Daily Archives: May 2, 2023

As Prepared For Delivery:

Good morning. Its my honor to be here with each of you today. When Jonathan asked if I would give keynote remarks at this gathering, I eagerly agreed because of the vital mission of this organization, the partnership that we have built in the Biden Administration, and the urgent issues facing our community.

Jonathans vision and innovation are defining what it means to lead an international civil rights organization in these very challenging times.

As President Bidens Homeland Security Advisor a West Wing role created just after 9/11 its my job to deal with the threat to our homeland that antisemitism represents. But for me, its also personal.

My great-grandparents fled oppression in Eastern Europe to build a new life in America where they could practice their faith without fear and seek opportunities denied to them in their homelands because they were Jewish.

Still, my mother was chased home from elementary school in Omaha as a little Jewish girl. Her family moved West to seek a more open-minded and tolerant place. She met my father in high school in Los Angeles, where they subsequently married at Wilshire Boulevard Temple.

At that time, my father was considering entry level job offers from several law firms after finishing Harvard Law School and a Supreme Court clerkship. One offer was from the most esteemed, blue-chip firm in the community, which had no track record of making Jews partners.

Another was from a firm established by Jewish leaders that welcomed young lawyers of Jewish faith into very successful practices. When my father was trying to choose between the two, his peers at the Jewish firm reached out and implored him not to accept their offer and instead go to the place where he would blaze a new trail for others to follow.

That story was told to me to emphasize the need to build bridges rather than walls to the greatest degree possible to be integrated rather than segregated, to know the other and to have the other know us across faiths and races.

My father experienced anti-Semitic discrimination long into adulthood. But he chose repeatedly, just like with his choice of a law firm, to build bridges from the Jewish community to other groups confronting discrimination and hate, including the Black and Asian communities in Southern California and beyond.

As Martin Luther King said, The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.

Or, as we say in our faith, it is our obligation to do tikkun olam. We must use our lives to heal a broken world.

I take that imperative seriously. I know you do, too. And every day, I see how what is broken seems even more jagged than it used to be.

Ethnic and religious hatred is being normalized in our melting pot. Antisemitism is being normalized its more mainstream, its out in the open. And, most disturbingly, violence against Jews is being normalized.

Jews are being targeted in their neighborhoods, synagogues, schools, homes, and online. By whatever measure you choose to employ, we have not seen this level of hatred towards Jews since Europe before the second world war.

For example, last month the ADLs annual audit reported that 2022 represented a 34% increase in antisemitic incidents in the U.S. over the previous yearthe highest number recorded since ADL began tracking these incidents in 1979.

To say this is concerning is a profound understatement.

So it was with urgency that President Biden charged us with crafting this countrys first-ever National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism. We started this work on literally the first day of the Administration. Then, as part of that larger effort, we embarked on the first National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism specifically.

We expect to complete this work by the end of May. The White House Domestic Policy Council Director Susan Rice, my co-chair in in this vital work, will speak more about the strategy later today.

Among its many initiatives is the one that to me is most urgently neededthe restoration of safety for Jews in our country.

And that goal means working in partnership with you, to address three pressing issues simultaneously.

First, we will continue to improve the security of synagogues and Jewish institutions.

The Biden Administration has expanded security assistance for houses of worship and religious institutions for example, increasing the funds to improve physical security of buildings from 180 million dollars two years ago to 305 million dollars today. And we have asked Congress to continue to increase these funds.

Were also sharing more information with law enforcement and community allies, creating partnerships between them, and training congregations to confront threats.

We saw how this work can make a difference in January of 2022 in Colleyville, Texas, when a rabbi and four members of his congregation were taken hostage. Ahead of time, the synagogue had already mapped out its floor plan and submitted it to local officials and the FBI. They had installed security cameras so law enforcement could see what was happening in real-time. As a result, they could move quickly to mount a rescue operation. And when there was an opportunity to escape, the hostages relied on their active shooter training to take decisive action and flee safely.

Colleyvilles then-Rabbi, Charlie Cytron-Walker, said after the hostage crisis that quote over the years, my congregation and I have participated in multiple security courses from the Colleyville Police Department, the FBI, the Anti-Defamation League, and Secure Community Network. We are alive today because of that education.

Second, we need to reduce the threat itself and decrease hate-driven violence and harassment.

This brings me back to my fathers lesson to build the bridges within our communities that make it hard for hate to flourish. That was the Administrations aim last year when the President convened the United We Stand summit.

The summit mobilized Federal agencies in new and renewed ways. For example, the Justice Department has improved the reporting of hate crime incidents, to address the problem of underreporting by victims, witnesses, and law enforcement agencies.

