Daily Mail: China’s hi-tech ‘death van’ where criminals are executed and then their organs are sold
Daily Mail
By Andrew Malone
27.03.2009
Death will come soon for Jiang Yong. A corrupt local planning official with a taste for the high life, Yong solicited money from businessmen eager to expand in China’s economic boom.
the unmarried official took more than £1 million in bribes from entrepreneurs wanting permission to build skyscrapers
But Yong, a portly, bespectacled figure, was caught by the Chinese authorities during a purge on corrupt local officials last year.
He confessed and was sentenced to death. China executed 1,715 people last year, so one more death would hardly be remarkable.
But there will be nothing ordinary about Yong’s death by lethal injection. Unless he wins an appeal, he will draw his final breath strapped inside a vehicle that has been specially developed to make executions more cost-effective and efficient.
In chilling echoes of the ‘gas-wagon’ project pioneered by the Nazis to slaughter criminals, the mentally ill and Jews, this former member of the China People’s Party will be handcuffed to a so-called ‘humane’ bed and executed inside a gleaming new, hi-tech, mobile ‘death van.’
After trials of the mobile execution service were launched quietly three years ago - then hushed up to prevent an international row about the abuse of human rights before the Olympics last summer - these vehicles are now being deployed across China.
The number of executions is expected to rise to a staggering 10,000 people this year (not an impossible figure given that at least 68 crimes - including tax evasion and fraud - are punishable by death in China).
They cost £60,000, can reach top speeds of 80mph and look like a police vehicle on patrol. Inside, however, the ‘death vans’ look more like operating theatres.
Executions are monitored by video
the police, judiciary and doctors are all involved in making millions from China’s huge trade in human body parts.
Inside each ‘death van’ there is a dedicated team of doctors to ‘harvest’ the organs of the deceased. The injections leave the body intact and in pristine condition for such lucrative work.
After checking that the victim is dead, the medical team first remove the eyes. Then, wearing surgical gowns and masks, they remove the kidney, liver, pancreas and lungs.
Little goes to waste, though the heart cannot be used, having been poisoned by the drugs.
The organs are dispatched in ice boxes to hospitals in the sprawling cities of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, which have developed another specialist trade: selling the harvested organs.
At clinics all over China, these organs are transplanted into the ailing bodies of the wealthy - and thousands more who come as ‘organ tourists’ from neighbouring countries such as Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan.
Chinese hospitals perform up to 20,000 organ transplants each year. A kidney transplant in China costs £5,000, but can rise to £30,000 if the patient is willing to pay more to obtain an organ quickly.
With more than 10,000 kidney transplants carried out each year, fewer than 300 come from voluntary donations. The British Transplantation Society and Amnesty International have condemned China for harvesting prisoners’ organs.
Laws introduced in 2006 make it an offence to remove the organs of people against their will, and banned those under 18 from selling their organs.
But, tellingly, the law does not cover prisoners.
‘Organs can be extracted in a speedier and more effective way using these vans than if the prisoner is shot,’ says Amnesty International.
‘We have gathered strong evidence suggesting the involvement of Chinese police, courts and hospitals in the organ trade.’
The bodies cannot be examined. Corpses are driven to a crematorium and burned before independent witnesses can view them.
A police official, who operates a ‘multi-functional and nationwide, first-class, fixed execution ground’ where prisoners are shot, confirmed to the Mail that it is always a race against time to save the organs of the executed - and that mobile death vans are better equipped for the job.
‘The liver loses its function only five minutes after the human cardiac arrest,’ the officer told our researcher.
‘The kidney will become dysfunctional 30 minutes after cardiac arrest. So the removal of organs must be completed at the execution ground within 15 minutes, then put in an ice box or preservation solution.’
The idea for such a ‘modern’ scheme is rooted in one of the darkest episodes in human history.
The Nazis used adapted vans as mobile gas chambers from 1940 until the end of World War II. In order to make the best use of time spent transporting criminals and Jewish prisoners, Hitler’s scientists developed the vehicles with a hermetically sealed cabin that was filled with carbon monoxide carried by a tube from the exhaust pipes.
The vans were first tested on child patients in a Polish psychiatric hospital in 1940. The Nazis then developed bigger models to carry up to 50 prisoners. They looked like furniture removal vans. Those to be killed were ordered to hand over their valuables, then stripped and locked inside.
