Day: September 29, 2023

Suella Braverman has made beastliness a trait in British politics.  The UK Home Secretary, fed on the mush and mash of anti-refugee sentiment, has been frantically trying to find her spot in the darkness of inhumanity.  

Audaciously, and with grinding ignorance, she persists in her rather grisly attempts to kill the central assumptions of international refugee protection, flawed as they might be, elevating the role of the sovereign state to that of tormenter and high judge.  In doing so Braverman shows herself to believe in the ultimate prerogative of the state to be decisively cruel rather than consistently humane.  The result is a tyrant’s feast, bound to make a good impression in every country keen to seal off their borders from those seeking sanctuary.    

In her speech to the American Enterprise Institute, Braverman came up with a novel reading on how the United Nations Refugee Convention of 1951 has been applied of late.  In her mind, there had been “an interpretive shift” towards generosity in awarding refugee status when, conspicuously, the opposite is true.  She was particularly irked by those irritating judges who had endorsed “something more akin to a definition of ‘discrimination’”.  All in all, “uncontrolled and illegal migration” posed “an existential challenge for the political and cultural institutions of the West.”

Lip service is paid to the rights of asylum seekers, though not much.  She shows a keen fondness for the term “illegal migrants” such as those who made their way to the Italian island of Lampedusa, proceeding to sleep on the streets, pilfer food and clash with police.  “Where individuals are being persecuted, it is right we offer sanctuary,” she conceded.  “But we will not be able to sustain an asylum system if in effect, simply being gay, or a woman, or fearful of discrimination in your own country of origin, is sufficient to qualify for protection.”  

Trust Braverman to turn universal human rights into a matter of gender or sexual politics.  She further teases out the battle lines by attacking the “misguided dogma of multiculturalism” that “makes no demands of the incomer to integrate”.  Such a failure had happened because “it allowed people to come to our society and live parallel lives in it.” 

A quick read of the definition of “refugee” in the Convention stipulates a number of considerations: “a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particularly social group or political opinion”; that the person is outside their country of nationality and unwilling to “avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.”

In 2022, a mere 1.5% of the 74,751 asylum claims lodged in the UK cited sexual orientation in their applications.  The countries most prominently featured as points of origin for the applicants were Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nigeria.  It remains unclear how many were accepted as a direct result of mentioning sexual orientation, but these numbers hardly constitute a radical shift.

The UNHCR was unimpressed by the Home Secretary’s AEI show, though hampered by the language of moderation.  “The need is not for reform, or more restrictive interpretation, but for stronger and more consistent application of the convention and its underlying principle of responsibility-sharing.”  The body suggested that expediting the backlog of asylum claims in the UK might be one way of approaching it, something Braverman has failed, rather spectacularly, to do.

The Refugee Convention has provided fine sport for abuse and blackening for over two decades, its critics always bleating about the fact that the circumstances of its remit had changed.  A list of Australian Prime Ministers (John Howard, Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Tony Abott, just to name a few) would surely have to top the league, always taking issue with a document regarded as creaky and unfit to deal with the arrival of “unlawful non-citizens”. From the implementation of the Pacific Solution to the creation of such odious categories as Temporary Protection Visas, the protective principles of the Convention became effigies to a system that was being forcibly retired.   

In Britain, New Labour’s Tony Blair, always emphasising the New over Labour, never tired of haranguing his party, and constituents, about the reforms he was making to a number of policy platforms, with processing refugees being foremost among them.  During his election drive in 2001, Blair claimed that, “The UK is taking the lead in arguing for reform, not of the convention’s values, but of how it operates.”  At the time, the chief executive of the Refugee Council, Nick Hardwick, gasped.  “The Geneva Convention on Refugees has saved millions of lives worldwide.”

Blair’s Home Secretary, Jack Straw, had already set the mould for Braverman in his promise in 2000 to initiate a “complete revision” of the Refugee Convention, one that would see “a two-tier system to cut the flow of asylum seekers” coming into the UK.

At home, Braverman has made a royal mess of things.  Keeping up with an obsession nurtured by the Johnson government, she has persisted in trying to outsource and defer the responsibility for processing asylum claims to third countries.  The favourite choice remains distant Rwanda, a country unfathomably praised for its outstanding “modernising” credentials.

