Legal and political agendas asserted on the backs of Quebec’s Muslim communities

Last month, Quebec’s Court of Appeal reduced Alexandre Bissonette’s life sentence without parole from 40 years to 25 years.

In 2017, Bissonette — who was 27 at the time — attacked the Quebec City mosque, killing six men and injuring 19 others, including Aymen Derbali, who became paralyzed for life.

When Justice François Huot delivered Bissonette’s sentence in 2019, he described the acts as “premeditated, gratuitous and abject,” and motivated by “visceral hatred toward Muslims.”

Justice Huot sentenced Bissonette to five concurrent 25-year life sentences and a 15-year term for the sixth count, to be served consecutively.

However, legal scholars described that sentence as “innovative” and “complex.” Some predicted, correctly, that it would be challenged.

Then-prime minister Stephen Harper — motivated by a “law and order” agenda that appealed to his base and its near-obsession with anti-terrorism legislation — introduced the “consecutive sentencing” principle in 2011.

But luckily for Bissonette, he lives Quebec and isn’t a Muslim.

Despite the fact that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau described the actions of Bissonette as a “terrorist attack,” there was always subtle but persistent pushback from Quebec politicians and media.

They viewed Bissonette’s actions not as being symptomatic of systemic islamophobia, but rather as an “isolated” incident. It is by this same logic that Bissonette’s father wrote an open letter to French and English media asking Trudeau to stop calling his son’s action a “terrorist” attack.

In my opinion, the decision to reduce Bissonette’s sentence carries four meanings:

• It reinforces the notion that Quebec’s legal system is somehow aligned with the ideals of second chances and rehabilitation for criminals, according to the principles of “liberté, égalité, fraternité” of the French Revolution.
• It appeases the idea that Bisonette is one of “ours,” and that he doesn’t deserve a heavy-handed punishment.
• It sends a subtle message to the Muslim community: to give them a “lesson” in “civility” and teach them how to remove vengeance from their hearts.
• It sends a clear message to Justin Trudeau, daring him to appeal the judgement with the knowledge that it could have implications for his electoral chances in Quebec.

It is both interesting and ironic to see how in two very publicized and controversial cases, the Muslim community in Quebec became the perfect “guinea pig” for the province to assert itself legally and politically.

Take the example of “Bill 21,” or the Laicity Act. It prohibits public employees from wearing religious symbols at work.

The bill was introduced despite everything that was said against it, and despite what several Muslim women described as a blatant discrimination against them.

In my opinion, the arguments that attracted most Quebecers weren’t the “feminist” or “secularist” ones, but rather the notion, subtly reiterated again and again by Premier Francois Legault and his supporters, that “in Quebec, we do things differently.”

This can be understandable. After all, Quebec has a unique status. Nevertheless, it has become clear that some Quebec politicians are asserting a new brand of “sovereignty” on the backs of immigrants, racialized communities and, in particular, the Muslim community.

With Bill 21, Muslims in Quebec are once again caught between a rock and a hard place. The Laicity Act attempts to send several messages:

• The idea that Quebec is a progressive province that is serious about women’s rights, despite the fact that Bill 21 removes some women’s rights to take certain jobs.
• A hidden message: to prove to the public that “chez nous” — we decide on things the way we want to.
• A third message, directed to the immigrant Muslim community: if you want to prove your loyalty to “our values,” you must leave your traditions in your country of origin.
• A final message to Justin Trudeau that was repeated during the 2019 federal election: if you legally challenge our law then you are automatically against us. 

To be sarcastic, Legault and his supporters should thank the Muslim community for unwillingly serving as pawns to achieve his political ambitions. 

More seriously, it is undoubtedly time for action. It has started already with challenges of the constitutional legality of Bill 21, and the likely appeal of Bissonette’s reduced sentence.

This article was originally published at rabble.ca

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French state’s demand that Muslims forget colonial history shows double standard

During a first and symbolic visit to Algeria — a former French colony — in 2017, Emmanuel Macron was asked by a journalist about the crimes the French colonial regime committed in Algeria that included killing and raping the local population for more than a century.

The French president, looking annoyed, replied that he knows the “Histoire,” but that he is not a hostage of the past and argued “both of us [France and Algeria]” should be looking into the future. 

A few days before, Macron tweeted an excerpt from an interview he had with an African journalist. In it, the French president gave the same patronizing advice to a young woman who asked him about the crimes against humanity committed by France in Africa.

Implying that she didn’t live through colonization because she was young, Macron reiterated his call for “neither denial nor repentance” and stressed that “we cannot remain trapped in the past.”

Taken at face value, those words seem to fit the attitude of a dynamic, pragmatic and young president who wanted to build new business relationships with the old French colonies. I would have understood this attitude, without necessarily agreeing with it, that in order to build new and better relationships, the past should be moved on from, but from both sides.

According to this distorted logic, France should embrace its French citizens originally from former colonies — without rejecting their religions, cultures and traditions — and on the other side, French citizens from the former colonies should embrace France, without holding grudges for their painful past.

However, this erasure of the past and “looking-towards-the-future” attitude seems to be very selective — mainly to the advantage of the French state, the former colonizer, serving its interests when needed, and dropped when not.

Only the colonized seem to be expected to forget their past. The colonizers have the luxury to bring it up or hide and erase it whenever they see fit. The “forgetting-the-past” approach is always on the French state’s terms, and never on the terms of its citizens originating from former colonies.

Indeed, this same past was brought up recently by Jean Castex, Macron’s prime minister, in order to appease the insecurities of the French political and intellectual class.

