Irwin Cotler

[Terrorism, September 25th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, counterterrorism law and policy should be organized around five foundational principles.

First, the struggle against terrorism should be a cornerstone of both domestic and international human security policy. It should mobilize parliaments, governments civil society and security forces.

Second, a clear and principled policy requires clear and principled thinking. We must jettison the notion that one person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter. Rather, the principle must be that one democracy's terrorist is another democracy's terrorist and that terrorism, from whatever quarter and for whatever purpose, is unacceptable.

Third, it must be clear that this is a war against terrorism and not against Islam or any religion.

Fourth, the struggle against terrorism should explore and exhaust a multi-layered strategy of diplomatic, juridical, financial, informational and related strategic initiatives short of a military response.

Fifth, any military response must comport with the principles of international humanitarian law: the doctrines of necessity, proportionality, protection of civilians in armed conflict and the like.

In a word, the new transnational network of super terrorist suicide bombers is an existential threat that requires clear, principled thinking and comprehensive policy and strategy.

[Canada-U.S. Meeting, September 20th, 2001]

Mr. Chairman, it is with a profound sense of sadness and pain that I rise to express my condolences to the American government and the American people, particularly to the families of the victims and their loved ones.

Words may ease the pain but they also dwarf the tragedy. As one who is a graduate of an American law school, who has taught and lived in the United States, who has family in the United States, and for whom many of my closest friends are Americans, this unspeakable tragedy was and is profoundly personal and familial, as it was profoundly human and neighbourly in a North American continental sense. In a word, we are all reminded that we are one human family and that this was an attack on that human family.

On the eve of the new millennium, various pundits and policy wonks at the time warned against millenarian cults that might use the fin de siècle for the commission of what they called apocalyptic acts of terrorism, but it took the transformative terrorist attacks on the United States of September 11, not those of the millenarian cults but of the transnational super-terrorists to bring us Apocalypse Now , and to bring us Apocalypse Now not as film but as unprecedented horror in prime time, and with the tragic loss of life and innocence not so much a case of life, or more specifically mass murder, imitating art but in fact mocking it.

Any counterterrorism law and policy, therefore, be it that of any prospective anti-terrorist coalition or that of member states of the international community like Canada and the United States, will have to factor into their response the following constituent features or faces of this transnational apocalyptic terrorism, most of which found expression in this macabre terrorist assault, including the increasing lethal face of terrorism.

In the last few years we have seen a lessening incidence of acts of terrorism but we have seen: an increasing lethality in the nature of terrorism, most dramatically expressed in this macabre act of September 11; the increasing targeting of civilians in public places; and the increasing incidence of suicide bomber terrorism, associated with or underpinned by religious fanaticism.

This was not the terrorist hijacking of planes for political ends, as bad as that would be. It was a terrorist hijacking of planes for the sheer purpose of mass murder, driven by a mass hatred.

There is more: the sophistication of transnational communication, transportation and financial networks; the potential use of weapons of mass destruction; the teaching of contempt and demonizing of the other as a kind of standing incitement to terrorism against the demonized target; the vulnerability of open and technologically sophisticated societies like the United States and Canada; the explosion of internal ethnic and religious wars abroad and their attending acts of terrorism which may implode elsewhere and at home; and the continuing presence of state sponsored terrorism. In a word, the profile of this new existential threat may be, as the U.S. state department report on global patterns of terrorism put it:

--the transnational super-terrorist who benefits from modern communication and transportation, has global sources of funding, is trained and anchored in transnational networks, enjoys base and sanctuary in rogue or pariah states, is knowledgeable about modern explosives and is more difficult to track down and apprehend than members of old established groups or those sponsored by state terrorism.

As Ward Elcock, the director of CSIS, put it in his submission to the special committee of the Senate on security and intelligence on June 24, 1998, “The global terrorist threat today compared to 10 years ago is more complex, more extreme, more sophisticated, more diffuse, and more transnational. If the world is now a global village, the threat exists in every neighborhood”.

What is perhaps the most important and oft ignored dynamic in the development of a counterterrorism law and policy such as that we would recommend is combating the increasing blurring of the moral and juridical divides that have often blunted or blurred any effective anti-terrorism law and policy in these past years. I am referring to the repetition of the moral and legal shibboleth that one person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter, a moral relativism or false moral equivalence that effectively blurred the distinctions between legitimacy and illegitimacy or, more profoundly, the distinctions between good and evil.