While the government scored a legal victory in the High Court in December 2022, which saw nothing questionable about undertakings made by Kigali in the Memorandum of Understanding and Notes Verbales (NV) about how asylum claims would be processed, the Court of Appeal thought otherwise.  On June 29 this year, a majority of the Court decided to give Rwanda’s human rights record a stern, rough comb over, finding it wanting on the prohibition against torture outlined in Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights.  

Sir Geoffrey Vos, Master of the Rolls, felt that “there were substantial grounds for thinking that asylum seekers sent to Rwanda under the MEDP [Migration and Economic Development Partnership]” at the date the decisions were made by the secretary in July 2022 “faced real risks of article 3 [European Convention on Human Rights] mistreatment.”  Such a conclusion was inevitable after consulting “the historical record described by the UNHCR, the significant concerns of the UNHCR itself, and the factual realities of the current asylum process itself.”

Lord Justice Underhill underlined the lower court’s own admission that the Rwandan government was “intolerant of dissent; that there are restrictions on the right of peaceful assembly, freedom of the press and freedom of speech; and that political opponents have been detained in unofficial detention centres and have been subjected to torture and Article 3 ill-treatment short of torture.”

As a result, Braverman finds herself at sea, struggling to find a port, or centre, to park her own, brittle dogmas.  In July, she told the House of Commons that she disagreed “fundamentally” with the view of the court “that Rwanda is not a safe place for refugees”.  She went on to say that her government took their “international obligations very seriously and we are satisfied that the provisions of the Illegal Migration Bill comply with the refugee convention.  The fundamental principle remains, however, that those in need of protection should claim asylum at the earliest opportunity and in the first safe country they reach.”  

And that, ultimately, is the rub: domestic politics vaulted by individual ambition.  When considering the stuffing in such speeches, the international audience is less important than those listening at home.  Braverman is likely to have her eyes on the prime ministerial prize, having failed to secure the Conservative leadership last summer.  A troubled Tory MP, speaking to the BBC on condition of anonymity, had some advice for UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak: best get rid of the Home Secretary as soon as possible lest it “reflects poorly on him”.  It’s a bit late for that.

By Ranjani Iyer Mohanty

Last Monday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stood up in Parliament and spoke of “credible allegations of a potential link between agents of the government of India and the killing of a Canadian citizen Hardeep Singh Nijjar” this past June near Vancouver. In essence, Trudeau has accused India of assassinating Nijjar. In response, India has denied any link to the murder and called the accusation “absurd” and “motivated.”

After the announcement, the Canadian public broadcaster, CBC, served outrage instead of presenting an objective account. In a television broadcast, journalist Evan Dyer described the alleged killing “the action of a rogue state” and implied that India was “nominally a democracy.” Journalist Andrew Chang said that if Trudeau’s accusation were true, the killing would represent “the highest form of interference possible.”

Practicing some selective amnesia of its own contentious dealings with its indigenous peoples and Quebec separatists, Canada views itself as a beacon for human rights, a platform for free speech, and a refuge for the persecuted, such as Sikh separatists. India views Canada as a valuable friend and trade partner but also as interfering in its internal matters (e.g., Trudeau’s support of Sikh separatists over the years both in Canada and India as well as his support of Indian farmers during their 2020–2021 strike) and as a safe haven for terrorists. A situation — especially one as explosive as this — requires a calm, mature, and comprehensive analysis where all sides are examined, beginning with a presentation of the evidence, an understanding of the context and a review of the use of assassination.

First and foremost, since Trudeau has made the allegations in public, he also needs to present concrete evidence to the public. At this point, with his unsubstantiated and heavy statement, he has made himself a champion of the Sikh separatists. There is some talk particularly in the India media that this may be a political tactic to win their votes or that Trudeau is unduly influenced by his Sikh friends and colleagues.

