Why was it necessary for Canadians to raise their voices over the detention of Omar Khadr in the US torture camp on Cuba?  Why did the Canadian governemnt not spring into action when it learned that Mr. Khadr was in US custody (one should hesitate to call what is happening at the Guantanamo Bay detention centre custody).   The US is certainly not a custodian of the human lives at Guantanamo.  Humans and their extended entities do not abuse or neglect the legitimate needs of people in their custody.  Those who do are liable for prosecution: so are government operatives who torture and fail to support citizens.

 

The US however claims to have the right to go beyond abuse and neglect to inflict sufferuing on teh detainees in teh name of defending the American people.  Canaduianbs are at war, and the legacy of the G.W Bush administration – financial and legislative exploitation of war time – has been at the heart of the Harper Government’s agenda.

 

Mr Khadr is paying the price for his racial (and perhaps religious) identity. while Canadians consent to the erosion of own human rights right here in Canada under the guise of hunting down and destroying terrorists.  There isn’t enough slight of hand to cover the violence and destruction of lives by police and armed forces.  Mr. Khadr should have long been repatriated (for all the reasons put forward by experienced jurists), and just because he is a Canadian.  The recent case of Ms. Martin, repatriated from a Mexican jail, shows us that governments will not stand up for us without being pushed.

 

 But the Canadian Government  is intent on showing its adulterous and perverse character.  Sharing a bed of imperialistic errors and paranoid xenophobia is far more important to some well-placed Canadians than the maintenance of our rights.  This is no surprise: Canadians seem to be silent about justice when they have to share country and resources with all the people in this great land.  A government that thinks that justice comes out of a reliance on force (police and amed forces) and the shifting pronouncements of the Supreme Court cannot but fail its citizens again