The rise of authoritarianism and assaults to the rule of law, part 2

We welcome back renowned international human rights lawyer the Honourable Irwin Cotler to discuss several examples of what authoritarianism looks like in countries like China, Iran and Saudi Arabia. He touched on the Chinese government’s treatment of Uighurs and the need for Canada and other countries to name it as genocide to oblige us to combat and prevent it. He also talked about the current dire situation of Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, as well as blogger Raif Badawi and his lawyer Waleed Abulkhair in Saudi Arabia. Professor Cotler urged Canada and other democracies to act, or else their silence would embolden authoritarianism. In the end, he believes justice can and will prevail.

Professor Cotler is the Chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights and an Emeritus Professor of Law at McGill University. He is a former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada and a Member of Parliament from 1999 to 2015.  As an international human rights lawyer, he has worked for many years to free political prisoners and advocates for democracy around the world. Maclean’s has referred to him as “counsel for the oppressed” and the Oslo Freedom Forum has described him as “Freedom’s Counsel.” 

Transcript

Welcome to the Rule of Law Matters podcast. If you're wondering what the Rule of Law means and why it matters, this is the podcast for you. This is season one, episode five, The Rise of Authoritarianism and Assault on the Rule of Law Part 2. This podcast is brought to you by the Law Society of BC. The Law Society is a regulatory body that protects the public by enforcing professional standards for lawyers in our province. We bring you this discussion today to raise awareness about the importance of upholding the rule of law. In this episode, our host, Jon Festinger, welcomes back The Honorable Irwin Cotler to continue the discussion on the rise of authoritarianism.          

Jon Festinger

Welcome back Professor Cotler, thank you for continuing the conversation with us on the rule of law and its place in the world in these strange and somewhat difficult and more authoritarian times than we would like. Let's start with what you are seeing in China. You've written a lot in the media about China and its record on human rights. When it comes to the internment and abuse of the ethnic Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region, you've urged the Canadian government to define China's treatment of the Uyghurs as genocide. Why name it genocide? 

Irwin Cotler

Well what we are seeing in, with regard to the targeting of Uyghurs and the mass atrocities that are targeting the Uyghurs, by the way, it should be seen in a contextual thing. I mean it's not only that Xi Jinping's China has emerged as the leading assault on the rules based on international order but they are targeting what they call the five poisons, the Uyghurs, Hong Kong, Falun Gong, Tibet and Taiwan. Amongst the five poisons, and they also jail more journalists than any other country in the world, apart from that, the Uyghurs stands out because this is the area in which we are seeing mass atrocities and crimes against humanity targeted at the Uyghurs that are acts constituted of genocide. And this is happening as we speak. I'm referring not only to the mass incarceration of 1.8 million Uyghurs in concentration camps and the forced labour, starvation, torture and death attending it, I'm not speaking only about the mass surveillance society, it's the only sort of technotronic genocidal repression that we have ever witnessed. I'm not talking only about the manner in which, with regard to the Uyghurs, you've got the mass sterilization of peoples in the sense that forced abortions, as I said mass sterilization, other coercive methods, I'm talking also about the manner in which they separated a half a million children you know from their families, Uyghur children from their families, which should resonate for us in our own historical context here in Canada. 

But in a word, what I'm speaking about is that the cumulative acts that are constituted of genocide and we are all parties to the Genocide Convention, we are obliged as a party to the Genocide Convention, to act so as to prevent as well punish genocide. That's why I went before the Foreign Affairs subcommittee which held the first hearings in any democracy over two days at the end of July into the situation with regards to the Uyghurs, and I said as I'm sharing with you, that the acts there are constituted of genocide. This is not a word that I use easily or lightly and I don’t like to make any analogies you know to the Holocaust but what is happening there, for all the reasons that I mentioned and more, are indeed acts constituted of genocide and I called on the Foreign Affairs committee to make a determination that these were acts constituted of genocide so that we could become the first parliamentary body in the world to do this. 

And I reminded the committee that we did this with regard to the Rohingya and that led us finally to take action before the International Court of Justice, before the International Criminal Court so I'm hoping that this will happen here. And the Foreign Affairs subcommittee reported two weeks ago unanimously recommending that the Canadian Parliament and the Canadian government make a determination that what is happening are acts constitutive of genocide, that this indeed obliges us as a parliament, as a government, as a country to do all that we can to prevent and combat this genocide.

Jon Festinger

When dealing with a country like China who is committing genocide, the economic strength of China, the dependency, the economic dependencies that other countries have in the region and elsewhere in the world on China, really complicates what should be a fairly simple and clear response, isn't that true?

