Maseratis and the Chinese Red Cross

By Alex Ballingall - Monday, July 18, 2011 at 10:10 AM - 0 Comments

AFP/Getty Images

A scandal involving a 20-year-old woman, fancy cars, luxurious handbags and the Chinese equivalent of Twitter has fuelled a groundswell of disquiet regarding the Red Cross Society of China. Guo Meimei Baby, as she’s called on the microblogging site Weibo, branded herself as a “commercial general manager” for the charity organization. Controversy sprang up after she posted a series of flashy photos that lent credence to the belief among an already suspicious public that the Chinese Red Cross had been using donation money to lavish executives with fancy toys. Among Guo’s photos were pictures of herself leaning on the hood of a white Maserati she labelled “little horse,” and an orange Lamborghini called “little bull.” She also sent out images of Hermès handbags and of herself enjoying fruity drinks in business class on an airplane.

A flurry of microblog posts has since appeared, lambasting both the Red Cross and Guo. At one point, the online furor garnered 600,000 posts a day on Weibo. Although both Guo and the Red Cross deny any affiliation, the latter issued a statement on July 1 saying it would allow auditors to scour its financial records for any wrongdoing.

Reading the documents: Notification, policy and concerns

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, June 27, 2011 at 4:32 PM - 5 Comments

The documents tabled last week can be viewed in their entirety here. Herein, a series of posts on some of the noteworthy files and disclosures contained therein.

Documents marked DFAIT36 through DFAIT116 cover the notification of the Red Cross (and later the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission) in regards to those detained and/or transferred by the Canadian Forces between June 2006 and May 2007.

DFAIT36 outlines concerns expressed by the International Committee of the Red Cross in June 2006 about delays in notification. DFAIT75 covers concerns expressed in December 2006. DFAIT145 covers concerns raised in May 2007.

In DFAIT126, dated September 2006, Richard Colvin suggests Canada should be doing its own monitoring of detainees in Afghan custody.

DFAIT141 covers a wide discussion of detainee policy, while DFAIT147 and DFAIT149, both from May 2007, are drafts of new policies.

DFAIT151 covers a number of issues and proposals raised in the wake of the Globe and Mail’s April 2007 reporting.

Reward miles for charity

By Jason Kirby - Thursday, April 14, 2011 at 10:17 AM - 1 Comment

Japanease Red Cross/Getty Images

Spurred by images of devastation in Japan, donations to charities like the Red Cross are soaring. To make it even easier to give, many companies with loyalty programs are now letting members donate their points to relief efforts. Just last week, Shoppers Drug Mart launched a one-month campaign encouraging customers to donate their Optimum points to the Red Cross, which it will match with cash donations up to $150,000. But while charitable giving is certainly a good thing and is to be encouraged, not all points-for-charity programs are the same, and it’s important to read the fine print before deciding if this is the best way to help out.

Canada’s largest loyalty program, Aeroplan, was one of the first to make such an offer available. It set up a special Aeroplan Miles account for the Red Cross, and kicked things off by donating one million “miles.” Since then, members have donated an additional 440,000 miles to the account, according to Isabelle Troitzky, communications director at Groupe Aeroplan. The Red Cross can redeem the miles to pay for flights or buy merchandise like computers through the Aeroplan website.

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Don’t cross the Red Cross

By Julia Belluz - Thursday, January 27, 2011 at 4:23 PM - 2 Comments

A comic pantomime production of Robin Hood in Glasgow allegedly violated the Geneva Conventions when nurse Ima Poltis rushed on stage wearing a hat and tunic bearing Red Cross emblems. According to a letter from the Red Cross, addressed to management at the Pavilion Theatre, unauthorized uses of the sign, “no matter how beneficial or inconsequential they may seem,” would diminish its special significance “and potentially lives may be lost.”

The protection of the symbol for the Red Cross is legislated by the conventions, and improper use—from first-aid supplies to children’s toys or video games—can land offenders in the International Court in the Hague. So the theatre replaced the scarlet crosses on the costume with green ones, following advice by the organization “to avoid pink, orange, burgundy or maroon.” Theatre manager Ian Gordon did not see what all the fuss was about. He told the Express, “While I understand the good work that this organization does,” there are “more pressing matters throughout the world. A small red cross on a stage for four minutes in a panto in Glasgow is unlikely to cost lives.”

