By Susan Scott

Canada should get tougher with torturers, people who have committed crimes against humanity and war criminals, says a refugee lawyer who recently spoke at a seminar hosted by York's Centre for Refugee Studies.

David Matas, a Winnipeg lawyer, is also past-president of the Canadian Council for Refugees, a non-profit organization that works to protect the rights of refugees in Canada and around the world, and on the settlement of refugees and immigrants in Canada.

Matas is particularly concerned about Canada's lack of action in investigating cases of alleged torture. Canada signed an international Torture Convention in 1985 and ratified it in 1987, said Matas. Between those years, he said, the federal parliament amended the Criminal Code to add the offence of torture. The offence penalizes every official and every person acting at the instigation of an official or with the consent or acquiescence of an official who inflicts torture.

"There is a jurisdictional provision in the code which allows Canada to prosecute any torturer found in Canada no matter where the torture was committed, no matter what the nationality of the victim and no matter what the nationality of the accused," said Matas.

However, in the 12 years since parliament legislated the offence of torture and since Canada ratified the Torture Convention, "the number of prosecutions for international fugitive torturers has been a big fat zero," he said. However, Matas said, "it's not for want of candidates." The Refugee Convention says it does not apply to anyone for whom there are "serious reasons" for considering that person has committed a war crime or a crime against humanity as defined by international standards. This exclusion is part of Canadian law and used by the Immigration and Refugee Board.

Matas said during a search of decisions of the federal Immigration and Refugee Board, he found 47 entries and printed 20. Of those 20, two claimants were recognized as refugees despite allegations of torture. The other 18 were excluded based on allegations of torture and included individuals from countries such as Haiti, Nigeria, Colombia, Sri Lanka, Algeria, Cambodia and Ethiopia.

"So we have at least 18 cases in the space of two-and-a-half years where an independent tribunal in Canada found serious reasons for considering that a person had been guilty of an act of torture. Why were none of these people prosecuted?" said Matas.

He acknowledged that actually getting convictions may be one explanation for the lack of prosecutions. Sometimes, he said, the only evidence at a refugee hearing is from claimants themselves.

"That evidence is not usable in a criminal trial because the law protects an accused from self-incrimination," Matas said.

However, he asked, why is there no investigation of these cases? "We do not know whether a conviction would be easy or difficult to get unless we investigate. Yet, we do not investigate," he said.

Although responsibility for prosecuting torture is a provincial or territorial one, rather than federal, Matas said there are no torture prosecutorial units within the provincial or territorial governments in Canada. He could only speculate on the reasons why this is so.

One may be that, as Matas, put it, "the left hand may not know what the right hand is doing." While the Immigration and Refugee Board and the federal Department of Citizenship and Immigration may be well aware of torture cases, the offices of the provincial attorneys general across the country may not be aware because no one has told them.

A second reason for inaction, said Matas, is a case appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada involving Imre Finta, an alleged Nazi war criminal. According to evidence presented at Finta's original trial in 1994, he was a captain in the Hungarian police and was a commander of an investigation unit there when more than 6,800 Jewish people were detained in a brickyard, forcibly stripped of valuables and deported to concentration camps. The only authority to deport was an order known as the Baky Order, which was a decree of the Hungarian Ministry of the Interior directed to a number of officials including commanding officers of investigating subdivisions. The Baky Order was an order requiring the deportation of all Jewish people from Hungary. Finta used this order in his defence and was acquitted. His acquittal was subsequently upheld by both the Ontario Court of Appeal and again the Supreme Court of Canada.

Matas said this case was important because sometimes acts of torture are also crimes against humanity or war crimes. When refugee claimants are excluded from the Refugee Convention because of participation in torture, the formal ground of exclusion is often participation in war crimes or crimes against humanity, since there is no formal ground of exclusion of participation in torture.

Canada used to have a criminal prosecutions unit for war crimes and crimes against humanity but it shifted its efforts away from criminal prosecutions to revocation of citizenship and deportation after the Supreme Court decided the Finta case.

"The Finta case made prosecutions unworkable and one reason was the peculiar and extended interpretation the court gave to the defence of superior orders," said Matas. According to the court in the Finta case, a person who is accused of a crime against humanity or war crime has a defence of superior orders, as long as those orders were not "manifestly unlawful". Finta argued that his participation in the deportation was not manifestly unlawful because of the Baky Order.

"Obviously, once local laws authorize the very crimes sought to be punished and Canadian law allows a defence of superior orders that allows pleading local law in defence," said Matas, "then prosecutions become impossible. It is understandable that, after the Finta decision, the government dropped prosecution of war crimes and crimes against humanity."