Irwin Cotler

That is true and in fact, China has been a, you know, an international bully but it has done its bullying one by one. It's gone after Australia, it's gone after Canada, it's gone after Japan and India, I can go on so therefore we formed, some four months ago now, the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, the first ever alliance of its kind. Now we have more than 25 democracies that are part of that alliance, I'm the co-chair from Canada, and one of the first things that we did, which was at the end of June, we had a senior scholar of China, Adrian Zenz, share with us his findings and then we shared it internationally that what was happening in China was constituted of genocide. We sounded the alarm and that began to get international coverage and resonance to what was happening. So I think the importance of us coming together and taking collective actions, we've called for our member governments to impose Magnitsky sanctions on China. No one might do it singly but collectively we can act and if Canada and US and Europe back, we have 2.5 times the economic power of China just in that configuration alone.

Jon Festinger

And that divide and conquer theory that China is using can only be counteracted by everyone talking to each other and calling out China for what they're doing to the Uyghurs in the same way and in a coordinated way because divide and conquer can work, and I'm going to come to one other aspect of that. China's own citizenry is very unaware of many of the things done by the Chinese government and China itself is very ahead or very comfortable with using technology in order to manipulate their own people around information. How does that get counteracted?

Irwin Cotler

Well you know it is you know a massive surveillance state, as I said, it is using all the agents of technocratic repression but you know people do get aware and you know when the coronavirus began and became known, there were those doctors and dissidents who sought you know to sound the alarm [inaudible 8:34] and of course what China did was that they arrested and disappeared doctors and dissidents. They engaged in suppression of information that the world should have known and that led us to the spread of the coronavirus. But there were heroes there who did speak up. In other words, with all the shield that China seeks to erect against any penetration of that kind of information, you can't block it all out as much as you try in this technotronic world, and with the surveillance state, there are these brave lawyers, there are these brave dissidents, there are these brave scientists there speaking up there publishing and they're the ones on whose behalf we have to speak and defend and act. And that's why, as I'm meeting with you today, we are in fact involved in the representation of a number of these brave people in China.

Jon Festinger

And I'll just add one thing, there's also a very brave ex-patriot community, a very brave Chinese Canadian and Chinese American community who act accordingly. Let's move to another country with similar issues but different in its own right. You're on the legal team that is defending Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh. In March she was sentenced to 38 years and six months in prison and 148 lashes because of her work as a lawyer. You've called her the Mandela of Iran; can you tell our listeners a little bit about her work as a lawyer prior to her imprisonment?

Irwin Cotler

Well she was one of the most heroic lawyers that I knew anywhere in the world today. Nasrin Sotoudeh has gone down the line for women threatened and imprisoned in Iran. She's gone down the line for children destined for execution. She gone down the line for journalists imprisoned in Iran. She's gone down the line for environmentalists where Iran has made environmentalists a crime. She's gone down the line for other political prisoners until she herself became a political prisoner. I first got involved in her case as a parliamentarian back in 2010 when she was engaged already in a myriad of these legal representations and after intense advocacy at the time, she was released in 2013 but then of course subjected to constant threat, harassment and in 2018 convicted and sentenced in the manner that you described. Just one footnote to that, two days after she was sentenced, a woman in her late 50s to 38 years in prison six months and 148 lashes, a virtual death sentence for a woman her age, Iran was elected to the UN Commission on Women's Rights. I mean one can't make these things up but an example really of the kind of Orwellian universe we're living in in human rights terms. 

And as we're meeting right now, she regrettably is under serious, serious risk of death at this point because she went on a hunger strike for close to 50 days, not on her behalf but on behalf of other political prisoners whose release she was seeking, because the spread of the coronavirus in Iran meant that these prisoners were at risk to their health and worse and so she went on a hunger strike on their behalf. Finally, she was taken to the hospital because she was then in serious respiratory arrest and cardiac condition and in the hospital, instead of properly treating her, they sent her to an even worse prison than Evin Prison. She is now in a vermin infested prison at great danger to her health, what is called, a prison that is called the end of the world in Iran where people are sent to die and we are really hoping that there will be an international outcry in that regard. 

I'm pleased that at least as a result of some of the representations we've made, Prime Minister Trudeau did you know tweet on, condemn what Iran was doing and called for her release. President Macron did it in France, he even did it in his speech before the UN General Assembly, all the UN special rapporteurs sought to draw attention to the urgency of her case. But regrettably Jon, again as we meet, you know we are all overtaken by the global COVID pandemic and in fact that's even used by Iran on the one hand to cover up their crimes and in fact to commit their crimes because while they acknowledge that prisoners should be released from prison during the COVID pandemic, they released all common criminals, they have not released the political prisoners. And in the case of Nasrin Sotoudeh have even put her in worse risk to her health. 

