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Vol. 71/No. 20      May 21, 2007

 
Uproar in Canada against torture in Afghanistan
 
BY BEVERLY BERNARDO  
TORONTO, May 3—Ottawa's participation in the imperialist war in Afghanistan dominated discussion in the Canadian parliament last week, as the Conservative minority government sought to defend itself against opposition attacks. An article in the April 23 Globe and Mail provoked the furor in reporting that Afghan prisoners captured by Canadian troops had been abused and tortured after being handed over to the custody of Afghan government forces.

In interviewing 30 men recently captured in Kandahar, Globe reporters found that “Afghans detained by Canadian soldiers and sent to Kandahar's notorious jails say they were beaten, whipped, starved, frozen, choked, and subjected to electric shocks during interrogation.”

Canadian forces regularly hold detainees for a few days of questioning at Kandahar Air Field, and then give them to the National Directorate of Security, Afghanistan's intelligence police.

Mahmad Gul, 33, an impoverished farmer, said he was interrogated for three days in May 2006, without any meals, at Zhari District Centre, a small town west of Kandahar. Gul says his “tormentors were the Afghan police, but the Canadian soldiers who visited him between beatings had surely heard his screams.”

Defense Minister Gordon O’Connor’s has made conflicting statements on whether the International Committee of the Red Cross was monitoring abuse of detainees by Afghan security forces, and when the Canadian government learned of the allegations of torture. These statements have led to calls for his resignation coming from both opposition parties, as well as the editors of the Globe and Mail—a newspaper that speaks for an influential section of the ruling class in Canada.

An editorial in the April 27 Globe expressed concern that Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s refusal to force O'Connor to resign is “undermining confidence in this country’s important mission in Afghanistan… and in the Conservative government.”

On April 24 the House of Commons defeated 150-134 a non-binding resolution introduced by the Liberals to serve notice to other NATO nations that it intends to withdraw the 2,500 Canadian troops from southern Afghanistan by 2009. The Liberals, who ran the government when Canadian troops were first sent to Afghanistan, left the door open for Ottawa to assume other military tasks in Afghanistan in 2009, after the current commitment of troops ends.

New Democratic Party members of parliament say they voted against the Liberal resolution because they are for immediate withdrawal of Canadian troops from Afghanistan.  
 
 
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