The accusation of Canadian complicity in the torture of Afghan detainees who had been turned over to Afghan authorities is not new.
Ottawa, ON - Opposition parties were given a big plate of cannon fodder Wednesday when Richard Colvin testified at a House of Commons Committee on Afghanistan. Prime Minister Stephen Harper dismissed the demand for a torture inquiry Thursday while opposition parties hammered Canada's Minister of Defence, Peter McKay over Canada's role in the alleged Afghan torture of prisoners.
MacKay put several classic techniques to work Thursday in his effort to deflect the opposition's quest for blue blood. MacKay, to be fair, was being grilled heavily by his parliamentary colleagues on Thursday. Under pressure, MacKay resorted to
emotional manipulation saying that Canada's Afghanistan expert, Richard Colvin, was taking the word of people
"who throw acid in the face of schoolgirls."
When that tactic fell on deaf ears,
MacKay moved on to the 'shoot the messenger' strategy, saying Colvin, an intelligence officer who served in Afghanistan as a Canadian diplomat, was not to be believed. MacKay said
"There has not been a single, solitary proven allegation of abuse involving a transferred Taliban prisoner by Canadian forces.”
Finally, for good measure, MacKay threw in the denial argument, claiming to have no knowledge of Colvin's
reports made to Canada in 2007 and 2008.
Professor Amir Attaran at the Ottawa University told the
CBC "The reality is that Mr. Colvin wrote 17 reports that he sent to colleagues in Ottawa. He cc's more than 70 people on those reports."
Colvin said Canada is complicit in the torture, because Canada knew what was going on and tried to bury the knowledge while doing nothing. Colvin now
works as an intelligence officer for Canada, based in the United States and is said to be an expert on Afghanistan.
MacKay also employed the tried and true strategy of discounting, telling
McLeans "... Yesterday, Mr. Colvin told us that his evidence was based on what the Taliban told him, what reports he’d read and what was second and thirdhand information. He also confirmed that the individuals that he talked to, including the one that you’re referring to that showed marks wasn’t even necessarily somebody transferred by Canadian soldiers so therefore his entire testimony is suspect. It’s not acceptable."
While Colvin had highlighted a specific two-year period in his testimony to the House of Commons Committee on Wednesday, he also
said that it was likely that detainees turned over to Afghan officials are still being tortured because that is a 'standard operating procedure' when interrogating detainees. Colvin
testified that the most common torture practices include rape, whipping and beating people, shocking people with electricity, cutting them with knives and using open flames to inflict burns.
The Liberal Foreign Affairs Critic, Bob Rae
said “By abandoning detainees to face torture, the Harper government has lost all credibility on human rights and now Canada’s global reputation has been seriously damaged. It’s going to take years to repair our leadership position, and a public inquiry will be the first step towards that repair."
The Foreign Affairs Critic for the NDP,
Paul Dewar, said
"There are concerns that the government was complicit in torture, in violation of international law, while engaging in a massive cover-up that put our diplomats and soldiers on the ground at risk. The only way to get to the bottom of Richard Colvin's explosive revelations is a public inquiry.”
The Conservative's strategy for dealing with Colvin's testimony is backfiring. As the
Globe and Mail pointed out Thursday
"The awkward fact for the Conservatives,however, is Mr. Colvin is otherwise trusted by the Canadian government on sensitive matters. He is currently a senior intelligence officer for Canada in this country's embassy in the United States."
Last month, the Bloc Quebecois scuttled a Liberal
motion to investigate allegations that Canada turned over Taliban prisoners to knowingly face torture at the hands of Afghanistan interrigators. The Bloc said the meeting of the special committee for the House on Afghanistan was the appropriate place to hear concerns about the treatment of Afghan detainees.
The Tory strategy of denial, discounting and emotional manipulation appears to only be damaging the credibility of the party, and as long as the government continues along this path, damage will continue to build up for team Harper.
