Documents [ Court decisions, human rights reports, etc.. ]
| A Petition Against Security Certificates (TASC, Oct 2007) | |
| Description | A downloadable PDF version of a petition produced by Toronto's "Campaign to Stop Secret Trials In Canada" Reads as follows: ======================= PETITION TO THE HOUSE OF COMMONS IN PARLIAMENT ASSEMBLED We, the undersigned, draw the attention of the House to the following: EXPERT OPINION Whereas the use of security certificates under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act has been found to violate fundamental human rights by such organizations as the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, the United Nations Human Rights Committee, the United Nations Committee Against Torture, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch; DEMOCRATIC WILL Whereas many thousands of individuals, community organizations and networks throughout Canada have exercised their democratic right to object through word and action to the use of security certificates over the past five years; INDEFINITE LOSS OF LIBERTY Whereas in practice the use of security certificates results in indefinite detention or indefinite loss of liberty and privacy under schemes of house arrest and control orders; ARBITRARY LOSS OF LIBERTY Whereas in practice the use of security certificates results in deportation, detention, house arrest or control orders based on vague and general allegations, that are supported by secret information that is not disclosed to the named individual nor to their lawyer, that may be tainted by coercion, torture and destruction of evidence, and that may consist of hearsay or be derived from untestable foreign intelligence sources; in short, allegations that rely more on racism and fear than the kind of evidentiary basis required for laying a criminal charge and employing the criminal law standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt; TORTURE Whereas the use of the security certificate results in people living indefinitely under a threat of deportation to torture or leads to actual deportation to torture; CANADA'S OBLIGATIONS Whereas indefinite, arbitrary deprivation of liberty, and deportation to torture violate natural justice and Canada’s international obligations under the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the UN Convention on Refugees, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the UN Convention on Torture; SUPREME COURT DECISION Whereas the Supreme Court of Canada ruled, on 23 February 2007, that the core of the security certificate process, the finding of “reasonableness,” violates the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, because it prevents the named individual from knowing the case against her/him; DISCRIMINATION Whereas the security certificate regime, applying only to non-citizens, is discriminatory and creates a two-tiered justice system in cases of alleged security concerns; REFORM INSUFFICIENT Whereas any attempt to reform the immigration security certificate process will only lead to the implementation of cosmetic changes incapable of altering the fundamentally flawed and unfair nature of the regime, as detailed in the preceding paragraphs; Therefore, we call upon Parliament to strike the security certificate, sections 33 and 77 to 85, from the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, and to refrain from introducing a new security certificate process. Name Address City Return to: Campaign to Stop Secret Trials in Canada, PO Box 73620, 509 St. Clair Ave. West, Toronto, ON M6C 1C0 by 1 Dec. 2007 |
| Image | no image available |
| Size | 62kB |
| Date | October 30, 2007 |
| Downloads | 874 |
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