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March 24, 2010 - No. 61
Quebec Public Sector
Impressive Expression of the Popular Will
Montreal, March 20, 2010:
Mass demonstration of more than 75,000 Quebec public sector workers.
Quebec Public Sector
• Impressive Expression of the Popular Will
• A New
Direction for Quebec! Develop a Pro-Social Program by Demanding: Stop
Paying the Rich and Increase Funding for Social Programs! -
Marxist-Leninist Party of Quebec (PMLQ)
• Government Hypocrisy Knows No Bounds
- Pierre Soublière
Human Rights Yes! Cold War Democracy No!
• U.S. Human Rights Record in
2009
• The U.S. and Human Rights Violations: A
Necessary Report
• The Practice of Torture by U.S.
Is a Negative Influence on the World
• Another Unpardonable Infringement on the
Sovereignty and Dignity of the DPRK - Korean Central News Agency
• Truncated Rights: Just Press the Button and
See - Elsa Claro, Granma International
• Note to Our Readers
Quebec Public Sector
Impressive Expression of the Popular Will
On March 20, more than 75,000 public sector workers
demonstrated in downtown Montreal under the banner "Together for Public
Services." In the
face of ongoing attacks on the public sector workers and their unions
they expressed their determination to solve the problems of society on
the
basis that health care and education are rights,
as is access to all the social services the people require.
Answering the call of the Common Front, contingents came
from Abitibi-Témiscamingue, Quebec, Trois-Rivières,
the Outaouais, Saguenay-Lac St-Jean, the Laurentides,
Lanaudière,
Ile-de-la-Madeleine, northern Quebec and elsewhere. With their green
flags emblazoned with the slogan "Together for Public Services," they
formed a massive sea of demonstrators.
After marching along Peel and Ste-Catherine streets the workers rallied
in front of Premier Jean Charest's office to present a message to the
government just ten days before their contracts are set to expire: the
government must stop the destruction of public services, take up its
social responsibility and ensure quality public services for all. This
was the main message of the Common Front union representatives, Michel
Arsenault (FTQ), Claudette Carbonneau (CSN) and Dominique Verreault
(SISP), all of whom emphasized that the struggle of the public service
workers is
crucial to the well-being of society. FTQ president Michel Arsenault
captured the spirit of the demonstrators when he began his speech
saying, "What a way to end the week!" referring to Charest's
disinformation campaign against the workers the previous week which
targetted the FTQ in particular he said. He denounced the
disinformation spread
by the media that public services are nothing but a burden on society.
"There is
nothing further from the truth," he said. On the contrary, public
services are an investment for future generations and it is the
government's responsibility to guarantee them, he added.
For the last five years, the more than 550,000 public
sector workers have been employed under a contract imposed by an
anti-labour
decree of the Charest government which allows it to privatize the most
profitable components of health
care to benefit private
companies. The contract was imposed on December 15, 2005 and
expires on March 31. Five years later, the struggle of the public
sector workers
is as important as ever to block Jean Charest's nation-wrecking agenda.
Workers who spoke with TML reporters at the demonstration
pointed
out that the Charest government and its representatives no longer
respect the established arrangements of the negotiation process.
They demand that the workers submit to them but they themselves will
not. No serious
discussion has taken place in the hundreds of hours of meetings with
the various unions and their employers, despite the grand statements of
Monique Gagnon-Tremblay, president of the Treasury Board, on her "firm
willingness to work doubly hard to come to a negotiated settlement by
March 31, 2010." On top
of the contempt the government has shown towards the workers' efforts
to
approach the negotiations in good faith, they rightly
wonder what attacks the Charest government is preparing while its
representatives remain silent on the substantive issues.
 Several workers told TML
that the myth of scarcity of state funds is invoked every time they
put forward proposals to
increase funding for social programs, regardless of whether there is an
economic crisis or not. It is a
dogma that cannot be questioned
without the risk of being accused of being "privileged" or "wealthy"
and refusing to do one's part for the "prosperity of Quebec." The
government will use the next budget to continue to put workers on the
defensive by hysterically brandishing the spectre of the collapse of
the Quebec economy, workers pointed out.
At the demonstration public sector workers expressed
their
determination to block the attempts to make them abandon their claims
and conciliate with the neo-liberal agenda. Workers are aware that when
they demand investments in health care, education and social programs,
they are taking up social
responsibility for a nation building project.
