Nicolas: Conservatismes dénationalisés

2024/08/08 Leave a comment

While I wouldn’t class J.K. Rowling the same as the “pyromanes” Elon Musk and Donald Trump, valid point on the convergence of the nationalist right wing across countries:

Il y a désormais 20 ans, l’été normalement très peu politique des gens de Québec était interrompu par une manifestation de 50 000 personnes se portant à la défense de CHOI Radio X et de son animateur vedette Jeff Fillion alors que la licence de la station était menacée par une décision du Conseil de la radiodiffusion et des télécommunications canadiennes, le CRTC. Les voitures de mon quartier étaient placardées d’autocollants où on pouvait lire : « Liberté ! Je crie ton nom partout ! »

Liberté de quoi ? Liberté, pour Jeff Fillion, d’insulter les femmes, les immigrants, les gais, les pauvres, les politiciens : bref, à peu près tout le monde. Du moins, c’était là le type de propos dits « controversés » qui avaient justifié la décision du CRTC.

En septembre 2004, une élection partielle dans mon comté, Vanier, a fait entrer à l’Assemblée nationale un nouveau député de l’Action démocratique du Québec (ADQ), Sylvain Légaré. Le chef de l’ADQ, Mario Dumont, avait vu dans la mobilisation locale une occasion politique en or et avait fait campagne en se portant à la défense de Radio X.

Cette page d’histoire locale illustre bien le contexte social et politique dans lequel a émergé ce qu’on a appelé la « crise des accommodements raisonnables ». L’été 2004 représente en quelque sorte une version bêta de l’alliance entre personnalités médiatiques populistes et politiciens populistes qui permet aux uns de normaliser leurs idées dans l’espace public et aux autres de faire des gains électoraux à court terme.

La recette testée cet été-là a été adaptée à l’échelle de la province dans les années qui ont suivi. D’un côté, des anecdotes médiatiques du type « les immigrants et les minorités exagèrent » ont trouvé leur courroie de relais à l’Assemblée nationale. De l’autre, le nouveau paradigme parlementaire a décuplé la proportion du débat public québécois qui divise la population sur la base des attitudes face à « l’identitaire ». À bien des égards, on vit toujours dans ce paradigme.

La métamorphose politique de ces années-là n’est toutefois pas unique au Québec. L’alliance entre médias de droite populiste et mouvements politiques conservateurs a aussi été cimentée par des hommes bien plus puissants, tels que Rupert Murdoch, propriétaire de la chaîne américaine Fox News comme de plusieurs médias du même acabit au Royaume-Uni et en Australie, et Vincent Bolloré, propriétaire de CNews et de plusieurs autres chaînes françaises. Ces hommes ont transformé non seulement les médias, mais aussi le champ des idées politiques acceptables et la manière de débattre dans leurs pays d’activité respectifs.

À bien des égards, la dynamique politique des années 2000, c’était le bon vieux temps. L’enfance du problème, en quelque sorte.

Ou du moins, c’est ce qui m’appert alors que je regarde comment des présupposés sur l’identité religieuse du suspect dans une affaire de meurtre servent de bougie d’allumage à une vague d’émeutes violentes portée par des mouvements d’extrême droite en Grande-Bretagne. Ou quand je vois comment la Russie, frustrée d’être exclue des Jeux olympiques, contribue à semer le doute sur l’identité de genre d’une boxeuse algérienne, Imane Khelif, de manière à faire s’entre-déchirer tout l’Internet occidental pris au piège dans ses « guerres culturelles ».

Je suis tentée de distribuer à J.K. Rowling, Elon Musk et Donald Trump les trois médailles d’une nouvelle discipline olympique : celle de l’ultrariche pyromane. Je laisse au jury le soin de terminer à qui revient l’or, l’argent et le bronze, mais de toute évidence, ces trois-là ont formé le peloton de tête cette semaine.

Je dis que les années 2000 m’apparaissent comme un temps plus doux, parce que dans l’affaire Khelif, nos populistes locaux se sont simplement fait les perroquets de nos champions internationaux ultrariches pyromanes. Depuis l’avènement des médias sociaux et la montée mondiale du populisme de droite, les dérapages qui empoisonnent nos débats d’idées sont de moins en moins désignables comme « nos » dérapages.

Du temps du code de vie d’Hérouxville, ça chauffait, certes, mais on se sentait un peu moins directement comme les pantins des milliardaires de la mondialisation en manque d’attention. On pouvait se battre contre les préjugés toxiques à armes tout de même plus égales lorsqu’on n’avait pas carrément les algorithmes de plateformes comme X contre nous.

En 2008, le rapport Bouchard-Taylor avait désigné, finalement, la « crise des accommodements raisonnables » comme une crise de perception alimentée par des anecdotes montées en épingles par certains médias d’ici. Ce que l’actualité de la semaine démontre, en quelque sorte, c’est que le carburant de nos crises de perception est plus que jamais complètement sorti des champs de compétence provinciaux.

La « bollorisation » des médias français influence directement les élites politiques et médiatiques québécoises admiratives de l’Hexagone. Les guerres culturelles de Fox News sont adaptées à la sauce canadienne par le mouvement conservateur de Pierre Poilievre. Par TikTok et YouTube, les masculinistes parlent aux jeunes de partout dans le monde. Et les propagandistes russes alimentent les complotistes occidentaux sur des plateformes où la vérification des faits a pour ainsi dire pris le bord. En fin de compte, la circulation des idées réactionnaires sur l’immigration, les minorités, les femmes et l’identité de genre s’est accélérée et internationalisée de manière phénoménale depuis 2008.

Entendons bien : les idées ont toujours circulé et circuleront toujours. Cela dit, des commissaires auraient bien du mal, en 2024, à pointer une origine précisément locale à nos « crises de perception » contemporaines sur les drag queens, les trans, les femmes trop masculines, les immigrants qui prennent trop de place, etc.

C’est là un grand paradoxe des nationalismes conservateurs contemporains. Tout en vantant la nation, ils s’appuient sur des discours qui ont de moins en moins de contenu spécifiquement national. De la France au Royaume-Uni, des États-Unis à l’Italie, de l’Espagne au Canada, les scénarios semblent de plus en plus interchangeables — et la « question de l’heure », hors de notre contrôle.

Source: Conservatismes dénationalisés

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‘The trust has been broken’: accountability for racism in PCO requires resignations, says Black Class Action lead Thompson

2024/08/08 Leave a comment

Usual over the top rhetoric and expectations. Good that reporting is including relevant data from the PSES and EE representation data.

For Thompson to claim that PCO is not providing the numbers, these are available in Table 1 in the annual reports, albeit not disaggregated by visible minority or indigenous group or level.

Given the relatively large numbers (March 2023, 252 visible minority employees, or 22.8 percent), it should be possible to request and obtain disaggregated numbers for most groups, and for the larger groups, executives):

…The report—released on July 29 by the Coalition Against Workplace Discrimination, which obtained the document through an access to information request—said that Black, racialized, and Indigenous employees experienced “racial stereotyping, microaggressions, and verbal violence,” and a workplace culture where that behaviour is “regularly practiced and normalized, including at the executive level.” 

The report also found that PCO’s culture discouraged reporting and that “effective accountability mechanisms are currently non-existent.”

Rachel Zellars, an associate professor at St. Mary’s University, produced the report following interviews she conducted with 58 employees from November 2021 to May 2022 as part of the PCO’s “Your Voice Matters” Safe Space Initiative, and her work as the inaugural Jocelyne Bourgon Visiting Scholar for the Canada School of Public Service. 