What might have been

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, March 11, 2010 at 1:52 PM - 14 Comments

Canadian Press delves into a proposed, but ultimately rejected, plan to put the Afghan army in charge of detainees.

NATO allies lobbied Afghan’s president for a separate legal framework to handle prisoners captured around Kandahar in late 2006 but those efforts “went nowhere,” say internal memos. The records outline an early strategy of the Canadian government as it faced pressure from the International Red Cross and others to take more responsibility for captured Taliban fighters…

The idea was to let the fledgling Afghan army operate a detention facility built by the U.S. rather than rely on either the National Directorate of Security or the country’s shaky correctional system. The proposal included a demand that Afghanistan create a separate legal framework for terror suspects, similar to the U.S. system of military tribunals. Afghan President Hamid Karzai was pressed to carve out “a new detainee policy that would have made the Afghan army responsible for prisoners and created a new class of detainees, but efforts have gone nowhere,” says a Dec. 4, 2006, memo.

What they were told, what we aren't allowed to hear

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, February 25, 2010 at 1:54 PM - 32 Comments

The Star reports on a May 2007 memo warning government and military officials about the legal ramifications of detainee transfers. James Travers, meanwhile, posits an unsourced, but seemingly somehow informed, theory as to some of what the government is currently withholding.

In the winter of 2007, three insurgents captured by Canada’s top-secret Joint Task Force Two disappeared into the notorious Afghan prison system. Three years later, Prime Minister Stephen Harper suspended Parliament rather than release related documents that raise difficult questions about the role of this country’s special forces and spies in targeting, capturing and interrogating key enemies.

Linking those events are fears about what happened to Isa Mohammad and two other prisoners transferred to Kabul control by Canadians after successful Kandahar operations. In a private 2007 briefing, the prestigious International Committee of the Red Cross expressed concern to Canada that the men had either been killed or were being held by the U.S. in one of its controversial “black site” military prisons.

Dispatches detailing those worries, the names of the three missing men – as well as a fourth who Canadians found – and Red Cross frustration over the military’s persistent failure to provide timely, accurate prisoner information are in the files the Harper government is withholding.

Yes, we have a plan

By John Geddes - Monday, February 8, 2010 at 8:50 AM - 9 Comments

The pattern in Ottawa following a humanitarian crisis has long been predictable: first the scramble to help, then the political damage-control exercise to justify delays and disarray. After the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004, federal officials were left explaining why it took several precious days to lease a Russian aircraft to fly in a Canadian military disaster relief team. When Israel attacked Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon in 2006, other countries managed to begin evacuating their citizens while Canadian officials were trying to book ships to do the job.
But last month’s devastating earthquake in Haiti has been an entirely different story. Although some inevitable snags have been reported, experts in large-scale relief operations have generally applauded the Canadian effort. “We can see,” said Susan Johnson, director general of international operations for the Canadian Red Cross, “that we’re in a different place than we were in some previous responses on the part of Canada.” Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his cabinet are basking in the praise—a welcome distraction from sharp and sustained criticism of the decision to suspend Parliament until after the Winter Olympics.

The more agile reaction this time is no accident. The federal government’s capacity to coordinate operations after a major disaster abroad has been systematically overhauled in recent years, precisely because it was previously found wanting. Among the old shortcomings: no large central stockpile of emergency aid supplies, no single federal agency with the authority to pull together the response, not even a full roster of trained public servants to call in to man the phones in an operations room.

Continue…

Phone it in

By Paul Wells - Tuesday, January 19, 2010 at 8:22 PM - 14 Comments

The Canadian Red Cross has now made it easier than ever to donate money to the Haitian earthquake relief effort. Following on the example of their U.S. cousins, the CRC today announced a mechanism for donating to relief efforts through mobile-phone text message.

As of today, Canadians can donate to the Society via text messaging. Donors interested in this option must simply text REDCROSS to 30333 and a one-time donation of $5 for the Haiti Earthquake fund will be added to their mobile phone bill. The charge will be posted once the donor responds to a confirmation text. Text messaging donations are available in $5 increments.

