INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS - LOOKING GLASS NEWS | |
No-fly listing flies against Human Rights |
|
by Mohamed Elmasry Media Monitors Network Entered into the database on Sunday, October 30th, 2005 @ 18:44:54 MST |
|
Western nations have struggled long and hard to establish a set of
universal human rights. But today's governments, including our own, have made
the historic mistake of imposing policies that are in clear violation of those
rights. One of those rights is the guarantee of a person's freedom of movement
-- unless, of course, this right is restricted by a court of justice after due
process, including a fair trial and time to defend. Only police states do otherwise:
a tyrant regime will routinely blacklist any citizen without judicial oversight.
But the U.S. "war on terror" has now turned into a war on
human rights and civil liberties, with Canada following on its coat-tails. And
this is wrong. Take the example of arbitrary no-fly listing. Although Canada does not yet have its own officially confirmed no-fly
list, it is all too rapidly developing one and airlines currently operating
in Canadian air space, including Air Canada, use those compiled by the U.S.
and other foreign countries. Just days after the Canadian Islamic Congress posted an urgent request that
Canadian Muslims report if any of their community members had been placed on
a no-fly list, the organization received a startling letter from a Canadian
professor of medicine. "I am not Muslim," the writer stated, "but I support your efforts
to bring this [the no-fly list issue] to the public's attention. While I am
confident that Muslim citizens are disproportionately represented on this list,
I too have been placed on this list with no information as to what I am accused
of and by whom." "They refuse to disclose how I got onto the list or how to get my name
removed. The Air Canada ticket agent talks behind my back to some nameless individual
on the phone asking me personal information, all in a public space. This is
humiliating and degrading. It is intolerable in a self-professed democratic
society that claims to protect the rights of its citizens." "We [all Canadians] need to stand together shoulder to shoulder to fight
intolerance and injustice in society wherever and whenever we see it,"
said the professor, whose identity is being protected, pending legal action.
No-fly listing would impair a person's right to travel and could cause financial
damage, as well as the loss of their business or personal reputation in the
world, not only in Canada. If any Canadian is placed on the list mistakenly, or on the basis of wrong
information, he or she would still be viewed by his/her employer, the media,
and/or general public as a potential terrorist, resulting in irreparable harm.
No-fly listing amounts to the same as black-listing, and with tragic consequences.
Take, for example, this Canadian incident that shows how black-listing (unrelated
to the no-fly issue) can destroy a person's life. A student wrote an assignment about child abuse and attached an appendix containing
the anonymous first-person account of a sexual abuser, taken from one of the
textbooks used to research the paper. But the teacher mistakenly thought the
appended story was the student's own work and contacted Child Protection Services.
For the next two years, the student was viewed as a potential sexual abuser,
her name was bandied around by the professors, and she was refused entry to
certain programs. For years beyond school, the label still hung over her; she
had difficulty getting work and, ironically, she wanted to help abused children.
The devastating long-term effects of such prejudicial errors now threaten Canadians
mistakenly targeted by no-fly lists. It is the responsibility of the federal
transportation minister and our government to protect citizens against abuse
by foreign states, not to facilitate that abuse by emulating them. The issue
here is not only a matter of basic human rights, but also of economic discrimination,
for many Canadians depend on air travel to make a living. Only six months ago, a Canadian Muslim family discovered that one of their
children -- an infant less than one year old -- had been placed on a no-fly
list. In a letter to federal transportation minister Jean Lapierre in August, the
Canadian Islamic Congress questioned the legality of creating the so called
no-fly list, which it said goes against the spirit and letter of Canada's Charter
of Rights and Freedoms. The CIC also told minister Lapierre that "Canadian Muslims are understandably
nervous" about the new measures, which copy those inaugurated by the U.S
Homeland Security agency. Key concerns voiced by the organization include: How (or if) Canadians will be notified that their names are on any no-fly list;
if there are procedures to ensure names could be removed from such a list; how
long the personal information of Canadians placed on no-fly lists would be retained;
who decides that a person's name is to be placed on a no-fly list; whether being
on a no-fly list in one country (such as Canada) would lead automatically to
being placed on similar lists in some, or all, other countries; which foreign
no-fly lists would Canada acknowledge as legitimate; what opportunities would
an individual have to submit information or evidence to satisfy Canadian security
and transportation authorities that he / she should not be on the no-fly list.
Canadians must "stand together shoulder to shoulder to fight intolerance
and injustice in society" as the recent non-Muslim victim of no-fly listing
in Canada wrote above. Hopefully, this will happen before more Canadians are
victimized by our elected government. |