As gas was pumped into the container and the van headed towards graves being dug by other prisoners, the muffled cries of those inside could be heard, along with banging on the side.
With the ‘cargo’ dead, all that remained was for gold fillings to be hacked from the victims’ mouths, before the bodies were tipped into the graves.
Now, six decades later, just like the Nazis, China insists these death vans are ‘progress’.
‘This deters others from committing crime and has more impact,’ said one official.
Indeed, a spokesman for the makers of the ‘death vans’ openly touted for trade this week, saying they are the perfect way to ‘efficiently and cleanly’ dispatch convicts with lethal injections. Reporting steady sales throughout China, a spokesman for Jinguan Auto - which is situated in a green valley an hour’s drive from Chongqing in south-western China - said the firm was bucking the economic trend and had sold ten more vans recently.
The exact number in operation is a state secret. But it is known that Yunnan province alone has 18 mobile units, while dozens of others are patrolling in five other sprawling provinces.
‘We have not sold our execution cars to foreign countries yet,’ beamed a proud spokesman. But if they need one, they could contact our company directly.’
Officials say the vehicles are a ‘civilised alternative’ to the traditional single shot to the head (used in 60 per cent of Chinese executions), ending the life of the condemned quickly, clinically and safely - proving that China ‘promotes human rights now,’ says Kang Zhongwen, designer of the ‘death van’.
For the Beijing regime, it is not a question of whether they should execute offenders, but how to do it most efficiently - and make the most money from it.
Related:
The existing EU member states have all signed up to Protocol 13 of the European Convention on Human Rights which outlaws the use of the death penalty in all circumstances. The Lisbon Treaty makes the EU a state superior with legal personality and has the post-Lisbon EU signed up to Protocol 6 rather than Protocol 13. Protocol 6 allows the death penalty for acts committed (who decides what acts?) in time of war or threat of war. We are told we’ve been under the war of terrorism since 2001. When reading protocol 6 below ask your self what role is envisaged for a post-Lisbon EU and its collective forces in a time of war or imminent threat of war?
“b) Article 2 of the Protocol No 6 to the ECHR: A State may make provision in its law for the death penalty in respect of acts committed in time of war or of imminent threat of war; such a penalty shall be applied only in the instances laid down in the law and in accordance with its provisions…” - www.eucharter.org/home.php?page_id=9 (EUcharter.org is funded by the European Commission)
One World China Rally Swamps Dublin City *
http://www.wiseupjournal.com/?p=850
__._,_.___
Life takes us in many strange directions and wonderful discoveries. It never turns out the way we thought it would.
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Friday, April 3, 2009
This is Amazing
Banks Starting to Walk Away on Foreclosures
Sally Ryan for The New York Times
Mercy James’s rental property in South Bend, Ind., was in foreclosure, but a sheriff’s sale was canceled at the last minute.
By SUSAN SAULNY
Published: March 29, 2009
SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Mercy James thought she had lost her rental property here to foreclosure. A date for a sheriff’s sale had been set, and notices about the foreclosure process were piling up in her mailbox.
Sally Ryan for The New York Times
After Ms. James had her tenants move out, vandals hit the home. It is set for demolition, but the title is still in her name.
Readers' Comments
Readers shared their thoughts on this article.
Read All Comments (61) »
Ms. James had the tenants move out, and soon her white house at the corner of Thomas and Maple Streets fell into the hands of looters and vandals, and then, into disrepair. Dejected and broke, Ms. James said she salvaged but a lesson from her loss.
So imagine her surprise when the City of South Bend contacted her recently, demanding that she resume maintenance on the property. The sheriff’s sale had been canceled at the last minute, leaving the property title — and a world of trouble — in her name.
“I thought, ‘What kind of game is this?’ ” Ms. James, 41, said while picking at trash at the house, now so worthless the city plans to demolish it — another bill for which she will be liable.
City officials and housing advocates here and in cities as varied as Buffalo, Kansas City, Mo., and Jacksonville, Fla., say they are seeing an unsettling development: Banks are quietly declining to take possession of properties at the end of the foreclosure process, most often because the cost of the ordeal — from legal fees to maintenance — exceeds the diminishing value of the real estate.