Jon Festinger

Well you know that is also a sure sign of authoritarianism where you value holding political prisoners more than you do real criminals. That's disastrous in a word. What more can be done in her case? What more could Canada do? What more could our listeners do?

Irwin Cotler

Well I'm hoping, you know we never had the US leadership weigh in. I mean I know about Trump's you know conduct with regard to the taking US out of the nuclear agreement and the like, but I'm talking about defense, defending and protecting against the repression and the imprisonment of these great heroic figures so we do need leadership from the US. And that reminds me that Vice President Biden has called for her release; I'm hoping we might see a change if in fact he does become president in the US, taking a position with respect to human rights repression in Iran not just speaking with regard to the nuclear issue. 

I am also hoping that countries like Canada can do more in that we have yet to impose any Magnitsky sanctions on any Iranian officials. Now, Canada, to its credit, adopted Magnitsky sanctions legislation, to its credit it imposed such sanctions on the leaders in Venezuela, in Russia, in Saudi Arabia, in Myanmar, in South Sudan but we have not imposed any Magnitsky sanction neither on any senior Chinese officials including those involved in the genocidal acts against the Uyghurs nor with respect to any officials in Iran. And we've given the Canadian government a list of what we call the 19 major architects of repression in Iran amongst whom is a chief justice, Ebrahim Raisi, in Iran. 

Now Ebrahim Raisi was a member of the 1988 death squad committee in Iran that sentenced thousands of dissidents to their death. Instead of him being held accountable, he was rewarded for his criminality and progressed through the ranks to become Attorney General and now Chief Justice of Iran. And again in a kind of an Orwellian initiative, you know we had the downing of flight, Ukrainian flight 752 with 55 Iranian Canadians on board, 30 permanent residents of Iran on board, and Canada heads up a five-country group seeking justice and accountability and transparency and compensation for the victims; well who did Iran appoint to chair this commission of inquiry? This Chief Justice Raisi, the arch criminal, was appointed to chair this commission of inquiry seeking justice and accountability for flight 752. So that's why I say we have a lot of international mobilizing to do to seek justice for the victims and accountability [inaudible 17:14] the human rights violators.

Jon Festinger

We're going to change focus to one final country for today, and that's Saudi Arabia. You represented blogger Raif Badawi and his lawyer Waleed Abulkhair. Can you tell us more about who they are, what they are imprisoned for, and what the situation is like now.

Irwin Cotler

Well you know Saudi Arabia is also amongst the leading jailers of journalists in the world. It is the, it ranks number four in terms of the jailing of journalists. Raif Badawi was a courageous Saudi blogger who blogged nothing else about what he would call the need for a more open Saudi Arabia, a more liberal Islam. I'm using that language because when Mohammed bin Salman became the Crown Prince, he made the same call but Raif Badawi is languishing in prison now for eight years for saying eight years ago what the Crown Prince is saying today. 

And so that case has become a major you know issue because Raif Badawi's wife, Ensaf Haidar and her three children fled to Canada, became refugees and now are Canadian citizens so there is a clear Canadian nexus to the case. When I was a parliamentarian, the Foreign Affairs subcommittee of which I was vice-chair, unanimously condemned Badawi's imprisonment and called for his release. Then the whole House of Commons unanimously adopted a resolution calling for his release and Jon, it's not that easy to get a unanimous resolution because if just one member stands up or says no, you don’t have a resolution so we have a unanimous resolution. 

In 2018, our foreign minister at the time, Chrystia Freeland, tweeted a call for the release of Raif Badawi and his sister, Samar Badawi. Her case is interesting too because she called for the right to drive then the Crown Prince, to his credit on that point, gave women the right to drive and then imprisoned the women who had called for the right to drive including Samar Badawi. So Chrystia Freeland tweeted a call for the release of the two Badawis. The Saudi authorities erupted in fury, ejected the Canadian ambassador, recalled their own ambassador from Canada, suspended all trade and investment with Canada, withdrew 15,000 Canadian students including medical students amongst them, really a self-inflicted wound. 

And regrettably, this goes back to, not one democracy came to Canada's defense and two months later, we witnessed the brutal assassination of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey. In other words, MBS felt ennobled by the silence of democracies, felt that he could act with impunity and that there's a straight line between the silence of the democracies after Canada's call for the release of the Badawis and down the line to the brutal assassination of Jamal Khashoggi at the time. 