Zellars said she conducted 13 interviews with racialized employees and eight with Black employees, the latter accounting for half of the total Black employees in the PCO at the time. 

Those employees shared experiences of their managers and supervisors using the N-word “comfortably” in their presence, and expressing surprise and ignorance when informed it was a pejorative term, as well as Islamophobic remarks and “feigned innocence” when white employees were promoted over them.

In contrast, white employees had worked at PCO for longer periods, and were clustered in higher-level positions than Black, racialized, and Indigenous employees. Those white employees also detailed experiences and career-advancing opportunities “in stark variance” to their non-white colleagues.

The Safe Space Initiative was launched following a Call to Action by former clerk Ian Shugart in January 2021. The call urged public service leaders to take action to remove systemic racism from Canada’s institutions. 

According to the 2022 Public Service Employee Survey results for the PCO, seven per cent of the 710 employees who responded said they had been the victim of on-the-job discrimination in the previous 12 months. Of the 35 respondents who identified as Black, 12 per cent said they had been the victim of discrimination. Ten per cent of the 145 racialized, non-Indigenous respondents indicated they had been the victim of discrimination, and five per cent of non-racialized, non-Indigenous employees did as well.

Of those who said they had been the victim of discrimination, 31 per cent said it had been targeted at their national or ethnic origin, followed by age-based discrimination at 30 per cent. Twenty-nine per cent said the discrimination they faced was based on their racial identity, 25 per cent said it was due to sexism, and 23 per cent said the discrimination was based on skin colour.

The vast majority of those employees who said they experienced discrimination—75 per cent—said the source had been a supervisor or manager, followed by 19 per cent who said it came from coworkers, 18 per cent who said employees from other departments, and three per cent who indicated they had been discriminated against by their subordinates.

Nearly half of the employees—47 per cent—who said they had been the victims of discrimination said they had taken no action in response due to fear of reprisals or expectations that doing so would be futile.

In an interview with The Hill Times following the Aug. 1 march, Black Class Action Secretariat CEO Nicholas Marcus Thompson questioned how the government can be trusted to implement any measures regarding the International Decade for People of African Descent, or even lead its own call to action to address anti-racism in the public service when the leadership responsible for doing so are themselves perpetrators. 

During this year’s official Government of Canada Black History Month reception on Feb. 7 at the Canadian Museum of History, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (Papineau, Que.) announced that Canada would extend its recognition of the decade until 2028, giving Canada the “full 10 years.” Trudeau’s government officially recognized the UN General Assembly 2015 proclamation of the decade in January 2018.

Since 2019, the federal government has announced several measures and investments attributed to Canada’s recognition of the decade, including $200-million over five years for the Supporting Black Canadian Communities Initiative, $265-million over four years to the Black Entrepreneurship Program (BEP), $200-million to establish the Black-led Philanthropic Endowment Fund, and the development of Canada’s Black Justice Strategy to address anti-Black racism and systemic discrimination in the criminal justice system. The strategy “aims to help ensure that Black people have access to equal treatment before and under the law in Canada.”

Thompson noted that the PCO’s response to the report did not include an acceptance of responsibility or an apology. 

“No apology for the pain they’ve caused their employees … for the microaggressions or the use of the N-word,” Thompson said. “The first step should be an apology.”

In response to the coalition’s publication of the report, the PCO issued a similar statement to the one it sent to The Hill Times, highlighting the steps its senior management team has taken to “reinforce” its commitment to Shugart’s call to action, and pointing to the increases in representation within its workforce and executive since 2020. 

Between March 2020 and 2024, the PCO says that of its 1,200 employees, Black representation increased from 3.4 per cent (29 employees) to 5.8 per cent (66 employees). It also noted an increase from 2.7 per cent to 2.9 per cent for Indigenous employees, 16.5 per cent to 23.9 per cent for racialized employees, and an increase in women employees from 53.9 per cent to 57.8 per cent.

Within the executive, PCO says it has increased its representation in all those categories as well, but did not provide the underlying number of employees those percentages are based on, which Thompson said helps mask the reality of the situation. 

“They rely on percentages when it suits them because they could say they had a 50 per cent increase, but that could just represent one more employee if they only had two before,” Thompson explained. “We want to see representation increase, but it must be done proportionately.”

As for the steps the PCO says it has taken in its response, Thompson said many of those were performative “events,” and lack the depth required to comprehensively tackle the systemic issues identified in Zellars’ report and Shugart’s call to action. 

However, Thompson said the “trust has been broken,” and the coalition no longer believes the PCO can “fix itself.” 

“If we want to see accountability, we need resignations,” Thompson said. 

Alongside its reiteration of the long-standing calls for the creation of a Black Equity Commissioner and the settlement of the class-action lawsuit filed against the federal public service in December 2020, the coalition is also calling for the resignations of deputy clerk Natalie Drouin, who was responsible for the discrimination file since 2021, and Matthew Shea, assistant secretary to the cabinet, ministerial services and corporate affairs, and the head of PCO corporate services since 2017.

“The PCO can’t fix itself on this issue, so we need an arm’s-length commissioner to audit and direct it,” Thompson said, suggesting that one of the reasons so little action had been taken on Zellars’ report was because it had been “optional.” 

Thompson also noted that while the government has created commissioners or special envoys to tackle issues of antisemitism, Islamophobia, or anti-LGBTQ2S+ hate, there is “no such thing” to address anti-Black discrimination. 

“We’ve been needing specialized solutions to addressing anti-Black discrimination, recognizing that it’s unique from all other forms of racism and discrimination,” Thompson said, adding that the federal Anti-Racism Secretariat does not even have a mandate to investigate the public service. 

“It’s an outward-facing secretariat,” Thompson said. “It has no mandate to investigate, audit, or examine any forms of discrimination in the public service.”

Thompson said that the Black Equity Commissioner would also need structural support, including the creation of a new Department of African Canadian Studies to function similarly to Crown–Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada, and the changes to the Employment Equity Act suggested by the federal task force earlier this year.

Last December, the Employment Equity Act Review Task Force presented its findings to then-labour minister Seamus O’Regan (St. John’s South–Mount Pearl, Nfld.), recommending that Black and LGBTQ employees should be recognized as separate groups under the Employment Equity Act, instead of falling under the label of “visible minority.”

When it was implemented in 1986, the Employment Equity Act was intended to dismantle barriers to employment for minority communities. The four groups the act recognized as facing those barriers are women, Indigenous people, people living with disabilities, and visible minorities.

Speaking with reporters on Dec. 11, 2023, O’Regan said he was personally “delighted” by the recommendation, and the government has said it “broadly supports” it, according to reporting by CBC News.  

In a statement to The Hill Times, the office of current Labour Minister Steve MacKinnon (Gatineau, Que.) said his predecessor’s initial commitments are only the “first steps” in the government’s work to transform Canada’s approach to employment equity.

“We look forward to tabling government legislation that is comprehensive of the needs of marginalized communities across Canada, and knocks down the barriers that prevent people from achieving their full potential in the workplace,” the statement reads.

Consultations on the Equity Act Review Task Force report will continue until Aug. 30.

