By Fareed Khan
Aug. 25, 2020
The international
legal order and the human rights of vulnerable minorities around the world are under
assault by autocratic regimes like never before as two foundational documents of
the United Nations go ignored: the Genocide Convention and the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
As we mark the third anniversary this week of the atrocities which commenced the
final phase of the Rohingya genocide by Myanmar,
we have to question whether Canada truly believes in standing behind these two instruments
which it signed, and whether it cares about stopping genocide.
Canada was
intimately involved in drafting both of these documents, so it follows that as a
democratic nation committed to the rule of law, Canada would be one of the nations
that would ensure their enforcement. In fact, Canadians have often heard Prime Minister
Justin Trudeau and former foreign affairs minister Chrystia Freeland state that
Canada is a rule of law nation, supports the international legal order, and is a
defender of human rights.
But such political
rhetoric is meaningless without actions to back it up.
In the fall
of 2017 when the scale of atrocities committed by Myanmar against the Rohingya was
front page news, many Canadians implored our government to designate the crimes
as genocide and invoke the Genocide Convention, which defines genocide as any of
the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national,
ethnic, racial or religious group:
a)
Killing members
of the group.
b)
Causing serious
bodily or mental harm to members of the group.
c)
Deliberately
inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical
destruction in whole or in part.
d)
Imposing measures
intended to prevent births within the group.
e)
Forcibly transferring
children of one group to another group.
However, instead of taking action, the government waited two months before it appointed
a “special envoy” to study the
matter. Five months later when he issued his recommendations, the government
proceeded to ignore most of them.
When Canada
did finally become the first nation to officially recognize the genocide
by unanimous resolutions of both houses of our Parliament – a full year after the
atrocities began – it did nothing more to hold Myanmar accountable, despite repeated calls by parliamentarians,
human rights scholars, activists, and members of the Canadian Rohingya community.
Arguably, as a state party to the Genocide Convention that recognized the Rohingya
genocide, Canada is now duty bound to act to try to stop it and help prevent its
recurrence.
Rather than
Canada, it was the tiny West African nation of Gambia that became the white
knight for the long suffering Rohingya when it filed a complaint under the Genocide
Convention at the International Court of Justice on Nov. 11, 2019.
Canada’s lack
of action in living up to its treaty obligations to defend the international legal
order isn’t new. Canada failed to act in the case of the Rwandan genocide and in the
Balkans genocide in the 1990s
(despite the presence of Canadian troops on the ground in both instances). It was
silent, along with the rest of the world, as the Darfur genocide unfolded and
as Myanmar’s genocide agenda came to light in the 2000s. It has done nothing to
respond to the genocide of the Uyghurs in China, and what appears
to be the start of a genocide in India-occupied Kashmir.
As it fails
to live up to its obligations, the Canadian government also refuses to admit its
hypocrisy of claiming to be a defender of human rights and the international legal
order while doing little to nothing to defend it. It adds to that hypocrisy every
year by intoning the mantra “never again” on Holocaust Remembrance Day marking the
death of millions at the hands of the Nazis. Such hypocrisy is not lost on the international
community and arguably contributed to Canada’s failed attempt to gain a seat on
the UN Security Council.
During a year
which marks the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz
concentration camp, the 25th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, and the 75th anniversary
of the UN itself, it is time for the Justin Trudeau government to finally put actions
behind its rhetoric. Because as it is, his government is losing all credibility
on the international stage by claiming to be a defender of the international legal
order and of human rights while its manifest failure to act demonstrates otherwise.
Fareed Khan is the director of advocacy and media relations at
the Rohingya Human Rights Network.
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2020 The View From Here. © 2020 Fareed
Khan. All Rights Reserved.
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