Full details via the link. Even though this option wasn’t available before today, Canadians have been extraordinarily generous using the old-fashioned credit card, cash and cheque methods: the CRC reports it has raised $35.7 million in donations and $8.1 million in pledges, and of that amount, $14 million has already been contributed directly to the relief effort. On his website, the Prime Minister urges Canadians to “donate money — not clothing or food — to their preferred, experienced humanitarian organizations such as the Red Cross.” Of course the Red Cross isn’t the only such organization, but it’s one I know and trusted with my donation.

"The police can't restore order in Haiti and for the most part don't try"

By Michael Petrou - Monday, January 18, 2010 at 10:34 AM - 32 Comments

Michael Petrou reports from Port-au-Princ

I’ve been in Haiti since Friday. Much of what I’ve seen and heard will appear in the print edition of this week’s magazine, but in the meantime here’s a very brief rundown of the trip so far.

On Thursday night I flew into Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. There I hooked up with Rahul Singh and his team from Global Medic. Global Medic is something Singh, a Toronto paramedic, started 10 years ago after a collapsed marriage sent him backpacking around the world. He ended up in Nepal, worked for an NGO there, and was appalled by the bureaucracy and waste that’s rampant in so many international development organizations. He wanted Global Medic to be different. It doesn’t have a bureaucracy to speak of. Its overhead is low. Its staff of medics, doctors, and engineers are volunteers. And its goals are simple: bring clean water, medical aid, and food to people in disaster zones as quickly and efficiently as possible.

It helps that Singh could sell ashes to the devil. People give him free stuff because he makes you believe in what he does. He scored a free flight to Dominican Republic for his team of seven on its way to Haiti from a charter airline, which also lugged all their water purifying systems and medical gear. He hired a bus and jeeps in the Dominican Republic and drove them all to Port-au-Prince. We arrived around 3 p.m. By nightfall, one of the doctors on Singh’s staff, Michael Howatt, was amputating gangrenous limbs on a table at an outdoor field hospital, cutting with shaving razors instead of scalpels. By noon the next day, they had set up a water purification system and were pumping out clean drinking water to thousands.

Global Medic has an annual budget of a few hundred thousand dollars. The Canadian International Development Agency, by comparison, spends one hundred million dollars a year in Haiti alone. This doesn’t mean that Global Medic is popular with other, bigger and more established NGOs.

“They are what we call a cowboy organization. They come and do something flashy,” says Bogdan Dumitru, a security officer with Care Canada. “We could have distributed all our stockpiles and grabbed a bunch of journalists, and it would be great. But that’s not the point.”

Dumitru says the responsible thing to do is to coordinate aid efforts with other organizations, especially the United Nations. Doing otherwise, he says, risks creating a “holy mess” if word gets out that there is fresh water in one part of the city but not in others.

To be frank, it’s not a convincing argument. Care, which already had a presence in the country before the quake, planned three water distributions Saturday. One was successful. They gave water purification packets to 600 people. They say they had to work through a local committee that had a list of people designated as water recipients. The same day Global Medic delivered clean water to 25,000. There was no riot or even disorder in the lineup of people waiting. And they trained Haitians in the neighbourhood to take over the purification system when Global Medic leaves.

A police officer patrols Port-au-Prince downtown to discourage looting (AP Photo/Ricardo Arduengo)

“If you look at the other NGOs, not to be critical, but they go in with clipboards,” says Singh. “When they fill up that clipboard with notes, they’ll go back and start bringing in what people need. Our job is to come in and be an expert, efficient, and immediate solution.”

International development types are welcome to fight this one out in the comments section.

I SAW THE FIRST dead body minutes after arriving in Port-au-Prince. Today, three days later, I can’t count them anymore. They’re everywhere, and some died much more recently than the earthquake. Vigilantism and score settling are on the rise. The police can’t restore order and for the most part don’t try.

I was in Port-au-Prince two years ago. Today, the city has turned into something I could not have imagined then and cannot accurately describe now. How many horror-infused anecdotes are necessary to convey what’s happening here? People carry toothpaste in their pockets so that they can re-apply a smear on their upper lip when the stench of death becomes too much. Body parts stick randomly out of the rubble, blistering in the sun. Is that enough?

I remember visiting the National Penitentiary in Port-au-Prince two years ago. Then, the overcrowding flooded my senses, and it took me a few minutes to trust my eyes, with men packed together tighter than animals in a stockyard. During the earthquake, the prison burned and crumbled. Some 3,000 prisoners forced their way out and onto the streets. I walked in to the prison Sunday, kicking open a gate and stepping over the razor wire that clung to my pant cuffs. It was like visiting the abandoned set of a horror movie. The cells were busted open, but inside dozens of hammocks crafted from scraps of cloth hung between bars and bunks to mark the tiny piece of air where men were once forced to carve out a place to sleep. Four dead bodies lay swelling in the prison yard. It’s impossible to tell how they died.