Source: ‘The trust has been broken’: accountability for racism in PCO requires resignations, says Black Class Action lead Thompson

Filed under Government, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , ,

Dave Snow: The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal will not be able to handle the deluge of cases from the Online Harms Act 

2024/08/07 Leave a comment

Interesting analysis of their workload and decisions:

…Exploring Human Rights Tribunal decisions

To determine how this new Bill could affect the federal human rights framework, I sought to understand how the existing framework works in practice. I conducted a content analysis of every Canadian Human Rights Tribunal decision over the last five-and-a-half years, from January 1, 2019, to June 30, 2024.

Surprisingly, I discovered that the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal issues very few decisions. Between 2019 and 2024, the tribunal only issued 63 actual decisions, along with 260 procedural “rulings” about ongoing hearings—typically involving brief motions to admit evidence, anonymize participants, or amend statements.

Moreover, nine of the 63 decisions were merely procedural in nature (mostly dismissing “abandoned” complainants) and one evaluated compliance with an ongoing settlement agreement between First Nations and the government of Canada.

This means that since 2019, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal has only actually issued 53 decisions that involved an evaluation of a complaint alleging discrimination or harassment—fewer than 10 per year–from a low of six in 2022 to a high of 14 in 2019. By way of comparison, in 2023 alone, human rights tribunals in Alberta, B.C., and Ontario issued 126, 248, and 1,829 decisions respectively. The COVID-19 pandemic did not appear to have a serious impact on delaying tribunal decisions.

In human rights tribunals, complainants allege discrimination or harassment based on one or more “grounds.” They can claim to have faced discrimination on multiple grounds simultaneously. Across the 53 decisions, there were an average of 2.1 grounds claimed per decision.

The most frequently claimed ground was disability (in 58 percent of decisions), followed by national or ethnic origin (34 percent), race (32 percent), family status (21 percent), age (19 percent), and sex (19 percent). Interestingly, there were only two decisions where complainants alleged discrimination based on religion, only two on sexual orientation, and only one on gender identity.

For each decision, I examined whether the claimant was successful (a “win”) or unsuccessful (a “loss”). I characterized partially successful claimants as a win, as these decisions still involved a remedy that typically included some form of financial compensation.

Table 1 shows an overall success rate of 62 percent. It also shows the win rate for each type or “ground” of discrimination that appeared in at least ten decisions.

Graphic credit: Janice Nelson. 

I found that complaints alleging age-based discrimination—all but one of which were based on old age —were least likely to be successful (40 percent win rate). Complaints involving discrimination based on race (53 percent) and national or ethnic origin (50 percent) also had a lower-than-average success rate.

By contrast, complainants alleging sex-based discrimination or harassment were the most successful (90 percent). Nine of the 10 complainants alleging sex-based discrimination and or harassment were women. Eight of those nine were successful.

Table 2 organizes the 53 decisions according to the three types of “respondents,” or the organizations accused of harassment or discrimination: federal government entities (including federal departments, Crown corporations, the RCMP, and the City of Ottawa); private companies in federally-regulated industries (transportation, aviation, marine, rail, banking, and telecoms); and First Nations. There was minimal variation in success rates by the type of respondent, with complainants slightly less successful against First Nations (58 percent win rate) than against governments (64 percent) and private companies (63 percent).

Graphic credit: Janice Nelson. 

Given the controversy over the incoming chief of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, I also sought to explore decisions in which Jewish complainants alleged antisemitic discrimination, whether on the grounds of religion or national or ethnic origin.

What I found was that there were no such decisions. The words “Jew,” “Zion,” “Zionist,” and “antisemitic” do not appear in any of the tribunal’s 63 decisions from 2019-2024. The word “Jewish” only occurs in four procedural rulings. Three were from an identically-worded sentence in procedural rulings describing an ongoing case involving an inmate who “self-identifies as an Indigenous, Jewish, Two-Spirit transfeminine woman”. The fourth was found in an interim ruling for a Muslim inmate. He had complained that Correctional Service Canada “provided a religious diet for Jewish inmates, but not a diet for [him] that would accommodate his Muslim beliefs and his health issues.”

It is worth noting how infrequent claims of religious discrimination are. Only two of 53 decisions involved religious discrimination, and in both cases the complainants also alleged discrimination on other grounds. Both complainants were successful.

Conclusions

Federal human rights institutions are under the political microscope, and for good reason. The Canadian Human Rights Commission claims“We must all call out antisemitism” but its incoming leader (expected to take up his post this week) once posted that “Palestinians are Warsaw Ghetto Prisoners of today.” Its website proudly displays a section on “Anti-racism work” yet it has been publicly admonished for its own alleged anti-black racism.

Meanwhile, as I have demonstrated through my investigation, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal appears unprepared to deal with the influx of complaints about online hate speech for which it will be responsible if the Online Harms Act passes.

Based on my research, I draw three main conclusions. First, the tribunal simply does not issue many decisions. It only issued 63 decisions over the last five-and-a-half years, 10 of which did not involve a formal evaluation of discrimination or harassment. The fact that the tribunal also issued 260 procedural rulings during the same period further suggests its existing hearings are often slowed down by procedural issues.

Second, the few decisions the tribunal does render are fundamentally different than what it would decide under the Online Harms Act. More than one in five decisions (12 of 53) involved truck drivers or trucking companies. The same number(12 of 53) involved allegations of discriminatory conduct by First Nations, such as when a non-Indigenous woman alleged discrimination for being fired from a First Nation-owned bowling alley (she lost). Cases of discrimination involving religion, gender identity, and sexual orientation are virtually nonexistent. The term “hate speech” occurred precisely once in a single decision over the last five-plus years. Not a single decision involved a Jewish complainant and only one involved a Muslim. This is not an organization prepared to adjudicate hateful content over the entire internet.

Third, it appears the Online Harms Act is yet another example of the Trudeau government asserting federal authority where provinces are likely better suited to govern. Because they deal with most forms of employment discrimination, provincial human rights commissions and tribunals have a far wider scope of jurisdiction than the federal tribunal does. Provincial human rights codes already deal with discriminatory speech, and the B.C. Human Rights Commission has even recently argued that the B.C. tribunal has jurisdiction over online speech as well. There is no inherent reason that the responsibility for determining online hate should be done by an entirely new and costlylayer of federal bureaucracy, particularly given the existing institutional capacity at provincial commissions and tribunals.

To be clear, I am not suggesting that provincial human rights tribunals ought to be given the sweeping powers contemplated by the Online Harms Act. Others have convincingly shown that the bill likely violatesCharter rights, and will chill “legitimate expression by the mere spectre of a complaint.” I am simply arguing that there are additional procedural reasons to be concerned about the institutional venues through which that chilling will occur.

Adjudicating online hate speech under the Online Harms Act will require deft sensitivity to competing rights claims and societal interests, a tall order for any organization. Instead, the federal government is placing its hopes in the hands of institutions that lack both the moral authority and institutional capacity to do the job.

Source: Exploring Human Rights Tribunal decisions

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Trump’s Massive Deportation Plan Echoes Concentration Camp History

2024/08/07 Leave a comment

Good reminder:

The Republican National Convention hit rock bottom on its third day in Milwaukee, Wis., on July 17, with a sea of signs calling for “Mass Deportation Now.” If former president Donald Trump is elected for a second term, he and his advisers promise to remove from the U.S., via forced expulsions and deportation camps, as many as 20 million people—a number larger than the country’s current estimated population of undocumented residents. Put into effect, this scheme would devolve quickly into a vast 21st-century version of concentration camps, with predictably brutal results.