Speaking about the fight against Islamist terrorism, the French prime minister insisted that “the first way to win a war is for the national community to be united, or united, or proud. Proud of our roots, of our identity, of our Republic, of our freedom.”

So why can the past, with its crimes against humanity, become a source of inspiration for some politicians, whereas this same past should supposedly be forgotten by French Muslims?

France has a long history with “la problématique islamique.” It didn’t start with the recent trial of the 2015 Charlie Hebdo attack. It didn’t start with the debate about the “Islamic veil” that has been ongoing since the end of the 1980s — before being eclipsed by the more recent burkini ban controversy on French beaches.

With over five million Muslims, France is home to the largest Muslim population in Europe. And yet Muslims’ relationship to the French political class and media is extremely tense.

Every time there is a tragic event, committed or claimed by Muslim extremists on French soil (regardless of whether the perpetrator is of French descent or from a different country), the media and political machines start a cycle of blaming and targeting Muslim citizens with laws — like the planned “Islamist separatism” bills that Macron announced a few days before the recent horrifying beheading of school teacher Samuel Paty in Paris.

And each time, the debate is simplistically described as a fight between “good and evil,” where evil is always attributed to French Muslims with terms like “Islamism,” “Jihadism,” “terrorism,” “separatism” and “barbarism.” The “good,” meanwhile, is always attributed to French republican values described by words like “laïcité,” “civilité,” “liberté” and “égalité.”

Yet none of these ideals ever seem to be adopted to embrace French Muslims.

After Abdullakh Anzorov, a young Chechen refugee living in France, brutally murdered Paty — who had shown his students the Charlie Hebdo caricatures of the prophet Mohamed — voices in the media and political class were very quick to pinpoint an imaginary link between this appalling act of violence and Islam — and by extension, between terrorism and French Muslim communities.

The mental state of the killer was largely unquestioned. Only his religious affiliation seemed to matter. And, by association, so did the faith of French Muslims.

The government cracked down on more than 50 Muslim organizations, while vigilante groups attacked mosques. A French minister proposed a ban on the Collective Against Islamophobia in France (CCIF) — an association that tracks anti-Muslim hate crimes — prompting opposition from academics and civil society groups.

French republican values are anchored in a controversial past: a past where the powerful party is always the French state and the weak are those who were colonized — a past that Macron urges Algerians and Africans to forget, but one that the French state is eager to remember and be proud of when it suits them.

This article was first published at rabble.ca

Racism Kills Two Times

I was listening to a podcast with French sociologist Rachida Brahim called “Racism Kills Twice,” when I heard the news that Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) will not charge the alleged killers of Soleiman Faqiri.

How would Faqiri’s mother feel? I tried to imagine the pain of losing a son in horrible circumstances and later hearing the news that no one would be held accountable. 

“Racism kills two times: first when the physical and verbal violence is exerted against the mind and body of the victim, and second when that violence or abuse is denied or not held accountable by the authority. That would leave the victim lost, without a sense of purpose,” explained Brahim speaking about the double violence that she argues racialized people suffer from when they become caught in an oppressive system.

Personally, I think Faqiri was killed several times. When this 30-year-old man, diagnosed at the age of 19 with schizophrenia, was taken to the Central East Correctional Centre in Lindsay, Ontario, his family thought that his troubles with the law were, as it happened a few times before, “benign,” and that all he needed was mental health supervision and support.

But Faqiri was let down by the system. He died on December 15, 2016.

That tragic story could have ended with an apology, or at least some explanation. But it didn’t. Due to the tremendous efforts and persistence of the brother of the deceased, Yusuf Faqiri, the family was able to dig further into the tragic circumstances of this horrible death. In 2016, in an interview with CBC, Yusuf repeatedly asked the same questions: “We want to know why my brother died,” “Why did Soleiman die?” “How did Soleiman die?”

Holding up information from the family. Putting the onus on the family to find out exactly what happened before and after the death of their loved ones. These are other ways to “kill” the victim again. To deny them the rest and peace. To prevent the family from finishing their mourning. This is what the system did.

Initially, the answers were scarce. Worse, they were not given straightforwardly by the authorities to the family. They came bit by bit, through investigative journalism and legal efforts, but mainly through the family’s activism.

First came the coroner report. It indicated that Soleiman Faqiri died inside a segregation cell at the detention facility following an altercation with guards. He was found with dozens of injuries, including blunt force trauma. The report mentions “obvious injuries,” but the cause of the death remained “unknown.” And when the family asked for accountability, their demands were left unanswered. 

More disappointment came when after conducting an investigation, the Kawartha Lakes Police Service decided to not lay charges.

The decision came after years of fighting for answers, and after a nearby inmate housed just across from Soleiman’s cell at the time of the incident broke his silence with an eyewitness account. The pressure built on OPP to do something. 

In 2019, OPP re-opened the case and promised to conduct an independent investigation. That was received with relief and optimism by the family.

Meanwhile, the family learned more details about how Soleiman died. He was pepper-sprayed, his ankles and hands were cuffed, a “spit hood” was placed over his head and 50 signs of blunt force trauma were found all over his body. Most likely it was a group that caused Soleiman’s death.

OPP buried its head under the sand and refused to lay charges. Their argument was that it was not clear who gave the fatal blow.

What logic is behind this reasoning? If we face a gang killing, or other violent assault, can we let the killers go free? 

Why, when jail guards participate in the beating of a young racialized man in crisis, does it become hard to determine who gave the “fatal blow” to the victim?