Accordingly, the underlying basis for any counterterrorism law and policy is that this apocalyptic terrorism must be seen for what it is: not only the ultimate existential assault on human rights and human dignity in its slaughter of the innocents, but as an assault on democracies themselves and on the peace and security of humankind. The struggle against terrorism, therefore, must be seen as part of the larger struggle for the protection of democracy, for the protection of human rights and human dignity, for the protection of the human family.

The principles, then, that must guide us are: that one democracy's terrorist is another democracy's terrorist; that if terrorism is a global phenomenon, it requires a global response, as no country can fight terrorism alone nor should it be required to do so; and that if terrorism is indeed a war on democracies, then democracies must use all the democratic, diplomatic, juridical, financial and institutional means at their disposal in taking the war to the terrorists themselves, organized around a series of specific global and domestic initiatives as follows and which I would modestly recommend for consideration by the Prime Minister, if not that of the anti-terrorist coalition.

The initiatives are as follows. The first initiative, one that arises from the blurring of the moral and legal divides, as I indicated, is the need to build an international understanding of and support for a counterterrorism law and policy that is a priority on the larger human rights and democratic agenda, not just on the national security agenda. That must include not only the mobilizing of governments but the mobilizing also of parliaments as representatives of the public will. It would also include the mobilizing of civil society, which can give expression and advocacy to that public will.

Second, the legal arsenal to fight terrorism must be internationalized and institutionalized. For example, many countries have still not ratified the 13 issue specific international conventions to combat terrorism. Ratification has not only juridical importance in terms of countries implementing these international treaties as part of their domestic counterterrorism law and policy, but ratification sends an important psychological as well as juridical message that these countries have put themselves on the side of the democratic war against terrorism.

We can identify those that put themselves on the side of that war by whether they are in fact ratifying these international conventions against terrorism and implementing domestic legislation alongside them. That is a verifiable test of a counterterrorism law and policy that is juridical and prospectively effective.

Third, the international juridical initiatives for implementing and enforcing a counterterrorism law and policy need to be expanded and refined, particularly as acts of terrorism tend to involve more than one state. This includes not only the principle of extradite or prosecute as a corollary to the national and international commitment to deny base and sanctuary to terrorism and terrorists anywhere, but it also includes, for example, arrangements for mutual legal assistance treaties, MLATs as they are called, or the use of encryption, a process that allows where necessary lawful government access to data and communications in order to prevent or investigate acts of terrorism while at the same time protecting the privacy of legitimate communications.

Fourth, it is crucial that intelligence gathering be refined and that information on terrorism and terrorists be shared so that one may not only build the evidentiary links which both law enforcement and courts require, which information, I regret to say, is still not even shared among allies and fellow democracies themselves, but which shared information is not only important in an evidentiary sense, it can pre-empt and prevent the terrorist acts to begin with.

Fifth, states must take seriously the characterization of terrorist fundraising, as the 1996 Paris ministerial conference on anti-terrorist fundraising put it, as “the soft neuralgic point of democracies”, and therefore states must take the necessary steps to counteract through appropriate domestic and international means the financing of terrorists and terrorist organizations, the whole in implementation of the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism.

Sixth, there is a need for democracies to adhere to, invoke and apply those foundational principles of international law as basis and justification for any counterterrorism law and policy. This includes, for example, the characterization of terrorism as a Nuremberg crime, not only as a violent act but as an international atrocity of the first order, akin to a crime against humanity.

It includes the characterization of terrorists as hostis humanis generis , the enemies of humankind, thereby underpinning what should be for all of us a zero tolerance policy respecting the combating of terrorism from whatever quarter and for whatever purpose.

Any military action must equally be anchored in foundational international humanitarian law principles respecting the use of force in armed conflict, the protection of civilians and the doctrines of necessity and proportionality in any responsive military action. Any domestic law and policy must ensure that the rule of law is not in the interests of a counterterrorism law and policy just as an effective counterterrorism law and policy is not blunted by its over-attention to technical detail.