Another takeaway from the summit was the benefit of community-based prevention efforts that see teachers, coaches, pastors and many others working together to steer individuals away from hate and violence works that takes time and trust and seeing each other as human beings living in the same community wherever possible.

And when these efforts are insufficient, we will rely on our law enforcement partners to prioritize the investigation and prosecution of those who harass, abuse, and harm Jews and Jewish communities.

On this point, strong partnerships between the government and diverse community groups can have a real impact. Let me give you an example.

Last November, the Community Security Initiative, a community-based security organization, detected a social media threat to quote shoot up a synagogue in New York City. They relied on their strong ties to law enforcement and reported the threat to the FBI and NYPD, who quickly determined the threat was credible and identified two men as suspects. That information was shared widely with local authorities and houses of worship, which resulted in the swift apprehension of the men after a local transit worker recognized them in Penn Station and alerted the police.

The police arrested the suspects and found a handgun and a large capacity magazine in their possession. All this was possible because a community group had strong relationships in place with law enforcement.

So whether you are working to strengthen ties within your community, or helping us address harassment, abuse, and threats, it matters. You are making a difference in the fight to end antisemitism.

Third, while we enhance protections in the short term and expand prevention efforts to reduce the threat over time we also need to address the creeping normalization of antisemitism in our everyday lives, especially through online media.

That includes tackling the ways in which antisemitic and other hateful views circulate online and mix with conspiracy theories and disinformation that can lead some people to undertake violence.

We need to ensure that those who spread lies and conspiracy theories remain outside the mainstream. And we have to do this in a way that protects not just members of the Jewish faith but members of all religious denominations. That is how we will build common cause against those who seek to divide us.

That means speaking out forcefully and clearly when we encounter expressions of hatred for Jews and other community groups, which is something President Biden has done throughout his presidency and his career in public service. Hate speech should never go unchallenged.

We as a Federal government are taking actions to address this. For example, the Departments of Commerce and Education are using model curricula and grant programs to help Americans recognize online hate speech and reduce its spread.

Through entities like the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, we are sharing information with technology companies, to ensure they understand the threat of antisemitism and more effectively enforce their terms of service. This is critical given the algorithms that suck people into more sinister conversations that we know may lead to incitement of violence.

And two years ago, after the prior Administration refused to join, we announced our decision to join the Christchurch Call, an international partnership among 56 governments and 10 technology companies, including Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, to develop new solutions to eliminating terrorist content online while safeguarding free expression.

For example, when the perpetrator of the Buffalo supermarket murders last May tried to livestream his attack, the Christchurch Call and GIFCT worked swiftly to terminate the livestream. Then, they ensured it was neither posted online nor shared widely, which meant the content was far less widely circulated than we have seen in prior attacks, diminishing the prospects of incitement, motivation by example, or copy-catting.

We know we need to go much further than this, and we are working with Congress to do that. As the President called for earlier this year, we are looking to Congress to reform the laws to ensure technology companies are responsible for the malign content they spread and the algorithms they use.

As I hope all these examples illustrate we cannot do this alone. We in government will do everything we can to improve the safety of Jews and other religions, races, and ethnic groups who face threats and discrimination. But we need to do this work with you all.

We need the public to understand antisemitism and rally against it in all its forms, while standing shoulder to shoulder with other communities targeted by hate.

We need community groups, law enforcement, schools, houses of worship, businesses and others to work together both to rally against hate and to use all of their tools to prevent hate-driven violence.

We need leaders at the local and state levels to join us in speaking out and condemning antisemitism and hate whenever it arises.

And we need the Anti-Defamation League. And we will continue to work alongside you. Because whether its the ADLs COMBAT plan to fight antisemitism in our communities your REPAIR plan to address online hate or many of the other remarkable initiatives you have underway. we share the ADLs comprehensive approach to end the defamation of the Jewish people and to secure justice and fair treatment to all.

Coming back to the lessons I learned from my familys experience fleeing hate and violence, starting new lives in a new land, making their way despite skepticism and sometimes outright hostility, and always looking for ways to lift up others and heal the world I would leave you with this final thought: Turn understandable fear into empowering action.

Rabbi Marc Katz of Temple Ner Tamid in Bloomfield, New Jersey recently put this best when he wrote that quote There will always be bad actors, hateful people, bad agents. But they need not derail our lives. Every triumph, no matter how small, takes up the room in our psyche that was once full of our anxieties. We need to ask not what will happen tomorrow but what we can do today. Then, when tomorrow comes, we arrive, realizing we have been so busy fixing our broken world that we had no time to be afraid.