By denying his family truth and justice, Soleiman Faqiri is being killed over and over.

Speaking about the case recently, Senator Peter M. Boehm called it a “travesty of justice.”

Dozens of civil society and professional organizations have issued statements condemning the OPP decision. What more is expected? What more can the family and their supporters do to let Soleiman Faqiri rest in peace, and stop killing him over and over?

A slightly edited version was published at rabble.ca

Why is Prime Minister Justin Trudeau refusing to stop Meng Wanzhou’s extradition?

Why is Prime Minister Trudeau refusing to stop Meng Wanzhou’s extradition?This is the question I have been asking myself over and over since Wanzhou’s arrest in Vancouver by the Canadian authorities for an extradition in December 2018.

As a clear retaliation to this act of aggression taken by Canada, the Chinese government arrested two Canadian citizens, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, and accused them of spying. 

My objective here isn’t to defend the wrong retaliatory actions taken by the Chinese government, but instead to understand what the Canadian government was thinking when it accepted the extradition file from the U.S. authorities, knowing that President Donald Trump is personally on a mission to attack Iran and that the charges against Meng Wanzhou are mainly related to the embargo against Iran — and thus “punishing” whoever deals with Iran. 

(Wanzhou is accused of lying to HSBC in 2013 about Huawei’s relationship with Skycom, a company accused of violating U.S. economic sanctions against Iran.)

Who is Canada helping with this politically motivated arrest? Is it its own political and economic interests, which I assume should always come first? Or is it rather the U.S. president or other American political interests? I still examine and re-examine these questions and still don’t find any smart side to the arrest.

A few weeks after the arrests of the two Canadians, John McCallum, a long-respected politician who was the former Canadian ambassador to China spoke very candidly — and in my view, very reasonably — that in order to obtain the release of the two Canadians, Wanzhou should be released. 

Unfortunately, some media and political parties turned this into a political drama to score ideological points against China. The case was turned into a hockey game of Canada versus China — and obviously Canada needed to score goals. 

McCallum was immediately criticized. He tried to back off, but it was too late. He was scapegoated for the pride of the country and lost his job. It was a big mistake by Prime Minister Trudeau, and it showed that a stubborn position in treating this case can make things even worse.

It doesn’t take a Ph.D. in political sciences to understand that this case has been from its inception a political case. It has never been a case about law and the prevalence of the judicial system. 

Wanzhou isn’t a random Chinese citizen arrested for a benign fraud. In terms of her reputation and stature, Wanzhou is comparable to a Bill Gates. Would the U.S. or Canada accept the Microsoft founder or his wife being arrested by China for suspicion of fraud in the same manner as Wanzhou, and consider it an ordinary legal case? Of course not! 

In fact, many would likely be calling for politicians to intervene.

A few months ago, 19 prominent Canadians, including former justice minister Allan Rock and former Supreme Court justice Louise Arbour, wrote a letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau calling him to stop the extradition of Wanzhou.

The authors of the letter made it very clear that there is no harm in invoking Canadian laws. This is not called political interference; it is using whatever means to solve a problem.

And a problem, there is. The two arrested Canadians are caught in the middle of this political quagmire. Of course, this is a wrong approach and China shouldn’t keep these two Canadians in prison. Nevertheless, we have a Canadian government that accepts playing the dirty game initiated by the American authorities. 

Are we Canadians supposed to apply the “rule of law” by proxy? If Wanzhou has done wrong, why did the U.S. ask Canada to arrest her? In all this, what did Canada gain? Nothing good — not even a peace break in the trade war launched by President Trump against Canada.

And not even strong support in diplomatic efforts to release the two Canadians. Nothing!

This is why it is time for Trudeau to take the right decision and stop the extradition process for Wanzhou. It is the only way to obtain the release of the two Canadians. 

Why is Trudeau waiting to move forward? Is it fear of backlash from the opposition? Or is it fear of another failure in managing a case that would show the weakness of the Canadian government?

First of all, politics shouldn’t be done at the expense of the lives and well-being of ordinary Canadians. All Canadians should speak with the same voice when one of them is arrested unjustly by a foreign government. Opposition parties should help the government in choosing the best solution.

Second, Canada has already lost a lot of political blood in this case. By stopping the extradition of Wanzhou, Trudeau would put an end to the crisis. 

Yes, Canada lost face in front of China, but diplomatic relations can be mended. However, the damage done to the lives of the Canadians who were arrested by China cannot be repaired, and worse, they could be harmed.

Trudeau should correct a wrong with a right: stop the extradition of Wanzhou and open the doors for the release of Kovrig and Spavor.

This column first appeared on rabble.ca.

It is time to bring Little Amira back to Canada

Last year, on February 19th, 2019, Prime Minister Trudeau, on the International Day against the use of child soldiers, declared the following:
“All children deserve a safe space to learn and grow. As part of our G7 Presidency last year, Canada and international partners announced a historic investment of $3.8 billion – the single largest investment of its kind – to support education for women and girls in crisis and conflict situations. Canada has also endorsed the Safe Schools Declaration to protect schools, teachers, and students during armed conflict.”

The words of Prime Minister Trudeau are crystal clear. Canada is serious and committed to protect, schools, teachers and students during armed conflict.

But what if the child is born to Canadian parents who allegedly went to fight in Syria? How if the parents went to fight with radical Islamic groups ( knowing that there are about 40 Canadians who went fighting with Kurdish militia. Their actions were met with somehow a sympathetic public opinion, as if some violence can be accepted depending on who is using it and who is receiving it)? And finally, what if the parents who fought with the wrong side, died and the children are left orphans? Would Prime Minister Trudeau be still committed to protect them?
Until now, the answer is a resounding no. At least for the troubling case of little Amira.

