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WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF THE PC's WERE TO DO THIS!!!
BLOODY OUTARGE! AND WITH GOOD REASON!
MARTIN MUST COME OUT STRONGLY AGAINST THE ACTIVITES OF HIS GOVERNMENT!
Thursday » January 22 » 2004
An ugly stain on our democracy
Government's vengeful raid on reporter's home threatens fundamental Canadian freedoms
       
Ottawa Citizen
Thursday, January 22, 2004
This editorial appears on the front page of today's Ottawa Citizen.
Images of police officers harassing journalists -- storming into their homes, accusing them of betraying the state -- are familiar in countries where human rights are unknown and freedom is cheap. But to see those same images played out in Canada, in the nation's capital no less, is something Canadians don't usually see. Nor should they. The RCMP raids at the home and offices of Ottawa Citizen reporter Juliet O'Neill Wednesday are an ugly and possibly indelible stain on this country's 137-year democratic tradition.
The right of journalists to do their jobs free of intimidation is non-negotiable. A free press does not serve at the pleasure of the government of the day. Wednesday's raids suggest that the RCMP -- and the government -- fail to grasp what for other Canadians is intuitive: that press freedom is inextricably linked to political freedom.
This much is clear: the RCMP targeted O'Neill because of her aggressive coverage of the Maher Arar scandal. Scandal is the right word, in that the Arar case has become a huge embarrassment for the Liberal government.
Arar is the Arab-Canadian computer engineer who was passing through New York's JFK airport en route to Canada when U.S. counterterrorism agents detained him and deported him to Syria, where he says he was tortured for many months before being released.
The main question has always been, what role did the Canadian government play in the detention and deportation of Arar? Were the U.S. authorities acting on dubious information supplied by Canadian intelligence, as Arar and his family suspect? Even more damaging, CBS's 60 Minutes II reported that Canada not only knew but consented to this secret deportation of a Canadian citizen who had never been charged with or convicted of any crime.
The Citizen is one of many voices across Canada to call for a public inquiry into Arar's ordeal. But first the Chrétien government, and now the one led by Paul Martin, refused such an inquiry, presumably in the hope that Arar would simply shut up and forget about losing a year of his life. But Arar is not going to shut up. Neither are we. Citizen reporters will continue seeking answers to questions that are in the public interest. And the question of how a law-abiding Canadian citizen found himself in a Syrian torture chamber is clearly in the public interest.
The RCMP search warrants against O'Neill cite her Nov. 8 front-page article in the Citizen, in which she described the contents of a Canadian intelligence dossier on Arar. The article, according to the warrant, is evidence that O'Neill may have violated the Security of Information Act, formerly known as the Official Secrets Act.
Any claim that the Citizen's reportage jeopardized national security is absurd. The raids on O'Neill's home and office, in trying to identify the source of an embarrassing leak, had little to do with protecting national security, but they did convey a message to every journalist that he or she would be wise to lay off the Arar file.
The government is playing a dangerous game. By invoking the Security of Information Act to justify vengeful actions against conscientious journalists and responsible news organizations, the authorities threaten the legitimacy of all anti-terrorist legislation. Perhaps those skeptics who after 9/11 feared governments would exploit the terrorist threat to persecute people they don't like -- in this case, inquiring journalists -- should have been taken more seriously.
In the end, this is not just about the Citizen, its staff and Maher Arar. Press freedom is a central pillar of our way of life, and when journalists are threatened, jailed or worse, the whole edifice of liberal democracy trembles. We will not be intimidated or prevented from pursuing the truth, whether in the case of Maher Arar or in any other matter of public interest.
© Copyright 2004 Times Colonist (Victoria)
Copyright © 2004 CanWest Interactive, a division of CanWest Global Communications Corp. All rights reserved.
Optimized for browser versions 4.0 and higher.
WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF THE PC's WERE TO DO THIS!!!
BLOODY OUTARGE! AND WITH GOOD REASON!
MARTIN MUST COME OUT STRONGLY AGAINST THE ACTIVITES OF HIS GOVERNMENT!
Thursday » January 22 » 2004
An ugly stain on our democracy
Government's vengeful raid on reporter's home threatens fundamental Canadian freedoms
       
Ottawa Citizen
Thursday, January 22, 2004
This editorial appears on the front page of today's Ottawa Citizen.
Images of police officers harassing journalists -- storming into their homes, accusing them of betraying the state -- are familiar in countries where human rights are unknown and freedom is cheap. But to see those same images played out in Canada, in the nation's capital no less, is something Canadians don't usually see. Nor should they. The RCMP raids at the home and offices of Ottawa Citizen reporter Juliet O'Neill Wednesday are an ugly and possibly indelible stain on this country's 137-year democratic tradition.
The right of journalists to do their jobs free of intimidation is non-negotiable. A free press does not serve at the pleasure of the government of the day. Wednesday's raids suggest that the RCMP -- and the government -- fail to grasp what for other Canadians is intuitive: that press freedom is inextricably linked to political freedom.
This much is clear: the RCMP targeted O'Neill because of her aggressive coverage of the Maher Arar scandal. Scandal is the right word, in that the Arar case has become a huge embarrassment for the Liberal government.
Arar is the Arab-Canadian computer engineer who was passing through New York's JFK airport en route to Canada when U.S. counterterrorism agents detained him and deported him to Syria, where he says he was tortured for many months before being released.
The main question has always been, what role did the Canadian government play in the detention and deportation of Arar? Were the U.S. authorities acting on dubious information supplied by Canadian intelligence, as Arar and his family suspect? Even more damaging, CBS's 60 Minutes II reported that Canada not only knew but consented to this secret deportation of a Canadian citizen who had never been charged with or convicted of any crime.
The Citizen is one of many voices across Canada to call for a public inquiry into Arar's ordeal. But first the Chrétien government, and now the one led by Paul Martin, refused such an inquiry, presumably in the hope that Arar would simply shut up and forget about losing a year of his life. But Arar is not going to shut up. Neither are we. Citizen reporters will continue seeking answers to questions that are in the public interest. And the question of how a law-abiding Canadian citizen found himself in a Syrian torture chamber is clearly in the public interest.
The RCMP search warrants against O'Neill cite her Nov. 8 front-page article in the Citizen, in which she described the contents of a Canadian intelligence dossier on Arar. The article, according to the warrant, is evidence that O'Neill may have violated the Security of Information Act, formerly known as the Official Secrets Act.
Any claim that the Citizen's reportage jeopardized national security is absurd. The raids on O'Neill's home and office, in trying to identify the source of an embarrassing leak, had little to do with protecting national security, but they did convey a message to every journalist that he or she would be wise to lay off the Arar file.
The government is playing a dangerous game. By invoking the Security of Information Act to justify vengeful actions against conscientious journalists and responsible news organizations, the authorities threaten the legitimacy of all anti-terrorist legislation. Perhaps those skeptics who after 9/11 feared governments would exploit the terrorist threat to persecute people they don't like -- in this case, inquiring journalists -- should have been taken more seriously.
In the end, this is not just about the Citizen, its staff and Maher Arar. Press freedom is a central pillar of our way of life, and when journalists are threatened, jailed or worse, the whole edifice of liberal democracy trembles. We will not be intimidated or prevented from pursuing the truth, whether in the case of Maher Arar or in any other matter of public interest.
© Copyright 2004 Times Colonist (Victoria)
Copyright © 2004 CanWest Interactive, a division of CanWest Global Communications Corp. All rights reserved.
Optimized for browser versions 4.0 and higher.