Aid is coming slowly. On Sunday, the joint Canadian and Norwegian Red Cross field hospital still hadn’t arrived. A handful of Canadian nurses and doctors did their best providing basic first aid to patients who lay on disintegrating mattresses and moaned under a field of tarps.

At the Canadian Embassy, mid-afternoon Sunday, Canadian Forces Captain Mark Peebles said that the Disaster Assistance Relief Team reconnaissance unit had sent its report back to Ottawa in the last “24 to 48” hours but that an order to deploy DART in full had not yet been given.

The embassy’s compound was filled with cheerful journalists and Canadian citizens waiting to be evacuated. The grounds are shaded, and there is a tennis court. There is also a small medical tent, but staff there are sufficiently underwhelmed: a man who appears to be suffering only from loneliness is attended to with compassion and time. Elsewhere in the city bodies are burning in ditches for lack of a place to bury them. It’s like stepping into a different world.

The politics of disaster

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, January 14, 2010 at 3:43 PM - 84 Comments

The Winnipeg Free Press’ Mia Rabson isn’t much impressed with the government’s public relations.

Late last night we got a photo from the prime minister’s office of Stephen Harper on the telephone, presumably with UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon, discussing the situation in Haiti. Today Defence Minister Peter Mackay is posing in Halifax as the HMCS Athabaskan and HMCS Halifax leave for Haiti. At about the same time, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his wife, Laureen, were staging a photo op making a donation to the Canadian Red Cross.

Enough already. Stop posing for photo ops and just get on with the business of helping Haiti.

Much like Jean Chrétien was heavily and rightly criticized for getting in the way in a photo op of him throwing a sand bag onto a dyke in the middle of the 1997 flood in Winnipeg, these kinds of photo ops smack of political opportunism and are out of place.

CBC’s Janyce McGregor is searching for signs of politics put aside. I would note only that Lawrence Cannon and Denis Coderre managed today to sit beside each other at a news conference in Montreal.

"A sea of devastation"

By Charlie Gillis - Wednesday, January 13, 2010 at 6:14 PM - 2 Comments

In that first fleeting moment, as the walls shook and a rumble coursed through her second-floor office in mid-town Port-au-Prince, Magdalie Boyer thought a transport truck must have somehow breached the surrounding walls, and struck the low-rise building. But as ever in Haiti, the truth was much worse than anything the rational mind might summon.

As Boyer and her co-workers at World Vision gathered in the courtyard below their building, the extent of tragedy about to engulf their city began to sink in. “The neighbourhood behind our building—one of the nicer ones in the city—was a mess,” says Boyer, a communications director for the international aid organization, who is permanently stationed in Haiti. “The walls around it had crumbled into the streets, so cars couldn’t get through. There were fallen trees, streetlamps hanging, roofs that had collapsed completely. Imagine a parking garage with the decks collapsed. That’s what a lot of the buildings in this neighbourhood looked like.”

Continue…

What the ministers were told

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, December 21, 2009 at 1:03 AM - 71 Comments

The head of the International Red Cross is reported to have met with Peter MacKay, Gordon O’Connor and Stockwell Day in the fall of 2006.

Officially, the Red Cross would only say the talks focused on topics including Afghanistan, humanitarian law in modern conflicts and co-operation with Canada. Unofficially, sources in Geneva said the international agency, whose functions include monitoring the treatment of prisoners, was growing frustrated over Canada’s tardy notification of its handover of captured suspected Taliban to Afghan authorities. The delay could often be as much as 34 days, making it difficult to track the detainees.

'Why do you want to know?'

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, December 15, 2009 at 10:18 AM - 28 Comments

More memos from 2006, more concerns about Canada’s handling of Afghan detainees.

One of the complainants was British Colonel Dudley Giles, a senior military police officer with NATO’s International Security Assistance Force the 40-plus nation coalition fighting insurgents in Afghanistan. In August of 2006 he brought his concerns to the Canadian embassy in Kabul, saying Canada was stonewalling on providing basic information on the Afghans it was capturing.

