Thursday, April 26, 7 pm

Toronto book lovers. Please come and meet Erna when she interviews author Dr. Gary Geddes at the Toronto Reference Library, Beeton Auditorium

Drink the Bitter Root: A Writer’s Search for Justice and Redemption in Africa, by Gary Geddes

Drink the Bitter Root is a provocative, emotionally charged account of one writer’s travels in sub-Saharan Africa. Haunted by the 1993 murder of a Somali teenager by Canadian soldiers in what became known as the Somalia affair, and long fascinated by the “dark continent,” Geddes decides at age 68 to make the trip.

Canada Committee News
This month, the Canada Committe welcomes Erna Paris.

Erna has accepted an invitation from Human Rights Watch to join the organization’s Canada Committee. Human Rights Watch is one of the world’s leading independent organizations dedicated to defending and protecting human rights.

2012 HRW Toronto Film Festival
The 9th Annual Human Rights Watch Toronto Film Festival runs from Wednesday, February 29 until Friday, March 9, 2011 at the TIFF Bell Lightbox.

This year’s festival will feature 9 oustanding feature and documentary films addressing a range of human rights issues including legal & illegal migration, political freedoms and modern slavery:

Feb. 29 – Special Flight (Dir. Fernand Melgar| Switzerland 2011)
Mar. 1 – Habibi (Dir. Susan Youssef| USA/Netherlands/
United Arab Emirates/Palestine 2011)
Mar. 2 – The Bully Project (Dir. Lee Hirsch | USA 2011)
Mar. 3 – Color of the Ocean (Dir. Maggie Peren | Germany 2011)
Mar. 4 – Burma Soldier (Dirs. Nic Dunlop, Annie Sundberg & Ricki Stern | Ireland/USA 2010)
Mar. 5 – This Is My Land…Hebron (Dirs. Giulia Amati & Stephen Natanson| Israel/Italy 2010)
Mar. 6 – The Price of Sex (Dir. Mimi Chakarova| USA 2011)
Mar. 8 – Granito: How to Nail a Dictator (Dir. Pamela Yates | US 2011)
Mar. 9 – The Island President (Dir. Jon Shenk | USA 2011)

All films will screen at 8pm at the TIFF Bell Lightbox.
Visit www.hrw.org/en/iff for more information on Human Rights Watch’s worldwide film festivals

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH CANADA
161 Eglinton Ave. E, Suite 702 Toronto ON M4P 1J5 (416)322-8448

January 2012
The venerable Canadian International Council (CIC) recently arrived on the web as www.opencanada.org, an exciting new hub for discussion on Canada’s foreign policy and International Affairs. Erna has joined as a “Rapid Responder.” Responders are academics, journalists, and other foreign affairs buffs who have been invited to fire off their opinions (in 150 words or less) on weekly questions. Check out the website to experience high-level unmediated writing and conversation about Canada’s role in the world.

On this issue of The Agenda with Steve Paikin, Erna Paris joins guests Preston Manning, John Duffy, Andrew Coyne, and John Ibbitson to discuss the New Canadian Order: Canada is seeing the rise of a new power structure and shifting geo-political alliance. How will the shift of power from Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal to the West influence Canadian politics and identity?

Watch the video on TVO

Watch the podcast on iTunes (choose “Is Central Canada…” and click on “View in iTunes” to download the video to your iTunes player).

October 25, 2011

Long Shadows:Truth, Lies and History was chosen by the finalists for the inaugural Hilary Weston Writers Trust Prize for Nonfiction as one of Canada’s twenty-five most influential works of nonfiction: the books that had made a difference in their lives.

By Erna Paris, Globe and Mail, October 28,2011

The right to free speech is one of the most important democratic freedoms. It enables the flow of information and encourages diversity of opinion in the public sphere, as well as criticism of political leadership, all of which are in the public interest. But like most freedoms, it is not absolute, nor should it be.

The Supreme Court of Canada is currently pondering whether to jettison provisions in the Saskatchewan Human Rights Code that restrict free speech in the interests of protecting a vulnerable minority from publicly proclaimed hatred. The case in question concerns the rights of homosexuals, but the issue is broader: The court’s judgment will have a ripple effect on anti-hate laws and the rights of minorities everywhere.

