Opinion :

Harper regime refuses national inquiry into brutality of indigenous women

by Daya Gamage

Call after call, within Canada and internationally, for a national investigation into the brutal deaths and involuntary disappearances of indigenous (Indian/First Nation) women and young girls but to no avail, and Canada's Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper and his regime has given a flat-out no to the likes of the United Nations, Human Rights Watch, the Assembly of First Nation, church groups and host of other organisations.

Every Valentine's Day, indigenous women, their families and their allies rally across Canada to remember the now more than 824 missing and murdered aboriginal women and girls whose cases have gone unsolved and in many cases uninvestigated.

That updated statistic — previously estimated at nearly 600 before the the Harper regime pulled the plug on Native women's data collection — was revealed by independent Ottawa researcher Maryanne Pearce in late January, the Winnipeg Free Press reported. Other advocates estimate the numbers could be many times worse.

Last year Stephen Harper told the Canada's CBS News “My experience has been they (the investigative commissions) almost always run way over time, way over budget, and often the recommendations prove to be of limited utility,” so much for his well-publicised call for transparency last year for world leaders and governments to boycott the Commonwealth Summit in Colombo asking Sri Lanka to have a transparent and accountability test over the final months of the battle in 2009 with terrorist Tamil Tigers.

Violence

The Asian Tribune US News Desk has monitored the latest developments of Harper regime and his Conservative-controlled parliament's failure and refusal - as recently as March 7 (2004) - to recommend needed steps to stem violence against indigenous women.

A landmark Canadian parliamentary report released on March 7 did not recommend either an independent national inquiry or a comprehensive national action plan on the violence, and made no recommendations to address accountability for police misconduct.

“The committee’s weak recommendations represent an acceptance of the shocking status quo of violence against indigenous women and girls, even by the very people who are supposed to protect them,” said Meghan Rhoad, women’s rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The status quo is a state of constant insecurity for the indigenous women and girls who face threats to their lives and feel they have nowhere reliable to turn for protection.”

Police misconduct

Human Rights Watch research published in February 2013 documented the failure of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in northern British Columbia to protect indigenous women and girls from violence.

Human Rights Watch also documented abusive police behaviour against indigenous women and girls, including excessive use of force, and physical and sexual assault. British Colombia has inadequate police complaint mechanisms and oversight procedures, and there is no national requirement for independent civilian investigations into all reported incidents of serious police misconduct.

Canadian Parliament established the special all-party committee in February 2013 to hold hearings on the issue of missing and murdered indigenous women and to propose solutions to address root causes of the violence against indigenous women.

Human Rights Watch said that creating a parliamentary committee was a positive move but was no substitute for a politically independent national commission of inquiry into the violence.

Instead of recommending the development of a comprehensive national action plan, the Conservative Party-controlled parliamentary committee called for an “action plan” to implement their recommendations.

The committee’s recommendations for a victim’s bill of rights and for government authorities to consider improving data collection on violence against indigenous women were considered important steps, but the recommendations as a whole are insufficient to address the scope of the problem, many analysts said.

Periodic review

The New Democratic Party (NDP) and the Liberal Party, both in opposition, each released dissenting reports on March 7, both of which recommend a national inquiry and action plan.

The Native Women’s Association of Canada has collected data showing that nationally, between the 1960s and 2010, 582 Aboriginal women and girls were reported missing or were murdered in Canada.

Thirty-nine percent of those cases occurred after 2000. Comprehensive data is no longer available since the Harper government cut funding for the organisation’s database, and police forces in Canada do not consistently collect race and ethnicity data.

More than a dozen countries raised the issue during the periodic review of Canada’s human rights record by the United Nations Human Rights Council last April. Both the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights sent delegations to Canada to investigate.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) report released February (2014) has recommended to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva to raise the issue of violence against indigenous women and girls in Canada as part of the United Nations Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review; Encourage Canada to launch a national inquiry into the murders and disappearances of indigenous women and girls.

Suspicious deaths

In Canada, the Constitution recognises Aboriginal People as three groups - Indians, Metis and Inuit peoples.

The Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC) collected data showing that nationally, between the 1960s and 2010, 582 Aboriginal women and girls went missing or were murdered in Canada. Data collected as of March 31, 2010, indicate that two-thirds of the cases logged were murders; one-fifth were disappearances; and the remainder were suspicious deaths or unknown. Some cases date back to the 1960s and 70s, but 39 percent occurred since 2000. NWAC’s data indicates that the majority of the victims were under the age of 31 and many were mothers.