The so-called bank walkaways rarely mean relief for the property owners, caught unaware months after the fact, and often mean additional financial burdens and bureaucratic headaches. Technically, they still owe on the mortgage, but as a practicality, rarely would a mortgage holder receive any more payments on the loan. The way mortgages are bundled and resold, it can be enormously time-consuming just trying to determine what company holds the loan on a property thought to be in foreclosure.
In Ms. James’s case, the company that was most recently servicing her loan is now defunct. Its parent company filed for bankruptcy and dissolved. And the original bank that sold her the loan said it could not find a record of it.
“It is what some of us think is the next wave of the crisis,” said Kermit Lind, a clinical professor at the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law and an expert on foreclosure law.
For older industrial cities like South Bend, hard times in the mortgage market began before the recent national downturn, as did the problem of bank walkaways. In the case of Ms. James, a home health care administrator, the foreclosure proceedings began in the summer of 2007, when she could not keep up with the adjustable rate on her mortgage.
In Buffalo, where officials said the problem had reached “epidemic” proportions in recent months, the city sued 37 banks last year, claiming they were responsible for the deterioration of at least 57 abandoned homes; the city chose a sampling of houses to include in the lawsuit, even though the banks had walked away from many more foreclosures. So far, five banks have settled.
In Kansas City, Rachel Foley, a lawyer who handles housing cases, said bank walkaways were “a rare occurrence two to three years ago.”
“We’re seeing them dumped more and more at the moment,” she said.
Experts suggest the bank walkaways are most visible in states where foreclosures are processed through the courts and therefore tend to be more transparent. Other states, like Indiana and New York, have court-mandated foreclosures, but roughly half of the states allow foreclosures to proceed without court intervention, making it difficult to accurately count the number of bank walkaways in recent months.
The soft housing market and the vandalism that often occurs when a house sits empty are the two main factors influencing the mortgage holders’ decisions to walk away, said Larry Rothenberg, a lawyer for Weltman, Weinberg & Reis, one of the larger creditors’ rights firms in the country.
“Oftentimes when the foreclosure starts out, it’s a viable property,” Mr. Rothenberg said, “but by the time it gets to a sheriff’s sale, it might not have enough value to justify further expense. We’ve always had cases where property was vandalized or lost value, but they were rare compared to these times.”
The problem seems most acute at the bottom of the market — houses that were inexpensive to begin with — and with investment properties, where investors and banks want speedy closure by writing off bad loans as losses. Banks and investors typically lose 40 percent to 50 percent of their investment on every foreclosure.
Guy Cecala, publisher of Inside Mortgage Finance, an industry newsletter, said some properties had become such liabilities for investors that it was not even worth holding on to them to strip valuable fixtures, like kitchen appliances, toilets and hardware.
“The whole purpose of foreclosure is to take title of the property, sell it and recoup what money you can,” Mr. Cecala said. “It’s just a sign of the times that things are so bad no one wants to take possession of the property.”
In South Bend, boarded-up houses for whom no one has stepped forward are dotting the landscape, adding a fresh layer of blight to communities that were already scarred from the area’s industrial decline.
The city is hoping to create a new type of legal mediation process that would bring together the homeowners and the mortgage holders to settle their disputes while allowing the owners to remain in the home — considered crucial to any stabilization effort.
“I’d say in the last three or four months, we’ve seen dozens of these cases,” said Chuck Leone, the South Bend city attorney. “We see it one of two ways. One is that the bank will simply dismiss the foreclosure complaint. The other is that the mortgage holder will follow through and take a judgment of foreclosure, but then not schedule the property for sheriff’s sale.”
In Ms. James’s case, it has been impossible to determine who canceled the sheriff’s sale, since her last mortgage holder went out of business. Even the city clerk’s records did not provide an answer.
“Nobody has any idea who owns what or who’s responsible,” said Judy Fox, Ms. James’s lawyer at the Notre Dame Legal Aid Clinic. “It’s a very common story.”
Mayor Stephen J. Luecke of South Bend added: “It’s just a crime the way it puts people in limbo. They first off have gone through the grief of losing their house, then they move out and find out that they still own it and have responsibility for it.”
In Jacksonville, Fla., Sylvester Kimbrough Jr. found himself caught in the limbo between foreclosure and ownership last year, 10 years into his 30-year mortgage on a $42,000 two-bedroom house.