Thank you for allowing me to join you this morning, and I look forward to doing tikkun olam together with you in the days, months and years ahead.

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Remarks by Homeland Security Advisor Dr. Liz Sherwood-Randall ... - The White House

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(THE CONVERSATION) Every year, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) releases a report on religious oppression around the world, recommending that the State Department designate specific countries as especially severe violators. In this years report, released May 1, 2023, Iran came in for particular criticism after months of protests and arrests sparked by headscarf laws. Sri Lanka, Cuba and Nicaragua were also singled out as areas of concern; Nicaragua is specifically accused of persecution against Catholics.

Created through the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998, the commission exemplifies how the right to freedom of religious expression has come to play a significant role in U.S. discussions about human rights and not just abroad. Legislation and recent Supreme Court rulings have created a new legal landscape in which religious freedom claims have become more likely to prevail at home, including well-known court cases like the Hobby Lobby ruling on contraception.

Underlying many debates about how courts and policies treat religion is an often-unspoken question: Is any human right religious freedom in particular more important than another? And what happens when human rights claims come into conflict?

As a scholar of human rights and religion, I believe its important to unpack those questions and to unpack the difference they make in the lives of people affected by U.S. policies around the world.

For one, for all

For the last several decades, the United Nations has been careful to describe all human rightsas interdependent. In this view, protecting any human right requires protecting all human rights.

As an example, think of two distinct rights recognized in the Declaration of Human Rights: the right to adequate food and the right to protest. A person who doesnt have enough food to live on is unlikely to have the health and energy to protest, and someone deprived of food because of government policies may find it necessary to protest in order to claim their right to food.

The U.N. and many human rights advocates have also argued that all rights are equal: No human right outweighs another.

According to this view, the only permissible reason one right could ever be temporarily suspended is to protect some other right. Even then, restricting the first right should be a last resort, and it should be restored as soon as possible.

For instance, a person with active tuberculosis or some other contagious disease might be ordered to quarantine for a period. Forced quarantine restricts the individuals right to freedom of movement, but it is considered more urgent to protect other peoples rights to life and health.

In other words, rights might sometimes conflict, but they all depend on each other and are of equal importance in principle. No human right can be ignored or downplayed.

Picking and choosing?

International discussion of human rights has not always reflected this view.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted in 1948, after the horrors of the Holocaust and World War II. It captured a general international consensus that rights protection should shape international humanitarian policy. However, when the U.N. General Assembly attempted to make the rights in the declaration enforceable in international law, disagreements about the importance of different types of rights led to not one but two treaties: the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Some countries have not ratified the first, including China and Saudi Arabia; others have not ratified the second, including the United States.

Today, too, many political leaders do not view all rights as equally weighty. For example, the Chinese government is known to regularly invade citizens privacy and has brutally repressed minority groups. Chinese leaders and state-owned media have insisted that advancing peoples social and economic rights, such as peace and the right to basic subsistence, takes priority over pursuing civil and political rights.

In the United States, the opposite is true. U.S. leaders and influential thinkers have often argued that civil and political rights, like the right to vote or to a fair trial, are more fundamental than economic and social rights, that they are more practical to uphold, or that they fit more neatly into the countrys history of political thought. For example, some Republican politicians, such as Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, have argued that health care is a privilege, not a right.

Two-tier rights?

Questions about how U.S. foreign policy should balance protections for different kinds of rights came under a spotlight in 2019, when then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo created the Commission on Unalienable Rights. This commissions stated goal was to advise the U.S. government on human rights, drawing on both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the founding documents of the United States.

USCIRF was not involved in the Commission on Unalienable Rights, but put out a statement in support of its work. At the time, USCIRFs president was Tony Perkins, best known for his leadership of the evangelical nonprofit Family Research Council. In the statement, Perkins referred to religious freedom as the most foundational fundamental right.

The commissions report received both praise and criticism from advocates and scholars for its attempt to distinguish unalienable rights, which all individuals have by nature, from positive rights, which are based in custom and written law. The report contends that, from the founders point of view, property rights and religious liberty are most essential, and governments should promote economic rights only insofar as those rights do not infringe on property and religious liberty rights.

The report also describes a few types of rights claims as matters of debate rather than settled law, such as the right to same-sex marriage, which it calls one of several divisive social and political controversies where it is common for both sides to couch their claims in terms of basic rights. Two sentences later, the writers argue that an increase in rights claims, in some ways overdue and just, has given rise to excesses of its own.