"How members of society are treated defines who we are
as a
nation," Genevieve Royer, a school teacher and a candidate for the
Marxist-Leninist Party of Quebec said.
"The public service workers are elaborating their
demands according
to the needs of the people for whom they are responsible," she said.
Jean Charest is using the power of the state and the
media to block
all discussion on the way forward for Quebec. The mass demonstration of
the public sector workers smashed the wall of silence around their
demands and was a vigorous expression of their opposition to the
government's disinformation,
attempts to criminalize
the workers' unions and spread defeatism. It was an impressive
expression of the popular will.
A New Direction for Quebec! Develop a Pro-Social
Program by
Demanding: Stop Paying the Rich and Increase Funding for Social
Programs!
- Marxist-Leninist Party of Quebec
(PMLQ), March 20, 2010 -
The
PMLQ joins with all those seeking solutions to the problems so as to
open the path to the progress of Quebec society, where the
rights of all are recognized by virtue of their being human. Clearly,
public
sector negotiations and the pending budget of the Charest government
are an occasion for a new
confrontation between the people and those who are wrecking social
programs and weakening the economic base in their attempts to drag
society backwards. This confrontation concerns the entire
society and it is the future of Quebec which is at stake.
 The
PMLQ condemns the government, the mass-media owned
by the
wealthy sectors it represents and different "champions" of the
retrogression who seek to impose defeatism by spreading lies and
irrationality. They talk about the "the capacity to pay" as an
abstraction which they place above all other
considerations. These forces blame the seniors, youth, teachers,
construction
workers and everyone else to incite the most backward
sentiments, thereby undermining all public discourse on the real
alternative to advance Quebec society.
None of their lies can hide the fact that the cause of
the
squandering of the social wealth and nation-wrecking is the pilfering
of the public purse to pay the rich, not "baby-boomers." The majority
of the $40 billion "lost" by the Caisse de dépôt et de
placement du
Québec wound up in the coffers of
U.S. and other foreign banks and investors, not in the pockets of the
workers.
Education, the well-being of seniors and a health care
system that
maintains a healthy population are not a cost to be reduced, they are
key elements of economic development and the mark of an advanced
society.
By refusing to abdicate their rights as public service
providers,
public sector workers are exposing this anti-social, anti-national and
anti-human propaganda. It is as clear that the media
hype about "corruption in the construction industry" and the offensive
to slander unions in general is
used to hide the fact that the government and the rich are the ones who
are corrupt and divert public discourse into dead-ends. It is an
attempt to divide the working class and its allies and attack their
capacity to resist the anti-social offensive, especially with the
intensified assault being prepared by the rich and the
Charest government.
Workers as well as students and all those fighting for
a sound
future can defeat the lies, defeatism and the irrational and anti-human
propaganda and the Charest government's anti-social and anti-national
plans by continuing their resistance and championing a pro-social
program, one which opens society's
path to progress.
In opposition to the wall of propaganda of the party in
power and
the official opposition in the service of the rich minority, the
pro-social perspective is the unifying and mobilizing force which
enables us to go from one step to the next to provide Quebec with a new
direction. The working class and
its allies are developing the pro-social program and concrete proposals
through the program: Stop Paying the Rich! Increase Funding for
Social Programs!
An Attack Against Public Sector Workers
Is an
Attack Against the Entire Society!
All Out to Support the Public
Sector Workers!
Government Hypocrisy Knows No Bounds
- Pierre Soublière -
The massive demonstration of the public sector workers
in Montreal
was a very fitting response to a government whose hypocrisy knows
no bounds.
On the eve of the event, the President of the Treasury
Board and
Minister responsible for Government Administration, Monique
Gagnon-Tremblay said it was important for both sides "to continue
negotiations to reach an agreement by March 31." She added
"demonstrating is good, but negotiating is better." One
really wonders if Ms. Gagnon-Tremblay comes from another planet, since
it was her government that flat-out refused the demands put forward by
the public sector workers and submitted a list of concessions it wanted
to impose on top of the lost wages and working conditions already
affecting the sector.
For example, she dares to declare that state
employees have
suffered "no layoffs," when the problem in health care and education is
precisely that it is increasingly difficult to recruit qualified people
to work in these fields as working conditions become increasingly
unlivable. In the case of the civil servants,
the problem of job security is precisely a result of the trend toward a
casual employment status. It goes without saying that the crisis in
health care and education are reflected everywhere, that is, a criminal
neglect of the needs of the population.