She is a five-year-old Canadian girl, whose Canadians parents went to fight in Syria, and she was born there. Unfortunately for little Amira, her parents and other siblings were killed ( was it during an air bombing by the Russian planes? The American planes or the Syrian regime), and sadly she was left alone in the Al-Hawl refugee camp in eastern Syria earlier. By 2019, the camp population was estimated to 74,000 people, mainly women and children, guarded by the US Kurdish forces.

So far, the Canadian government refused to repatriate little Amira so she can live with her uncles, cousins, grandparents and extended family in Canada. It didn’t want to provide her with travel documents so she can fly home.

There are about 900 children from western countries, including Canada in different refugee camps in Syria, run by the Kurdish forces. Even France who has 270 children from French nationals and in which the public opinion is adamantly against any sympathy towards French Muslims travelling abroad to fight, decided few weeks ago to repatriate 10 of the French children stranded in some of these camps.

These kids didn’t take the arms against anyone. They are not even close to the definition of child soldiers. Thus, they should be, at least benefit from the definition and treatment reserved for child soldiers. Because assuming they are child soldiers, through the actions of their Western parents, wouldn’t they be the “perfect” candidates to be included under the protection reserved for child soldiers?

Recently, the uncle of little Amira decided to go after the Canadian government and sue it because he considered that the Canadian government has been negligent in dealing with the case.

I personally think that this is the best thing to do. “Playing nice” is always interpreted by the government as a lack of means, or lack of determination… By going after the government, I think the family of little Amira is sending a clear message to the Canadian government and to the Canadian public that the right place for little Amira is Canada where her family loves her and wants her among them, despite the circumstance that led to the departing of her parents to Syria.

Despite the alleged acts her parents did or didn’t. She is only five. She needs to be loved, nurtured and most importantly start go to school.

Last week, we read in the news that CSIS, the Canadian intelligence agency has been lying to judges, using illegal methods to obtain warrants against Canadians who went fighting abroad. This is an explosive news. Not surprisingly, it was met with almost no shame by the government and a sort of indifference from the public opinion.

What if some or most of the information obtained about Canadians fighting in Syria is flawed, biased and even false?
Judge Gleeson, found that CSIS has engaged in illegal activities such as “provision of money” and “provision of personal property” to a person “known to be facilitating or carrying out terrorist activity.”

Judge Gleeson said that, in a case of a Canadian who went abroad to Syria, CSIS paid someone known to be facilitating or carrying out terrorism an amount totalling less than $25,000 over a few years.

Who is the guilty and who is the innocent? Relying on the “false” information gathered by CSIS through person who has been conducting terrorism themselves, has been misleading and damaging to the Canadian government and to Canadians. Judge Gleeson wasn’t outraged because of one isolated case. He talked about a “pattern” over years. Personally, I wouldn’t believe any information after hearing from a Canadian judge that CSIS lied on judges so why wouldn’t they lie on all the government and Canadians.

A public inquiry should be announced and getting to the bottom of this should be the right thing to do by Prime Minister Trudeau and his government.

Last May, sixteen independent human rights experts at the United Nations have called on Canada to repatriate little Amira and have described the repatriation of children as “a humanitarian and human rights imperative”.

The Canadian government should correct the wrong, fulfill its promise of protecting children in zone of conflicts and what is better today than bringing little Amira home.

A slightly modified version of this article was published at rabble.ca

Covid-19, secularism and hypocrisy

When Premier François Legault appeared on May 12 at his daily press briefing on the COVID-19 pandemic, accompanied by his health minister and director of public health, all three of them wearing a face mask, I almost fall out of my chair.

This was the same François Legault who brought last year the controversial Bill 21 that banned in Quebec public servants in positions of “authority” while on duty from wearing religious symbols, including the niqab, a religious face cover some Muslim women wear. It was the same François Legault who was adamant about the importance of protecting the secular values in face of the fear of what some view as the “Islamization” of Quebec society (Muslims represent only three per cent of the total population). Nevertheless, this same François Legault is now insisting on wearing a face mask and encouraging all Quebecers to follow his example when they go out in public spaces.

Of course, the face-covering Legault and his minister and top bureaucrat wore didn’t emanate from a religious requirement, but rather from a health-protection measure. However, when a Muslim woman decides to cover her face, it is automatically perceived as a degrading and submissive sign. Most of the time when face covering it is implicitly assumed that it is her husband, father or other male relative who forced her to do so.

But when Legault, a man, strongly recommends that his fellow Quebecers wear a mask (and may perhaps soon make it a requirement) this move is described as “good respiratory etiquette.” So if a Muslim woman who is wearing a hijab (hair covering) decides today in those circumstances to wear a face cover for religious reasons, a niqab, how can we in all honesty distinguish between “good respiratory etiquette” and what someone might call “religious etiquette”? What would make a face covering switch from a benign or even useful thing to a malign or degrading one? Would the meaning of the mask depend on the identity of the person wearing it, to make it either dangerous or harmless? Wouldn’t that be called racial profiling? Is a face covering worn by a white woman is commended as good etiquette and good citizenship, while the same face covering worn by a brown woman is automatically portrayed as misogynist and degrading?