Mr. Kimbrough, 56, a former driver for a car dealership who is now unemployed, had already moved out when he learned that the foreclosure had been stopped.
“That move really almost destroyed us,” Mr. Kimbrough said. “It was all for nothing.”
Sally Ryan for The New York Times
Mercy James’s rental property in South Bend, Ind., was in foreclosure, but a sheriff’s sale was canceled at the last minute.
By SUSAN SAULNY
Published: March 29, 2009
SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Mercy James thought she had lost her rental property here to foreclosure. A date for a sheriff’s sale had been set, and notices about the foreclosure process were piling up in her mailbox.
Sally Ryan for The New York Times
After Ms. James had her tenants move out, vandals hit the home. It is set for demolition, but the title is still in her name.
Readers' Comments
Readers shared their thoughts on this article.
Read All Comments (61) »
Ms. James had the tenants move out, and soon her white house at the corner of Thomas and Maple Streets fell into the hands of looters and vandals, and then, into disrepair. Dejected and broke, Ms. James said she salvaged but a lesson from her loss.
So imagine her surprise when the City of South Bend contacted her recently, demanding that she resume maintenance on the property. The sheriff’s sale had been canceled at the last minute, leaving the property title — and a world of trouble — in her name.
“I thought, ‘What kind of game is this?’ ” Ms. James, 41, said while picking at trash at the house, now so worthless the city plans to demolish it — another bill for which she will be liable.
City officials and housing advocates here and in cities as varied as Buffalo, Kansas City, Mo., and Jacksonville, Fla., say they are seeing an unsettling development: Banks are quietly declining to take possession of properties at the end of the foreclosure process, most often because the cost of the ordeal — from legal fees to maintenance — exceeds the diminishing value of the real estate.
The so-called bank walkaways rarely mean relief for the property owners, caught unaware months after the fact, and often mean additional financial burdens and bureaucratic headaches. Technically, they still owe on the mortgage, but as a practicality, rarely would a mortgage holder receive any more payments on the loan. The way mortgages are bundled and resold, it can be enormously time-consuming just trying to determine what company holds the loan on a property thought to be in foreclosure.
In Ms. James’s case, the company that was most recently servicing her loan is now defunct. Its parent company filed for bankruptcy and dissolved. And the original bank that sold her the loan said it could not find a record of it.
“It is what some of us think is the next wave of the crisis,” said Kermit Lind, a clinical professor at the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law and an expert on foreclosure law.
For older industrial cities like South Bend, hard times in the mortgage market began before the recent national downturn, as did the problem of bank walkaways. In the case of Ms. James, a home health care administrator, the foreclosure proceedings began in the summer of 2007, when she could not keep up with the adjustable rate on her mortgage.
In Buffalo, where officials said the problem had reached “epidemic” proportions in recent months, the city sued 37 banks last year, claiming they were responsible for the deterioration of at least 57 abandoned homes; the city chose a sampling of houses to include in the lawsuit, even though the banks had walked away from many more foreclosures. So far, five banks have settled.
In Kansas City, Rachel Foley, a lawyer who handles housing cases, said bank walkaways were “a rare occurrence two to three years ago.”
“We’re seeing them dumped more and more at the moment,” she said.
Experts suggest the bank walkaways are most visible in states where foreclosures are processed through the courts and therefore tend to be more transparent. Other states, like Indiana and New York, have court-mandated foreclosures, but roughly half of the states allow foreclosures to proceed without court intervention, making it difficult to accurately count the number of bank walkaways in recent months.
The soft housing market and the vandalism that often occurs when a house sits empty are the two main factors influencing the mortgage holders’ decisions to walk away, said Larry Rothenberg, a lawyer for Weltman, Weinberg & Reis, one of the larger creditors’ rights firms in the country.
“Oftentimes when the foreclosure starts out, it’s a viable property,” Mr. Rothenberg said, “but by the time it gets to a sheriff’s sale, it might not have enough value to justify further expense. We’ve always had cases where property was vandalized or lost value, but they were rare compared to these times.”
The problem seems most acute at the bottom of the market — houses that were inexpensive to begin with — and with investment properties, where investors and banks want speedy closure by writing off bad loans as losses. Banks and investors typically lose 40 percent to 50 percent of their investment on every foreclosure.