This demonstration is like a breath of fresh air after
five years of
collective silence imposed by the Charest government's decree, which
expires on March 31. It is also part of a combination of actions that
include, in some cases, a one-day strike, local events to mark the
official end of the decree and, amongst others,
the application of the collective agreement in the workplace. The
public sector workers are upholding the tradition of the Quebec working
class to defend itself and put forward working and living conditions
that favour them and the society.
In the context of the anti-social offensive in all
sectors -- public
and private -- the workers are not interested in sitting down with a
government and monopolies which impose concessions and unacceptable
rollbacks. Workers are determined to find an alternative path. The
public sector demonstration played a big
role to overcome the sense of hopelessness and pessimism which the
government seeks to impose on the workers. We are determined to find
new solutions to the government's current dead-end which blocks the
development of society.
Human Rights Yes! Cold War Democracy No!
U.S. Human Rights Record in 2009
The State Department of the United States released its
Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2009 on March 11, 2010.
As in previous
years, the reports are full of accusations of the human rights
situation in more than 190 countries and regions, but turn a blind eye
to, dodge and even cover up
rampant human rights abuses of the U.S. itself. Decrying the stance of
the U.S. to once again pose as "the world judge of human rights,"
China's Information Office of the State Council has
published a report entitled "The Human Rights Record of the United
States
in 2009." The report has been prepared to help people
around
the world understand the real situation of human rights in the United
States. For the full text, click here.
The U.S. and Human Rights Violations:
A Necessary Report
Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa recently suggested
replying immediately to the U.S. reports on Human Rights, demanding
that
Washington detail its own violations, committed everywhere since the
U.S. considers it has the right to criticize, reproach and/or
condemn all governments on this issue. President
Correa urged all nations and progressive organizations and leaders to
start collecting information on U.S. violations of human rights.
This is undoubtedly a huge task since there is such
overwhelming evidence against the United States in almost all Latin
American countries that suffered directly or indirectly because of
Washington's support for regional dictatorships, Radio Havana Cuba
points out in an editorial.
Just in the last century, 20,000 Latin American army
officers were trained in torture at the infamous School of the Americas
(also known as the School of Assassins) either in Panama or in their
classrooms, now in Columbus, Georgia.
 Thus, specialists received
"special knowledge and
training services" in which, for instance, prisoners were subjected
to inconceivable forms of humiliation and torture including the sadly
well-known methods of Dan Mitrione -- applying electric shocks to
victims' genitalia or the CIA's waterboarding
technique and other methods taken from a terrifying torture manual.
"Some of these cruelly inhumane procedures --
unfortunately adopted with enthusiasm by some other criminal
governments and even legalized in the United States -- were authorized
for use by the George W. Bush administration in fighting against
'suspicious-looking terrorists.' Some days ago, for instance,
Bush's former adviser, Karl Rove, not only recognized them in public
but also felt proud of such 'economical and practical methods" that
were capable of 'breaking down the prisoner's will' without leaving
visible traces on the victims. Plenty could be said about this topic,
which is only a simple point on an endless
list. Nevertheless, these unacceptable aberrations called 'techniques'
by their defenders also violate their own human rights, turning them
into miserable human scum," Radio Havana Cuba notes.
Prisoner camps such as Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo and
many other secret Black Sites turned into centres of torture with
European complicity and silence, the so-called Educated Europe, must
be added to the report as well, Radio Havana Cuba says.
"Most importantly, we must add the daily atrocities
committed by the U.S. 'justice' system in the case of the Cuban Five --
real fighters against terrorism," Radio Havana Cuba concludes.
The Practice of Torture by the United States Is a
Negative Influence on the World
 The reaction of the United States
and its allies to the
September 11, 2001 attacks by intensifying the use of torture in their
investigations has had a highly negative influence on the rest of the
world, stated Manfred Nowak, the UN special rapporteur on torture.
"Many countries felt that if even the United States is
officially torturing, why should we not torture," the expert
explained during a press conference in Geneva, in which he took stock
of his five years of his mandate.
Nowak highlighted the contradiction between the fact
that the United States is seen as the country "that invented human
rights," while he added that the "entire world knows that the United
States practiced torture although [the government of then President
George W. Bush] denies it."
Likewise, Nowak referred to the most widespread kinds of
torture currently being used, including sleep deprivation,
which is perpetrated at the U.S. detention centre for terrorism
suspects at its naval base in Guantánamo Bay (Cuba), where
prisoners are
woken up every 15 minutes.