The same question would be relevant if asked about a man wearing a face cover. For Legault, this is a sign of prevention from disease and civic duty, but for a Black or other racialized man wearing a face mask, it would be most likely portrayed as a sign of suspicion, danger and potential attack.

In France, from where most of the secular debate is imported to Quebec, the hypocrisy is so blatant these days.

Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy once declared: “Citizenship should be experienced with an uncovered face. There can be no other solution but a ban in all public places.”

However due to COVID-19, the tables have flipped. The French government recently made face masks mandatory. The fine for not wearing a mask on public transport is 135 euros, whereas, since 2011, the country’s law prohibiting Muslim women from wearing the niqab in public imposes a fine of 150 euros.

In the last decade, France, Denmark, Austria, Belgium and many other Europeans countries introduced legislation to ban the niqab. Those legal bans were preceded by toxic public debates that fueled Islamophobia, especially against Muslim women, despite the fact that the number of Muslim women in these Europeans countries is small and doesn’t justify the introduction and passing of these bills.

Even in Canada, in 2015, prime minister Stephan Harper ran a federal election campaign trying to polarize public opinion by creating a wedge issue around the case of Zunera Ishaq, a Muslim woman wearing the niqab that Harper at that time wanted to stop from taking her citizenship ceremony while wearing a face covering.

One argument claims that a niqab worn for religious reasons and a mask worn for health purposes are two totally different things. For some, the former is a symbol of women’s subjugation (some people went further, calling niqab wearers “bank robbers”) whereas the latter is intended for protecting individuals and assuring their safety — no questions asked about the security issues posed by a mask or the importance of liberal values.

Assuming this is true, how can we differentiate between the two? By looking at the person wearing them? Wouldn’t that be further evidence of racial profiling, suggesting the same object has two distinct meanings depending on who is wearing it?

Another argument would state that a niqab poses a threat for national security, whereas a health mask doesn’t. This is not true, since all women who wear a niqab agree to remove their niqab to show their face at airports, and for security reasons. There are no known incidents that indicate national security incidents happened with women wearing a niqab, but what will happen for people wearing face masks once the airports start operating again? Will the face masks be allowed? Why wouldn’t they be considered a national security threat?

This is another example of how the COVID-19 pandemic shows the hypocrisy of some politicians, and how a narrow and misleading definition of secularism was used against the rights and liberties of certain Muslim women in many democracies that most of the time pretended to be champions of freedom — except when it came to face coverings … Well, until face coverings became strongly recommended or mandatory!

This column was originally published at rabble.ca

COVID-19 an opportunity to build a low-emission economy

A few years ago, I went to Tunis, Tunisia, my hometown, for a short visit in the month of December. It had been almost 20 years since I visited in the winter. My visits were usually in the summer so my children could go to the beach and enjoy the warmth of the Mediterranean sun.

But with each visit, I found the summers becoming unbearably hotter. The last time I went during the summer, I had to keep the air-conditioning unit in each room working almost all day, and my children refused to leave the house, which defeated the purpose of the outdoor summer activities.

I grew up in Tunis and spent my first 20 years there. The temperatures frequently reach 40 C, and sometimes beyond, especially between mid-July and mid-August. Opening the windows at night might help, letting a light breeze refresh our sweating bodies. During the day, we keep our home darkened by the window shutters, and draw the curtains to create a cooling effect. We never had an air-conditioning system.

Over the years, those tricks became useless, as the temperatures rose higher and higher, and the rise came with a new phenomenon: the car pollution. From the early ’90s, an increasing number of cars filled the streets of the crowded city. Thus, creating a sense of suffocation and the near disappearance of breeze.

In 2013, there were 1.7 million registered vehicles in Tunisia. Compared to over 35 million registered vehicles for a population of 37 million in Canada, the number of registered vehicles relative to Tunisia’s 11.6 million population might seem low, but we are talking about a network of 19,418 kilometres of road in Tunisia (as of 2010) compared with a network of roads of over one million kilometers in Canada (as of 2008).

In 2016, Tunisia emitted CO2 emissions of 2.6 tonnes per capita. In 2014, Canada emitted 15.2 tonnes per capita.

Even if statistically speaking Tunisia is less polluting than Canada, the concentration of pollution in Tunisian cities combined with poverty, a weak public health-care system, crumbling infrastructure and dense urban areas make the population more at risk for pulmonary diseases.

The hotter the weather during the summer, the more air-conditioning units are installed in buildings, and of course, the more CO2 is released in the air. Combined with the increasing number of cars driving around the city, it creates a vicious cycle.

So, in order to avoid spending two or three weeks avoiding the sun and breathing artificially cool air filtered through air conditioning, I stopped going to Tunis in the summer. It made me sad.

I lost the comforting heat of the sun on my skin. I missed those breezy nights when we stayed up past midnight. I lost the incredible shades of the sky at dusk.

I also became angry at the cars that drove crazily in the narrow streets, and most of all I resented the policy makers who for decades instead of investing in more public transportation encouraged citizens to buy cars by relaxing the personal loans conditions and easing car-import restrictions.

But these policies are not random or unique to the transport sector: they took over all sectors. It is part of the disengagement of the state from the public sector and its replacement by neoliberal policies where citizens are made principally responsible for their health, education, transportation and jobs.

Today, with the COVID-19 pandemic, the “emperor has no clothes.” If this horrible crisis brought us something good, it showed us that a neoliberal economy is no longer an alternative, and the pollution that this economic model brought is not inevitable.

What is even more interesting are the results of a study that linked air pollution to coronavirus deaths. This study, despite its limitations, showed a storng correlation between the presence of the nitrogen dioxide and the number of deaths due to COVID-19.

