last year, Ethiopian authorities temporarily suspended the Addis Standard, a leading news outlet in Ethiopia, claiming it was advancing the agenda of the Tigray People's Liberation Front.

In Venezuela, the Maduro government has carried out campaigns of stigmatization, harassment and repression against the media. In May of last year, authorities seized the headquarters of the newspaper El Nacional in an apparent effort to silence one of the few remaining independent media outlets in the country.

We are also seeing worrying trends in countries that are traditional allies of Canada, including the United Arab Emirates, Israel and India. In the United Arab Emirates, scores of activists, academics and lawyers are serving lengthy sentences following unfair trials on vague and broad charges. The UAE also continues to develop surveillance capabilities, misusing spyware to gain access to the private and encrypted communications of journalists, activists and world leaders.

In Israel, authorities have targeted Palestinians for opposing the occupation, jailing thousands and shutting down dozens of media outlets. Last year, Israeli authorities designated six prominent Palestinian civil society organizations as terrorist and illegal organizations, a move that permits closing their offices, seizing their assets and jailing their staff and supporters.

Finally, in India, critics of the BJP-led government, including activists, journalists, peaceful protesters, and even poets and actors, increasingly risk politically motivated harassment, prosecutions and tax raids. Last year, the government restricted funding for 10 international NGOs working on climate change, the environment and child labour.

In closing, we ask this committee to urge the government to take several concrete steps to address these growing challenges. The government should condemn any state, including Canada's allies, that seeks to silence independent voices and limits the rights of journalists and human rights defenders to free assembly, association and expression.

To protect these at-risk groups, there's also an urgent need to regulate the global trade in surveillance technology. Canada could be a leader in this space and should ban the sale, export, transfer and use of surveillance technology until human rights safeguards are put in place. Canada should also impose sanctions on commercial spyware companies that are responsible for or complicit in serious human rights abuses by repressive states, until they can demonstrate a change of policy that will end the violations that gave rise to these sanctions.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Thank you very much, Ms. Deif.

We will turn to the Raoul Wallenberg Centre.

Mr. Diamond, you have five minutes for your opening statement.

[Yonah Diamond, Legal Counsel, Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights]

Thank you, Chair and members of the committee.

“I hope for a day when no one in the world is imprisoned for their thoughts and for having such a beautiful demand as freedom.” This modest expectation was expressed by the celebrated Iranian poet and filmmaker Baktash Abtin, before he was sent to prison on a six-year term with his colleagues from the Iranian Writers' Association. Shortly after, Baktash contracted COVID-19 in prison. As his condition deteriorated, authorities refused to send him to the hospital until it was too late. He died on January 8 of this year in state custody. Baktash Abtin's death is a stark reminder of the lethal risks human rights defenders face, especially during a pandemic in overcrowded, unhygienic and undersupplied prisons.

Nasrin Sotoudeh, the embodiment of the human rights movement in Iran, was sentenced to 38 years and 148 lashes in 2019 for her support of women's rights activists, including sharing pins and flowers. At the height of the pandemic, her near-fatal 46-day hunger strike, anchored in a public appeal for the release of political prisoners, mobilized unprecedented international attention and allyship. As a result, she is now able to recover at home on conditional release, though with difficulty breathing.

Canadian-Iranian citizen Dr. Reza Eslami, a human rights law professor who has studied and taught here in Canada, was sentenced last year to seven years in prison for attending a training course abroad, part of a well-known pattern targeting dual nationals in Iran.

Swedish-Eritrean journalist Dawit Isaak and his colleagues remain the longest-imprisoned journalists in the world, in a country ranking at the bottom of the world press freedom index for more than a decade.

Canada must also prioritize the case of Canadian citizen Huseyin Celil, whose imprisonment goes back to 2006, and who faces a virtual life sentence in the Uighur region, all for his peaceful advocacy for his community, emblematic of the horrors facing the Uighurs as a group, including genocide.

Dr. Wang Bingzhang, founder of the overseas Chinese democracy movement, and the first Chinese national to obtain his Ph.D. in North America at McGill University, was kidnapped in 2002 and sentenced to life in solitary confinement after a half-day trial. His Canadian family has been advocating for his release ever since.

Senator Leila de Lima has been unjustly detained for over five years for her courageous work to end the culture of impunity in the Philippines for the atrocities of Duterte's drug war, which has summarily killed tens of thousands, amounting to crimes against humanity. Yet, Senator de Lima remains one of the most productive and popular legislators in the Philippines, now running for re-election in the May elections, with the future of Philippine democracy on the ballot.

In Russia, Anastasia Shevchenko's case represents the internal escalating crackdown in recent years. She was the first Russian criminally tried under the “undesirables” law, one of the Kremlin's key repressive tools, carrying up to six years in prison for human rights activity—all for holding a sign at a peaceful gathering stating “enough”.