In short, the commission prioritized property rights and religious freedom claims. Pompeos State Department acted in line with these priorities, holding two summits on religious freedom with civic and religious leaders from around the world. The State Department also created an International Religious Freedom Alliance with more than two dozen nations, without similar initiatives around other human rights.

The course ahead

Under the administration of President Joe Biden, the Commission on Unalienable Rights was shelved. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has argued that all human rights are co-equal and has criticized the commissions report for seeming to create a hierarchy of rights.

The State Department under Biden has expressed its intent to advance rights claims of LGBTQ+ individuals. Recently, it threatened sanctions on Uganda over a new bill that would impose punishments as severe as death for same-sex relationships.

The latest International Religious Freedom report demonstrates that the right to religious freedom is threatened in many places. The entire world has a long way to go in ensuring it is meaningfully protected. At the same time, debates remain heated over whether protecting this right should ever mean violating others.

The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts. The Conversation is wholly responsible for the content.

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Are some human rights more important than others? Religious ... - Jacksonville Journal-Courier

The South African government has a longstanding history of HIV denialism. Throughout his presidency from 1999 to 2008, Thabo Mbeki continually questioned the validity of HIV research. Infamously, he presented his dissenting positions in a letter to world leaders in 2000. In speeches that same year, he stated, A virus cannot cause a syndrome. A virus can cause a disease, and AIDS is not a disease, it is a syndrome. In addition to this rhetoric, Mbeki sponsored panels that highlighted dissenters from current HIV research, furthering his pseudoscientific views. As a result, HIV conspiracy theories became rampant in South African political life. Mbekis claims were met with immediate backlash from media outlets, AIDS activists, and healthcare organizations. However, these responses disregard the South African historical context. The legacies of apartheid, corruption, and colonialism that linger in the South African collective consciousness provided the perfect climate for conspiracy theories around HIV/AIDS to proliferate.

In South Africa, public health and systemic oppression have been intertwined for centuries, with the racial segregation of healthcare codified by the 1883 Public Health Act. Under this acts emergency provisions, Black South Africans were removed from urban centers during flare-ups of the Bubonic Plague. Between 1900 and 1910, this policy surrounding Plague epidemics resulted in the sweeping loss of property for Black South Africans. This period of racial segregation became impressed upon the national consciousness of South Africans. It was a time when racism was thinly veiled as public health policy.

In later years, fearful of anti-apartheid movements, the South African government began investing in Project Coast, an operation within its chemical and biological warfare (CBW) department. Former military-doctor Wouter Basson headed this project, modeling it on programs in other countries. Allegedly, this bolstering of the CBW department was originally intended to combat chemical weapons threats during the South African conflict in Angola. Testimonies from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) hearings, however, uncovered it to be an effort to possibly commit genocide against the Black population.

Researchers attempted to create a bacterium to target Black individuals. Additionally, Bassons team investigated how CBW such as cholera and micro-organisms could be deployed for population control. One of the most terrifying projects included a vaccine to covertly sterilize the Black population. This effort became extremely explicit during the TRC hearings, in which one doctor stated that their final brief, [] was to develop a product to curtail the birth rate of the [B]lack population in the country.

These genocidal plans coincided with the faulty AIDS response by the partheid government throughout the 1980s and 1990s. As soon as AIDS began afflicting the Black population, the government response reflected the enduring racism in South Africa. The voices of right-wing parliament members offered an alarming prophecy of the destruction to come. Dr. F. H. Pauw claimed that the Black majority would no longer be a threat due to many dying of AIDS. Conservative Party MP Clive Derby-Lewis stated, If AIDS stops black population growth, it would be like Father Christmas. While the government eventually attempted to advocate for contraceptives, this only aggravated anti-apartheid groups and was seen as another method of reducing the Black population.

"The legacies of a racist, morally bankrupt colonial government lent themselves to a poor response to the growing HIV crisis."

When Nelson Mandela was elected in 1994, his post-apartheid government inherited a public health system riddled with mistrust and an increasing number of people living with HIV. In fact, in 1994, 7.6 percent of South Africans were HIV positive (compared to 0.7 percent in 1990). This figure would only keep growing, hitting 22.4 percent in 1999. South Africas crippled healthcare system needed to address this growing crisis, yet officials refused to credit the results of HIV studies, slowing government interventions.

