Monthly Archives: February 2008

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Video: El Ejido, The Law of Profit

February 14 | El Ejido | julie

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SW0RiGCzDFY[/youtube]

El Ejido is today the third richest town in Spain with an estimated 40,000 legal migrants and about the same number of undocumented ones. Most have no work contract and live in conditions so intolerable they sparked riots in 2000 and again in 2004. El Ejido produces millions of tons of vegetables a year, much of which is exported to the rest of Europe, mostly to Germany, France and the UK.

Filmed along a strip of the former desert coastline not far from the tourist resorts of the Costa del Sol, El Ejido, The Law of Profit reveals kilometer after kilometer of undulating white plastic greenhouse tents as far as the eye can see. Under these white-hot roofs, migrants from Morocco, Romania, Mali and Senegal pick tomatoes, fruit and vegetables in temperatures soaring above 40 degrees.

El Ejido, The Law of Profit documents the workers’ daily lives and points out the mechanism of an industrial system that exploits human beings and the environment. It’s the story of degradation of human rights, environment and ethic values in Europe that are being imposed by globalization.

El Ejido, The Law of Profit screens February 29, 2008, 7:30 PM at Jackman Hall, Art Gallery of Ontario.

Tagged morocco, romania, spain

Video: Human Rights Watch

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February 8 | Taxi To The Dark Side | julie

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtQ80ejoePY[/youtube]

Kenneth Roth, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch speaks out against against abuses perpetrated and condoned by the Bush administration on the news program Democracy Now!

Later, on the same show, Amy Goodman interviews Taxi to the Dark Side director Alex Gibney.

Tagged alex gibney, human rights watch

Khadr Author To Speak At Toronto Human Rights Watch Film Festival

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February 5 | 2008 Film Festival, HRWFF Special Guests, Taxi To The Dark Side | julie

khader defence

Michelle Shephard, National Security Reporter for The Toronto Star, and author of “Guantanamo’s Child: The Untold Story of Omar Khadr” (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.) will be a guest speaker at the Toronto Human Rights Watch Film Festival on March 3rd when she will introduce Taxi to the Dark Side director Alex Gibney.

The Oscar-nominated Taxi to the Dark Side has been lauded as a “chilling indictment” on the use of torture in the “war on terror.”

Toronto-born Khadr was captured in Afghanistan in 2002 at the age of 15 after a firefight with U.S. forces. The Pentagon has charged Khadr with five war crimes, including the murder of Christopher Speer, a Delta Force soldier and medic who died 10 days after the firefight from grenade wounds.

Earlier this year, Human Rights Watch along with Amnesty International, the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers and Human Rights First sent a letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper to formally request that the United States either try Mr. Khadr under juvenile justice rules or send him back to Canada.

Mr. Khadr is the only Westerner still held in Guantanamo Bay, and the U.S. administration has previously indicated that even his acquittal in a military court may not necessarily mean he would be released.

Tagged alex gibney, human rights watch, michelle shephard, omar khadr

In the News: Human Rights Watch World Report

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February 1 | News | julie

human rights watch world report 2008
In its 2008 annual report released yesterday, Human Rights Watch criticizes Western governments for devaluing democracy by allowing “dictators to legitimize themselves on the cheap.”

The sweeping report says Western nations are undermining human rights worldwide by allowing autocrats to pose as democrats, without demanding they uphold the civil and political rights that make democracy meaningful.

World Report 2008 identifies many human rights challenges in need of attention, including atrocities in Chad, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia’s Ogaden region, Iraq, Somalia, Sri Lanka, and Sudan’s Darfur region, as well as closed societies or severe repression in Burma, China, Cuba, Eritrea, Libya, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Vietnam.

The United States also comes in for harsh criticism:

275 prisoners are still being held at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, without being charged with any offense. Many have been there for six years, and several were cleared long ago of wrongdoing but simply not released.
The CIA continues to assert, with White House backing, that it is not bound by key U.S. anti-torture rules.
Secret prisons that were closed in 2006 appear to have been reopened.
Under U.S. anti-terrorism laws, authorities have denied refugee protections “to persons who fit the refugee definition under international law, including rape victims forced into domestic servitude by rebel groups,” the report says.

Canada was not one of the 75-plus countries that the report focused on.

Human Rights Watch was founded in 1978 and has produced an annual global survey of human rights for the last 18 years.

For more information, including video footage of yesterday’s press announcement delivered by Human Rights Watch Executive Director Kenneth Roth visit the World Report Special Feature.

Canadian News Coverage:
CBC News – Western states turn blind eye to brutality by allies, NGO finds
Toronto Star — Olivia Ward — Rights group says West backs `sham’ democracies