Given its multicultural fabric, contemporary Canada is vulnerable to the potential rise of ethnic hatreds, and it is naive, not to mention ahistorical, to assume that our mythologized consensus over tolerance cannot easily be eroded.

Back when Canada was white and Protestant, respected academics proudly announced that Catholics, Jews and immigrants from southern Europe were “unassimilable” (their favourite expression). Their words carried weight. Signs in the Beaches neighbourhood of Toronto read: “No Jews or dogs.” There was a riot against Jews in the 1930s. In Quebec, a virulent fascist movement held sway with ideas that continued into the postwar decades. The leader and mainstay, Adrien Arcand, was supporting neo-Nazi Ernst Zundel as late as 1967.

Happily, those days are gone; in fact, one reason Canada has successfully incorporated millions of immigrants from around the world is that Canadians came to understand that, in an emerging milieu of ethnic difference, hate speech was a danger to the maintenance of social peace. Equality of citizenship, including freedom from harassment, required compromise and moderation, values that were incorporated into the Canadian zeitgeist.

European countries without our tradition of upholding anti-hate laws, and without a history of ethnic pluralism, have had a much harder time coping with growing diversity. Only the United States allows almost unmitigated speech, but some legal scholars, such as Jeremy Waldron of New York University, are beginning to believe that America should align itself with the rest of the world’s liberal democracies – countries that, in his words, “take affirmative responsibility for protecting the atmosphere of mutual respect against certain forms of vicious attack.”

This protection has become urgent in the years since 9/11 with the concomitant increase in verbal attacks on Muslims. In Canada, the most prominent free-speech extremists are Ezra Levant, who provocatively republished the insulting Danish cartoons denigrating the Prophet Mohammed in 2006, and Mark Steyn, who has been generalizing about Muslims for years. Both these authors have tried to shift the Canadian consensus by normalizing previously unacceptable levels of speech.

And normalizing is exactly how it happens. Shifts in the general consensus regarding minorities are progressive and incremental. We don’t notice. Then we wake up to find ourselves in a changed environment, as did the Norwegians after Anders Breivik went on a murderous rampage last summer. Mr. Breivik was part of a growing continuum of radicals fixated on the idea that Muslims, as an undifferentiated group, are conspiring against the West. In his eyes, he was a patriot. Unfortunately, history is rife with such people. They are nourished on incessant, unbridled hate speech.

It has been more than 20 years since our Supreme Court last wrestled with this issue, then upheld Canada’s hate-speech provisions by ruling (narrowly) that James Keegstra, an Alberta teacher who quizzed his students on their “knowledge” of his anti-Semitic views, was willfully promoting hatred of a Canadian minority. The Canada we live in today is considerably more fragile than it was in 1990. Freedom of speech must be balanced with freedom from the destabilizing effects of public hatred in this, the world’s most heterogeneous society.

By Erna Paris, Ottawa Citizen October 21, 2011

The early al Jazeera videos graphically depicted Moammar Gadhafi’s last moments. In unedited footage we see the Libyan dictator at the instant of his capture. He is bloodied and dazed, but still standing upright as he is shoved and pushed by his captors. He does not appear to have the critical head wound that reportedly killed him. In a second video, men lunge at his lifeless body like a pack of hyenas attacking their prey. They tear off his shirt and roll him around the ground shouting Allahu Akbar, God is Great.

“We were serious about giving him a fair trial. It seems God had some other wish,” the chief spokesman for the National Transitional Council explained to the assembled media.

The poor deity – once again held responsible for the heinous acts of His underlings. Someone did suggest feebly that Gadhafi was shot because he was resisting capture, but the attempt at an excuse didn’t really matter. The leadership of the National Transitional Council knew they would not be officially challenged for killing the wounded tyrant in lieu of sending him to trial; for just one day earlier, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had explicitly condoned the prospect of an assassination. “We hope he can be captured or killed soon …” she told university students in Tripoli during a surprise visit to Libya. Clinton simultaneously encouraged the country’s new leadership to adopt a just democracy that would be free of retribution (presumably of the sort she had just recommended).

