New Ottawa Peace Assembly Website

Please visit the Ottawa Peace Assembly's new website at OttawaPeace.org.

WHAT NEXT FOR AFGHANISTAN featuring MALALAI JOYA

Tireless human rights defender. Fearless antiwar campaigner. Member of Parliament, undemocratically expelled for opposing the warlords Canada and NATO are keeping in power in Afghanistan. Hailed as “the bravest woman in Afghanistan”. In November 2009 she spoke to a packed hall of 700 people in Ottawa.

On October 6, Malalai Joya is returning to Ottawa to speak out against the war.

The Ottawa Peace Assembly presents:

WHAT NEXT FOR AFGHANISTAN?
Featuring Malalai Joya and other special guests

WEDNESDAY, OCT. 6
7PM, Doors Open at 6:30PM

BRONSON CENTRE
211 Bronson Ave | North of Somerset

TICKETS: $10 / $5 for students
Advance tickets available at Octopus Books
(116 Third Ave @ Bank St)

An outspoken opponent of the NATO occupation of her home country and Canada's role in it, Malalai Joya is the author of A Woman Among Warlords: The Extraordinary Story of an Afghan Who Dared to Raise Her Voice.To learn more about Malalai Joya, click here.

For more information, contact ottawa.peace.assembly@gmail.com. To see the Facebook event, click here.

Ottawa Peace Assembly protests the G8 and G20

The G8 recently met once again to undermine economic, social, and environmental justice - to ignore the climate crisis while pushing for more war. On March 29, at the site of the G8 foreign ministers meeting in Gatineau, the Ottawa Peace Assembly, Rassemblement Outaouais Contre la Guerre and several other organizations took to the streets to reject the policies of the G8 and G20.

There will be a week of events leading up to the G8 and G20 Summits, beginning with a People’s Summit from June 18-20 in Toronto. For more information on the plans underway in Toronto, visit the websites of the 2010 G8/G20 People's Summit and the Toronto Community Mobilization Network. For details on bus tickets to Toronto, contact the Ottawa Peace Assembly.

To join OPA on Facebook, click here.

Harper: Soft on War Crime

During the last federal election, Stephen Harper said "soft on crime doesn't work". Yet the continuing revelations of torture in Afghanistan show that the Harper government is soft on war crime. Stephen Harper supported the war in Iraq. The Harper government is trying to deport war resisters who are refusing to be complicit in war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And the Harper government is complicit in torture of innocent Afghans, a war crime.

Call on the Harper government to:

• Fire Peter MacKay
• Call a full public inquiry
• Bring the troops home now (not in 2011)

Contact the Prime Minister today:

• pm@pm.gc.ca, Phone: 613-992-4211, Fax: 613-941-6900
• Guy Giorno, Stephen Harper's Chief of Staff, Phone: 613-992-4211 x11

To get involved in the peace movement in Ottawa, contact the Ottawa Peace Assembly today. You can also make use of the excellent resources prepared by the Canadian Peace Alliance for education and outreach in your community.

End Torture. End the War.

The testimony of Richard Colvin shows that the highest levels of the Conservative Government are complicit in war crimes. As many as 600 detainees, many of whom were just innocent bystanders, were handed over to Afghan law enforcement agencies by the Canadian forces. Torture by the Afghan police forces is known to be widespread.

Stephen Harper and Peter MacKay are challenging the credibility of Colvin, saying that he is listening to "Taliban propaganda" Yet it is the Harper government that totally lacks credibility on this issue. It is hard to believe that they didn't see multiple memos and reports from one of the top diplomats in Afghanistan. It would represent a radical departure from standard procedure for any government.

And even if the memos didn't circulate to the political masters in the Conservative party, there were countless reports from international agencies such as the Red Cross, Amnesty International, School of Law of New York University, Center for Human Rights and Human Rights Watch which all said that torture of detainees was widespread. The Tories must have known this information or they showed a woeful lack of knowledge about their main foreign policy plank.

Once the issue of detainee torture hit the media in early 2007, the Harper Government worked to both discredit the reports and to allay fears with a new detainee transfer agreement. That agreement has not stopped the torture of innocent Afghan civilians.

The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission released a report in April 2009 that interviewed people who had been detained by Afghan police and army. The results were staggering. According to their findings, 98.5% of detainees said that they were tortured. They have concluded that torture "is a commonplace practice in Afghanistan's law enforcement institutions," and add that "torture is also perpetrated by the parties to the armed conflict in Afghanistan, including the international security forces."

According to Afghan MP Malalai Joya, "It is an open secret that this happens. The Canadian government is still supporting this."

An inquiry into the torture of detainees is long overdue but given the obstructionist nature of the Conservatives, we are unlikely to get a full accounting of these scandalous revelations. Peter MacKay, who earlier this year called for a Parliamentary discussion on the future role of Canada in Afghanistan, has decided to cancel that debate, likely because he fears any scrutiny on the torture issue. Complicity in war crimes is too serious an issue to be swept under the carpet. There must be a parliamentary debate on ending Canada's complicity in the crime of the Afghan war.

Torture is part and parcel of this occupation and the so-called 'war on terror.' Right now, the U.S. is expanded the prison at Bagram Airbase in what Afghans are calling a 'new Guantanamo.' Only by ending this occupation can we ensure an end to Canadian complicity in torture. We need to bring the troops home immediately.

Canadian Peace Alliance

About the Ottawa Peace Assembly

The Ottawa Peace Assembly (OPA) is a coalition of community groups opposed to Canada's complicity in the so-called "war on terror". We want a world based on peace and justice, not war and occupation.

Through the Canadian Peace Alliance, we work with other peace organizations across the country to build a strong, coordinated voice for peace and justice.

Our mandate is simple. We oppose war and occupation. We oppose Islamophobia, anti-Arab bigotry and all forms of racism. We support the struggles of indigenous peoples. And we support civil liberties to defend freedom of expression and assembly.

People in Ottawa have mobilized around the issue of peace for some time. Since 2002, mass demonstrations have been organized against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, drawing out tens of thousands. The coordination of anti-war events like these forced the Canadian government to stay out of a full-scale military role in the Iraq war.

The OPA is a new coalition that comes from this proud tradition. OPA member groups will continue to organize opposition to the occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and support the campaign for US war resisters seeking refuge in Canada.

In doing so, the OPA plans to organize large-scale educational events, including teach-ins and conferences, public forums and debates. We will also organize city-wide marches, emergency rallies and pickets in response to events like the 2004 siege of Fallujah, the Abu Ghraib scandal, and the disappearance of Afghan detainees.

In our time of endless war, we want to create a culture of peace. Join us!