Guy Cecala, publisher of Inside Mortgage Finance, an industry newsletter, said some properties had become such liabilities for investors that it was not even worth holding on to them to strip valuable fixtures, like kitchen appliances, toilets and hardware.
“The whole purpose of foreclosure is to take title of the property, sell it and recoup what money you can,” Mr. Cecala said. “It’s just a sign of the times that things are so bad no one wants to take possession of the property.”
In South Bend, boarded-up houses for whom no one has stepped forward are dotting the landscape, adding a fresh layer of blight to communities that were already scarred from the area’s industrial decline.
The city is hoping to create a new type of legal mediation process that would bring together the homeowners and the mortgage holders to settle their disputes while allowing the owners to remain in the home — considered crucial to any stabilization effort.
“I’d say in the last three or four months, we’ve seen dozens of these cases,” said Chuck Leone, the South Bend city attorney. “We see it one of two ways. One is that the bank will simply dismiss the foreclosure complaint. The other is that the mortgage holder will follow through and take a judgment of foreclosure, but then not schedule the property for sheriff’s sale.”
In Ms. James’s case, it has been impossible to determine who canceled the sheriff’s sale, since her last mortgage holder went out of business. Even the city clerk’s records did not provide an answer.
“Nobody has any idea who owns what or who’s responsible,” said Judy Fox, Ms. James’s lawyer at the Notre Dame Legal Aid Clinic. “It’s a very common story.”
Mayor Stephen J. Luecke of South Bend added: “It’s just a crime the way it puts people in limbo. They first off have gone through the grief of losing their house, then they move out and find out that they still own it and have responsibility for it.”
In Jacksonville, Fla., Sylvester Kimbrough Jr. found himself caught in the limbo between foreclosure and ownership last year, 10 years into his 30-year mortgage on a $42,000 two-bedroom house.
Mr. Kimbrough, 56, a former driver for a car dealership who is now unemployed, had already moved out when he learned that the foreclosure had been stopped.
“That move really almost destroyed us,” Mr. Kimbrough said. “It was all for nothing.”
The Canadian Government Does Something Horrible
Abousfian Abdelrazik
Between You, Bev Landriault, Matt David Chapman, Nancy Robinson, Don Chapman, Wylie Coy Ote, Liz Strom, Bruce Mitchell, Paul Antoine Samson, Jason R and David Chapman
David Chapman
Today at 9:04am
Reply
Below is the story about Abousfian Abdelrazik a Canadian citizen of Sudanese Origin who despite being cleared of any links to terrorism is being denied a passport by the Harper government. Abousfian Abdelrazik has been kept out of Canada for 6 years now and has been stuck in the Canadian embassy in Khartoum for over a year. Despite efforts by many Canadians to obtain a plane ticket home for him at great risk to themselves the Harper government keeps changing the rules and upping the ante in preventing Abousfian Abdelrazik from coming home. Think of Tom Hanks in the Terminal. This is an atrocity and a denial of basic human rights from our government. There is no known reason why they the Harper government should prevent him from coming having being cleared. But as noted he does remain on no fly lists but that doesn't prevent the Harper government from bringing him home. There is a growing group on Facebook to work to assist in bringing Abousfian Abdelrazik home. Don't let the Harper government win this attrocity. This is another Maher Arar and when we win it will cost the Canadian taxpayer millions because of the actions of the Harper government.
The story is below from the Facebook http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=69034411293&ref=mf group.
David
Abousfian Abdelrazik is a Canadian citizen of Sudanese origin, who has been anonymously accused of ties to al Qaeda and been put on a UN “no-fly” list. He has never has a chance to defend himself from these accusations.
He was arrested in 2003 (apparently at the request of CSIS, Canada’s intelligence agency) when visiting his mother in Sudan, and spent a total of close to two years in prison where he was interrogated and allegedly tortured. He was ultimately released by the Sudanese authorities, who concluded he was an innocent man. Since then, the RCMP and CSIS have also cleared him of any involvement in terrorism or crime.
Mr. Abdelrazik has never been convicted of any crime, in fact he has never even been charged with anything - and there are no arrest warrants pending against him from any government. Following his release from prison in 2006 the Government of Canada has placed one unreasonable obstacle after another in the way of his coming home to his family in Montreal.