Nowak stated that the principal reason given for the use
of torture is to obtain a confession, a statement that will later be
used in trials.
Another Unpardonable Infringement
on the Sovereignty
and Dignity of the DPRK
- Korean Central News Agency, March 13,
2010 -
In a commentary dated March 13,
the Korean
Central News Agency pointed
out that
the meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Council now underway in
Geneva is being used by the United States to cook up an anti-DPRK
resolution which calls for maintaining the "special rapporteur on human
rights issue in north Korea."
This is another unpardonable
infringement on the sovereignty and dignity of the DPRK and a wanton
violation of human rights and democracy, KCNA points out. Far from
tarnishing the image
of the dignified DPRK, it
is a ridiculous burlesque orchestrated by the U.S., it adds. The
commentary continues:
Human rights mean national sovereignty and vice versa.
 The U.S. has long wantonly violated the
sovereignty and
rights of other countries and peoples, abusing human rights and
democracy, the universally accepted idea of the international
community, as levers for aggression and interference
in their internal affairs.
This outrageous "human rights" racket of the U.S. has
mercilessly trampled on the democratic rights of many countries
and nations of the world to set up social systems suited to their
actual conditions and in line with the requirements of their peoples to
live an independent life.
The original aim sought by the international community
in creating the UN Human Rights Council in 2006 which replaced the UN
Committee on Human Rights is to put an end to the persistent arbitrary
practices of the U.S. in the international arena dealing with human
rights.
At first the U.S. worked hard to scuttle the efforts to
create the above-said council, but, finding it hard to thwart them any
longer, made a U-turn all of a sudden in a bid to achieve its sinister
aim. It pretended to be a supporter of the move and joined it.
What the U.S. has done since it made its way to the
council is that it has only defended the human rights abuses by such
countries as Israel and infringed on the sovereignty of anti-U.S.
independent countries including Cuba. By keeping "special human rights
rapporteurs," in particular, as its mere marionettes
the U.S. seeks to politicize human rights issues and deal with them
according to double-standards in a selective
manner.
The DPRK has never recognized the ghost-like "special
rapporteur on human rights issue in north Korea," a leftover of the
already defunct UN Committee on Human Rights, and categorically turned
down the illegal resolutions on the DPRK.
If the UN Human Rights Council is to develop its
activities as desired by the international community opposed to
politicization, selectivity and double-standards on human rights, it
should appoint, to begin with, a special rapporteur taking issue with
the U.S., the world's worst human rights abuser, and adopt a
resolution critical of the U.S.
The U.S. is a tundra of human rights as it has the
world's worst human rights record: Rights to existence of hundreds of
millions of toiling people are wantonly abused due to the unlimited
pursuit of profits by the privileged circles including monopoly
plutocrats, cowardly murders including gun-related crimes
are daily occurrences and racist forces are so rampant that even
the president of the U.S. comments on the racial
discrimination by white police.
It was the U.S. that invaded Afghanistan and Iraq after
deceiving mankind and turned them into mayhems of terrorism and
genocide. It built secret prisons in different parts of the world,
mercilessly killing innocent people and forcing humiliation and
disgrace on them. The brigandish "war on terrorism" launched
by it is an unprecedented war to deprive other countries of their
national sovereignty and a horrible war to abuse human rights.
The international arena dealing with human rights should
naturally force the above-said war criminals and worst human rights
abusers to stand trial and face a stern punishment.
The U.S. would be well advised to stop the political
charade and mind its own business as it may cause the above-said
council to meet the same miserable end as that of the previous
committee.
Truncated Rights: Just Press the Button and See
- Elsa Claro, Granma International, March
16, 2010 -
In early March, the tribunal created by and named after
the philosopher
Bertrand Russell met in Barcelona. It was
originally constituted to judge the war crimes committed in Vietnam,
and subsequently in Latin America, and other lamentable situations
around the world. This time, the Russell Tribunal issued
a ruling on the European Union, finding it guilty of failing to
influence Israel in order to prevent the launch of Operation Cast Lead
which, from December 2008 to January 2009, caused the deaths of 1,412
Palestinians and destroyed the scant infrastructure of the Gaza Strip.