One of the biggest failures of Mandelas new government was its refusal to properly use the antiretroviral drug azidothymidine (AZT), the primary treatment given to people living with HIV at the time. In other countries, AZT helped address mother-to-child transmission, wherein children were infected by their mothers during pregnancy. Scientific evidence highlighted that proper use of AZTwhen used in tandem with cesarean sections and formula feedingsresults in a near-zero mother-to-child transmission rate. Still, Health Minister Nkosazana Clarice Dlamini-Zuma claimed otherwise, espousing the view that AZT was too expensive and ineffectively addressed the pandemic. Her successor echoed similar sentiments, arguing the drugs benefits did not outweigh its toxicity. Dissenting from scientific evidence on antiretroviral drugs, the South African government failed to respond to the HIV crisis: A study from the Harvard School of Public Health estimated that more than 330,000 people died prematurely and 35,000 babies were born with preventable HIV infections. An antiretroviral treatment program was not implemented until 2003, three years after Mbekis troubling letter was presented.

Despite these obvious failures, they must be considered in the context of apartheids oppression. The legacies of a racist, morally bankrupt colonial government lent themselves to a poor response to the growing HIV crisis. This legacy helps explain why the government withheld the authorization of AZT. With the discovery of genocidal planning and anti-fertility research, the post-apartheid government was sensibly wary of drugs specifically marketed toward mothers. Coupled with the fact that Western pharmaceutical corporations were heavily pushing and profiting off of the drug, the government was extremely cautious of AZT in the post-apartheid era.

Mbeki was extremely hesitant to blindly accept wisdom from countries that participated in the oppression of his people. In his letter, he emphasized that prohibiting HIV dissent is precisely the same thing that the racist apartheid tyranny we opposed did. He also highlighted the unique nature of the African HIV crisis, a claim which some have misconstrued as stating that there existed a new African source of AIDS. Yet, the HIV crisis itself in South Africaand other countries affected by colonialismis unique. Many challenges come from grappling with the legacy of apartheid, which undoubtedly fractured the response from the onset. This begs the question: Can we really judge a leader for not trusting their oppressors?

Today, the legacy of apartheid continues to influence public health in South Africa. In 2020, South Africa had approximately 7.8 million people living with HIV, and around 19.1 percent of people ages 15 to 49 had tested positive for HIV. South Africa has the fourth highest HIV prevalence rate and has the greatest number of people living with HIV in the world, making it a pressing matter of consideration for global health.

This consideration became especially apparent once the Covid-19 pandemic struck. HIV has left many South Africans immunocompromised. Coupled with low vaccination rates, South Africa and other Sub-Saharan African countries were at high risk for Covid-19. This had a global impact: Some scholars believe that the Omicron variant originated in South Africa in part due to its sizable immunocompromised population, which put it at greater risk of mutations appearing.

While one cannot trace back every public health failure to apartheid governments, it is important to note the role of lasting legacies of oppression left by them. It forever changed the consciousness of South Africa, as the memories and trauma of apartheid have not been erased with transitions of power. This sentiment is not confined to South Africa, but rather, it is the case in every country with a deep oppressive history. Medical mistrust is especially pervasive among Black Americans due to systemically racist medical malpractice and a centuries-long legacy of chattel slavery. The Tuskegee Syphilis Study, while perhaps the most infamous, is only one example of a racist weaponization of science against the Black community. Similarly, many Indigenous populations also continue to distrust post-colonial medical establishments.

Every colonizing power must reflect on its weaponization of health, as they have colored the modern-day responses to public health crises. How can we expect people to trust the science if the source has an untrustworthy track record? While it is easier said than done, governments must invest time and resources into mending the wounds that they inflicted. Without addressing past atrocities, conspiracies will continue to run rampant, frustrating the global response to future health emergencies. As the world is hopefully on the tail end of the Covid-19 pandemic, the present moment stresses the urgency of reconciling prior wrongdoings for the sake of the health of all eight million people on the planet.

[Editors Note: This article was published in the Fall 2022 issue of the BPR magazine.]

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Postcolonial Plague: The Legacy of Apartheid South Africa in ... - Brown Political Review

TOKYO/GENEVA (28 April 2023) A UN expert today urged the Japanese government to assume a greater leadership role to address the deteriorating crisis in Myanmar and step up pressure on the countrys military junta.

The international communitys response to the crisis in Myanmar is failing, and that failure has contributed to a lethal downward spiral that is devastating the lives of millions of people, said Tom Andrews, UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Myanmar at the end of a 10-day official visit to Japan.

I came to Japan because I believe that this country has an essential role to play in resolving the crisis, Andrews said.

Japans leadership will be vital in recalibrating a failing international response to the crisis, he said. The UN expert called on Japan to work with regional and global allies to weaken the capacity of Myanmars military junta to attack its citizens.