Canada refused to renew his passport (which expired while he was in prison), and has refused to grant him emergency travel documents - even though it is obliged by Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms to provide them. Canada also refused the government of Sudan’s offer to fly him home, and has refused to give him a seat in the private planes of numerous Canadian government officials who have visited Sudan.
The most bizarre injustice came recently. The Canadian government finally said it would provide emergency travel documents, but only if Mr. Abdelrazik (who is destitute and living in the Canadian Embassy in Khartoum) had a paid flight ticket. Moreover, it indicated that any Canadians who loaned or gave him money for the flight home could be charged under Canada’s anti-terrorism legislation (which can carry penalties of up to 10 years in prison upon conviction).
This final outrage was exposed in a March 5, 2009 Globe and Mail article, and there has been a swift, strong response from Canadians across the country. Risking imprisonment, 115 Canadians came together in an unparalleled civil disobedience action and contributed the money needed to purchase the flight ticket (for April 3rd).
Their action was announced at a media conference on March 12th, 2009. The contributors include Stephen Lewis, the former Solicitor General of Canada (Warren Allmand), two-time Progressive Conservative leadership candidate David Orchard, a plethora of university professors, religious leaders, students, seniors, artists, lawyers and other Canadians from across the country.
As word has spread, others have joined the civil disobedience action and the number of those participating in the action had climbed to 145 by March 18th. It currently stands at 197 and continues climbing steadily.
The Canadian government has clearly been caught off-guard, and has failed to provide a coherent response regarding why it is preventing Mr. Abdelrazik from coming home.
Amnesty International has called for his immediate return to Canada. In a letter to Canada's Foreign Minister, the heads of Amnesty Canada wrote the following:
"Minister Cannon, with each passing day the injustice of this case deepens. If there are concerns about Mr. Abdelrazik's possible involvement in or support of terrorist activities, then these could and should be dealt with under the Canadian justice system. Indefinite and tenuous temporary refuge in the face of a serious risk of grave human rights violations is not safety and it is not justice. Amnesty International calls on the Canadian government to ensure Mr. Abdelrazik's return to Canada with no further delay."
Please join your fellow Canadians and call, write, or e-mail your MP and ask them to act now to get the government to allow Abousfian Abdelrazik to come home to his family in Montreal. His children have been missing their father for almost 6 years.
Help Abousfian Abdelrazik get a ticket home
Abousfian Abdelrazik is a Canadian citizen of Sudanese origin, who has been anonymously accused of ties to al Qaeda and been put on a UN “no-fly” list. He has never has a chance to defend himself from...
Between You, Bev Landriault, Matt David Chapman, Nancy Robinson, Don Chapman, Wylie Coy Ote, Liz Strom, Bruce Mitchell, Paul Antoine Samson, Jason R and David Chapman
David Chapman
Today at 9:04am
Reply
Below is the story about Abousfian Abdelrazik a Canadian citizen of Sudanese Origin who despite being cleared of any links to terrorism is being denied a passport by the Harper government. Abousfian Abdelrazik has been kept out of Canada for 6 years now and has been stuck in the Canadian embassy in Khartoum for over a year. Despite efforts by many Canadians to obtain a plane ticket home for him at great risk to themselves the Harper government keeps changing the rules and upping the ante in preventing Abousfian Abdelrazik from coming home. Think of Tom Hanks in the Terminal. This is an atrocity and a denial of basic human rights from our government. There is no known reason why they the Harper government should prevent him from coming having being cleared. But as noted he does remain on no fly lists but that doesn't prevent the Harper government from bringing him home. There is a growing group on Facebook to work to assist in bringing Abousfian Abdelrazik home. Don't let the Harper government win this attrocity. This is another Maher Arar and when we win it will cost the Canadian taxpayer millions because of the actions of the Harper government.
The story is below from the Facebook http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=69034411293&ref=mf group.
David
Abousfian Abdelrazik is a Canadian citizen of Sudanese origin, who has been anonymously accused of ties to al Qaeda and been put on a UN “no-fly” list. He has never has a chance to defend himself from these accusations.
He was arrested in 2003 (apparently at the request of CSIS, Canada’s intelligence agency) when visiting his mother in Sudan, and spent a total of close to two years in prison where he was interrogated and allegedly tortured. He was ultimately released by the Sudanese authorities, who concluded he was an innocent man. Since then, the RCMP and CSIS have also cleared him of any involvement in terrorism or crime.