“Col. Giles made what can only be described as strong criticisms of the Canadian approach on detainee issues,” Canadian diplomat Richard Colvin wrote in a Sept. 28, 2006, memo that was sent to more than 30 Canadian government e-mail addresses – most of them in the Department of Foreign Affairs.

“There are ‘issues of trust and openness,’ ” Mr. Colvin quoted Col. Giles as saying. “According to Giles, when he contacts Canadian [officials] in Kandahar, ‘their first response to requests is ‘Why do you want to know?’ followed by ‘We know what you want, but we won’t give it to you.’ ” The memos add to the weight of concerns already raised by Mr. Colvin, the International Committee of the Red Cross and human-rights groups about Canada’s practices in transferring prisoners to Afghan authorities.

(Reminder: Tomorrow at 1pm, I’ll be chatting about the year in Parliament.)

The apology precedent

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, December 10, 2009 at 12:49 PM - 10 Comments

It was suggested during QP yesterday that some sort of apology to the House might now be in order. Here, for the sake of comparison, is the statement Gordon O’Connor, Peter MacKay’s predecessor as minister of national defence, made in the House on Mar. 19, 2007, after it was confirmed that statements he had made were not accurate. Continue…

'The buck stops with MacKay'

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, December 8, 2009 at 12:14 PM - 42 Comments

The NDP has just now asked that the Defence Minister tender his resignation tout suite.

Full press release after the jump. Continue…

'Strategic (Macro) Level Engagement'

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, December 7, 2009 at 11:32 PM - 9 Comments

Canadian Press gains access to internal documents and finds talking points, expressed concerns and wrangling over contingencies.

As the winter of 2006-07 settled in, Canadian officials began to hear abuse concerns from more than just the Red Cross. British and Dutch forces, who followed the Canadians into southern Afghanistan, were “deeply frustrated” even though their agreements with Kabul allowed them more access to prisoners.

“UK/Dutch pol/mil colleagues lament that they are unable to track their detainees,” said a Dec. 4, 2006, memo viewed by The Canadian Press. ”It is unclear whether they are tortured, held beyond legal limits, or (all too frequently) released back to battlefield.”

The Allies were worried “the detainee issue could explode at any moment into a political firestorm.”

The Commons: And so we arrive at satire

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, December 3, 2009 at 6:20 PM - 39 Comments

The Scene. Bob Rae stood first, with what sounded like a reference to a particularly demented game of Clue.

“We were told yesterday at the Afghanistan committee that a braided electric cable, which is undoubtedly an instrument of torture, was found in the office of the director of investigations at the National Directorate of Security,” he reviewed. “I would like to ask the Minister of National Defence, would he not agree with us that a discovery like that points to a systemic problem rather than simply a single instance with respect to a discovery of that kind?”

As Mr. Rae spoke, there was some discussion on the Conservative side as to who should answer. Since the Liberal critic had requested the Minister of Defence, it was apparently decided that the Transport Minister would rise. Mr. Baird duly rose to list all the times Canadian officials have searched Afghan prisons without finding anything like a braided electric cable.

“In other words, in 2007 alone, we visited the prison on 33 occasions, the National Directorate of Security on 12, and the Afghan National Police Detention Centre on two, for a total of 47 visits,” Mr. Baird explained. “These were usually unannounced and there was nothing discovered.”

“Au contraire,” Mr. Rae said, reminding the Transport Minister of the braided electric cable to which he had referred just seconds earlier.

The Transport Minister rebuffed this too. Over then to Ujjal Dosanjh, the increasingly frustrated Liberal defence critic.

Continue…

KANDH-0032

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, December 3, 2009 at 1:23 PM - 1 Comment

Here, via some very rudimentary technical skills, is KANDH-0032 isolated from yesterday’s package of documents. Much of whatever Richard Colvin reported in his early memos is obscured, but of those that were said to deal with the “treatment” of detainees, this is perhaps the least redacted.

Again, this would seem to be one of the memos Canadian Press referred to yesterday. The most relevant section would seem to be at page three of this memo.

'All kinds of things are going on'

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, December 2, 2009 at 6:39 PM - 28 Comments

The Canadian Press gets a look at several uncensored documents.

The International Red Cross met twice with senior Canadian officials in Kandahar to deliver veiled but insistent warnings about torture in Afghan jails a year before Canada acted to protect detainees.