Finally, every state must review its domestic legal regime with a view to filling in the domestic gaps in law and policy. For example, does the domestic legal regime here in Canada properly address the evolving and dynamic nature of this terrorist existential threat as I described above? Do we need special domestic laws or perhaps a countrywide counterterrorism law such as exists in the U.S. and U.K. but improved upon? Would such special laws possibly--

[Layla Zana, June 13th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, there are few cases of the right to self-determination that are more compelling than that of the Kurdish people. However, there are few peoples whose right to self-determination has been more persistently and pervasively repressed, yet whose tragedy remains engulfed in a deafening silence.

Kurdish political prisoner and Nobel prize nominee, Layla Zana, has come to symbolize a case and cause that should commend itself to parliamentary democracies everywhere and to parliamentarians in this place.

Elected to the Turkish parliament in 1991 as the only Kurdish woman ever to serve in the Turkish parliament with over 80% of the vote of her Turkish constituents, she was arrested, prosecuted, convicted and sentenced in 1994 to 15 years in prison for nothing other than simply expressing support for the idea of self-determination. This criminalization of freedom of expression and association invites universal condemnation.

The Turkish government should undertake all necessary measures to secure the release of all prisoners held for the expression of non-violent opinion, including Layla Zana and three other imprisoned former Kurdish deputies, and put an end to this criminalization of Kurdish identity.

[Nelson Mandela, June 12th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege and pleasure for me to join in this debate and support the motion.

As one involved in the anti-apartheid movement for 20 years and who served as Canadian counsel for Nelson Mandela, I would like to pay tribute to the historical contribution of Nelson Mandela to Canadians and people the world over. The conferral of this honorary citizenship will have enduring resonance and inspiration as Raoul Wallenberg has had in being our first honorary citizen.

I would like to briefly summarize what I mean by this historic resonance and inspiration that this conferral of honorary citizenship will have.

First, Nelson Mandela is the metaphor and message of the struggle for human rights and human dignity in our time. If apartheid was the ultimate assault on human rights and human dignity, if South Africa was the first post-World War II, post-Nazi country to institutionalize racism as a matter of law and to seek to do so under the cover of being a western democracy, then Nelson Mandela's struggle was the ultimate in the struggle for human rights and for human dignity and against racism and against bigotry.

Second, Nelson Mandela is the metaphor and message of the long march toward freedom, of the struggle for equality, of the struggle for democracy. The three great struggles of the 20th century are symbolized and anchored in his personal struggle in South Africa.

Third, Nelson Mandela is a metaphor for nation building, for building a rainbow coalition, for taking diverse peoples, even antagonistic peoples, races and identities, and welding them into a rainbow coalition for nation building.

Fourth, he is a metaphor for hope, how one person could endure 27 years in a South African prison and emerge not only to preside over the dismantling of apartheid but to become president of South Africa and to build that nation. I do not know of any other example in the 20th century that can serve as such a source of inspiration and hope, particularly for the young people of our time, those who are imbued with cynicism, those who believe that this kind of inspiration does not exist any more.

Fifth, he is a metaphor, as in his Soweto speech, of education as a linchpin for peace, of education as a precondition to a culture of peace and against a culture of contempt.

Sixth, he is a metaphor for tolerance, for healing, for reconciliation.

If one looks at the entire historical record, what we have is a person who is one of the great humanitarians of the 20th century and whose contribution to the struggle for human rights, for democracy, for peace and for equality will endure and inspire all in this country and the world beyond.

[The Middle East, June 12th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I join my words to those of the member for Ottawa Centre. As a tenuous Israeli-Palestinian ceasefire hangs on a thread and threatens to explode into violence, it is more necessary than ever that the parties adhere to the recommendations of the Mitchell commission, including: first, the unequivocal and unconditional cessation of all acts of terrorism and violence; second, the cessation and desisting from all acts of incitement, for it is this teaching of contempt, this demonizing of the other, particularly that which is government sanctioned, where it all begins; third, the ending of the culture of impunity and the bringing of the perpetrators of acts of violence and terrorism to justice; fourth, the institutionalization of security co-operation between the parties so as to pre-empt acts of violence and incitement; fifth, the promotion of a culture of prevention through the institutionalization of confidence building measures; and sixth, the recommitment to direct negotiations between the parties as a basis for a just and lasting peace.