Concentration camps are built for the mass detention of civilians based on group identity, excluding protections normally afforded by a country’s legal system. I wrote a history of these camps that traced an arc from their 19th-century origins in Spanish-occupied Cuba through the development of death camps in Germany and their modern-day descendants around the world.

Trump’s plan to launch a massive deportation project nationwide—the first plank in the platform approved at his party’s convention—draws on the same flawed historical rationales and pseudoscience that built support for concentration camps worldwide in the 20th century. Early architects of these camps veiled their efforts in scientific terms while using terror and punishment to seize more power.

For example, Trump has claimed repeatedly that undocumented immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of the U.S. “Blood poisoning” is a medical condition; saying that foreigners are poisoning a nation’s blood is simply a slur. But perverting scientific or medical language to violate human rights and permit atrocities comes from a familiar playbook.

Justifications for brutal immigration policies have often distorted scientific goals of public health programs. Trump and his advisers have long been prone to panic-mongering over the threat of disease from immigrants. They’ve likewise twisted sociology to stoke anxiety about assimilation to justify a Muslim ban or to try to make racist comments seem less objectionable. Even simple principles of statistics get skewered as Trump lies about crime committed by immigrants.

Trump’s incendiary language echoes dangerous historical precedents. He has called his political opponents “vermin,” referred to immigrants as depraved“animals” and “rapists,” and described the U.S.–Mexico border as an “open wound.” Examples abound of similar rhetoric in Nazi propaganda about Jews.

Less well known is the fact that before World War II, the Nazis framed German Jews as aliens who needed to be forced into emigration or expelled. This was the original logic for stripping Jews of citizenship: to officially render them foreigners. (It should be noted that Trump aims to end birthright citizenship in the U.S.)

Prejudice has always been a part of concentration camps. At the dawn of the 20th century, mortality surged in British camps in southern Africa during the South African War, with children’s deaths blamed on “uncivilized” Boer mothers. Embracing pseudoscientific biology, camp administrators spent about half the money per day for food for a Black African civilian as was spent on white detainees (who themselves received insufficient rations). Bureaucracy and unforeseen crises added immeasurably to the harm. In poorly sited and badly run camps, tens of thousands of noncombatants died.

Other early camp systems included massive networks established on an emergency basis to detain immigrants or expel targeted minority groups. During the Spanish Civil War, when 475,000 refugees poured across France’s southern border in less than three weeks, many were forced into unlivable conditions in remote areas to isolate them from French society. Illness and disease followed on a massive scale.

After the start of World War II, the French government used those same camps to intern foreign Jews who had escaped Hitler’s Germany, detaining them as enemy aliens. And after France fell to the Nazis, French policemen went door-to-door in Paris in May 1941 in the service of the Vichy government to round up foreign Jews who remained at liberty. Some deported Jews were sent to barracks still holding Spanish detainees and “enemy aliens.” Camps often begin as one thing and become something else.

The relocation and detention involved in the deportation project that Trump is proposing are at least an order of magnitude greater than these debacles. The argument that a second Trump administration wouldn’t be able to launch such an operation because of a lack of personnel or legal authority should be understood as largely irrelevant because it presupposes the intention of running a precise, legal project at all.

A professional effort on this scale would be impossible. The mass deportations planned to begin in January 2025 if Trump is reelected are meant to unleash deliberate and collateral mayhem. And if history is any guide, a system of camps built to punish millions represents a threat to every American.

As for what they say they intend, Trump and his allies openly admire the results of the Eisenhower-era “Operation Wetback,” whose very name offers a slur revealing the endemic prejudice that made it possible. This limited deportation blitz led to the deaths of 88 workers in 112-degree-Fahrenheit heat. A new Trump administration would be looking to replicate that operation on a scale heretofore untried, using the largest deportation force ever seen in the U.S., according to both Trump and former director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Tom Homan.

Trump adviser Stephen Miller has described a plan to create “vast holding facilities that would function as staging centers,” and Trump has promised to remove four percent of the current U.S. population in a deliberate plan to spur a massive disruption of the labor market. If Americans took notice of border policy during Trump’s first administration, said Homan earlier this month, “They ain’t seen shit yet.”

The “Mass Deportation Now” signs filling the audience at the Republican National Convention are a grim warning of how much worse the situation could get. Trump, his advisers, the Heritage Foundation (the extreme-right platform that has put forth Project 2025) and countless members of Congress are not only winking and nodding toward detention horrors of the past but also clearly willing to repeat history if it will let them consolidate power.

The U.S. has previously embraced concentration camps during the detention of Japanese Americans during World War II and under the family-separation policy imposed during Trump’s presidency. The broader legacy of camps on six continents offers a panoramic assortment of even more ways in which mass deportations and forced relocation can go wrong. Unleashed on anything close to the scale under discussion, the project Trump and his henchmen are proposing will be lethal to the targeted groups, catastrophic to the stability of the country and extremely difficult to undo. These camps are in no way scientific or even serious policy; they’re the equivalent of dropping a hydrogen bomb to put out a forest fire.

This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.

ANDREA PITZER is author of the books One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps, The Secret History of Vladimir Nabokov and, most recently, Icebound: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World. Follow her on X (formerly Twitter) @andreapitzer.

Source: Trump’s Massive Deportation Plan Echoes Concentration Camp History

Filed under Antisemitism, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Will Canada apply its immigration policy fairly in the face of the Gaza conflict?

2024/08/07 Leave a comment

I find these arguments somewhat tiresome, not because they are not valid but rather because they need to also acknowledge the war crimes, genocidal aims, etc by Hamas. Equally tiresome are arguments by hardline supporters of the Israeli government not acknowledging their war crimes and tolerance of extremist settler groups:

One of the most sacrosanct foundations of democracies is that they are based on the rule of law, which mandates one set of laws enforceable on all individuals—including the government itself. The notion that the law simply does not apply to an individual, or groups of individuals, is more commonly associated with corrupt dictatorships than democracies. 

Yet, in 2024 in Canada, whether the rule of law is supreme is an open question. Canada has specific laws governing who is considered admissible to the country, proscribing Canadians from joining foreign militaries, and preventing illegal support for armed forces of another country by Canadian charities. Each one of those laws has been applied in regard to some groups, and consistently violated and disregarded with others. 

The American State Department recently issued an unexpected decision regarding Elor Azaria, a former sergeant in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) convicted of extrajudicially killing a Palestinian in the West Bank. The decision bars Azaria, as well as his immediate family members, from entering the United States. The statement declared, “We are designating Elor Azaria … pursuant to Section 7031(c) for his involvement in a gross violation of human rights … .” 

This decision marks a significant turning point for those implicated in war crimes in Gaza under U.S. jurisdiction, and it also raises a crucial question about the repercussions of the Gaza conflict on the enforcement of Canada’s laws. 

How will the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) handle the Income Tax Act implications for charities that fund the IDF? The CRA recently revoked the Jewish National Fund’s charitable status for directing donations towards IDF infrastructure. This raises questions about other charities that have publicly raised funds for the IDF and illegal settlements. Similarly, how will the Royal Canadian Mounted Police address provisions of the Criminal Code and Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act regarding Canadians who have joined the IDF?