Mr. Abdelrazik has never been convicted of any crime, in fact he has never even been charged with anything - and there are no arrest warrants pending against him from any government. Following his release from prison in 2006 the Government of Canada has placed one unreasonable obstacle after another in the way of his coming home to his family in Montreal.
Canada refused to renew his passport (which expired while he was in prison), and has refused to grant him emergency travel documents - even though it is obliged by Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms to provide them. Canada also refused the government of Sudan’s offer to fly him home, and has refused to give him a seat in the private planes of numerous Canadian government officials who have visited Sudan.
The most bizarre injustice came recently. The Canadian government finally said it would provide emergency travel documents, but only if Mr. Abdelrazik (who is destitute and living in the Canadian Embassy in Khartoum) had a paid flight ticket. Moreover, it indicated that any Canadians who loaned or gave him money for the flight home could be charged under Canada’s anti-terrorism legislation (which can carry penalties of up to 10 years in prison upon conviction).
This final outrage was exposed in a March 5, 2009 Globe and Mail article, and there has been a swift, strong response from Canadians across the country. Risking imprisonment, 115 Canadians came together in an unparalleled civil disobedience action and contributed the money needed to purchase the flight ticket (for April 3rd).
Their action was announced at a media conference on March 12th, 2009. The contributors include Stephen Lewis, the former Solicitor General of Canada (Warren Allmand), two-time Progressive Conservative leadership candidate David Orchard, a plethora of university professors, religious leaders, students, seniors, artists, lawyers and other Canadians from across the country.
As word has spread, others have joined the civil disobedience action and the number of those participating in the action had climbed to 145 by March 18th. It currently stands at 197 and continues climbing steadily.
The Canadian government has clearly been caught off-guard, and has failed to provide a coherent response regarding why it is preventing Mr. Abdelrazik from coming home.
Amnesty International has called for his immediate return to Canada. In a letter to Canada's Foreign Minister, the heads of Amnesty Canada wrote the following:
"Minister Cannon, with each passing day the injustice of this case deepens. If there are concerns about Mr. Abdelrazik's possible involvement in or support of terrorist activities, then these could and should be dealt with under the Canadian justice system. Indefinite and tenuous temporary refuge in the face of a serious risk of grave human rights violations is not safety and it is not justice. Amnesty International calls on the Canadian government to ensure Mr. Abdelrazik's return to Canada with no further delay."
Please join your fellow Canadians and call, write, or e-mail your MP and ask them to act now to get the government to allow Abousfian Abdelrazik to come home to his family in Montreal. His children have been missing their father for almost 6 years.
Help Abousfian Abdelrazik get a ticket home
Abousfian Abdelrazik is a Canadian citizen of Sudanese origin, who has been anonymously accused of ties to al Qaeda and been put on a UN “no-fly” list. He has never has a chance to defend himself from...
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Ban on travel to Cuba may be lifted
A bipartisan group of senators says Congress is ready to pass legislation to allow all Americans to visit Cuba. Supporters say the move would create thousands of jobs.
By William E. Gibson
April 1, 2009
Reporting from Washington -- A bipartisan group of senators predicted Tuesday that Congress was ready to pass legislation to allow all Americans to travel to Cuba.
Removing the travel ban would produce a burst of tourism, create thousands of jobs and generate as much as $1.6 billion in business a year, an independent research group said.
Cuban Americans can go home more...
Report: Cuba, Venezuela could host Russian bombers
Daily Travel & Deal Blog
A Senate news conference Tuesday and one in the House set for Thursday reflect new attempts to lift the travel ban, a key part of the U.S. trade embargo imposed after Fidel Castro took power in Havana in 1959. The broader trade embargo would remain in place.
Sponsors said the bill would free Americans to travel to the one place in the world they can't go and encourage Cubans to push for democratic reforms by exposing them to new people and information.
"Punishing the American people in our effort to somehow deal a blow to the Castro government has not made any sense at all," said Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.). "At long last, this policy, which has been in place for 50 years and has not worked, will finally be removed."
Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) strongly opposes the measure. He warned that flooding Cuba with tourists and dollars would only sustain the Castro regime.