Either way, he may have unleashed a force he cannot control. His statement has emboldened Canada’s Khalistanis (supporters of a secessionist Sikh state in Punjab). A leader of the group Sikhs for Justice, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, has directed a threatening videoto Hindus living in Canada, claiming that “you have repudiated your allegiance to Canada and Canadian constitution” and demanding that they “leave Canada and go to India.” He is also planning protests outside Indian embassies this week. Trudeau needs to remember that he is the prime minister for all Canadians — including the roughly 630,000 people of Indian origin who are not Sikh, not to mention the other 37 million Canadians — and that Canada should be a welcoming and safe place for all Canadians.

Sikh separatism has a long history in India and Canada

No event occurs in isolation. The Sikh issue has a complex and nuanced backstory that is essential to understand. In the 1930s, when India was still a British colony, the Sikhs began asking for their own nation, but when India became an independent country in 1947, for a variety of reasons, it did not ultimately happen. However, the dream remained alive, and an active and often violent separatist movement surged during the late 1970s.

This culminated in three significant events. In June 1984, the Indian army stormed the Golden Temple in Punjab to flush out Sikh militants; they found some 200 militants, a large cache of arms, as well as the bodies of 41 men, women and children who had been tortured to death. In October 1984, Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards whom she had trusted implicitly. In uncontrolled retaliation and rampage, over the next four days, rioters killed some 3000 innocent Sikhs in Delhi.

Then, in June 1985, an Air India flight from Toronto to Mumbai was bombed over Ireland killing all 329 people onboard — children and grandparents, mothers and fathers, travelers heading on summer holidays as well as people returning home. Although airline officials, Canadian police and the Indian government strongly suspected Sikh separatists in Canada, the investigation by Canadian authorities was lackadaisical, late and botched, resulting in few concrete convictions; a report many years later by Justice John Major called it a “cascading series of errors”. He said, “For too long the greatest loss of Canadian lives at the hands of terrorists has somehow been relegated outside the Canadian consciousness.” After that fiasco, it would not be surprising if India lacked confidence in Canada’s skill or will to bring Sikh terrorists to justice.

India is the country with the largest Sikh population in the world, roughly 25 million people (about 2% of India’s total population), most living in the northern state of Punjab, one of India’s 28 states. However, the dream of Khalistan now seems to burn more brightly outside of India, amongst the overseas population in places like the UK, Australia and Canada. This could be because the Khalistan movement is outlawed in India, because Sikhs in India are more focused on jobs and day-to-day concerns or because Sikhs living abroad want to strengthen their region of origin and have the means to do so.

For a country that supposedly persecutes its Sikhs, India surprisingly had and has Sikhs in influential and respected professions such as doctors, engineers, scientists, academics, lawyers and business leaders. Many Sikhs serve in India’s armed forces and have often been heads of the Indian army, navy and air force. They have also occupied powerful roles in government, including the very top ones: Giani Zail Singh was President of India from 1982 to 1987, and Manmohan Singh was Prime Minister of India from 2004 to 2014.

Today, some 1.4 million people of Indian origin live in Canada, about 3.7% of the country’s population. Roughly half of those are Sikhs. Canada has the third-largest Sikh population in the world, after India and the UK. Within Canada, the largest concentrations are in Brampton, Ontario, and Surrey, British Columbia. Sikhs are a powerful minority in Canada, with substantial political influence. Some of the Sikhs living in Canada, like Nijjar, are Khalistanis. Others are just happy to have made their home in Canada and are focused on their family, school, work, gurudwaras and, in general, their lives in Canada.

Assassinations are more common than you think

Nijjar was born in the Indian state of Punjab. He had been living in Canada for the past 20 years and was deeply involved in the Khalistan movement. India branded Nijjar as a terrorist three years ago and there was a warrant for his arrest. Interpol linked Nijjar to a 2007 bombing of a cinema in the Indian state of Punjab. Indian authorities wanted him for attacking a Hindu priest and in general inciting rebellion among the Sikhs in India. As the saying goes, “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” And indeed, Indian Prime Minister Modi’s terrorist is Trudeau’s freedom fighter: two sides of the same coin.