These are just some of the emblematic cases that we've advocated for. At the same time, indigenous rights defenders are being killed or are arrested for their activism around the world, including those at the forefront of our collective struggle to protect our environment. Last year alone, a global initiative documented at least 358 murders of human rights defenders—the most conservative number.

I want to commend Canada for recently announcing the special refugee stream for human rights defenders at risk and launching the Declaration Against Arbitrary Detention in State-to-State Relations. But these cannot remain declarations. They must be acted upon with urgency and consistency across all global crises. Consular assistance for Canadians abroad is not a matter of discretion, but of international legal obligation, and legislation should be further adopted to this end.

The Magnitsky act is another invaluable tool in this regard, specifically worded to protect those rights defenders under consideration today, and should be applied as such. The government should work to strengthen the implementation of the Magnitsky Law, including a robust and accessible system that engages with civil society.

In our work, we have seen how advocacy can empower and help secure the release of rights defenders or the medical care they need to survive. As parliamentarians, your actions carry additional influence, not only for the defenders themselves, but for the movements they represent and the lives they protect.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Thank you very much, Mr. Diamond.

Now we'll open the floor to questions from the members. Each member has seven minutes.

We will start with Mr. Zuberi.

[Sameer Zuberi, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for being here today and for taking the time to be with us.

I'd like to start off with Mr. Diamond.

You mentioned the case of Huseyin Celil. We've heard before from Irwin Cotler, who is with your centre. Are you aware of the case of Idris Hasan, who is being held right now in Morocco?

[Yonah Diamond]

I'm somewhat familiar.

[Sameer Zuberi, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Thank you. I was going to ask you about that.

In terms of Huseyin Celil, if there's one recommendation you have for us, what would it be?

[Yonah Diamond]

I would say to continue pushing, as the subcommittee recommended previously, for a special envoy, specifically designated to secure the release not only of Huseyin Celil but of other Canadian citizens who have long been locked up abroad for advocacy particularly.

[Sameer Zuberi, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Thank you for that.

I'd like to turn to Ms. Deif.

Thank you for being here. You touched upon what's happening in India and the situation there. I'd like to give you some time to expand upon that.

[Farida Deif]

Thank you so much.

We are seeing really worrying trends in India. It's the world's largest democracy, but there's a really dramatic backslide in human rights. We've documented—with the BJP-led government, with support by Hindu nationalists—attacks against religious minorities and attacks against farm workers. Last year, Prime Minister Modi called peaceful protesters “parasites”. This is the type of language we would see in very repressive states. We wouldn't really assume that would happen in a country that claims to be a democracy.

There's been a real escalation in the human rights crisis in India. We're seeing really worrying trends in terms of stifling of media, targeting of journalists and using legislation around foreign funding of NGOs to close civil society organizations. There's been a real shrinking of the democratic space in India. There's been a shrinking of the civil society space. It's incredibly worrying. I think it really requires governments to take action to condemn this and condemn even small steps.

I think what happens oftentimes is that when allies deteriorate at this rate in terms of their human rights, it's usually because a number of small steps that have been taken in a negative direction are ignored. When states turn a blind eye again and again to small elements of oppression, you see a very worrying trend in which a government like the Modi government feels as though they can take action with absolute impunity against minorities, against religious minorities and against civil society in India. At some point, it becomes quite difficult to turn the ship back around.

[Sameer Zuberi, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Are there any recent examples that come to mind that you can expand upon?

[Farida Deif]

I'm sure members of the committee know of the worrying trends around religious garb and the limitations around the wearing of the hijab by Muslim minorities in Karnataka in southern India. There have been a number of wide-scale cases in which the Indian government has used politically motivated tax fraud allegations to target anyone who is independently voicing their concerns about the human rights abuses in the country.

It's a worrying trend that we're seeing. A number of examples come to mind every day. There's the statement by Prime Minister Modi about farm workers. At the time, he was talking about the farm workers' protest, which was a largely peaceful protest by farm workers, and calling them “parasites”. I think that is emblematic of a general approach that the Modi government has towards anyone voicing a dissenting opinion on their policies.

[Sameer Zuberi, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Thank you, Ms. Deif.

I'd like to shift focus for a moment. You talked about six groups in the Middle East. I don't want to take up too much time with that, but I would like to hear more from you around that particular point, if I may.

[Farida Deif]

Do you mean on the Palestinian organizations?

[Sameer Zuberi, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Yes, exactly.

[Farida Deif]

As I said earlier, we see a really worrying trend by governments to use counterterrorism legislation, to misuse counterterrorism legislation, to prosecute individuals and human rights defenders for their activities. As long as you can frame them as a national security threat, then it allows you to really undermine their work and threaten their work.