The testimony of Belgian Euro Deputy
Véronique de Keyser, member of the Flemish Socialist Party,
revealed in those sessions that the European Commission knew beforehand
about the plan to bombard Gaza, because former Israeli foreign minister
Tzipi Livni had personally communicated Tel Aviv's military intentions
during a meeting with the EU
Foreign Affairs Commission. That body, far from trying to avert the
military operation, agreed to strengthen its ties with Israel. For that
reason, this moral court, comprising prominent individuals from very
diverse tendencies and creeds, considers the EU to be complicit in the
massacre.
That outcome inevitably leads one to the assumption
that if the countries that currently make up the EU had had a "common
position" of pressure and criticism with respect to the Pinochet coup
in Chile in the 1970s, or to any of the dictatorships in the American
Southern Cone, it is possible that those
illegitimate, bloody, dehumanized processes would not have lasted so
long.
With the honorable exception of countries like Olof
Palme's Sweden, the allegedly hyper-democratic parliamentary deputies
of the Parliament that brings together representatives of the European
Community in ideological groups that profess such concern about right
and wrong, did not oppose with
the necessary force the U.S-authorized barbarity in those countries.
These are not irrelevant events, because what occurred in Honduras last
year confirms the duplicity or moral weakness of those who utilize the
big stick and falsification against persons in their sights, based on
their own decision or as part of the
pro-empire (read USA) chorus.
An initial impulse prompted them to condemn the
kidnapping of Zelaya and the usurpation of his post, but they did not
hesitate to follow the steps oriented by Hillary Clinton and right-wing
extremists in the United States, and proceeded to withdraw the timid
sanctions they had announced. They repeated
the permissiveness shown toward Argentina, Uruguay, Chile and Central
American nations in the 1970s and '80s, when in all of those countries
people were being disappeared, tortured or killed, including Americans
and European citizens.
Except for one or two trials, almost always promoted by
relatives, and in a bilateral context, there was no condemnation of
usurpers who forcibly removed from power governments elected in the
sacrosanct Western style of representative democracy, nor was there any
condemnation (or not with the
necessary force) of the inexcusable events that continue to affect
thousands of families 30 years later. Because, while some at least
recovered their grandchildren, many were not even able to bury the
bodies of their loved ones who were thrown into the sea or into
communal, Nazi-style graves. That is something that
is being uncovered today in Colombia, and admitted by the paramilitary
killers themselves, without anybody in Europe being scandalized.
In a 1980 study, the Latin Americanist Lars Schoultz
found that U.S. foreign aid had "tended to flow disproportionately to
Latin American governments which tortured their citizens... the worst
violators of basic human rights in the hemisphere." More extensive
studies undertaken by Edward Herman found
the same correlation, and also suggested an explanation. It is not
surprising that U.S. aid tends to be correlated with a climate
favorable to business, which by and large improves with the
assassination of workers and farmers' leaders and human rights
activists, plus monumental violations of human rights, Noam Chomsky
noted in an article in which he also stated that torture was the least
of many crimes of aggression, terror, subversion and economic
strangulation that have darkened U.S. history, as is the case with
other major powers.
Giving an example of his formulation, the prominent
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor said that in the
last 60 years, the CIA employed up to "one billion dollars per year"
for its reprehensible methods of obtaining information by inflicting
unbearable pain on its victims. Those
methods were preferably employed outside of the United States, and the
most famous facilities for such practices were the secret prisons set
up by George Bush Jr. in Europe, where they were tolerated by the local
governments.
A November 2, 2005 article in the Washington Post was
the first to refer to the fact that the CIA was holding suspected
members of Al Qaeda in various Eastern European, Asian and Middle
Eastern countries. These "black sites," as they were called at the
time, emerged after September 11, 2001,
and the stopovers made in various countries by U.S. planes transporting
those individuals, deprived of all their rights, caught the attention
of European civic organizations, which exposed them.
When the matter assumed scandalous proportions, the
European Council instructed the Swiss senator Richard
Marty to head up an investigative commission on the issue. His first
report appeared nine months later (June 2006), and stated that 14
European nations, including Switzerland,
were actively or passively involved in the detention and transfer of
those prisoners. A second finding exhaustively confirmed what had been
found.
In late 2007, Bush defended the CIA's methods, just as
Richard Cheney did 12 months ago, and as Karl Rove -- the power behind
the throne of the Republican administration and one of the devisers of
the kidnapping/torture/murder network justified by the attacks on the
World Trade Center -- has
just done this March, in an interview with the BBC. This is an
individual capable of insisting on the usefulness of torture and of
affirming with pride that he had created a legal framework for that
abhorrent practice.