Assassinations — or targeted killings, as the Americans now prefer to call them — are not new nor are they infrequent nor are they unknown. Just check Wikipedia. At times, what Canada may call a rogue state has indeed committed these assassinations. For example, when Andrew Chang of CBC did his analysis of the current Canada–India row last Wednesday in his show About That, he noted the 2018 murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul by agents of the Saudi government and the poisoning of erstwhile Russian Intelligence Officer Sergei Skripal (a British citizen) in the UK allegedly by the Russian government.

However, Chang did not mention any of the assassinations by Canada’s neighbor and friend, the US, nor those by its close strategic partner Israel, with whom Canada also cooperates on “the promotion of human rights globally.” Nor did he mention possible actions by the UK’s MI6. Trudeau was deeply disturbed by “the killing of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil,” and rightfully so. However, he may have forgotten that the CIA has a kill list. In 2002, the US assassinated Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi; it was the killing of a Yemeni citizen on Yemeni soil. In 2011, the US assassinated a US citizen on Yemeni soil via a drone strike by the order of the Obama administration. That same year, a team of US Navy SEALS famously killed Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader, on Pakistani soil. In 2020, Major General Qasem Soleimani was also killed by a US drone strike near Baghdad: the killing of an Iranian citizen on Iraqi soil. The list of American assassinations is long.

The list of assassinations by Israel is even longer. It consists of mostly members of the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization; also fighting for an independent homeland) but also includes a West German rocket scientist in Munich, an Egyptian nuclear scientist in Paris, a Brazilian Air Force lieutenant colonel in Sao Paulo and a Canadian engineer/designer in Brussels. 

While the UK government’s assassinations are not as easily enumerable, its 1994 Intelligence Services Act protects its MI6 agentswho commit any crimes abroad, including kidnap, torture and murder.

Both the UK and the US are members of the Five Eyes intelligence sharing network, together with Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Therefore, Canadian intelligence works closely with the CIA and the MI6.

It might be naïve to be so surprised and upset by a possible targeted killing by another country’s government. It seems it’s not such an uncommon action but one committed by both so-called “rogue states” as well as “allies,” authoritarian states and democracies. Perhaps it’s not “the highest form of foreign interference” — invasions and election manipulations may arguably supersede it — but it seems to be one important tool in the foreign affairs toolkit of many countries. A BBC article written several years ago asks and discusses the question: “Can state-sponsored assassination work as a strategy?” This is a question worth considering without melodrama or self-righteous indignation.

This issue between two democracies is too potentially destructive to allow it to roll out in an uncontrolled manner. In the interest both of maintaining cohesiveness within Canada and keeping a good working relationship with a valued partner, Trudeau should walk back his provocative and public allegation, at least until he can present concrete evidence; then, too, he can do it behind closed doors. He could also let non-Sikh Indo-Canadians know that they too are a valued part of Canada and will be protected. The Canadian press can also help to calm the waters by giving a nuanced, historical and multi-perspective context of the situation. They could even present some of the Indian side of the story — like the informative counter-perspective to the CBC given in a recent episode of the podcast Cut The Clutter by Shekhar Gupta, Editor-in-Chief of The Print. Finally but importantly, a third party respected by both sides and well-versed in the ways of international relations, such as the US or the UK, can mediate talks between India and Canada so that they can soon again be the friends they should and need to be.

About the author: Ranjani Iyer Mohanty is a writer and academic editor and QR novice. After a previous career in information systems with consulting companies, banks, and development organizations in Canada, England, Holland, India, and Portugal, Ranjani now works as a writer and editor for business, academia, and the nonprofit sector. She divides her time between North America and Asia. Her social commentaries have appeared in several newspapers, magazines, and websites, including International Herald Tribune, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times and The Atlantic.

Source: This article was published by Fair Observer.

By Jon Miltimore

Once a year, usually late in February, my wife’s face brightens as she thumbs through our mail. 

“We got our Costco rewards check,” she beams. 

It’s not a ton of money, maybe $1,000. And the money is not actually coming from Costco, but from Visa, its credit card partner. Still, a $1,000 check is better than a kick in the teeth—and a merrier sight than the bills and junk mail we usually receive. 

This is why I was alarmed at recent news that credit card rewards could soon go the way of the dodo.

