This October, the Canadian government is planning on introducing new Security Certificate legislation when Parliament re-convenes in mid-October. In February 2007, as a direct result of a grassroots campaign led by Security Certificate detainees and their families, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that Security Certificates were unconstitutional. Rather than abolishing Security Certificate legislation, the Government is passing new legislation in an attempt to provide a veneer of legality to a fundamentally unjust process. The Secret Trial 5 have called for our solidarity in their ongoing struggle against racism, oppressive immigration controls, and expanding state surveillance and control.

IN VANCOUVER: Join us for Leafleting, Readings, and Creative Resistance. FRIDAY OCTOBER 19TH 4:30-6:30 PM. Broadway Skytrain Station, Commercial Drive. Organized by No One is Illegal-Vancouver and Siraat Collective.

Join us in this National Day of Action to demonstrate our continued opposition to Security Certificates in any and all forms! Allegations that are imprecise and rely more on racist fear are fundamentally arbitrary and a system that applies only to non-citizens in inherently discriminatory. Thus any cosmetic reform is incapable of altering the fundamentally flawed nature of this regime. Abolish Security Certificates Now!

**** Also, write and call your MP to demand that they not support any new security certificate legislation. You can find your MP’s contacts via www.parl.gc.ca

For more information on the National Day of Action, contact Campaign to Stop Secret Trials in Canada. Email tasc@web.ca or phone (416) 651-5800

BACKGROUNDER

Security certificates are a measure of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) that allow for the preventive arrest and detention of non-citizens, without charge, under secret evidence. They were introduced in their present form in 2002, but have been part of the Immigration Act since 1991. A special $3.5 million dollar six-cell facility Kingston Immigration Holding Centre “Guantanamo North” was created especially for security certificate detainees and is run by the Canadian Border Services Agency.

There are currently five men against whom Security Certificates have been issued- the Secret Trial 5- Mohammed Mahjoub, Mahmoud Jaballah, Mohamed Harakat, Hasan Almrei, and Adil Charkoui.

The Security Certificate process allows for the preventive arrest and detention of non-citizens, without charge, under secret evidence. Amnesty International has described security Certificates as being fundamentally flawed and unfair and the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention and United Nations Committee against Torture have both questioned Canada’s use of this procedure. The detainees and their lawyers see only a summary of the evidence and evidence maybe presented in court in the absence of the detainee or their lawyer. Normal standards of evidence are explicitly waived. The detainee is not afforded a right to examine any of the witnesses. The men can be deported, including deportation to torture in contravention of international law. Therefore security certificates violate the fundamental principle of innocent until proven guilty.

Most fundamentally, the Security Certificates process is a form of legislated racism and is a recent manifestation in a historic trend of racism and exclusion. The fact that Security certificates only apply to permanent residents and refugees reveals how immigration systems deny certain classes of people their fundamental rights. History should stand as warnings to us with the internment of Japanese-Canadians (so-called “enemy aliens”) during WWII. Throughout Canada’s history, “national security” has been used to legitimize a series of exclusionary immigration policies by creating a sense of fear and threat posed by “outsiders” to the Canadian nation and its “legitimate” citizens.

Despite its existence for over 20 years, public light has rarely fallen on this legal process until a campaign against security certificates was launched in Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal (cities where the detainees were originally held). Much of the resistance to the security certificates regimes has come from the detainees, their families, and grassroots supporters, and over time, human rights organization and international bodies such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the United Nations, the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group, and many others also sent submissions to the government of Canada protesting security certificates

On February 23 2007, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the security certificate process is unconstitutional. The Court gave Parliament one year to amend the provisions to bring them in line with the Charter. Over seven months later, little has changed for the detainees: Mahjoub, Harkat and Jaballah families live under a stifling and humiliating house arrest. Hassan Almrei is once again in a form of solitary confinement, as the only detainee in Guantanamo North. The Charkaouis are still living under control and surveillance, although Adil Charkaoui’s certificate has never even been reviewed by any court process.

SPECIAL ADVOCATE LEGISLATION

To top it off, rather than abolishing Security Certificate legislation, the Government is passing new legislation in an attempt to provide a veneer of legality to a fundamentally unjust process. It is widely believed that this new legislation will be based on the ‘special advocate’ model. In effect, all that the system does is allow for a government appointed special advocate to have access to and review the secret evidence against the detainee. However this special advocate cannot reveal the nature of the evidence to the detainee and prevents the special advocate from speaking out if they believe that the secret evidence was unlawfully obtained.

This system, currently in existence in the UK, continues a two-tier system of justice in which the freedom of non-citizens can be infringed more easily than that of citizens; doesn’t address the core issue that security certificates are based on vague and broad allegations; maintains that detainees are guilty until proven innocent; does not allow the detainee to have access to the secret evidence; and leaves in place the possibility of indefinite detention or indefinite house arrest. This would represent nothing but a new form of discrimination against non-citizens, a new failure to provide immigrants and non-status people with a fair trial, continued use of indefinite detention, and continued threat of deportation to torture.

It is time to just say NO to Security Certificates legislation! It cannot be reformed and must be abolished. Allegations that are imprecise and rely more on racist fear is fundamentally arbitrary and a system that applies only to non-citizens in inherently discriminatory; thus any cosmetic reforms is incapable of altering the fundamentally flawed nature of this regime.

Join the call to demand:

1. No New Security Certificates;
2. Immediately free the five from all conditions or charge them and provide them with a full, fair, and open trial;
3. End deportation proceedings against the five;
4. End deportations to torture; and
5. Close “Guantanamo North”.