Additionally, Section 34(1) of Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) bars entry to individuals involved in violence, terrorism, or membership in related organizations. Sections 35(1) and 35.1(1) further prohibit entry to anyone implicated in human or international rights violations, including war crimes, crimes against humanity, senior officials in governments guilty of gross human rights violations, and those under international sanctions. These provisions—mirroring the American laws that barred Azaria—were broadly designed by Parliament to safeguard national security. They granted discretionary power to Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) officers and immigration officials, but also acknowledged the potential to inadvertently affect innocent and non-threatening individuals who are meant to be treated as exceptions. 

If applied universally, these principles could restrict figures in the vein of Nelson Mandela, or even historical members of the U.S. Democratic Party due to their support of slavery. However, in practice, the CBSA has often used these provisions selectively, particularly to unjustly target and deport refugees from Muslim countries, with decisions frequently influenced by the personal biases of individual officers. This same bias has also led to the oversight of individuals who should rightfully be captured by the law.

Despite well-documented instances of systemic violence against Muslims and other minorities by members of India’s Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Canada has not taken a similar stance against them. The RSS, a right-wing Hindu nationalist group, and the BJP, India’s ruling party, have been linked to numerous violent acts, including riots and targeted attacks on religious minorities. From 2013 to 2023, Indian immigration to Canada increased by 326 per cent, with 18.6 per cent of recent immigrants coming from India. Yet, Canada has not pursued cases of inadmissibility against individuals from these groups, raising questions about the consistency and fairness of its immigration policies.

The ongoing Gaza conflict has led to investigations by the International Criminal Court into alleged war crimes by Israel, including the targeted killing of civilians, willful suffering, and the use of starvation as a warfare tactic—all human rights violations. Additionally, the International Court of Justice has declared that Israel’s occupation and settlement expansions in the Occupied Palestinian Territory are illegal, and that there is an imminent risk of genocide. Under Canada’s Immigration Act, involvement with groups linked to these illegal settlements or with the IDF, amidst allegations of war crimes or possible genocide, could make individuals inadmissible to Canada—a measure affecting a significant portion of Israel’s population.

Our laws must be consistently applied, holding individuals accountable for human rights violations, war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity, irrespective of their nationality, the geopolitical context of their actions, or the political stance of the government of the day. To ensure the proper application of the law and to enable the CBSA to effectively perform its duties, a suspension of visa exemptions for travellers from Israel is necessary.

As the U.S. has taken a step towards a consistent application of its immigration laws concerning human rights violations against Palestinians, it is crucial for Canada to critically examine its own legal enforcement, and ensure that it upholds fairness and impartiality in every instance. Our nation faces a difficult test with the Gaza crisis, challenging us to confront the systemic biases embedded within our governmental institutions. Our standing as a democratic nation founded on the rule of law demands nothing less.

Washim Ahmed is a refugee and human rights lawyer, and a co-founder of OWS Law. Taha Ghayyur is the executive director of Justice for All Canada, a non-profit human rights and advocacy organization dedicated to preventing genocide.

Source: Will Canada apply its immigration policy fairly in the face of the Gaza conflict?

Filed under Antisemitism, Immigration, Islamophobia, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

In South Korea, Schools Grapple with Surge in Multicultural Student Population

2024/08/06 Leave a comment

Of note:

In a striking demographic shift, 350 schools across South Korea now report that students from multicultural backgrounds comprise over 30% of their total enrollment, according to a recent study.

This figure represents a 40% increase from just five years ago, highlighting the rapid changes in the country’s educational landscape.

The report, titled “Innovation Strategies for Schools in Immigrant-Dense Areas,” was released on August 2 by researchers at the Korean Educational Development Institute. It reveals that these schools with high multicultural student populations now account for 2.96% of the nation’s 11,819 primary and secondary schools, up from 2.15% in 2018.

The Ministry of Education defines “multicultural-dense schools” as those with over 100 students, where at least 30% come from multicultural backgrounds.

By this definition, 87 schools across 12 regions fall into this category, marking a staggering 278.26% increase from 23 such schools in 2018.

The concentration of multicultural students is particularly pronounced in certain areas. In Ansan, Gyeonggi Province, one elementary school reports that 97.4% of its student body comes from multicultural backgrounds.

Three other schools in Ansan and Anseong have multicultural student populations exceeding 80%.

This rapid demographic change poses unique challenges for the education system. Researchers warn that excessively high concentrations of multicultural students could negatively impact all students.

There are concerns about potential stigmatization of multicultural students and the risk of reverse discrimination against non-multicultural students if educational support becomes too focused on one group.

The study’s authors emphasize the need for comprehensive strategies to ensure quality education for all students in these diverse environments.

They recommend developing school visions and educational plans based on multicultural education policies, enhancing teachers’ expertise in multicultural education, and improving personnel policies for schools in immigrant-dense areas.

Source: In South Korea, Schools Grapple with Surge in Multicultural Student Population

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Explained: How UK’s long-running Islamophobia problem led to far-right riots

2024/08/05 Leave a comment

One of the better explainers:

More ugly scenes have unfolded on the UK’s streets on Saturday, as police continue to grapple with a wave of far-right disorder across the country.

Cities in England and Northern Ireland saw violent clashes involving anti-immigration demonstrators and counter-protesters, with police officers injured as objects such as bricks, chairs and bottles were thrown at them.

The far-right has drawn condemnation from MPs across the political spectrum after disorder in London, Manchester, Southport, Hartlepool and Sunderland over the past week, many of which have seen mosques and other Muslim religious buildings targeted.

With more marches planned in the coming days, experts have warned such demonstrations are being driven by deep rooted Islamophobic sentiment among some sections of the population.

The catalyst for the wave of unrest was the killings of three young girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport, Merseyside, on Monday.

Axel Muganwa Rudakubana, 17, who was born in Cardiff and lived near Southport, is accused of the attack, but false claims spread online the suspect was named “Ali al-Shakati” and was asylum seeker of Muslim faith who had arrived in the UK by boat in 2023.

Racial equality and civil rights think tank the Runnymede Trust warned that this “violent racism has long been simmering under the surface” of society.

“What is happening is the direct result of years of normalised racism and Islamophobia, enabled by politicians and the British media,” a spokesperson said.

There has been an upsurge in Islamophobic incidents and rhetoric in recent years. According to Home Office data, religious hate crime is at an all-time high and Muslims are the most targeted religious group.

There was a nine per cent increase in religious hate crime offences in the year ending March 2023 – where the victim’s religion was recorded, 2 in 5 of these offences were targeted against Muslims.

Yet, authorities stand accused of doing nothing to address this spike; it recently emerged that the previous Conservative government’s anti-Muslim hatred working group (AMHWG) was “on pause” for more than four years, from 2020 until the party’s general election loss, despite repeated promises from officials and an increase in hate crime.

The new Labour government’s strategy for tackling Islamophobia remains unclear and Sir Keir Starmer has been criticised for failing to engage enough with Muslim communities in the wake of disorder.

Writing on X/Twitter, the Muslim Association of Britain said: “@Keir_Starmer had no problem meeting @MuslimCouncil when he was in opposition.

“Now that he is in government, and Muslims are being attacked and Mosques have become targets, his government have no plans to meet the largest body representing Muslims in the UK. What changed?”

Recently, The Independent revealed that a Muslim political group was “inundated” with racist abuse and violent threats during the general election, resulting in a report being made to the police.

In March, Muslims in Britain reported that they are too scared to leave their homes after dark, as new figures from a London charity, Islamophobia Response Unit (IRU), showed the number of Islamophobic incidents skyrocketed by 365 per cent since the 7 October attack on Israel by Hamas.