"Having tourists on Cuban beaches is not going to change the equation of how to create the opportunity for democratic institutions in Cuba," Martinez said. "It's only going to enrich those who are oppressing the Cuban people and provide them with more economic means with which to do that."
Dorgan and fellow sponsors sense an opportunity to change U.S. policy now that President Obama has replaced George W. Bush in the White House and Castro has turned power over to his brother, Raul Castro.
Obama has ordered a review of U.S. policy on Cuba and last month loosened restrictions to let Cuban Americans visit relatives. Journalists can travel to Cuba, as can people on humanitarian missions.
On one side of the debate in Congress are liberal Democrats, Republican free-traders and farm-state members of both parties who seek a wider market for food sales.
Unfettered travel would make it easier to sell more products, they contend. They are backed by the American Farm Bureau Federation and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Senate sponsors include Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) and Michael B. Enzi (R-Wyo.). House sponsors include Bill Delahunt (D-Mass.) and Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.).
On the other side are Cuban Americans and conservatives, who remain alarmed by a communist island 90 miles from the Florida Keys.
If travel limits were lifted, about 3 million Americans would visit Cuba each year, according to a 2002 study by the Brattle Group, economic consultants in Washington.
The increase in air travel, cruises and a ripple effect through the travel industry would produce $1.2 billion to $1.6 billion a year, the group estimated, creating as many as 23,000 jobs.
Martinez accused the Chamber of Commerce and business interests of seeking profits at the expense of freedom and democracy.
"They are not acting from a moral standpoint," he said. "They are simply acting from an economic advantage standpoint."
wgibson@sunsentinel.com
A bipartisan group of senators says Congress is ready to pass legislation to allow all Americans to visit Cuba. Supporters say the move would create thousands of jobs.
By William E. Gibson
April 1, 2009
Reporting from Washington -- A bipartisan group of senators predicted Tuesday that Congress was ready to pass legislation to allow all Americans to travel to Cuba.
Removing the travel ban would produce a burst of tourism, create thousands of jobs and generate as much as $1.6 billion in business a year, an independent research group said.
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A Senate news conference Tuesday and one in the House set for Thursday reflect new attempts to lift the travel ban, a key part of the U.S. trade embargo imposed after Fidel Castro took power in Havana in 1959. The broader trade embargo would remain in place.
Sponsors said the bill would free Americans to travel to the one place in the world they can't go and encourage Cubans to push for democratic reforms by exposing them to new people and information.
"Punishing the American people in our effort to somehow deal a blow to the Castro government has not made any sense at all," said Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.). "At long last, this policy, which has been in place for 50 years and has not worked, will finally be removed."
Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) strongly opposes the measure. He warned that flooding Cuba with tourists and dollars would only sustain the Castro regime.
"Having tourists on Cuban beaches is not going to change the equation of how to create the opportunity for democratic institutions in Cuba," Martinez said. "It's only going to enrich those who are oppressing the Cuban people and provide them with more economic means with which to do that."
Dorgan and fellow sponsors sense an opportunity to change U.S. policy now that President Obama has replaced George W. Bush in the White House and Castro has turned power over to his brother, Raul Castro.
Obama has ordered a review of U.S. policy on Cuba and last month loosened restrictions to let Cuban Americans visit relatives. Journalists can travel to Cuba, as can people on humanitarian missions.
On one side of the debate in Congress are liberal Democrats, Republican free-traders and farm-state members of both parties who seek a wider market for food sales.
Unfettered travel would make it easier to sell more products, they contend. They are backed by the American Farm Bureau Federation and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Senate sponsors include Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) and Michael B. Enzi (R-Wyo.). House sponsors include Bill Delahunt (D-Mass.) and Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.).
On the other side are Cuban Americans and conservatives, who remain alarmed by a communist island 90 miles from the Florida Keys.
If travel limits were lifted, about 3 million Americans would visit Cuba each year, according to a 2002 study by the Brattle Group, economic consultants in Washington.
The increase in air travel, cruises and a ripple effect through the travel industry would produce $1.2 billion to $1.6 billion a year, the group estimated, creating as many as 23,000 jobs.
Martinez accused the Chamber of Commerce and business interests of seeking profits at the expense of freedom and democracy.
"They are not acting from a moral standpoint," he said. "They are simply acting from an economic advantage standpoint."
wgibson@sunsentinel.com
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