Precedents of the implementation of psychological and
physical punishment are much older, but it was in the 1950s that
it became systematic. According to authorized studies, what was
uncovered in the photographs taken at Abu Ghraib prison after the
invasion of Iraq in 2003, had already been
put into practice in other locations -- Latin America, for example. In
no case has Europe reacted vigorously to those acts of perversion.
It would seem that researcher Allan Nairn, considered
by various eminent U.S. figures to be serious, objective and
courageous, had those precedents in mind when he said: "What Obama's
(ban on torture) cancels is merely that small percentage of torture
that is not being engaged in by Americans,
but it maintains the overwhelming entirety of torture as a system,
employed by foreigners under U.S. patronage."
He was referring both to soldiers trained in places
like the School of the Americas by gendarmes acquired in occupied
countries, and mercenaries who, as "contractors," take charge of dirty
work, such as inflicting suffering on defenseless human beings.
Barack Obama suspended the application of torture
shortly after becoming president, but he did not proceed to punish the
guilty, thus leaving intact the systems that continue to function both
inside and outside the country. On March 10 in Geneva, Manfred Nowak,
UN special rapporteur on torture,
criticized the U.S. president for that very reason, accusing him of not
having investigated charges of torture under the Bush administration,
despite the fact that the United States, as a signatory to the
International Convention on Torture, has legal responsibilities
requiring an exhaustive investigation and bringing the
guilty to justice.
The fact that Karl Rove, smiling and sarcastic, can
venture to say that he doesn't care that weapons of mass destruction
were not found in Iraq and, with murderous vehemence, has defended the
use of torture as a method for obtaining questionable revelations,
indicates that Nowak is right.
Rancid Europe
Nowak is an Austrian attorney who, as the UN special
rapporteur, has visited various prisons throughout the world, including
those of certain prominent countries. Last year he informed the media
that several nations had refused to allow him to examine their prisons.
In any event,
he discovered that approximately 10 million people were being held in
unacceptable conditions. "The majority of them are in conditions that
violate human dignity," he affirmed. One million of that total
comprised children aged 9 to 10, who were detained with adults, subject
to diverse abuse or beatings by the jailers
themselves as a method of "disciplining them."
International organizations have confirmed these extreme
findings and refer, moreover, to the detention of immigrants, because
the European Union has 180 prisons for holding foreigners without
documents, in addition to those imprisoned in ordinary jails.
The problems with prisons in Europe are many, according
to another report, reflecting overpopulation and lack of hygiene, in
addition to insufficient personnel and a lack of safety, including
sexual attacks, issues that are touched only by the alternative media.
In 2008, these irregularities prompted several
hundred prison officials to demonstrate outside the Council of
Ministers in Brussels to protest those anomalies, which also lead to a
high rate of suicide. Prison suicides occur above all in the United
Kingdom, Norway, France and Slovenia, according to the study.
The above is deplorable, as is the content of an Amnesty
International dossier: "The role played by some European states in
secret handovers and detentions has wavered between 'active
participation and tacit connivance.' European agents have detained or
held suspects and left them under the custody
of the United States without any legal process. They directly
participated in illegal arrests; in one case, helping U.S. agents
kidnap a suspect in the middle of the street in Italy before his
extraordinary handover to Egypt. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA) has freely used European airports to operate aircraft
which transported victims of extraordinary handovers, hooded and
chained, with the aim of subjecting them to interrogation and abuse
while they were held incommunicado in secret prisons all over the
world, including Europe. Agents of European states took advantage of
the illegal detention of some of the individuals
held to interrogate them without doing anything to alert their families
as to their whereabouts or to try to solve the illegal detention, which
in and of itself constitutes a human rights violation.
The investigations undertaken discovered the existence,
from 2003 to 2005, of CIA-run secret prisons in Europe, where detainees
were the victims of forced disappearances, and were held "in conditions
that would constitute torture or other cruel, inhuman and degrading
treatment."
Let's place an ellipsis at the end of this account
which, sadly, is a long and compromising one for those immaculately
dressed persons who issue unfounded statements solely because they are
not in agreement with the accused, despite the large volume of dirt
swept under their carpets.
Note to Our Readers
The Editorial and Technical staff of TML are taking a
spring break on the occasion of the celebrations of the 40th
anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of Canada
(Marxist-Leninist). Publication of TML
will resume on Monday, April 5. Readers
will nonetheless be informed about any update to the website.
With best wishes,
Editorial and Technical Staff
Read The Marxist-Leninist
Daily
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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