Political discourse and dynamics have also fuelled anti-Muslim sentiment, campaigners have said.

In response to the unrest, Qari Asim, chairman of Mosques and Imams National Advisory Board, said Muslims around the country are “deeply worried and anxious about the planned riots by the far-right groups across the country”.

He said: “This intimidation and violence is the inevitable, devastating, outcome of rising Islamophobia that has been enabled to fester on social media, in parts of the mainstream media and by some populist leaders.”

Earlier this year, former Tory MP Lee Anderson’s remarks about the Muslim Mayor of London Sadiq Khan being “controlled” by “Islamists” led to his suspension from the party.

Despite this, Mr Anderson remained unapologetic about his comments, defected to Reform UK, and doubled down by saying “most of the public agree with him”.

A independent review led by Professor Swaran Singh in 20121 found that “anti-Muslim sentiment remains a problem” within the Conservatives and although an updated report in 2023 found the party had made progress, it also warned it had been slow to implement some of his recommendations.

A report by the Labour Muslim Network (2020) highlighted consistent experiences of Islamophobia among Muslim members and supporters and a number of MPs, including Zarah Sultana, have called for the party to launch an inquiry into the issue.

Sections of the media have also been accused of peddling Islamophobia and risking the safety of Muslims around the country in the process.

Examining over 10,000 articles and clips referring to Muslims and Islam in the winter period of 2018, a 2021 report from the Muslim Council of Britain’s Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM) found that the majority (59 per cent) of all articles associated Muslim people with negative behaviour, over a third of all articles misrepresented or generalised about Muslim people and terrorism was the most common theme.

Source: Explained: How UK’s long-running Islamophobia problem led to far-right riots

Filed under Islamophobia, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , , , ,

Phillips: A federal minister wanted Canadian soldiers to serve as props at a pop concert. It’s just the latest way the Trudeau government has treated national security as a joke

2024/08/03 Leave a comment

Really wonder what they are thinking (or not thinking):

You can’t be too careful these days. With all the fake news, misinformation and AI-generated “deep fakes” out there you can’t take anything at face value. You have to be on your guard.

Which is why when I saw a headline this week saying a federal minister had lobbied for 100 Canadian soldiers to act as “backdrops” for a concert by an Indian pop star, my first thought was it must be one of those fakes. Or perhaps someone’s idea of a joke.

But no. It turns out a minister in the Trudeau government, Harjit Sajjan, really did try to convince the military to supply soldiers to be, in effect, props for a performance in Vancouver by one of India’s most popular singers and actors, Diljit Dosanjh.

Sajjan, the minister of emergency preparedness and a former defence minister, sent the request to the current defence minister, Bill Blair. Blair apparently passed it on to whoever’s in charge of these things in the Canadian Armed Forces and fortunately sanity prevailed. The military replied that “this request would not be feasible due to the tight timeline and personnel availability.”

This is a story that might well just slip by, especially in the depths of summer when no one’s paying attention. But it shouldn’t. It underlines this government’s fundamental lack of seriousness on issues of national security and, just as bad, its habit of playing diaspora politics rather than focusing on the national interest.

Sajjan isn’t having any of this. After the Globe & Mail reported his request for soldiers he didn’t apologize or back down. On the contrary. He defended the idea as “a good opportunity for the Canadian Armed Forces to engage with and expand connections to a diverse community of young Canadians.”

But this wasn’t an event with broad public connections like a Canada Day concert, a Grey Cup halftime show or a multicultural festival. It may well be appropriate for the military to have a presence at such events to, quite literally, show the flag.

This was a private, commercial concert by a very popular singer from another country. You might as well ask the air force to do a flyover at a Taylor Swift concert. The military, to state the obvious, isn’t there to serve as props for pop stars – however popular.

Now, it’s impossible to miss the fact that Dosanjh is a mega-star who was born in Punjab and makes much of those origins. He’s hugely popular in India and is reaching out to other countries; his Vancouver event was reportedly the biggest Punjabi music concert ever outside India.

Does any of this escape the Liberals? Of course not. They’re acutely attuned to currents in diaspora communities, including those from India and especially Punjab, the only Sikh-majority state in India. Sajjan himself was born in Punjab and is one of several ministers with origins in India. Nothing wrong with that – but there is something wrong with trying to use the military in a way that may bring political benefits.

Sajjan came under fire recently for telling the armed forces to mount a rescue operation for 225 Afghan Sikhs during the fall of Kabul in August 2021. The suggestion was that Sajjan, defence minister at the time, diverted resources from others desperate to get out before the Taliban took over.

In light of that you’d think he’d be extra cautious about doing anything else that might be interpreted as pandering to Punjabi-Canadian voters. But apparently not.

There’s a bit more spill-over from all this. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau himself dropped in at another concert by Dosanjh in July at the Rogers Centre in Toronto and referred to the singer as “a guy from Punjab.” 

That sounds banal but given the tense state of relations between India and Canada it created a minor storm. The national secretary of the ruling party in India, the BJP, accused Trudeau of “deliberate mischief through wordplay” by emphasizing Dosanjh’s Punjabi identity, rather than his Indian one.

If the government is serious about repairing relations with India, shouldn’t it avoid even small missteps that feed India’s narrative about Canada being a hotbed of Sikh separatism? Unless, of course, it prefers to play for partisan advantage.

Source: A federal minister wanted Canadian soldiers to serve as props at a pop concert. It’s just the latest way the Trudeau government has treated national security as a joke

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , , ,

Nicolas: Décivilisation

2024/08/02 Leave a comment


Good piece:


« Il faudrait d’abord étudier comment la colonisation travaille à déciviliser le colonisateur, à l’abrutir au sens propre du mot, à le dégrader, à le réveiller aux instincts enfouis, à la convoitise, à la violence, à la haine raciale, au relativisme moral, et montrer que, chaque fois qu’il y a au Vietnam une tête coupée et un oeil crevé et qu’en France on accepte, une fillette violée et qu’en France on accepte, un Malgache supplicié et qu’en France on accepte, il y a un acquis de la civilisation qui pèse de son poids mort, une régression universelle qui s’opère, une gangrène qui s’installe, un foyer d’infection qui s’étend et qu’au bout de tous ces traités violés, de tous ces mensonges propagés, de toutes ces expéditions punitives tolérées, de tous ces prisonniers ficelés et interrogés, de tous ces patriotes torturés, au bout de cet orgueil racial encouragé, de cette jactance étalée, il y a le poison instillé dans les veines de l’Europe, et le progrès lent, mais sûr, de l’ensauvagement du continent. »

Vous m’excuserez la longueur de la citation. C’est que cette phrase-monument contient en elle seule une thèse entière, un coup de poing à la face du monde qui a toujours le pouvoir de nous couper le souffle aujourd’hui. Aimé Césaire l’a publiée en 1955 en guise d’ouverture de son Discours sur le colonialisme.

1955, c’est cette année charnière qui marque la fin de la guerre d’Indochine et les débuts de la guerre d’Algérie, alors qu’une grande partie du monde se trouve toujours sous contrôle européen. On comprend le contexte, le temps d’où les mots de Césaire nous parviennent. On aurait souhaité qu’avec le passage des années, la thèse de l’écrivain s’empoussière, que le « progrès » en étouffe la flamme. Mais non.