This finding matches previous studies about links between the number of deaths caused by SARS in 2003 and air pollution.

In her iconic book, The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein, showed through the notable examples of Chile and Iraq how private corporations literally take advantage of economic and social chaos created by some natural disaster or social unrest to fill the void created by the orchestrated absence of the state. Neoliberal policies were sneakily introduced and became the norms during times of crisis. Private schools replaced the poorly funded public ones. Private corporations became the owners of long-term facilities for seniors.

The COVID-19 pandemic should be an opportunity to create a “reverse” shock doctrine. Already we have the evidence, day after day, that if it wasn’t for the measures introduced by the government to help the most vulnerable, the economy, the businesses, the research, the health sectors, the situation would be worse.

Instead of having a government playing the role of “saviour” for the last resort, why don’t we have policies where the public good is always sought after? Why don’t we accept once for all that the economic system adopted so far is wrong? Pollution kills us and a better alternative is possible.

This column was first published on rabble.ca

COVID-19 and the war on terror

The COVID-19 pandemic is still claiming lives around the world, sending many people to crowded hospitals and putting medical systems under unbearable strain. It is a scary, concerning and tragic situation.

However, with many of us confined at home, it is also a time to reflect on the fragility of the systems we live in, and perhaps learn from the mistakes and bad decisions that have been guiding many of the governments around the world, including Canada.

After the attacks of 9/11, the United States convinced its allies that the world is threatened by the presence of the terrorists, and urged them to join its “War on Terror.” On September 20, 2001, in a national address, then-president Georges W. Bush famously declared: “Every nation in every region now has a decision to make … Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.” First came the attacks on Afghanistan and then followed the war in Iraq. The whole region never recovered from the military presence of the American troops and their allies.

Bush even incited Americans to “go shopping” and visit “Disneyworld.” In a very simplistic and false dichotomy, he wanted to summarize those attacks as an attack on the way of lives of Americans — an attack of “barbarism” on civilization, an attack of people who hated freedom on those who cherished it. Every intellectual or commentator who tried to situate those attacks in a more geopolitical and multilayered context linked to American politics and interference in the Middle East was criticized and attacked as unpatriotic (remember the backlash against Susan Sontag).

The majority complied and the U.S. Patriot Act was passed to give extraordinary powers to the state for policing, surveillance and imprisonment of the most vulnerable groups, like immigrants and Muslims. Very rare were the voices who opposed this onslaught on the civil liberties. The motto was ‘less liberties for more security.’

From a mocked and belittled president when he was first elected, Bush became a sort of national hero, a semi-divine figure who would lead his country’s people to war: “This battle will take time and resolve, but make no mistake about it, we will win.”

Today, eighteen years later, it is somehow ironic but worth noting that when the peace deal agreement between the U.S. government and the Taliban started to make its way through the media, COVID-19 was accelerating its mortal pace around the world, affecting hundreds of thousands of people. It was as if the implicit message to the U.S. government was that with one threat gone, a new one appeared.

In a report prepared by the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University, released last fall, we learned that the war on terror cost the U.S. economy US$6.4 trillion. 800,000 people died due to direct war violence, and several times as many died indirectly. Over 335,000 civilians have been killed as a result of the fighting.

The figures for Canada are not easy to find. Nevertheless, the same report indicates that “Canada spent an estimated $18 billion on fighting and reconstruction in Afghanistan, but there is no comprehensive figure on other costs.”

Also, the same report notes:

“a Parliamentary Budget Office report estimated in 2015 that the cost of providing financial support to Afghanistan veterans would total $157 million by 2025, discounting (in part due to lack of data) health care, pharmaceuticals and rehabilitation services. Disability benefits to Canadian combat veterans for a single year of military operations were projected to cost $145.2 million over nine years.”

Canada was not as directly impacted by the attacks of 9/11. Among the 2973 victims, only 24 were Canadians. Of course, these are lost human lives and their families were devastated, but it wasn’t a direct terrorist attack that hit Canada. Despite this matter, the Canadian parliament hastily passed in 2001 the Antiterrorism Act that mainly and tragically affected the lives of Canada’s Muslim community (representing barely 3 per cent of the population). It affected their jobs, economic situations, travels, civil liberties, families, children and integration in the Canadian social fabric.

The Canadian government also joined the war on terror because of the pressure from the U.S. government and because the RCMP and Canadian intelligence institutions understood that their lack of cooperation with their American counterparts would put their existence and relevancy in jeopardy. In the last two decades, those institutions saw their budgets and powers increase. In 2008, and because the Canadian government didn’t want to reveal the cost of extra security measures introduced after 9/11, CBC found that $24 billion was spent by the federal government on security measures since 9/11. In 2008, the RCMP’s annual budget rose by close to $1 billion since 2001, and the budget of Canada’s intelligence agency, CSIS, nearly doubled.

Were those increase justified? Not as much as they were portrayed by some politicians. There was never any evidence that showed those additional funds helped secure the lives of Canadians. In Canada, terrorist risks, understood here as emanating from the Muslim community, were not particularly higher than in any other part of the world. In 2018, Public Safety Canada wrote in its annual assessment “the principal terrorist threat to Canada and Canadian interests continues to be that posed by individuals or groups who are inspired by violent ideologies and terrorist groups, such as Daesh or al-Qaida (AQ).”

Despite the increasing violence and the flourishing of white supremacist groups, those institutions are still frozen in the post-9/11 mentality, trying to milk the threats posed by the ‘usual suspects.’

