Before the election, Canadian foreign policy was a jumble of contradictory principles: high-minded talk about human security and soft power, punctuated by enthusiastic trade deals with unsavory types not particularly interested in protecting freedoms. Two high-profile human rights cases suggest the jumble will continue in the new Liberal government.
The two cases involved China and Nigeria. We'll start with the People's Republic.
As the Citizen has reported in detail over the last month, KunLun Zhang, a dual Canadian-Chinese citizen, has been sentenced by Beijing to three years in a labor camp for practicing his religion, Falun Gong. Our government's reaction Limited at best.
It has made requests (rebuffed, so far) for access to Mr. Zhang. But mostly it has focused on planning a Team Canada trade mission to China (which will include a 12-year-old London, Ont. boy who is CEO of his own company. What an opportunity to learn, early in life, how trade trumps basic rights).
Not all government members have been passive about Mr. Zhang's predicament: Montreal MP and rights activist Irwin Cotler has taken up the case personally, and Ottawa backbencher Marlene Catterall, in a Dec. 14 letter, urged new Foreign Affairs Minister John Manley to try to leverage the trade trip against Mr. Zhang's release. The Liberal party still does contain some liberals.
But Mr. Manley has had little to say. Sure, he's been absent from the nation's capital for part of the holiday season. But he hasn't even issued a press release or put a formal statement on his department's normally exhaustive Website. (In pre-election days, the site would have dripped with Axworthian concern about fair treatment for Falun Gong followers).
And while there are vague promises of the prime minister raising Mr. Zhang's case over chopsticks in Beijing next month, we can guess what that will mean: a vague allusion to the situation for the record, then on to discussions of dollars and cents. Yet Mr. Cotler has characterized Mr. Zhang as "such a classic case of a prisoner of conscience that it just leaps out at you." Would that we could hear such blunt words from a cabinet minister.
The second case, Nigeria, offers a study in contrasts, sort of. Bariya Ibrahim
Magazu, a 17-year-old Nigerian, is sentenced to 180 lashes for having sex with her father's friends and claiming she was pressured into it. Amnesty International and others believe that 180 lashes could amount to a death sentence (I myself would characterize it as execution by torture). All reports so far agree that Ms. Magazu had no legal representation during her trial or sentencing, and no one -- neither the state nor the federal government -- has provided legal help for an appeal should she want one. Leaving aside larger debates about sharia law, the human rights violations here are flagrant.
In this case, the Canadian government has acted: After a strong public outcry, it diligently passed on complaints to the Nigerian government through our high commission in Nigeria. Hedy Fry, the Canadian minister responsible for status of women, has also spoken, saying "I think everyone of us is appalled at the thought that this young girl would be flogged." But Ms. Fry then went on to say that Canada can't do much about an "internal" matter of Nigerian justice.
Wrong: moral suasion and international pressure are powerful weapons in ensuring nations respect global human rights covenants. Canada has earned respect from Nigeria in the past for speaking out strongly on rights. We have the ear of a new Nigerian president trying hard to re-establish international credibility. So give credit to Ms. Fry for at least speaking, and to the bureaucrats at foreign affairs for ensuring Canadian views would be passed along to senior Nigerian officials.
John Manley has, so far, said nothing directly on the matter. Again, there is no press release, no public statement from him. On Thursday, his office said neither the minister or his spokesperson would be available until Monday. Perhaps Canada's top politicians are busy studying their briefing books on Beijing.
It is a new year, a new millennium, a new government and a new foreign minister. But on the challenges and tough questions of international human rights, it feels an awful lot worse than the old one.
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/columnists/spencer/010106/5053973.html
Category: Falun Dafa in the Media