So this speaks to the importance of as I say democratic renewal, resilience, putting an end to the backsliding of democracy, holding the authoritarians accountable. But what we are witnessing and as we are speaking to you, what has happened? Saudi Arabia was, as I said, just elected to the UN Human Rights Council. Saudi Arabia was elected to chair and will be hosting in a few weeks the G20 Conference. So again, rather than being held accountable, it is being rewarded and so you have, as I say, this pandemic of impunity and I hope at the World Conference on Press Freedom that we're going to have on November 16th we will have a call for his release mainly because this, his case symbolizes both the resurgent global authoritarianism as finds expression in Saudi Arabia, the backsliding of democracies, the imprisonment of political prisoners and the criminalization of press freedom.

Jon Festinger

So one I think question that is, that flows from all of this, do you see the world as some currently do as hanging in the balance between authoritarian regimes and authoritarianism and rule of law countries that are democratic? Are we at the moment where the world could really shift or is there reason to believe in the world, in the words and thoughts of Martin Luther King that ultimately justice will prevail and we're just going through a difficult moment? When I survey the commentators and the writers, views are all over the place on this question; where's yours?

Irwin Cotler

Well I'll tell you, mine is that I think we are witnessing you know a frontal assault on the rule of law. I think we are witnessing as I said a resurgence and escalating you know global authoritarianism, all the things I mentioned above, the backsliding of democracies, but we are also seeing you know portents of light. You know we are seeing the protests in Belarus, we are seeing you know now protests to get Taiwan as a member of the World Health Organization, we are seeing you know the Venezuelan people you know in all their courage and right now a very transformative event occurred just four days ago and that is the former leader of the democratic opposition in Venezuela, Leopoldo Lopez, escape from the Spanish Embassy in Venezuela. 

He's now in Spain and we had a conference call with him. He is a strategic genius and he has set forth a whole plan with respect to an international justice set of initiatives, international political initiatives. I think you're going to see the beginnings of a democracy movement bringing together the community of democracies with regard to Venezuela. So in this arc of history, I'm seeing some glimmers of hope and I hope this presidential election will result in America returning to its role you know as a major protector of the rules-based international order and not one that is undermining it.

Jon Festinger

And one last factor, if I may, which I'll ask you to comment on. I see also a glimmer of hope, if not more than that, in the resurgence of the role of protest and the Black Lives Matter movement and the process that have been happening around the world in favor of rule of law causes; am I right to be comforted by that?

Irwin Cotler

Well I'll tell you that's why I mentioned, I only gave one example but I mentioned Belarus but it's not the only example. You know I think what is happening in Sudan is also hopeful of a transition government from the military government with which they are in partnership. I see portents of hope in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and I might add I've been in touch with the leadership both in Sudan and in the DRC. I see hope in the peaceful protests that have been taking place in United States with regards to Black Lives Matter and the like. I do feel that the people are stronger than those that are temporarily you know in power and I do believe that we are on the verge of I hope a change in government in the US but what all this has revealed has been really the latent power of the institutions of democratic governance in the United States. 

The fact that through all this you can have free and fair elections even with all of the attempts at their suppression, that in fact through all this you can have a free press notwithstanding attempts at alleging fake news, that in fact through all this the legal profession you know are operating and you've got lawyers challenging any attempts with regards to corrupting the election or corrupting the media and the like. The fact that through all this, and I was part of a group that even went to the UN Human Rights Council through leadership of the American Civil Liberties unit and filed representations there regarding to what is happening in the US and mobilizing behind the Black Lives movement and peaceful protest. So yes, I think that there are dynamics at work and I think that the base is strong and yes, the Martin Luther King arc of history will, in my view, start bending towards justice.

Jon Festinger

So as this is the perfect note to end today and in thanking you for joining us, I will add one last glimmer of hope and that is that Professor Irwin Cotler is as much in the game as he's ever been. Thank you.

Irwin Cotler

Thank you Jon.

Jon Festinger

I'm going to try to sum up in a few sentences. Professor Cotler gave us examples of what authoritarianism looks like in countries like China, Iran and Saudi Arabia. We discussed the Chinese government's treatment of Uyghurs and the need for Canada and other countries to call that genocide, obliging us to combat and prevent such actions. We also touched on the current dire situation of Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh as well as blogger Raif Badawi and his lawyer Waleed Abulkhair in Saudi Arabia. Professor Cotler urged Canada and other democracies to act otherwise our silence will embolden authoritarianism. One way to accomplish this is to impose Magnitsky sanctions against foreign individuals who have committed human rights abuses. But there is hope. We see all over the world examples of people standing up against oppression and authoritarianism. Professor Cotler believes that ultimately justice can and will prevail. Thank you for listening. If you want to find out more about the rule of law, visit the Law Society's website at lawsociety.bc.ca. Vinnie Yuen is our terrific producer today. This is your host, Jon Festinger, signing off.