[Human Rights, June 11th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the right to freedom of association, the right to join a trade union and the right to engage in collective bargaining are fundamental rights guaranteed under the universal declaration of human rights, the charter of the Organization of American States and the conventions of the International Labour Organization.

These fundamental rights, the pillars of a democratic society, are under sustained assault in Colombia involving also an assault on the right to integrity of the human person, indeed the very right to life itself.

The data are staggering. Since 1991 over 1,600 trade unionists have been killed while thousands more have been detained, beaten, harassed, kidnapped and tortured, all for merely trying to exercise their right to freedom of association. Ninety per cent of all murders of trade unionists in the world take place in Colombia. Over 50 have been killed in 2001 alone. In a word, it is the most dangerous country in the world for trade unionists.

I ask the Canadian government to call on the ILO to convene a mission of inquiry into these human rights violations and ask the government of Colombia to protect its workers who are also at the forefront of the struggle for peace and help put an end to this culture of impunity.

[Vietnam, June 8th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I recently met with the directors of Democracy for Vietnam, Drs. Lam Thu Van and Truong Minh-Dung, who shared with me their concerns for three recent cases of religious repression in Vietnam.

First, Tadeus Nguyen Van Ly, a Catholic priest, was imprisoned for calling for religious freedom for the people of Vietnam, and there has been no news of him since.

Then there the Venerable Thich Huyen Quang, Patriarch of the United Buddhist Church of Vietnam, who has been under house arrest for the past 19 years. He is badly in need of medical care, to which he is not allowed access.

Finally, ethnic minorities in the highlands of Vietnam are the victims of religious persecution, property confiscation, torture, arbitrary imprisonment and murder.

I call upon the Canadian government to protest this religious persecution, to ask the Vietnamese authorities to inform them of the whereabouts of Father Ly and allow the Venerable Thich Huyen Quang to receive medical care, and to encourage the Cambodian government to provide Vietnamese refugees with temporary asylum.

[Raoul Wallenberg, June 6th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the establishment of Raoul Wallenberg Day recognizes this lost hero of the Holocaust, this Saint-Just of the nations, whom the UN characterized as the greatest humanitarian of the 20th century for having saved more people in the second world war than almost any government.

It is an historic initiative that will have enduring resonance. We will be recognizing, teaching and inspiring Canadians about the unparalleled and unprecedented heroism of Canada's only honorary citizen who, in his singular protection of civilians in armed conflict, signified the best of international humanitarian law; who, in his singular organization of humanitarian relief, exemplified the best of humanitarian intervention; who, in his warning to Nazi generals that they would be held accountable for their crimes, foreshadowed the Nuremberg principles; who, in saving 100,000 Jews, personified the Talmudic idiom that if a person saves a single life it is as if he saved an entire universe; and who, in having the courage to care and the commitment to act, showed that one person can make a difference, that one person can confront radical evil, prevail and transform history.

[Raoul Wallenberg, June 5th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Canadian Heritage.

In 1985, the Parliament of Canada made Raoul Wallenberg an honourary citizen of Canada. In doing so, we wanted to recognize the contribution of this great hero of mankind, who risked his own life to protect and save 100,000 Hungarian Jews from the Holocaust.

Could the Minister of Canadian Heritage tell us how she intends to make sure the legacy of Raoul Wallenberg, the inspiration behind the struggle for human rights in our time, will be celebrated in Canada in the future?

[Petitions, May 18th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the second petition, again signed by many residents of my constituency, seeks to draw the attention of the House to the following: that the Government of Canada may be asked to support the U.S. national missile defence, NMD, program to be operated by the North American aerospace defence command; that NMD is a unilateral initiative of the United States which plans, as it states in this petition, to dominate space by integrating space forces into war fighting capability; that NMD would be a step toward the deployment of weapons in space and lead to a new arms race; and that it would violate the 1972 anti-ballistic missile treaty and run counter to Canada's commitment as a signatory to the non-proliferation treaty to promote complete nuclear disarmament.

These treaties are the cornerstones of the international non-proliferation arms control and disarmament regimes long supported by Canada. Therefore the petitioners call upon parliament to declare that Canada objects to the national missile defence program of the United States and ask that Canada play a leadership role in banning nuclear weapons and missile flight tests.