In a statement(also in Japanese) delivered at the end of his visit, the Special Rapporteur raised the alarm about an impending humanitarian disaster in the Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh. Without immediate additional funding, a decision to cut food rations by an additional 20% will be made in the next few weeks, reducing food rations to 27 cents per person per day. The cuts would also potentially eliminate food rations completely for hundreds of thousands.

This is an emergency. Further cuts will leave the Rohingya, already victims of genocidal attacks in Myanmar, at risk of starvation and drive thousands into boats and dangerous land routes in utter desperation, Andrews warned.

He called on the Government of Japan and all Member States to immediately increase humanitarian funding, including by redirecting funding from development programmes in Myanmar.

Referring to the worsening situation in Myanmar, Andrews said Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, who has led the junta since the February 2021 coup, had responded to widespread opposition to their rule with barbarism and oppression against the people of Myanmar. Arbitrary detention, torture and systematic attacks on villages have become hallmarks of the junta. The military is repeatedly attacking civilian populations throughout the country and has quite literally made war on the Myanmar people, the expert said.

He urged Japan to impose targeted economic sanctions on the Myanmar military and its key sources of funding, just as it is doing in response to the crisis in Ukraine.

Economic sanctions that deprive the junta of the resources required to operate its war-making machinery would weaken the capacity of the junta to attack its people, Andrews said.

The expert urged Japan to terminate a Ministry of Defence programme that continues to provide military training to military personnel from Myanmar, referencing credible reports linking previous trainees to military units that have committed atrocities against civilians.

Andrews called on the Government of Japan to clearly and consistently renounce the juntas plan to stage fraudulent national elections as a means of legitimising itself. It is not possible to hold a genuine election when opposition leaders are arrested, detained, tortured and executed; when key political parties have been dissolved; when it is illegal to criticise the junta; and when journalists are imprisoned for doing their job, he said.

The Special Rapporteur highlighted the upcoming G7 Summit in Hiroshima as an opportunity for Japan to shine a light on the situation in Myanmar before the world.

I urge Prime Minister Kishida to ensure that the Myanmar crisis is high on the G7 agenda and that a strong, unified message and action on Myanmar emerges from the Summit, the expert said.

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UN expert urges Japan to step up pressure on Myanmar junta - OHCHR

Conservative Member of Parliament Michael Chong is applauded as he rises during Question Period in the House of Commons on May 2, 2023.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service on Tuesday confirmed to Conservative MP Michael Chong that he and his family were targeted by the Chinese government after he sponsored a parliamentary motion condemning Beijings conduct in Xinjiang as genocide, the MP says.

He said CSIS also confirmed that Zhao Wei, a Chinese diplomat in Canada, was involved.

The Globe and Mail first reported the situation on Monday, citing a top-secret CSIS intelligence assessment prepared in July 2021.

The briefing provided to Mr. Chong took place Tuesday in Ottawa.

Mr. Chong declined to identify the senior CSIS official who briefed him, but said the official told him he was authorized to read to him from the CSIS report quoted by The Globe because it relates to a threat to you and your family.

The Canadian government told Mr. Chong Tuesday it is investigating why he was not alerted about this.

Mr. Chong said the failure to notify him of Chinas targeting represents either a breakdown of the machinery of government or a political failure by the Liberal government.

He is also asking Commons Speaker Anthony Rota to find the Peoples Republic of China in contempt of Parliament for efforts to intimidate an MP.

The Globe and Mails report on the July, 2021 intelligence assessment by CSIS found Chinas intelligence service, the Ministry of State Security (MSS), has taken specific actions to target Canadian MPs linked to the February, 2021, parliamentary motion condemning Beijings oppression of Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities.

That motion, which passed, declared that Chinas conduct amounts to genocide.

The spy agency said an MSS officer sought information on an unnamed Canadian MPs relatives who may be located in the PRC [Peoples Republic of China], for further potential sanctions.

This effort, the CSIS report said, is almost certainly meant to make an example of this MP and deter others from taking anti-PRC positions.

A national-security source, whom The Globe did not name in the Monday story because they risk prosecution under the Security of Information Act, said the MP targeted was Mr. Chong, and that Mr. Zhao was working on this matter.

Mr. Zhao is listed in the Department of Global Affairs record of foreign diplomats as working in Chinas Toronto consulate. In February, The Globe reported that a national-security source described Mr. Zhao as a suspected intelligence actor.

The Globe reported Monday that according to the top-secret intelligence assessment from CSIS, China sees Canada as a high-priority target and employs incentives and punishment as part of a vast influence network directed at legislators, business executives and diaspora communities.