We're seeing this in a number of countries around the world, and we've seen this recently in Israel as well, where you have six Palestinian civil society organizations, some of the leading human rights organizations in the country, that are documenting abuses by the Israeli government and working towards accountability at the International Criminal Court for war crimes that are committed in the Palestinian territories. We've seen an attempt by the Israeli authorities to muzzle their work, to limit their activities, by imposing baseless charges around counterterrorism on their actions.

What's been even more disconcerting, or equally disconcerting, for me, is the unfortunate silence by this government about these abuses. We've seen a number of western states that have condemned the actions of the Israeli authorities in listing these organizations as terrorist, using those baseless charges, but unfortunately we saw complete silence on the part of Global Affairs Canada and on the part of this government. There was no condemnation of those abuses.

I think what happens is that once Canada turns a blind eye to abuses by its allies, it only exacerbates the situation. It worsens the human rights crisis in a country, and it sends a signal to other states that those actions are condonable and fine to move forward.

[Sameer Zuberi, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Ms. Deif, that's the limit of my time.

I was hoping to talk more about surveillance in Canada and also about what's happening in Russia with respect to human rights defenders there. Hopefully, we'll hear more from you about that later on.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Thank you very much, Mr. Zuberi.

We now turn to Mr. Cooper.

You have seven minutes.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the witnesses.

I'm going to direct my questions to Ms. Deif.

In your testimony, you cited a number of countries of concern, and I want to ask you a little more about Venezuela. You noted that the assets of the daily newspaper El Nacional were seized by the Maduro regime. Prior to that, Roland Carreño, a reporter with El Nacional and critic of the Maduro regime, was arrested in October 2020 on trumped-up charges of money laundering, financial terrorism and illegal trafficking of weapons, and he remains a prisoner of the Maduro regime.

Are you familiar with this case and, if so, could you speak to it as perhaps part of a broader picture of the situation, which I would submit is a very grim one in Venezuela for journalism?

[Farida Deif]

I'm not familiar with the specific case, but I can tell you the contours of this case are a model that we're seeing in Venezuela and elsewhere, again and again.

I mentioned the authorities seizing the headquarters of El Nacional. It was, basically, after the supreme court of Venezuela ordered it to pay more than $13 million U.S. in damages for alleged defamation. You see the control of the courts, the use of defamation charges, the use of fraud and the heavy fines that come with it as a sort of larger element of a problem where governments are trying to close any dissenting media outlets and carry out a campaign of stigmatization and repression against the media. Very few newspapers, websites or radio stations in Venezuela can criticize authorities anymore; they fear reprisals and they're really made to self-censor. We've seen this again and again, and certainly Venezuela is a model for this.

We also saw that in Venezuela, in 2017, the constituent assembly passed a very vague law, which they call the “law against hatred”, which forbids political parties from promoting fascism, hatred and intolerance and establishes prison sentences of up to 20 years for publishing anything that they call messages of intolerance and hated. However, it's being misused in a lot of ways. During the COVID-19 state of emergency that was imposed, many people sharing or publishing information on social media questioning officials or their policies around the pandemic have been charged with incitement to hatred and other crimes.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

That actually leads to where I was going to go next, which was for you to elaborate a bit on how the Maduro regime has exploited COVID in terms of cracking down, including what we have seen in terms of a significant number of arbitrary detentions of journalists.

[Farida Deif]

In Venezuela, in a lot of ways, in terms of the effect of the pandemic, you see a collapsed health care system that's led to a kind of resurgence of vaccine-preventable infectious diseases. Hundreds of people are allegedly dying due to barriers in accessing health care.

There was a very serious collapse of the health care system even prior to the COVID pandemic, which has only been made worse. Certainly, you see a very similar playbook, where vaccination has been marred by corruption allegations and a lack of transparency in terms of who gets the vaccines and what the distribution is like. You see the government of Venezuela using the COVID-19 pandemic in order to further restrict space for civil society.

You see, in the Maduro government, so much of the same playbook that you see again and again in repressive states, around the pandemic and the use of the opportunities that the pandemic creates in order to further restrict people's individual rights and freedoms.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Would you consider the situation in Venezuela to be deteriorating?

[Farida Deif]

We certainly see that. With the Maduro government and the security forces over these past few years, we've seen an increasing worsening of the situation. We've seen extrajudicial executions, forced disappearances of jailed opponents, the prosecution of civilians in military courts, torture of detainees, crackdowns on protests, the use of the state of emergency in response to COVID as a pretext to intensify the government's control over the population, and no judicial independence, which certainly contributes to a kind of impunity for the Maduro government's crimes.

Certainly, we see a real worsening of the situation.