Details of the face-to-face meetings in 2006, outlined in uncensored memos examined by The Canadian Press, undermine the federal government’s claims that diplomat Richard Colvin was a lone voice raising vague concerns about torture.

The Red Cross is prevented by international rules from using the term “torture” and from commenting on one country’s behaviour to another. But the risks were so dire that detainees might be tortured in Afghan jails that the agency felt compelled to alert senior Canadian diplomats and officers in person, say memos made available on a confidential basis to The Canadian Press.

Some of this would seem to be referenced in KANDH-0032, which is found in its redacted form in today’s release at page 126.

A little light editing

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, December 2, 2009 at 10:27 AM - 7 Comments

Ahead of more testimony at the Afghanistan committee today, the Globe reports that Richard Colvin was asked to delete portions of his reports.

Canada’s former ambassador to Afghanistan asked a diplomat to erase two bluntly worded sections from an April, 2007, report on how Ottawa’s delays in notifying the Red Cross of prisoner transfers to Afghan authorities left these detainees vulnerable to abuse.

The Globe and Mail has learned that Arif Lalani asked for the edits from Richard Colvin, a diplomat at the centre of an unfolding controversy over whether Canada turned a blind eye when handing prisoners to Afghanistan’s torture-prone authorities.

This editing took place in April, 2007, only days after a Globe investigation revealed disturbing allegations of abuse and torture among prisoners transferred by Canadians to Afghan detention – stories that kicked off a stormy debate in Ottawa.

Looking back, looking forward

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, November 24, 2009 at 12:19 AM - 13 Comments

The CBC finds evidence of delays, going as far back as 2002, in reporting detainee transfers to the Red Cross. Opposition members of the special committee on Afghanistan say they want all relevant briefing notes and government documents related to Afghan detainees before they’ll hear from David Mulroney.

The NDP, the Liberals and the Bloc Québécois are demanding the Tories release a long list of documents linked to Mr. Colvin’s testimony before they allow Mr. Mulroney a public rejoinder…

Prime Minister’s Office spokesman Dimitri Soudas accused opposition parties of playing games on detainees by blocking Mr. Mulroney. “If the opposition were serious about finding answers, they would allow him to appear before the committee,” Mr. Soudas said.

Opposition MPs however say they can’t properly question Mr. Mulroney without access to the uncensored versions of e-mails, briefing notes and memos that make up the background story behind Mr. Colvin’s testimony.

The Liberals are particularly seizing on whatever it was the Defence Minister promised in Question Period this afternoon.

What happened to those 130?

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, November 23, 2009 at 11:50 AM - 0 Comments

The government has long maintained that to disclose the number of detainees transferred by Canadian Forces in Afghanistan would violate operational security, but a government source now tells the Globe that approximately 130 were transferred during the first 14 months of combat operations in Kandahar.

In June 2006, when news broke that Canadian soldiers had twice intervened to prevent the execution of prisoners, a spokesman for the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission told the Canadian Press that about 30 percent of prisoners handed over to Afghan authorities were abused. CP’s report of June 2, in its entirety, after the jump. Continue…

'Elements of a war crime seem to be present'

By Michael Byers - Friday, November 20, 2009 at 1:41 PM - 12 Comments

Canadians should hang their heads in shame. Richard Colvin’s testimony about torture in Afghanistan is a searing indictment of government officials who either knew—or should have known—that Canada was transferring detainees to torture.

Between 2006 and 2007, Colvin, the second-highest-ranking Canadian diplomat in Kabul, sent 17 reports about torture to Ottawa. The reports, which were circulated widely within the departments of Foreign Affairs and National Defence, confirmed public warnings from international officials and journalists.

In March 2006, Louise Arbour, the then UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, reported that complaints of torture at the hands of Afghan officials were “common.”

In June 2006, the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission estimated that “about one in three prisoners handed over by Canadians are beaten or even tortured in local jails.”

In March 2007, the U.S. State Department reported that unconfirmed reports of torture were “numerous” in Afghanistan.

In April 2007, the Globe and Mail reported on “a litany of gruesome stories and a clear pattern of abuse by the Afghan authorities who work closely with Canadian troops.”

Yet the Canadian Government did next to nothing. In April 2007, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said that “Canadian military officials don’t send individuals off to be tortured.”