But, said Matas, the Canadian Criminal Code excludes the defence of superior orders for crimes of torture. Finta's defence would not have been open to him if he had been prosecuted for torture instead of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Matas explained the Canadian government is preparing new legislation to "overcome the Finta decision." The proposed Bill C-19 excludes torture. "The proposed legislation must not, as it does now, remove the Finta-generated difficulties for war criminals and crimes against humanity but leave them intact for torture."

This legislation was, in part, sparked by the establishment of an international criminal court and a treaty launching the court, which Canada signed last summer. Therefore, said Matas, Canada must "get its legislative house in order so that it can ratify the treaty. Canada could not promote the court abroad and do nothing about international criminal fugitives at home."

While the treaty criminalizes war crimes and crimes against humanity, it does not criminalize torture, unless the torture is a war crime or crime against humanity, said Matas. But, he added, if Canada "puts itself in the position again to prosecute war crimes and crimes against humanity, it must also ensure that it can and will prosecute torture."

He said Canada has an obligation under the Torture Convention to prosecute tortures. "We have made a promise and we should keep it. Canada cannot be credible in the international arena asking other states to keep their promises to Canada if Canada does not keep its promises to other countries."

Furthermore, he said the "promise of prosecution" would be kept if Canada extradited torturers for prosecution abroad, but requests for extradition of torturers are "non-existent". Matas said for a crime to be deterred there needs to be an effective criminal justice system. "Deportation is relocation of the criminal but not punishment of the crime. If a fugitive comes to Canada knowing that the worst that could happen is that he or she may be told to leave, that is no reason not to try. Canada, for fugitive torturers, becomes an immigration lottery where they cannot lose, but, at worse, end up in the same position in which they started," he said.

Finally, he argued that because of the Finta decision, "Canada has become a pole of attraction for the worst criminals around the world. They will not be prosecuted here. They may get a haven, and if they face torture or death abroad, they must get a haven." While time and effort are spent trying to prevent people from coming to Canada who are trying to get here, Matas said it would be easier to change our system so that "international criminal fugitives", because of the fear of prosecution, would not want to come here.

Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus at York University, Jack Granatstein will receive an honorary degree from the University of Western Ontario on June 9, 2000. The respected author, historian and teacher is currently director and CEO of the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa. Granatstein was a professor in York's Department of History from 1966 to 1995 when he also held the Canada Council's Killam Senior Fellowship twice and served as editor of the Canadian Historical Review from 1981 to 1984. In 1997, he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada. Most noted for his perspective on the events of World War II, Granatstein is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

By Cathy Carlyle

Charles Geshekter and Carla Marcelis

HIV - human immunodeficiency virus
AIDS - acquired immune deficiency syndrome

"Have you ever wondered whether what you've read about HIV and AIDS is incorrect?" asked Charles Geshekter, California State University historian and anthropologist, at a recent talk. "I want to confront some core concepts that people treat as 'received wisdom'. It's a volatile subject and one that doesn't seem to be open for interrogation. Yet we scrutinize, challenge, and replace with better information any other theories."

Geshekter spoke at a panel discussion at York's Founders College along with Carla Marcelis from Women's Health Interaction (WHI), a voluntary feminist collective concerned with women's rights and social justice in Canada and internationally.

"We approach the topic from the angle of women's health, looking at issues from a broad perspective," said Marcelis. Like Geshekter, she believes there are many misconceptions in the world surrounding HIV and AIDS.

Geshekter decried the figures for the numbers of HIV and AIDS cases bandied about by newspapers and magazines. "What is the basis for these numbers? There are lots of differing estimates about the epidemiology of AIDS, particularly in Africa. It's like Alice's Looking Glass World where anything goes," he said, adding that he had worked for many years in South Africa and Swaziland, conducting research and meeting with government officials. [He had an extensive meeting with South African Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, whose special advisor, Dr. Ian Roberts, he worked with for a number of years.]

Why are the number of AIDS and HIV cases at such variance in different reports? Geshekter's stance is that what passes as symptoms of those conditions are in reality cases of malaria, tuberculosis (TB), protein anemia etc. - all common diseases of crowding and poverty. The symptoms for the more prevalent diseases are similar to those of AIDS: fever, persistent cough, loose stools for two to four weeks and an unaccountable 10 per cent loss of body weight within the last two months.

"Those were the symptoms that the World Health Organization (WHO) agreed upon as the official definition of AIDS in 1985," said Geshekter, "and they have remained unchanged, except for the WHO adding TB as a possible cause."