En début de semaine, une foule a fait irruption au tribunal militaire de Beit Lid, en Israël, pour dénoncer l’arrestation de neuf soldats qui auraient torturé et violé un prisonnier palestinien. Plus précisément, les réservistes de l’armée font face à des accusations de sodomie aggravée, d’avoir causé des lésions corporelles dans des circonstances aggravées, d’avoir infligé des sévices dans des circonstances aggravées et d’avoir eu un comportement indigne d’un soldat.

À la suite de cette arrestation, des centaines de manifestants de l’extrême droite israélienne ont donc pris d’assaut la base militaire de Beit Lid, forçant des confrontations avec des soldats. La scène n’est pas sans rappeler l’attaque sur le Capitole du 6 janvier 2021, à Washington. La ressemblance avec la déchéance politique américaine s’amplifie encore lorsqu’on comprend que des élus, et même des ministres israéliens, ont participé à la mobilisation et encouragé les manifestants. Tant dans la foule que chez les politiciens les plus radicaux, on s’est insurgé de « l’ingratitude » envers les soldats ainsi accusés. D’autres, dont le premier ministre Benjamin Nétanyahou ainsi que des élus plus progressistes, ont vivement condamné le mouvement de foule.

Les questions sous-jacentes à cette suite d’événements extraordinaire sont lourdes. Pourquoi un « terroriste » aurait-il des droits ? Quels sont les motifs suffisants pour enquiquiner des hommes qui servent avec bravoure la Nation, affrontent son Ennemi ? La torture, la sodomie sont-elles des chefs d’accusation adéquats pour embêter des Héros ? Pourquoi s’empêtrer dans la moralité alors que nous sommes en guerre ? Serait-ce là, implicitement bien sûr, les questions qui divisent profondément les membres de la Knesset cette semaine, au point de devenir un véritable point de clivage politique ?

Les horreurs ont continué à se succéder à Gaza dans les dernières semaines, ou plutôt les derniers mois. Comme si ce n’était pas assez, la catastrophe humanitaire de Gaza vient elle-même faire ombrage aux assassinats, arrestations arbitraires et colonisations accélérées en Cisjordanie, et à la maltraitance de nombreux prisonniers palestiniens en Israël même. Et puis, il y a le conflit avec le Hezbollah qui a repris de plus belle à la frontière sud du Liban. La dernière attaque israélienne sur Beyrouth fait craindre une accélération du conflit et une implication directe de l’Iran, voire des États-Unis.

Ça faisait déjà un moment que je n’avais plus écrit sur Gaza et Israël. Non pas parce que les horreurs ont cessé, mais parce qu’à force, on est à bout de souffle. On ne sait plus quoi dire de plus. Je sais que je ne suis pas seule, ici.

Sauf que l’émeute de Beit Lid vient cristalliser, symboliser quelque chose de particulièrement important, qu’il faut nommer. Et ce, même si les questions de maltraitance des prisonniers palestiniens sont loin d’être nouvelles, et qu’elles ont été largement documentées par plusieurs organisations de défense des droits de la personne, étrangères comme israéliennes. Que des accusations de violence sexuelle puissent susciter un débat — oui, vraiment, un débat — entre représentants politiques dit beaucoup de choses sur l’état actuel du droit, des institutions et peut-être surtout de la morale dans cette fameuse « seule démocratie du Moyen-Orient ». Après près de dix mois de guerre, certes, mais aussi après des décennies de colonisation illégale de terres palestiniennes.

J’en reviens donc à l’ouverture du Discours sur le colonialisme d’Aimé Césaire, qui me travaille au corps pendant que j’absorbe les dernières nouvelles sur l’état du monde. Césaire parlait de « décivilisation ». C’est là un mot qui resurgit dans toute son actualité pour parler du débat public à l’ère des guerres de Benjamin Nétanyahou et des frasques de Donald Trump, dont le dossier criminel vient aussi banaliser la question de la violence sexuelle dans l’espace politique ; à l’ère de trop d’émules encore. Une ère où on doit poser avec le plus grand sérieux du monde des questions qui relèvent de l’absurde.

Le viol, est-ce si grave ? Vraiment, oui, on est dans l’absurde. Le théâtre de l’absurde, par ailleurs, est aussi un mouvement artistique qui a pris son envol à la même époque où Césaire écrivait son Discours — une manière de garder son humour, et donc son humanité, dans un monde qui avait perdu la tête. Décidément, pour faire sens de la dégradation politique qui nous entoure, il nous faudra renouer avec plusieurs classiques.

Source: Décivilisation

“We should first study how colonization works to decivilize the colonizer, to dumb him in the true sense of the word, to degrade him, to wake him up to buried instincts, to lust, to violence, racial hatred, to moral relativism, and show that, every time in Vietnam there is a cut head cut and a flat eye and that in France we accept, a girl raped and that in France we accept, a Malagasy tortured and that in France we accept, there is an achievement of civilization that weighs on its dead weight, a universal regression that takes place, a gangrene That is settling in, a focus of infection that is spreading and that at the end of all these violated treaties, all these lies spread, all these tolerated punitive expeditions, all these prisoners tied up and interrogated, all these tortured patriots, at the end of this encouraged racial pride, this spread jactance, there is the poison instilled in the veins of Europe, and the slow but sure progress of the enrage of the continent. ”

You will excuse me for the length of the quote. It is because this monument-sentence alone contains an entire thesis, a punch in the face of the world that still has the power to take our breath away today. Aimé Césaire published it in 1955 as the opening of his Discourse on Colonialism.

1955, it is this pivotal year that marks the end of the Indochina War and the beginning of the Algerian War, while a large part of the world is still under European control. We understand the context, the time from which Césaire’s words reach us. We would have liked that with the passing of the years, the writer’s thesis would get dusty, that “progress” would stifle its flame. But no.

Earlier this week, a crowd broke into the military court in Beit Lid, Israel, to denounce the arrest of nine soldiers who allegedly tortured and raped a Palestinian prisoner. More specifically, army reservists face charges of aggravated sodomy, causing bodily injury in aggravated circumstances, inflicting abuse in aggravated circumstances and having behaved unworthy of a soldier.

Following this arrest, hundreds of Israeli far-right demonstrators stormed the Beit Lid military base, forcing confrontations with soldiers. The scene is reminiscent of the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, in Washington. The resemblance to the American political decline is further increased when we understand that elected officials, and even Israeli ministers, participated in the mobilization and encouraged the demonstrators. Both in the crowd and among the most radical politicians, there was “ingratitude” towards the soldiers thus accused. Others, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and more progressive elected officials, strongly condemned the crowd movement.

The questions underlying this extraordinary sequence of events are heavy. Why would a “terrorist” have rights? What are the sufficient reasons to worry men who bravely serve the Nation, confront its Enemy? Are torture and sodomy adequate charges to annoy Heroes? Why get entangled in morality when we are at war? Could this be, implicitly of course, the issues that deeply divide the members of the Knesset this week, to the point of becoming a real point of political cleavage?

Horrors have continued to follow one another in Gaza in recent weeks, or rather the last few months. As if that were not enough, the humanitarian disaster in Gaza itself overshadows the assassinations, arbitrary arrests and accelerated colonizations in the West Bank, and the mistreatment of many Palestinian prisoners in Israel itself. And then there is the conflict with Hezbollah, which has resumed at the southern border of Lebanon. The latest Israeli attack on Beirut raises fears of an acceleration of the conflict and direct involvement of Iran, or even the United States.

It had already been a while since I had written about Gaza and Israel. Not because the horrors have stopped, but because by force, we are out of breath. We don’t know what more to say. I know I’m not alone here.