Colvin’s testimony directly contradicts the Prime Minister’s statement. He reports that all the transferred detainees were tortured and that this was widely know in Kandahar, including among Canadian soldiers and diplomats.

Also in April 2007, then Defence Minister Gordon O’Connor told the House of Commons that the Red Cross would inform the Canadian government if it had any concern about the treatment of detainees. O’Connor later apologized, admitting the ICRC had always maintained its policy of reporting only to the Afghanistan government.

Colvin reports that the Red Cross tried unsuccessfully for three months to convey its concerns to the Canadian military about problems in the way Canada was reporting to the Red Cross when it transferred detainees to the Afghan authorities.

Colvin’s allegations have emerged because he was called to testify before the Military Police Complaints Commission, a body—established after the Somalia Inquiry—which has been investigating detainee transfers at the request of Amnesty International and the BC Civil Liberties Association. The government sought to block Colvin’s testimony before the MPCC, citing national security. The obstruction prompted the three opposition parties to call Colvin to testify before a Parliamentary committee, where his voice could finally be heard. Now, the Canadian Government is seeking to shoot the messenger by publicly besmirching one of Canada’s finest diplomats.

Colvin currently serves as an intelligence officer at the Canadian Embassy in Washington, D.C., a post reserved for the very best in the foreign service. And he’s been put in an unenviable position, his career and reputation on the line, and has chosen to tell the truth rather than fall in contempt of Parliament. In addition to slurring Colvin, the Canadian Government is seeking to obfuscate the facts by claiming that it acted decisively to improve the detainee transfer arrangement put in place by the previous, Liberal government. Nothing could be farther from the truth: it took more than a year of complaints, news reports, litigation and political pressure before a new transfer arrangement was finally adopted in May 2007.

The actual facts are still emerging, but all the elements of a war crime seem to be present. The prohibition of torture ranks with the prohibitions of genocide and slavery as one of the most fundamental rules of international law. Torture—and complicity in torture—is a “grave breach” of the 1949 Geneva Conventions. If Canadian officials allowed detainees to be transferred to Afghan custody despite an apparent risk of torture, and chose not to take reasonable steps to protect them, they are as guilty of a war crime as the torturers themselves. They could be prosecuted in Canada under the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act. Or they could be hauled before the International Criminal Court. Canada has ratified the ICC’s statute, giving it jurisdiction over Canadians who commit war crimes anywhere. However, the International Criminal Court will not intervene if Canadian officials are willing and able to investigate and prosecute. We must hope that the will to investigate and prosecute is present. For imagine the damage to Canada’s reputation and influence if a general, ambassador or cabinet minister was prosecuted for war crimes in The Hague.

As Colvin himself explained: “If we disregard our core principles and values, we also lose our moral authority abroad. If we are complicit in the torture of Afghans in Kandahar, how can we credibly promote human rights in Tehran or Beijing?”

Even more seriously, the government’s indifference to torture may have created greater risks for Canadian soldiers. Insurgents who believe they will be tortured will fight to the death rather than surrender, placing Canadian soldiers at increased danger of harm. As a result, it is possible that one or more soldiers might have been killed as a result of the Canadian Government’s actions. Again, as Colvin cogently explained: “In my judgment, some of our actions in Kandahar, including complicity in torture, turned local people against us. Instead of winning hearts and minds, we caused Kandaharis to fear the foreigners. Canada’s detainee practices alienated us from the population and strengthened the insurgency.”

It’s time for Canadians to rally behind this brave and principled diplomat. It’s time to insist that any war criminals be investigated and prosecuted, regardless of who they are.

Michael Byers holds the Canada Research Chair in Global Politics and International Law at the University of British Columbia. He has taught the laws of war at UBC, Duke University, Oxford University, the University of Cape Town and the University of Tel Aviv. Byers ran as an NDP candidate in the last federal election.

Broken telephone

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, November 20, 2009 at 1:05 PM - 35 Comments

Speaking about the process of notification around detainee transfers, Richard Colvin testified on Wednesday that “when the Red Cross wanted to engage on detainee issues, for three months the Canadian Forces in Kandahar wouldn’t even take their phone calls.”

This has apparently been misrepresented in subsequent reports, but speaking to Canadian Press a Red Cross official seems to confirm Mr. Colvin’s claim.