The report warned that Beijing is the foremost perpetrator of foreign interference in Canada. Its agents are unconcerned about repercussions, the report says, because of the lack of obstacles such as a foreign-influence registry.

Its not known whether elected officials in Canada gained access to the report, which was produced by the agencys Intelligence Assessment Branch and dated July 20, 2021, several weeks before the federal election campaign got under way.

The assessment is presented as a baseline for understanding the intent, motives and scope of Beijings foreign interference in Canada.

The nine-page document, seen by The Globe and Mail, is the latest example of the warnings published by Canadas security service in recent years. Its marked top secret and for Canadian eyes only.

It said Canada needs to erect more obstacles to foreign interference. Absent real disincentives, such as a foreign-influence registry and indictments of foreign-interference actors, Chinese targeting of Canada is expected to continue and increase over time.

Threat actors almost certainly perceive their activities in Canada to be low-risk and high reward, the assessment said.

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CSIS confirms to MP that he and family were targeted by China - The Globe and Mail

Duvar English

Opposition Y (Good) Party chair Meral Akener has confirmed the allegations of the government having sent a bureaucrat to the mral Island to talk with jailed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) leader Abdullah calan.

Akener said that the government had assigned someone from the judiciary for the task and that although she knew who it was, she would not reveal the name.

They (the rulership) have recently sent someone to mral, asked for help. I know who it is, someone who used another name (not to be exposed). It would be dishonorable for me to reveal (the name). If the person were a politician, I would say it (the name). They have sent someone from the judiciary. The person went there by changing their name, Akener told journalist Fatih Altayl on May 1 on Habertrk TV channel.

The allegations of a government delegation having held a meeting with calan initially came to the foreground with the reporting of journalist Amed Dicle on April 10. The journalist said that when the government could not get the answer they wanted during the meeting with calan, the jailed PKK leaders isolation was aggravated and disciplinary punishment was given.

On April 28, jailed former Peoples Democratic Party (HDP) co-chair Selahattin Demirta told the daily Cumhuriyet that the alleged meeting between the government and calan was also confirmed by my sources. When they (the rulership) couldnt get a result in mral, they have preferred to increase the oppression against Kurdish on the field and back up (Kurdish Islamist political party) HDA-PAR.

A similar confirmation came from journalist Murat Arel who said that the alleged meeting between senior bureaucrats and calan took place on March 28. Sources to whom you can ask this meeting are limited. They dont want to say anything with regards to the content (of the meeting). We dont know what they talked inside. What has been reflected in the press is that some offers were made and these offers were not accepted. When I asked (my resources about this), it was a meeting of this sort, Arel told Halk TV on April 28.

Presidential spokesperson brahim Kaln, however, denied the existence of such a meeting with calan.I would like to express that this claim is a clear lie. These are the claims made by certain circles to gain a political advantage. It is not possible for them to get a result from this. There was no meeting, Kaln said on April 26.

calan was arrested in 1999 and is serving a life sentence on mral Island located in the south of the Sea of Marmara.

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Opposition leader says govt sent a bureaucrat to talk with calan - Duvar English

Since the Supreme Court incorporated the First Amendment to apply to the states in 1925, conversations about the balance between free speech and other social values have intensified. Arguably the most contentious conflict exists between freedom of speech and egalitarian social values, creating issues when free speech causes harm to marginalized communities.

The First Amendment allows for broad protections of speech. For example, content-based restrictions on speech those that limit speech based on its message are subject to strict scrutiny, the highest level of judicial review. Any measure that restricts speech based on its content must serve a compelling governmental interest and be narrowly tailored to serve that purpose alone. When the government limits speech, it must do so in the least restrictive way possible.

There are only a few categorical exceptions to the content-based restrictions that are permitted under the First Amendment, such as true threats or criminal incitement. The Supreme Court has chosen to interpret these exceptions narrowly and has largely refused to expand the kind of speech that is not protected under First Amendment protections.

One court case that continues to trouble some Americans is Snyder v. Phelps, where the Supreme Court ruled in 2010 that the First Amendment shields speech that intentionally causes emotional distress. In Matal v. Tam, the Supreme Court reaffirmed the idea that hate speech does not count as a categorical exception to the First Amendment.

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As a result, government entities have little power to regulate even harmful speech. This is exacerbated in the university context when student organizations invite controversial individuals to speak on campus. Recent visits from speakers like Ben Shapiro and Matt Walsh have been met with calls for the University of Wisconsin to have them removed. Unless their speech reaches one of the categorical exceptions to the First Amendment, however, UW has little power to unilaterally prevent hateful speech.