Commenting further on the issue of numbers, Geshekter cited figures used in USA Today magazine articles, which said that AIDS is the number one cause of deaths in Africa; that a total of 11.5 million people have died there from it since the early 1980s; that 22.5 million people in all are expected to die from it within 10 years; and that 95 per cent of HIV carriers in sub-Saharan Africa have not been tested. He pointed out the irony of the last piece of information.

"Contrast those figures with ones in a World Health Organization study in November, 1999. For Africa the total number of people confirmed with AIDS from 1981 to 1999 is 794,000. The US, which has a little more than one-third of Africa's population, has 717,000 people with AIDS dating from 1981 onward [a far higher proportion than has Africa], according to the WHO study."

Geshekter pointed out that in 1996 the WHO said there were 91,000 TB cases in South Africa compared with 729 AIDS cases. Zimbabwe had 330,000 cases of malaria, 35,000 cases of TB and 9,100 cases of AIDS.

Another factor to consider when you read AIDS figures is that pregnant women who test positive for HIV frequently do not have the virus, he said. "Especially in Africa, you get surveys done on pregnant women who have gone to clinics for antenatal care. HIV tests are given and projections made on the number of people who have the virus. But the testers do not realize that, because pregnancy is a special condition, a high number of the results are false positive. And the reports giving numbers of HIV cases in Africa are based mainly on these false results.

"Tied to the numbers is the topic of 'African sexuality' and 'African sexual culture', terms which border on racism and are often used by AIDS researchers. No one has ever shown that people in Rwanda, Zaire and Kenya - the so-called AIDS belt - are more sexually active than people in Nigeria and Cameroon where reported AIDS cases are much lower," said Geshekter.

He is "astonished" that more people haven't raised the issue of stereotyping and racism connected with stories about Africa. "When I hear statements about Africans having 'insatiable sexual demands' and being 'sexual athletes', I am taken back to the way missionaries there used to talk in the 19th century. Also, when researchers tie AIDS cases to homosexuality, I question that. It seems to me to be an endemic disease, caused by malnourishment, not 'out-of-control' sexual behaviour."

He queried two other pieces of conventional "wisdom", giving his own views based on results from numerous recent studies published in medical and science journals. He said new information demonstrates that HIV is not easily transmitted sexually; and, further, that HIV has not even been proven as the cause of AIDS.

"There is a tremendous controversy around this. It's almost a religious icon that AIDS is caused by something called HIV. But has HIV ever been isolated? Usually when you produce antibodies, it means your body has mounted a campaign against a virus that is already active. But with HIV, we're told that a high antibody count means your body is mounting a fight against a syndrome [AIDS] that is yet to come. Yet researchers continue to lump the term HIV with AIDS."

Carla Marcelis, in agreement with Geshekter about AIDS misdiagnoses, spoke of the mental and physical stresses placed upon those told they have the syndrome when, in fact, they do not. She, too, questioned the link between HIV-positive tests and AIDS. "We heard of one scientist testing for HIV antibodies who was using undiluted blood for the tests. If you test people for HIV with undiluted blood, all of us would test positive. HIV is different, in that you need to use a one-in-400-parts dilution for the test."

If you are told you have AIDS, or HIV that could cause AIDS, she said, you experience great fear. Not only that, you are prescribed huge amounts of toxic drugs. "When someone - say, a marginalized pregnant woman - tests positive, such a diagnosis has tremendous consequences. After its birth, her baby can be removed from her if she refuses treatment for it, even if it does not test positive. This results in many so-called HIV-positive children and women being given toxic drugs that are unnecessary," said Marcelis.

"There is a case of a child who has been away from her HIV-positive mother for over six months now, and who is being given drug cocktails that are causing kidney damage, vomiting, diarrhea and lethargy. This is a child who was healthy. There is more than one case of a woman being forced to stop breastfeeding because she had HIV, and of women diagnosed as HIV-positive who are being encouraged to have abortions or caesarians to avoid HIV transmission to unborn children." The other side of the issue is that the pregnant women who have been diagnosed with HIV, whether the test result is accurate or not, are being given drug treatment "when we know what the drugs could do to a rapidly-growing fetus."

Marcelis spoke against the mandatory testing of women for HIV, the unreliability of results when a pregnant woman is tested and how symptoms of AIDS are like "diseases of poverty" such as TB and dysentery. "It is clear that there are people dying in Africa, but are they dying of AIDS?" she asked. "Our [WHI] fear is that the true causes of death are not being looked at and addressed. Is there something that needs to be done nutritionally?"

She mourned the lack of support from women's groups on the whole issue of HIV testing. "In other issues, women's groups have been behind the WHI," she said. For example, explained Marcelis, they were supportive over the WHI's fight against DES (diethylstilbestrol), a hormone given to pregnant women to prevent miscarriages and later found to be linked to cancer in their female offspring; over the negative effects of certain silicone breast implants; and over the Dalkon contraceptive shield, the use of which sometimes caused serious side effects, including death.