The threat comes from the benign-sounding Credit Card Competition Act, a piece of legislation that failed to pass in 2022 but is once again being pushed by a bipartisan group of federal lawmakers. 

Lawmakers claim to be upset that Visa and Mastercard account for 80 percent of the US credit card market, what US Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill) calls a “duopoly” that “inflates prices.” 

“It’s time to inject real competition into the credit card network market, which is dominated by the Visa-Mastercard duopoly,” says Durbin. 

Unfortunately, the act seeks to address a problem that doesn’t exist, and could threaten the credit card rewards cherished by many.

Killing Rewards (Again)

It’s true, as Durbin says, that credit card companies take a percentage of payments. These are called interchange fees, a small transaction charge—usually 2-3 percent—that is borne by the retailer (not the customer) whenever a customer swipes.  

Yet credit card companies provide a service: the convenience of swiping a card instead of paying cash. Even better, consumers often get a percentage of that money back from the credit card companies in the form of rewards.

Durbin’s Credit Card Competition Act, Forbes reports, “would require the country’s largest credit card issuers to enable at least two credit card processing networks to be used on their credit cards—and insist that one of those networks must be someone other than Mastercard or Visa.” 

Proponents of the legislation say it would lower prices for consumers, but history suggests otherwise. 

We’ve seen a version of this film before in the form of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010, the most sweeping banking reform change since the Great Depression. One of the provisions of that legislation is today known as the Durbin Amendment, “a last-minute addition by Dick Durbin, a senator from Illinois” (yep, same guy) that limited processing fees on debit cards. 

At the time, Durbin claimed the amendment would save consumers money, reasoning that retailers would lower their prices. That’s not what happened. 

“Multiple studies conducted in the years since the Durbin amendment became law have concluded that it didn’t have much, if any, effect on retail prices,” Nerd Wallet points out. “In fact, a 2015 economic brief published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond included survey results estimating that more than 21 percent of merchants actually increased their prices after the rule went into effect.”

Not only did consumers not benefit from lower sticker prices, but credit institutions responded to their own losses by slashing debit card rewards and hiking fees on checking accounts. 

Many predict Durbin’s latest bill would have a similar effect on credit cards. 

“Will consumers lose? Probably,” wrote Brian Riley, director of the credit advisory service at Mercator Advisory Group. “Their reward programs will dry up, just as they did with debit cards.”

Why It’s Happening

I love the convenience of my credit card, which is quickly replaced if I lose it, with the company usually covering any losses. But I love my rewards even more. 

So why are lawmakers threatening them? 

Well, not everyone is happy with the current system, and it goes back to the previously mentioned interchange fees. Big box retailers—Walmart, Target, Home Depot, etc.—don’t like paying these fees because they cut into their own profits.

Retailers, of course, are under no obligation to accept credit cards. But they understand consumers love them and they’d lose business if they did not accept them. Many have of course tried offering their own credit cards, but with limited success. So they’ve turned to the government for help. 

This is where the Credit Card Competition Act comes in. Lawmakers can’t very well say they’re working to protect the profits of Walmart and Target, so we’re told the act is about fairness and “consumer protection.” 

In fact, retailers are simply trying to protect their bottom line. 

One could argue that this is precisely what companies should do: maximize profit. The problem is they wouldn’t be earning their profit by offering a good or service, but by using government force to stop voluntary transactions. 

That’s why, for me, the CCAA is a double whammy. It’s not just a threat to my credit card rewards; It’s a violation of my libertarian principles.

Profit through government coercion is nothing new. Ayn Rand wrote at length about it in her magnum opus Atlas Shrugged, describing the “looters” seeking to enrich themselves not by serving others but by leveraging powerful people to use government force.

Rand believed this was no way to create a harmonious or prosperous society, and I believe she was right. 

The kicker is that if Durbin’s bill—which has the support of J.D. Vance and other Republicans—should pass, it won’t just be a loss for voluntaryism. It will likely mean kissing my Costco rewards goodbye.

About the author: Jonathan Miltimore is the Editor at Large of FEE.org at the Foundation for Economic Education.

Source: This article was published by FEE