Except that the Beit Lid riot crystallizes, symbolizing something particularly important, which must be named. And this, even if the issues of abuse of Palestinian prisoners are far from new, and they have been widely documented by several human rights organizations, both foreign and Israeli. That accusations of sexual violence can provoke a debate – yes, really, a debate – between political representatives says a lot about the current state of law, institutions and perhaps especially morality in this famous “only democracy in the Middle East”. After nearly ten months of war, of course, but also after decades of illegal colonization of Palestinian lands.

So I come back to the opening of Aimé Césaire’s Discourse on Colonialism, which works on my body while I absorb the latest news on the state of the world. Césaire spoke of “decivilization”. This is a word that resurfaces in all its current events to talk about the public debate in the era of Benjamin Netanyahu’s wars and Donald Trump’s escapades, whose criminal file also trivializes the issue of sexual violence in the political space; in the era of too many emulators yet. An era where we must ask with the greatest seriousness in the world questions that are absurd.

Is rape so serious? Really, yes, we are in the absurd. The theater of the absurd, on the other hand, is also an artistic movement that took off at the same time when Césaire wrote his Speech – a way of keeping his humor, and therefore his humanity, in a world that had lost its head. Decidedly, to make sense of the political degradation that surrounds us, we will have to reconnect with several classics.

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Idées | Le profilage racial et l’éternel virage vers le statu quo

2024/08/01 Leave a comment

Pandemic issue for the SPVM, remember well from some of the files I dealt with more than 10 years ago:

La lutte pour mettre fin au racisme policier à Montréal se trouve dans une impasse. Nous n’avons jamais eu autant de preuves de l’existence de racisme au sein des forces policières à Montréal ni une meilleure compréhension des mesures à prendre pour le combattre. Pourtant, le Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) et l’administration de Projet Montréal s’entêtent à rejeter les recommandations formulées par des groupes communautaires et des chercheurs et ressuscitent plutôt des réformes éculées et inefficaces.

De nombreuses preuves empiriques sur le racisme policier ont été accumulées depuis les premières enquêtes gouvernementales, réalisées dans les années 1970. En 2019, par exemple, une équipe de chercheurs indépendants a publié une étude recensant les interpellations policières effectuées entre 2014 et 2017, qui montre que les personnes noires et autochtones sont interpellées par la police de Montréal quatre fois plus souvent que les personnes blanches.

L’an dernier, l’équipe de chercheurs a publié une étude de suivi portant sur la période de 2018 à 2022, et a constaté que les iniquités raciales, loin de s’atténuer, étaient en fait encore plus marquées.

En réaction à ces rapports, des groupes communautaires et des chercheurs ont exigé la mise en oeuvre de plusieurs solutions éclairées et efficaces. Une coalition de 80 groupes communautaires a demandé la réaffectation d’au moins 50 % du budget du SPVM à des programmes communautaires, et 85 groupes ont exprimé leur soutien à l’abolition des interpellations policières et des interceptions routières.

Le SPVM a écarté chacune de ces recommandations. Ainsi, lorsque les auteurs du rapport de 2023 ont demandé un moratoire sur les interpellations, le chef du SPVM, Fady Dagher, a rejeté cette demande, affirmant qu’un « virage culturel » au sein de l’institution suffirait à résoudre le problème. L’administration de Projet Montréal a donné son soutien au plan de Fady Dagher et n’a fait aucune autre déclaration sur le sujet.

Le 23 juillet dernier, une enquête du Journal de Montréal a révélé que le SPVM s’était ingéré dans une étude « indépendante » sur les interpellations afin d’en réduire la portée. Parmi les tactiques employées, le SPVM a tenté d’obtenir la transcription d’entrevues confidentielles de ses policiers qui dénonçaient les pratiques racistes du service et a fait pression sur les chercheurs afin qu’ils s’abstiennent de recommander un moratoire sur les interpellations.

Il est facile de comprendre pourquoi le chef Dagher et Projet Montréal balaient du revers de la main les demandes des groupes communautaires et des chercheurs et font plutôt la promotion d’un « virage culturel ». Le SPVM a déjà amorcé ce virage il y a des dizaines d’années, en adoptant une politique sur les relations communautaires en 1985 et en mettant en oeuvre un ensemble de politiques visant à mieux former les policiers pour éliminer les préjugés, à embaucher plus de policiers racisés et à établir des liens avec les communautés noires, autochtones et racisées.

Depuis les années 1980, ces mêmes politiques sont ressuscitées chaque fois qu’une crise survient — ce qui est stratégique. Présenter des politiques qui ont échoué comme de « nouvelles » solutions permet au SPVM et à l’administration municipale de donner l’impression qu’ils prennent le problème à bras-le-corps. Pendant ce temps, les disparités raciales dans le maintien de l’ordre demeurent aussi marquées, sinon plus, qu’en 1985.

De vraies solutions au racisme policier

Il existe de nombreux moyens efficaces d’éliminer le racisme policier, mais ils se fondent sur une conception très différente de la sécurité publique. Nous appuyons trois de ces mesures.

Premièrement, comme l’exigent depuis longtemps les groupes communautaires et les chercheurs, les interpellations et les interceptions routières doivent être abolies, et des excuses doivent être présentées aux communautés auxquelles cette pratique de longue date a porté préjudice.

Par nature, les interpellations et les interceptions n’exigent aucune preuve préalable que la personne visée a contrevenu à la loi — il suffit que la policière ou le policier « soupçonne » que ladite personne a commis une infraction ou est susceptible de le faire. Les interpellations arbitraires n’ont aucun fondement juridique, nuisent à la sécurité publique plutôt que de l’améliorer et laissent à la police un pouvoir discrétionnaire qui donne lieu à des comportements abusifs et à une discrimination raciale à grande échelle.

Deuxièmement, les règlements municipaux sur les « incivilités » doivent être abrogés. Ces règlements prévoient des pénalités en cas de comportements non menaçants comme s’allonger au sol, uriner sur la voie publique ou « flâner ».

Lorsque le SPVM a commencé à sévir contre ce qu’il appelle des « incivilités », en 2003, nous avons assisté à une augmentation considérable des cas de harcèlement envers les personnes marginalisées, notamment les personnes noires, autochtones et itinérantes de toutes origines, de même qu’à un accroissement du nombre de contraventions remises à ces populations. Projet Montréal a reconnu ce problème en 2018 et a mis sur pied un comité constitué de groupes communautaires chargé d’examiner et de supprimer les règlements les plus discriminatoires. Ces règlements abusifs sont toujours en vigueur six ans plus tard.

Troisièmement, les fonds publics investis dans les forces policières doivent être redirigés vers des programmes qui améliorent de façon tangible le bien-être et la sécurité des populations marginalisées et racisées. Depuis des décennies, la police est vue comme la solution à tous les problèmes sociaux qui retiennent l’attention du public, qu’il s’agisse de violence armée ou d’itinérance. Il en résulte un cercle vicieux où l’échec prévisible des forces policières à résoudre des problèmes systémiques se traduit par des appels renouvelés à une plus grande présence policière.

Ce sont ces mesures — et non un autre « virage culturel » vers le statu quo — que le SPVM et Projet Montréal doivent mettre en oeuvre s’ils veulent lutter contre le racisme et la violence des forces de l’ordre.

Source: Idées | Le profilage racial et l’éternel virage vers le statu quo

Filed under Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with ,

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