To fully comprehend the complexity of freedom of speech, we must acknowledge the weight words carry. Words arent simply syllables strung together they have the power to mobilize ideologies and behaviors. As a result, freedom of speech can come into tension with social equality, as hateful speech perpetuates oppressive power structures.

Members of marginalized groups are often the recurring targets of hate speech. In fact, minority communities encompass more than 70% of the people targeted by hate crimes and hate speech on social media, according to the United Nations. This speech is exacerbated by unregulated speech on social media. After Elon Musk bought Twitter, reducing the regulation of hate speech on the platform, the use of the n-word on the platform increased by almost 500% within 12 hours, according to the Brookings Institution.

People who use their constitutional freedom to speak hatefully can impose tangible impacts on marginalized communities based on historical power imbalances that speech can perpetuate. When hateful expression is allowed in the name of free speech, it reinforces structures of oppression.

It is critical that UW responds to hateful speakers not only to acknowledge the harm their speech inflicts, but also to support impacted communities. In the context of broad free speech protections, UW has the responsibility to support students harmed by free speech without resorting to censorship.

When a student group invites a speaker to campus who spreads harmful ideas, UW cannot prevent that. But, given that freedom of speech and freedom of protest are both protected by the First Amendment, UW also cannot prohibit counter-protests that may arise against speakers.

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There is a fundamental difference between freedom of speech and freedom of consequence. When a community reacts to a harmful speaker, that is an example of a logical repercussion for spreading ideas that hurt people. Not only are civilian protests against other forms of free speech a legal right, they should be encouraged to facilitate a healthy democracy. Community members who organize in response to harmful rhetoric can help foster discussion around why such hate should not be tolerated.

April 4, many UW students received an email with the subject line Homosexuality and Christ Talk this Thursday from Badger Catholic through the RSO outreach via All Students email address. The email invited students to attend an event with guest speaker Kim Zember.

Students receive these emails because they are enrolled at UW and because the organization is a Registered Student Organization. RSOs can send one email per semester to all students at a reduced fee. Students who wish to be removed from these mass emails can choose to do so under the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act, FERPA.

Before sending out the mass emails, UW reviews the text of the email to ensure RSOs are adhering to UWs policies. The Center for Leadership & Involvement has a responsibility to every campus organization to send these emails if they follow UWs policies. But UW also has a responsibility to its students, particularly those who are often the target of harmful speech, to condemn harmful speech being promoted by any RSO.

UW failed to identify or condemn Zember as an anti-LGBTQIA+ speaker. Unless speech constitutes true threats, incitement of criminal activity or another categorical exception to the First Amendment, UW cannot censor speakers. It is a public university and that would be a constitutional violation of free speech. But doing nothing in the face of hateful speakers is unacceptable.

For one, when vetting the text of the RSO Outreach emails, UW should consider whether it is misleading. The Badger Catholic email was vague and did not make clear the hateful content of Zembers message. When this is the case, UW should send out a supplemental email with more context about controversial speakers, including resources and community spaces to better prepare and support students in the face of hateful speech.

In the absence of UWs open condemnation of harmful speech, students can and should do something. We live in a democracy where everyone has the right to free speech. The cost of having this right is the persistent need to fight the expressions of bigotry it permits. Hateful expressions are not a consequence of the First Amendment as a conduit for ideas but a broader American culture that perpetuates these ideas in the first place.

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We live in a country where transgender people are victimized at staggering rates, a country founded on a distorted view of equality and a country built by enslaved people on stolen land. Our history has repeatedly empowered bigots to weaponize freedom of speech against vulnerable communities, and it is this not free speech that represents the root of hateful expression.

Fortunately, the same right that permits hateful rhetoric on campus also permits students to protest this rhetoric. Instead of calling on UW to censor hateful speakers, we must openly oppose harmful speech, share resources with one another, promote inclusive campus groups and build community around a shared goal of empowering marginalized groups.

Freedom of speech and social equality are not mutually exclusive. Instead of calling for censorship in the face of harmful speech, we must use the rights we have to engage in productive counterprotest. Within the framework of the First Amendment, members of a democracy have the ability and responsibility to respond when free speech is abused.

It is the wielding of free speech not the constraining of it that provides an avenue to push back against the hateful discourse the First Amendment allows.

The Badger Herald Editorial Board serves to represent the voice of the editorial department, distinct from the newsroom and does not necessarily reflect the views of each staff member.

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The Badger Herald Editorial Board: The bounds of free speech The ... - The Badger Herald