Yavar Hameed, National security, immigration and racism
Tanie Hallé, criminalization, political repression and CSIS
Adil Charkaoui, CSIS: harassment of immigrants, case of the Muslim
community
The evening will also include: a discussion
kicked off by Jaggi Singh on the importance of not collaborating with CSIS; the
projection of several short films on CSIS; presentation and discussion of
campaign plans; and the launch of a new "Know your rights" booklet about
CSIS.
* Free, light dinner (with vegetarian &
hallal options)
* Free child-care onsite (with games like pin
the tail on the spy, find the secret evidence, etc.)
* Translation (whisper):
english-french-spanish-arabic-punjabi-farsi-urdu
Members of community organizations and individuals are warmly invited to
participate in a community dinner and information and discussion
event about how to protect our communities from
harassment, intimidation and criminalization by Canada's aggressive
spy agency, CSIS.
For decades, the Canadian Security Intelligence
Service (CSIS), Canada's spy agency, has profiled communities
and social movements and subjected them
to surveillance, harassment, threats and other abuses.
CSIS is the Canadian government agency mandated to
bar immigrants from Canada on so-called security grounds, to initiate the
"security certificate" process, to screen government employees,
and to place organizations and individuals on blacklists. It
also routinely shares information on people in Canada with foreign spy
agencies. In its work, CSIS relies on
guilt by association and profiling; it regards certain
political and religious opinions, as well as entire
communities, as suspect. It keeps a watch
over indigenous communities, migrant groups, mosques and political
organizations. CSIS has been heavily
implicated in Canadian cases of rendition to torture but has emerged from
these and other scandals - such as manipulation of evidence
and the infiltration of labour unions - unscathed, protected by a
broad mandate, secrecy and lack of accountability.
Over the last
decade, CSIS's budget has increased by 140%, reaching $430 million in
2009. In 2010, CSIS maintained almost 3000 employees. It also had
information sharing agreements with 147 countries. With the Harper majority and right-wing attitudes favouring
surveillance and exclusion hardening in Canada, the problem
of CSIS will likely only worsen.
The People's Commission Network sees CSIS as a
flagship of the current political trend and a powerful tool the state
uses to implement racist and repressive policies. Since 2009, our CSIS
Watch project has promoted non-collaboration with CSIS. We are now
launching a public campaign to confront CSIS more
effectively.
Come join us to learn more about the history,
mandate, abuses, and current practices of Canada's spy agency, to
learn about the new tools that the People's Commission has developed
to protect our communities against CSIS (videos, pamphlets, workshop,
website, etc.), and to discuss how, as individuals
and communities, we can develop effective strategies to end
CSIS intimidation and defeat the political interests it
serves.
---------------
People's Commission
Network
People's Commission Network is a working group
of QPIRG
Concordia.