OTTAWA—Jason Kenney’s scornful rebuke of Amnesty International for criticizing his government’s snitch line for “war criminals” dodging deportation orders was laced with an especially acidic tone.Even for a tough-on-crime Conservative immigration minister.
On ministerial and MP letterhead, Kenney’s office on Tuesday released an “open letter” to the advocacy organization, slamming it for what Kenney calls its “ridiculous” suggestions the government was out of line.
“When I joined AI in high school, it was to defend the rights of political dissidents like Andrei Sakharov and to oppose brutal regimes,” including those still doing bloody business in Iran and North Korea,” wrote Kenney.
Kenney charged Amnesty with “squandering the moral authority accrued in those campaigns on targeting one of the most generous immigration systems in the world, and protesting the actions of Canadian public servants applying rules and laws that far exceed our international obligations.”
The letter follows an equally acerbic response last winter by Kenney, a Catholic, to Catholic bishops who criticized his proposed “human smuggling” bill to deal with mass boat arrivals of refugees.
The bishops’ criticisms reflected a “long tradition of ideological bureaucrats who work for the bishops’ conference producing political letters signed by pastors who may not have specialized knowledge in certain areas of policy,” he said at the time.
In an interview with the Star, Kenney said his aim is to “set the record straight.”
“I’m of the view that if you’re in a political forum making unfounded and unfair criticisms of government policy, expect to be called on it.
“My model in this is Stéphane Dion’s letter writing campaign against Jacques Parizeau and the PQ. I think it was very instructive to see a minister point out flaws in his adversary’s arguments. I think that’s what democratic discourse is all about . . . If they want to have a debate on these issues, fine. Let’s have one. That means I get my say.”
Kenney denies it’s personal.
But try telling that to Amnesty’s secretary general, Alex Neve, who says he was “taken aback by the personal attacking tone of the letter.”
Since he was 15 in high school at the Athol Murray College of Notre Dame in Saskatchewan, talking friends into letter writing campaigns, Kenney has considered himself a human rights activist.
He made “modest” donations of about $25 to Amnesty and responded to their mailed-out alerts soliciting help in targeting dictators.
He recalls being a “pretty diligent letter writer” on behalf of Tibetan religious and political prisoners, and continued that advocacy work when he went to college in San Francisco.
Kenney says it continued until about 10 or 15 years ago, and doesn’t recall any one reason why he stopped, but said “I think it is fair to say that certainly in recent years I’ve been unimpressed by a dilution of their traditional focus on the victims of totalitarian states and tyrannical societies and I think my letter expresses my concern in that regard.”
Kenney denies feeling a sense of personal betrayal when he became one of Amnesty’s targets.
“I just think they’re way off the mark.
“The Amnesty International brand still has a great deal of vestigial moral authority as a voice for human rights and I think it’s being misapplied when the organization uses its voice and scarce resources to focus on criticizing what is probably the fairest immigration system in the world when it comes to deporting people we believe are complicit in war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
Amnesty Canada posted a reply to the open letter Wednesday, denying Kenney’s accusation of “self-congratulatory moral preening.”
“We certainly regret that you see our concerns in that light for they are entirely and solely based on Canada’s international human rights obligations,” says the letter, signed by Neve and another Amnesty official.
Neve says he expected a more “measured” response from a government minister and stressed that Amnesty’s original letter made clear that Canada’s overarching international obligation is to try human rights violators in criminal courts, not use the immigration system to remove them because “in very many instances, what will happen at the end of deportation is nothing,” said Neve.
“That is wrong and fails to live up to our international legal obligations.”
Origin
Source: Toronto Star
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