Don't sweat it, Ottawa.
Canada has lost to Ireland and Norway its bid for one of the two
rotating, temporary seats on the United Nations Security Council. Canadian human rights activist Kaveh Sharouz,
writing with unusual clarity and integrity, notes
Share |
notwithstanding Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s sloganeering
on international affairs, Canada isn’t back. With a humiliating loss in the UN
Security Council election, we seem to be exactly where we were in 2010. Getting
Canada back onto the Security Council had been a cornerstone of Trudeau’s
foreign policy, if for no other reason than to succeed where Stephen Harper
failed. And now, having won fewer votes than his predecessor, Trudeau has
nothing to show for it....
While Trudeau did not spend as readily as our opponents
Norway and Ireland (the latter even splurging on U2 tickets for 150 foreign
diplomats), he sacrificed a lot in this quixotic quest. To win the votes of
unsavoury regimes and their allies, Canada kept silent on China’s mass human
rights abuses, said nothing about Bashar Assad’s butchery in Syria, refused to
talk about gay rights in Senegal, and voted against an amendment calling on
Cuba to release political prisoners. The list goes on.
He explains his country is now free to reclaim its "voice
for democracy and human rights protections internationally" and can
begin by taking the battle to some of the worst global
actors. China, surely, is at the top of that list. There’s strong evidence it
runs horrifying concentration camps for its Uyghur minority. It has taken away
what little independence Hong Kong had left. Its malfeasance led to a far
greater pandemic than the world would have otherwise experienced. And it
continues to unjustly imprison two Canadians. Unburdened by the need to win a
UNSC seat, we should abandon what a former Canadian ambassador to China calls
Canada’s “almost humiliating” posture towards Beijing.
The same should be done with Iran and Russia, two of the
most malevolent regimes on the international scene. Compelled by the UNSC race,
we have been eerily silent when those regimes take political prisoners or when
they slaughter their citizens in the streets. Worse than silence, our prime
minister has even periodically hobnobbed with officials of a regime responsible
for killing dozens of our citizens in the skies.
Being rejected by the United Nations should be considered
more a badge of honor than a badge of disgrace. It's not Iran and Russia which
that body- or its human rights council- is concerned with:
China lashed out at me at the United Nations today for "abusing human rights" after I asked why a regime that locks up 1 million Muslims, and crushed those who tried to sound the alarm of the Coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, was put on the UN panel that vets human rights monitors. pic.twitter.com/lPaa1CcdG7— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) June 18, 2020
Share |
No comments:
Post a Comment