April E-News from Canadian Friends Service Committee

Details: Published on Sunday, 29 November -0001 16:00; Written by editor

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After devastating verdict, call on Canada to refuse to extradite Hassan Diab a second time

As readers of the E-News will know, for many years we've been deeply disturbed by the treatment of Hassan Diab. He was previously extradited to France where he spent more than three years in prison, without charge or trial.

He was eventually released came home to Canada in 2018, after the investigative judges found all sorts of problems with the case and the evidence against him (include evidence that he wasn't in France at the time of the bombing he's accused of). With no new evidence and with all of the problems remaining, a French court tried Hassan in absentia and found him guilty on April 21. Many human rights experts are speaking out about this extreme situation, which is widely seen as... a case of scapegoating and anti-Arab racism.

Please consider writing an urgent letter calling for Canada not to extradite Hassan Diab to France a second time. The International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group (which we're founding members of) has a tool to help: https://iclmg.ca/diab-letter

Free hybrid event on costs, reliability, danger, and security of increasing nuclear power

Since they are lower carbon emitting than fossil fuels, the Canadian government, as well as multiple provincial governments, are promising to spend billions on new nuclear to meet their climate commitments.

How do these new reactors compare with renewables on cost, reliability, danger, and security? Are there connections to nuclear weapons? Are there health concerns? And what are the impacts on First Nations?

Hear leading Canadian anti-nuclear voices:

– Dr. Gordon Edwards, Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility

– Friend Dale Dewar, author of From Hiroshima to Fukushima to You: A primer on radiation and health

– Candyce Paul, English River First Nation

– Angela Bischoff, Ontario Clean Air Alliance

All welcome. Free.

If you’re in Ottawa you can join in person:

Ottawa Quaker Meetinghouse 91-A Fourth Ave. Ottawa, ON K1S 2L1 Canada.

If you’re anywhere else in the world you can join online.

The event is

Thu, Apr 27, 2023 7:00 PM – 8:30 PM Eastern. Free tickets are available via Eventbrite.

This event is co-sponsored by the Ontario Clean Air Alliance, Ottawa Quakers, and Canadian Friends Service Committee.

Coalition tells the UN it’s time for National Action Plans to implement Indigenous rights

CFSC staff and associate members were at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues again this year in New York. We worked alongside Indigenous partners on multiple meetings and this joint statement:

Nearly ten years ago, Member States of the United Nations made a significant commitment by consensus in the Outcome Document of the high-level plenary meeting of the General Assembly known as the World Conference on Indigenous Peoples. States committed, in Paragraph 8 of this Outcome Document, to “cooperating with indigenous peoples, through their own representative institutions, to develop and implement national action plans, strategies or other measures.”

The UN Declaration recognizes, in preambular paragraph 8, “the urgent need to respect and promote the inherent rights of indigenous peoples.” However, it is nearly ten years after the World Conference, and we have seen very little global progress on National Action Plans. Keep reading.

We joined a large international call for the United Nations to respect human rights while combating antisemitism

As we’ve written about previously, we continue to oppose hate while raising the need for a definition of antisemitism that won’t be used to silence legitimate protest of Israel’s human rights violations. (We support the Jerusalem Declaration definition.)

We signed a new open letter to the UN explaining our concern. The letter to got a lot of media attention, including this article from the Toronto Star: https://bit.ly/TorontoStarIHRA

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