Two related concerns emerge from this sudden end to the Moammar Gadhafi story, and both of them point to the struggle between international law and power in the contemporary global arena.

A bit of recent history may illuminate the problematic outcome. Last February the UN Security Council voted unanimously to refer the abuses of the Gadhafi regime to the International Criminal Court, where fair and transparent trials could proceed according to the rules of due process, and where those who had committed massive crimes against humanity might be held accountable. Three weeks later, the council subsequently agreed to activate the legislation known as the “Responsibility to Protect” by enforcing a no-fly zone over Libya. Following these resolutions, the leaders of the Transitional National Council wrote to the chief prosecutor of the ICC, in April, to state their commitment to trials of major perpetrators and the rule of law. But in May, NATO tried (and failed) to assassinate Gadhafi, in direct defiance of the Security Council ICC resolution; in other words, illegally.

It’s a lot easier to eliminate your enemies than to see them tried in a courtroom. Trials take time and cost money; witnesses must be called to testify; there must be a fair defence; the judges must then weigh the evidence and come to a measured conclusion. No question about it; revenge is undoubtedly sweeter in the short term. But the long-term stability of a nation transitioning out of civil strife is better served by justice than by violence. Post-Gadhafi Libya is a volatile, war-ravaged wasteland with an untried government and no institutions. It is unfortunate the proposed new democracy has begun with the savagery of a gruesome killing.

If breaching a Security Councilapproved resolution to capture, not kill, Gadhafi is the new Libya’s first casualty, the role the United States has played by promoting frontier justice in opposition to international law – and, one may add, in opposition to its own laws against political assassinations – is similarly worrisome, especially in terms of America’s emerging policies under President Barack Obama. Think for a moment about the terrible twins, Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. In her stated approval of a potential assassination, Hillary Clinton effectively echoed the words of president George W Bush a decade earlier when the latter announced he wanted bin Laden “dead or alive.” But in 2003, the U.S. did agree to a trial of a captured, not assassinated, Saddam Hussein. That the trial itself was profoundly flawed is important, but less so, in my view, than the recognition that even the Bush administration felt the need to pay lip service to the emerging demands of international criminal justice. The Obama administration, on the other hand, seems to entertain no such qualms.

Osama bin Laden was a hunted man, and rightly so; but his assassination in May 2011 deprived the world of a trial that would have created an important record of evidence for posterity, including for the Arab world; satisfied his victims’ need for justice, as opposed to crass retribution; and sent out a message that those who perpetrate crimes against humanity will be held accountable for their acts.

Unfortunately, U.S. state-sanctioned assassination is becoming a disturbing trend. Unmanned drone aircraft kill individuals designated as terrorists by secret fiat. In September, the Obama administration went further still, killing Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S.-born citizen who was living outside the country.

Does any of this matter to the American public? The Obama administration is betting, perhaps wrongly, that it does not.

Should it matter to the rest of us? Yes, it should. Extrajudicial assassinations signal a breakdown of the international legal order we necessarily depend upon. Such policies fly in the face of the foundational principles of moral and legal justice that were codified at the post-Second World War Nuremberg Tribunal, where the top Nazis were tried. The judges at Nuremberg recognized that revenge and its inevitable counter cycles are detrimental to long-term peace.

It is an affront that Moammar Gadhafi was killed before he could be put on trial before the international community. And an affront that this illegal act was openly condoned by the United States.

By Erna Paris, Globe and Mail, September 22, 2011

Enough already: That’s what a majority of world governments are preparing to say when they debate Palestinian statehood at the United Nations Enough of the blame game. Enough of wars and intifadas that target civilians. Enough of the disingenuous peace process and the stale narratives that make up the status quo. Enough of the occupation of one people by another, regardless of rationalizations.

It’s in Israel’s strategic interests to support what’s likely to be overwhelming recognition of Palestine. Whatever one thinks about the Palestinian effort to focus world attention on the plight of its people, it’s a showcase example of the shifting global order. The ground has moved, leaving Israel behind. International law and human rights have gained precedence in the past decade and, for the first time, “lawfare” has emerged as a bloodless alternative to warfare. The Palestinian bid for statehood is a bold attempt to introduce legal diplomacy into the arsenal of conflict resolution.