According to Marcelis, researchers who question current HIV and AIDS information are silenced and marginalized and experience a loss of research funds. "We've been called dangerous. Maybe we are, from a pharmaceutical company's perspective that stands to gain a lot of money in the promotion of drugs for HIV and AIDS. But we just want women to be more informed on the subject. We don't want them used as guinea pigs."

Panel discussions were organized by York's African Studies Program and sponsored by the Office to the Advisor to the University on the Status of Women, Department of History, Department of Anthropology, Division of Social Science, Health and Society Program, Centre for Feminist Research, Centre for Human Rights and Equity, Faculty of Education and Founders College.

Geshekter's earlier talk touched upon

During an earlier talk at York in February, Charles Geshekter emphasized the difficulty of getting social science statistics in Africa, according to Pablo Idahosa, coordinator of York's African Studies Program. Geshekter said researchers seem knowledgeable about sexual practices in Africa - practices that seem to be known despite a paucity of information about them. He said there is no restriction, however, on the exaggerated figures and projections on HIV and AIDS in Africa.

Idahosa also said Geshekter talked about the enormous dependence most parts of Africa have on development assistance from governments and multilateral agencies like the World Bank, of which AIDS amelioration and education has increasingly become a part. "HIV and AIDS are now seen, like development, as part of the need to modify the African's behaviour, said Isahosa, paraphrasing Geshekter. "Again, it is a blaming of the victim for the travails of development."

As well, Geshekter placed emphasis on the role of multinational pharmaceutical companies, which have a large stake in seeing the HIV-AIDS nexus maintained through arguing that the rest of the world is seeing the future of the world by looking at Africa.

By Susan Scott

Recently, the Gazette published an article about a symposium held earlier this winter on 'Commercialization of University Research.' At this symposium, a number of York faculty members voiced their concern over the increasing number of corporate donations to universities and the resulting effect on researchers' work. In this article, the Gazette speaks with faculty members who discuss how corporate donations can benefit research projects.

Research funding is here to stay and faculty members may as well apply for their share, say York researchers.

Paul Lovejoy, a York history professor, said the main issue regarding research funding is accountability on all sides. While the researcher is responsible for producing what he or she said she would when applying for funding, and granting agencies or corporations have a responsibility to fund projects for the advancement and knowledge of society, the University must have safeguards in place to protect intellectual property.

Lovejoy said funding - whatever the source - is available for those who go after it. "Either we can lament about corporate involvement or we can take advantage of the fact that this funding is there. Everyone else is doing this," he said. "York has a first-rate reputation and we have a right to funding just like other institutions." He said he has never experienced influence from a funding agency regarding how to spend research dollars. The Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI) for example, he said, is quite specific in its funding criteria: projects must be for infrastructure.

Michael Siu, a York chemistry professor who is also NSERC/ MDS SCIEX Chair, said "the current funding climate has made working with business necessary for some, especially those whose research is funding intensive." York, NSERC (the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada) and MDS SCIEX, a Canadian-owned manufacturer of science equipment, have established a new $2-million Chair - to which Siu was named - in analytical mass spectrometry at the University.

Siu suggested researchers who work with funding agencies need to ensure their agreements allow for "as much academic freedom as possible. I would not personally sign any agreement that will limit what I want to do or unduly limit my ability to publish my work in the 'open literature'. The key is to pick your partners wisely and give yourself room to operate."

Michael Herren, a humanities professor at York's Atkinson College, said he is concerned about academic freedom and ensuring safeguards are in place to protect the University's interests and those of its faculty. At the same time, he suggested the University continue to reach out to community groups, which might have fewer conditions for supporting York, not just corporations as sources for funding. He pointed to the successful partnership between the University and the Greek community which recently provided funding to establish a Chair and Hellenic Studies Program at York.

By Nishat Karim

York Lanes It is where music and Nazism are researched; where feminism and disability are discussed and debated; and where United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Sadako Ogata, participated in an open forum with 250 participants.

Most people look at York Lanes and think... 'oh my goodness, it's a shopping centre on campus.' Well yes, it does provide retail services to the University's community as well as the surrounding North York vicinity, but it also does so much more.

York Lanes houses many of the research centres and institutes at York, allowing the University to encourage interaction between them. The building officially marked its opening on July 17, 1991. The Canadian Centre for German and European Studies, the Centre for Feminist Research and the Centre for Refugee Studies are just a few of the research initiatives that are housed on the second and third floors of York Lanes.