The Canadian Press Thursday, January 19, 2006. Canada allegedly backed Bush on forced disappearances. We ran interference, says rights group

Ottawa — A civil liberties group accuses Prime Minister Paul Martin of siding with the Bush administration to undermine a proposed United Nations treaty outlawing forced disappearances. Human Rights Watch says in its annual report that Martin aparently
decided to run interference for the U.S. as a way for Canada to mend strained relations. The group says disappearances occur when governments seize people without acknowledging their detention, leaving them highly vulnerable to torture or execution. Human Rights Watch says Canada “worked aggressively” to dilute key elements
of the treaty. “Canada contributed to this shameful opposition, not because it is known to forcibly ‘disappear’ people but apparently because Martin decided to run interference for one of his neighbour’s unsavoury practices.”

Several Latin American countries backed the UN effort because they experienced a plague of disappearances in the 1970s and ’80s. A working group of the UN’s Commission on Human Rights has adopted a draft version. The U.S. and Russia “strongly opposed” the wording, HRW says. “The willingness to sacrifice basic human-rights principles in the name of fighting terrorism hit a new low around the issue of forced disappearances,” it said. The U.S. fought the treaty because of their reliance on detentions in secret jail facilities abroad, the New York-based rights group contends.