Israel should support the Palestinian bid because to do so is the lesser of two evils. Yes, it’s true the immediate outcome can’t be predicted, but going with the international flow will reduce Israel’s increasing isolation. Far from “delegitimizing” the Jewish state, positive support will relegitimize it in the eyes of the world.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “big stick” vision of security and settlements expansion has become increasingly unsustainable as the Arab Spring uprisings have challenged once-stable configurations: Hosni Mubarak is gone, and Egyptian rioters recently attacked the Israeli embassy; Israel’s refusal to offer a face-saving apology to Turkey over the killing of nine people in a Gaza-bound aid flotilla seriously upset ties with a former ally; Syria is in turmoil; Iran is challenging Israel’s nuclear hegemony in the region; radical West Bank settlers are attacking local Palestinians, increasing the likelihood of another intifada.

If these are not reasons enough for a policy review with regard to Palestinian aspirations, America’s diminishing power in the world should be. Israel relies on unconditional U.S. support, including billions of dollars in annual aid, armaments and the threat of back-up military force to maintain its position in the neighbourhood. But with the U.S. edging into economic depression, how long can this degree of aid be sustained? Furthermore, President Barack Obama has declared himself in favour of a Palestinian state with pre-1967 borders, so there can be no succour in that quarter. Finally, is there stronger evidence of America’s waning influence than Saudi Arabia’s recent threat to review its special relationship (read oil and military bases) should the U.S. veto the Palestinian request for statehood in the Security Council?

The status of the Palestinians is about to change. Israel would do well to get on board and restart negotiations from the inside.

What Israeli officials fear is the International Criminal Court, and liability for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The government has been fighting the trend toward international justice since the disastrous 2008 Gaza war, after which an investigation concluded that war crimes had been committed by both sides. Yes, the recognition of statehood, however attenuated, will allow the Palestinians to bring accusations of war crimes to the ICC, but it will also expose their own leaders to comparable charges. The prospect of criminal accountability may well encourage sober second thoughts on both sides.

Of course there’ll be problems. Israel will have to deal with its radical settlers, some of whom believe that God gave them the land, just as the radicals of Hamas may threaten the prospect of revived negotiations. On the other hand, the endemic questions of Jerusalem and the right of Palestinian return won’t be affected by state recognition, other than returning them to the negotiating table.

Does Mr. Netanyahu have the foresight and flexibility to represent his country at this game-changing event? Israel’s survival in a reconfigured world that increasingly privileges law and accountability will require a leader capable of recognizing and serving his nation’s long-term interests.

There are no panaceas in the Middle East. Only better choices.

The Toronto Dollar Supper Club invites you to hear
Erna Paris, Author, Historian, Journalist
Monday October 31
“The Surprising Birth of the International Criminal Court”

Erna Paris is the author of Long Shadows: Truth, Lies, and History which The Literary Review of Canada calls one of the hundred most important books ever written in Canada. Ms. Paris is winner of ten national and international writing awards for her books, feature writing, and documentaries.  Her works have been published in fourteen countries and translated into eight languages. Erna’s most recent work, The Sun Climbs Slow: The International Criminal Court and the Struggle for Justice was first on The Globe and Mail‘s “best book of the year” list and shortlisted for the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing. Erna is a member of the Honorary Council of the Canadian Centre for International Justice and a past chair of the Writers’ Union of Canada.

Reserve seats for the dinner by emailing supperclub@torontodollar.com
or by calling 416-361-0466.
Time: Monday, October 31: Socializing at 5:30, followed by dinner.
Ms. Paris will speak at 7 p.m.
Place:  Hot House Cafe, corner of Church and Front streets.
Cost: $30 Toronto Dollars (includes taxes and gratuities; drinks extra)
Toronto Dollars are available at the event.

By Erna Paris, The Ottawa Citizen, September 3, 2011

There’s a very old game being played out before our eyes and the stakes are high. Members of the Gadhafi family have found sanctuary in Algeria, the welcoming country next door; and we may be sure that Moammar is also looking for an escape route across the border.