Successive Liberal and Conservative governments accepted those increases in defence, surveillance and police budgets. But there was never an open public debate about the relevance of the Canadian participation in the war in Afghanistan that cost at least $18 billion, the death of 158 soldiers and more than 1,800 wounded. It is still a taboo. The late Jack Layton, former leader of the New Democratic Party who courageously dared to suggest in 2006 in the House of Commons that Canada should negotiate with the Taliban was derided by other political parties as “Taliban Jack.”

False and misleading parallels were always drawn in the media and by politicians between the role of Canada in the liberation of Europe in the Second World War, and its implication in the war in Afghanistan. There was nothing in common between those two conflicts: the stakes were totally different. Unfortunately, the media and some politicians used the same rhetoric to justify a bad decision dictated by American politics and not by the interests of Canadians.

The war on terror in Canada and in the U.S. wasn’t financed through higher personal taxes or more contributions from business. Rather, it was funded through additional borrowing and higher debts and interests. Over the last decades, Canada’s public finances kept worsening and federal and provincial governments kept slashing health budgets, education and social programs. Everybody was asked to make sacrifices. They sold us an illusory sense of safety by looking always at the same misleading source of danger, terrorism, while ignoring other dangers.

Our participation in the war on terror gave us tunnel vision, where the threats were artificially maintained and inflated, while all other dangers were dismissed or diminished. Health budgets, education funding and support for infrastructure, social housing and scientific research were always the last of the priorities of our governments. Those services were the sacrificial lambs in order to participate in the war on terror.

Today, with the high spread of COVID-19 and the increasing number of fatalities, provincial governments wake up to a sad reality. The hospitals are in need of masks and ventilators; nurses and doctors are overworked; schools are not equipped with online resources that would have made it easier to keep children educated while schools are closed.

COVID-19 is revealing the naked priorities of our governments. When Trudeau announced money to help Canadians laid off because of the crisis, and to give a fiscal break to small businesses, he is not being nice and charitable. These are overdue measures that should have been taken decades ago. Perhaps the situation of Canadians today would have been less vulnerable, and our health systems would have been more prepared to face this pandemic.

If COVID-19 has any positive message, I see it as making us reassess our personal priorities and policies as a country. Maybe it is time to tell ourselves — without being accused of being a terrorist apologist, a socialist or just naive — that the war on terror was a bad decision, and that instead we should have invested those billions of dollars in health, education and the most vulnerable in our society.

This column was first published on rabble.ca

Justin Trudeau lectures others about human rights while forgetting issues at home

An old Arab proverb says “If a camel tries to look at its own hump, its neck might break.” Basically, looking at one’s own back (or own problems) might be painful, so instead many people decide to look away.

In his recent visit to African countries, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been trying to convince African leaders that Canada deserves their support. Observers note that African countries increasingly vote as a monolithic bloc in international bodies like the Francophonie, the United Nations and the Commonwealth — hence the importance of Canada seeking their support in its bid for a seat at the UN Security Council.

In a revised memo obtained through an access to information request by Global News, the Liberal government has adopted two objectives, among others, for its foreign policy in sub-Saharan Africa: promoting human rights and inclusive governance, and supporting poverty reduction.

So, it comes as no surprise that Trudeau, while touring African countries, emphasized these two particular issues. Meanwhile at home, Trudeau’s own record on these two objectives came to haunt him and perhaps damaged his carefully constructed image.

In Senegal, Trudeau boasted to journalists that he was “a great defender of human rights” (an insinuation that same-sex marriage is legalized in Canada whereas homosexuality is criminalized in Senegal).

In photo-ops, Trudeau was pictured at the House of Slaves on Gorée Island, a very emotionally and historically charged place where African slaves were shipped to America by European slave-merchants.

Similar places should be a strong reminder to Trudeau that slavery and colonialism were horrific acts of genocide, and that posing for photo-ops is obviously not enough.

While reminding Senegal President Macky Sall of the importance of human rights, Trudeau must have forgotten that in Wet’suwet’en territory in northern British Columbia, the militarized RCMP raided and arrested land defenders for peacefully opposing the construction of the Coastal GasLink pipeline that would run through unceded Wet’suwet’en territory.

On top of siding with corporate interests, the RCMP went even further by limiting and even threatening to arrest journalists who were trying to report on the situation. This is an affront to freedom and democracy in this country.

Unfortunately, this isn’t a surprise. The RCMP, since its inception has had a long history of oppression and violence against Indigenous communities and other marginalized groups. Indeed, the creation of the RCMP by prime minister John A. Macdonald was mainly to “control” the Western part of Canada, and that meant fighting Indigenous resistance and establishing full control over the economic resources of the newly established country.

In former prime minister Stephen Harper’s Bill C-51 (the Anti-terrorism Act), which was slightly amended by the current Liberal government, the activities of Indigenous and environmental activists were among many activities described as posing a threat to Canada’s national security.

In 2016, the RCMP tracked 89 indigenous groups that were considered threats for participating in protests.

This week, the Assembly of the First Nations (AFN) launched a class-action lawsuit against the federal government because, they said, Indigenous children “have been discriminated against by the government’s child welfare system.” The AFN argues the federal government’s actions increased Indigenous child poverty levels.

In 2016, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal found the government systemically discriminated against on-reserve First Nations children by providing inadequate services.

So far, the government has already spent upwards of $8 million in legal fees in its efforts to fight the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal ruling, as documented by First Nations Child and Family Caring Society executive director Cindy Blackstock, who started the challenge years ago and has kept track of efforts by the government to fight the ruling.