Offering refuge to war criminals and dictators used to be a centrepiece of conflict resolution at the end of wars and other crises. There was a ready formula: Spirit the bad guys out of the country, proclaim the dawn of a new day, then get on with the business of rebuilding. There have been many recipients of this largesse, but let us remember just two 20th-century beneficiaries: the Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie, for one, who lived contentedly in Bolivia for 40 years after the Second World War until he was returned to France to stand trial for crimes against humanity. Chaos erupted the moment he stepped onto French soil. There had been no justice, no reconciliation. But starting with his trial in 1987, France entered a new era of accountability for crimes that had been swept under the rug, but not forgotten.

Idi Amin of Uganda was another. In 1979, when dissent grew too strong for the brutal dictator to manage, he too found a safe haven from justice: in Libya, as it happens, where his friend Moammar Gadhafi welcomed him as a brother.

The government of Algeria may not have noticed that expectations about criminal accountability have changed in recent years. The slow-growing realization that national reconciliation must include transparent justice for both the victims and the major perpetrators of crimes against humanity reached a high point in 2002 with the creation of the International Criminal Court, the first institution of its kind. The ICC is a transnational organization mandated to prosecute the perpetrators of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.

Today, its 117 member states include almost all the world’s democracies.

The stakes are high for the entire international community because in February 2011 the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution referring the Gadhafi case to the ICC, a unanimous decision made virtually in tandem with a second agreement to protect Libyan civilians by actualizing the legislation known as the Responsibility to Protect (whose guidelines originated in Canada, as it happens) with a NATO no-fly zone.

For the first time, courtroom justice for the perpetrators of major crimes was integrated into the workings of real-time diplomacy. The United Nations cannot afford to see the legitimate rulings of the Security Council ignored without losing credibility, which would be in no one’s interests. Algeria’s counter ploy has upped the ante for the global community by placing us at a crossroads between the old (an offer of sanctuary) and the new (a call for justice).

The need to confront the transgressions of Moammar Gadhafi goes further. It is critical that unaddressed criminal impunity not be allowed to poison the future of Libyans who have fought so hard for their freedom.

Should Gadhafi be captured alive, there is plenty of evidence to warrant a trial. When the ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo issued arrest warrants last May, he cited information that civilians had been attacked in their homes and that demonstrations were being repressed using live ammunition. The recent victory of the rebels revealed other atrocities, including the discovery of more than 50 massacred prisoners in Tripoli. The question is, where should he be tried? By the ICC in The Hague? By the Libyan people at home?

British Prime Minister David Cameron recently spearheaded a move to hold prosecutions in Libya, the idea being that Libyans alone should assume responsibility for the outcome of their revolution. This would be a mistake in my view. While it is true that the International Criminal Court is a tribunal of last resort, it is also true that its cases are triggered when a suspect’s country of origin either refuses to mount a trial that meets international standards, or lacks the capacity to do so.

The latter is precisely the point. It is unrealistic to expect Libya, a country that has been tyrannized for decades, to have courts that operate according to due process. It will take years to build an independent judiciary. Few would want to repeat the travesty of the Saddam Hussein trial in Iraq, where the courts were similarly dysfunctional. Three defence lawyers were murdered and the chief judge was forced to resign because of “softness.” The Saddam trial was a poster case for not prosecuting major international crimes in countries without capacity.

There is another reason why Libya’s trials should take place in an international court: last May the ICC prosecutor announced that he was also investigating allegations of war crimes committed by the rebels. ICC indictments depend on the “gravity” of the crimes committed, as defined in the Rome Statute that underpins the tribunal. Although there is as yet no known evidence of massive, planned infractions, reconciliation will nonetheless depend on judicial even-handedness. It is no insult to the victorious rebels to question whether they are likely to investigate, indict, and try war criminals from their side of the conflict.

Legitimate and independent prosecutions can potentially contribute to the process of national rebuilding. Because they place a symbolic marker between the abuses of the past and the new era by making perpetrators accountable and by acknowledging the suffering of the victims, properly run trials are a key to reconciliation and a sustainable transition.

Algeria should check the calendar before allowing Moammar Gadhafi to slip over its border. In 2011, the offer of sanctuary to a tyrant on the run is a backward step.