Wouldn’t it have been easier to pay these sums to the First Nations children so they can have decent schools like other children in Canada?

In a tweet this week, Trudeau wrote: “Every child, no matter who they are or where they live deserves to enjoy their childhood.”

And what if the child is First Nations and living in Canada? Does this tweet apply to her? Or is it only when Trudeau comes to give lessons to other countries that we are champions?

Trudeau’s diplomatic charm operation has so far cost $2 million, and there is no guarantee that Canada will end up getting the Security Council seat. Canada might lose the seat to one if its competitors, Norway and Ireland, who are doing much better respectively in terms of foreign aid and siding with the Palestinian cause. These issues matter tremendously to African countries, but Trudeau has kept silent on them or has at least shown he isn’t ready to take a leading role on them.

This article was originally published in rabble.ca

Prison, Mental Health and Racism

Philosopher Michel Foucault once asked the following rhetorical question: “What is so astonishing about the fact that our prisons resemble our factories, schools, military bases, and hospitals — all of which in turn resemble prisons?”

People may agree or disagree with this interjection.

I would like to bring forward the cases of two young men, one Muslim and the other Indigenous. Both individuals struggled with mental health issues and yet both were treated by coercive and punitive institutions rather than hospitals. That led to the tragic death of the former and to the indefinite detention of the latter.

In both cases, one can strongly argue that prisons and hospitals became interchangeable with disastrous effects on the lives of these individuals.

The fact that both individuals are racialized, one a visible Muslim man and the other a Dene man from northern Saskatchewan, adds another layer to the already existent oppression found in the carceral system.

The story of Soleiman Faqiri has been in the Canadian media since his death on December 15, 2016.

Faqiri was arrested 11 days prior to his death for attacking a neighbour with an “edged weapon.” Since he was a person with a documented mental health history, he should have been taken to a doctor as it is stipulated under Ontario’s Mental Health Act. But not on that day when he was arrested. Instead he was taken to a prison: the Central East Correctional Centre in Lindsay, Ontario. Even worse, he was incarcerated in solitary confinement.

Why was he put in jail instead of being taking to a hospital? Why was he put in solitary confinement when it was known that he was diagnosed with schizophrenia? Wasn’t Foucault then right in this case? Prisons are equal to hospitals? Maybe the officers who decided to put him in jail thought a jail is like a hospital, with the only tragic difference being that the jail killed Soleiman Faqiri instead of saving his life.

Beside the mental health issues that Faqiri suffered from, he was a visible, racialized Muslim man. How much did his beard, the kufi on his head and his long cultural dress play a morbid role in his treatment by jail guards? We don’t know.

Ryan Williams, a religious studies academic at Cambridge University’s prison research centre, has examined the role of Islam in three U.K. maximum security prisons. He writes that there is a muddling of “issues around extremism, religious identity, and the specific conditions that bring about certain interpretations and enactments of Islam. Within prisons, everyday Muslim practices of praying, reading the Qur’an, or even reading commentary from Muslim scholars about God’s creation and evolutionary theory can raise concerns over extremism.”

Why would guards at the Central East Correctional Centre in Lindsay be different from those in the U.K.? Why would they be immune to an international Islamophobic climate, where people mix their own prejudices and fear of Islam with their attitude towards the aggressiveness or resistance shown by some Muslim inmates?

Some would consider this last question a serious accusation against public servants who are supposed to be objective in conducting their duties. But unless this hypothetical assertion is thoroughly taken into consideration in any investigation of the case, the public and Faqiri’s family may never know why he died while resisting the incredible amount of physical force exerted by the 20 to 30 officers who were called to subdue him.

Despite the sad ending to Faqiri’s case and the pain his horrifying death brought to his family, we shouldn’t look at it as an isolated case. It should be seen through the lens of the ongoing racism and colonialism still affecting many Canadian institutions. The carceral system in Canada, at both federal and provincial levels, has been filled with disturbing, tragic cases of Indigenous prisoners with mental health conditions requiring urgent care but for whom the long incarceration, segregation and neglect instead led to self-inflicted injuries or suicide.

Joey Toutsaint, a Dene inmate from northern Saskatchewan with serious mental illness who, by his own count, has spent more than 2,180 days in isolation, is the “perfect” example to describe this travesty of justice. His Indigenous background has a lot to do with the harsh treatment the prison system has reserved for him since he entered it for criminal offences.

Some perhaps well-meaning voices have been asking for more Indigenous representation within the prison system, such as the appointment of a deputy commissioner for federally sentenced Indigenous offenders.

A similar call was made in the aftermath of 9/11 when a wave of Islamophobia swept up many Muslim men and wrongly charged them with terrorism. At the time some of these voices recommended that the RCMP and other police bodies go through culturally sensitive training in Islam and Muslims customs.

In my opinion, this cultural sensitivity training or “Indigenization” of the prison system are merely cosmetic changes. They “help” the institutions that conduct them look good more than they help the affected individuals. The core problem remains — that those law enforcement institutions and prisons are based on old, persistent and racist views towards racialized groups, mainly the Indigenous population. The “offender” is generally represented as a racialized person who is lazy, dirty, oppressed and violent, regardless of their socioeconomic background and most importantly, regardless of their mental health situation. Only a restructuring through decolonization can help in stopping this epidemic of high incarceration and the subsequent killing of Indigenous populations and other racialized minorities suffering from mental health issues.

This article was originally published at rabble.ca