While the Canadian government has issued statements and undertaken studies indicating that it appreciates the gravity of the situation, it has stopped short of establishing a public national inquiry into the murders and disappearances of indigenous girls and women or developing a national action plan to address the issue. Harper's Conservative government has totally rejected a national inquiry.

The Assembly of First Nations, the Native Women’s Association of Canada, and Canadian Feminist Alliance for International Action are among the many groups that have called for a national inquiry.

The HRW February report states:

(Quote) The Native Women’s Association of Canada documented 160 cases of indigenous women and girls who went missing or were murdered in British Columbia between the 1960s and 2010, significantly more than any other province or territory in Canada.

The province also had the highest unsolved rate of murders of indigenous women and girls. The 724- kilometer stretch of Highway 16 that runs through small rural towns between Prince George and Prince Rupert has come to be called the Highway of Tears, because of the murders and disappearances that have occurred in its vicinity. Since 1969, dozens of women and girls – perhaps more than 40 – have gone missing or been murdered in close proximity to three highways in northern and central BC (Highways 16, 97, and 5). The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) includes 18 murders and disappearances in its roster of Highway of Tears cases.

However, indigenous community estimates have always been higher than the numbers maintained by the RCMP due, in large part, to the RCMP’s requirement for the disappearance or murder to have happened within a mile of Highway 16, 97, or 5 to be included in its E-PANA project, a special task force formed to investigate unsolved cases related to the Highway of Tears.

A 2006 report by several indigenous groups about the Highway of Tears referenced community activities in memory of 32 victims. Later estimates have topped 40.

Media reports highlight the fact that a number of the victims were hitchhiking at the time of their disappearance, but circumstances in other cases have varied. Indigenous women are disproportionately represented among the missing and murdered. Of the 18 Highway of Tears victims identified by the RCMP, 10 are indigenous. (End Quote)

Human Rights Watch documented eight incidents in which police physically assaulted or used questionable force against girls under the age of 18. In four of those cases, the girls themselves described the events to us; in the others, our information came from eye witnesses or from parents or service providers with knowledge of the events.

The incidents occurred in seven different communities in the north, and four of the eight occurred in 2012. In two of the cases, the police injured girls who they had been called in to protect.

In five of the 10 towns Human Rights Watch visited in the north, it heard allegations of rape or sexual assault by police officers. Human Rights Watch was struck by the level of fear on the part of women we met to talk about sexual abuse inflicted by police officers. Even though Human Rights Watch conducted outreach to women and girls through trusted service providers with long histories of working in these communities, on several occasions, women who initially expressed interest in talking with Human Rights Watch about their experiences of police sexual abuse later declined to speak or did not appear for interviews. Fear of retaliation, a frequent reason why women and girls do not report police abuse in general, is compounded by fear of stigma and feelings of shame in cases of sexual abuse. As a consequence, the HRW found it was very difficult to gather first-hand testimony to support the allegations we heard.

However, in one town, Human Rights Watch met Gabriella P., a homeless woman, who reported that in July 2012 she had been taken to a remote location outside of the town and raped by four police officers whose names she knew but would not provide.

“I feel so dirty,” Gabriella said through tears, the first time she spoke with Human Rights Watch. “They threatened that if I told anybody they would take me out to the mountains and kill me and make it look like an accident.” Gabriella said that she had been raped by police in similar circumstances on previous occasions. With all these glaring evidence, the Harper administration has so far refused accountability and transparency.

Canada’s international treaty obligations require that the government take measures to prevent and address with due diligence violence against indigenous women and girls.

They must also ensure that police do not treat individuals in violation of the prohibition on inhuman and degrading treatment, but treat them with respect and dignity in a nondiscriminatory manner.

United Nations human rights treaty monitoring bodies – including those committees addressing children’s rights violations, torture, discrimination against women, and civil and political rights violations – have criticised Canada for the inadequate government response to violence against indigenous women and girls. The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) has gone even further and taken the exceptional step of announcing an inquiry with respect to disappearances and murders of indigenous women and girls.

Stephen Harper's rhetoric of ‘accountability and transparency’ to nation's such as Sri Lanka has not matched his actions. Harper, when called for the boycott of the Commonwealth Summit in Colombo last year alleging that Sri Lanka committed war crimes in its battle against the Tamil Tigers exhibited itself as ‘Paragon of Virtue'.

Harper's conservative Party-controlled Parliamentary Committee's refusal to establish a commission to nationally investigate the brutal treatment of Canada's indigenous population speaks loud of his declared position on ‘transparency’ and ‘accountability'.

Why didn't he advice the Government of Sri Lanka “My experience has been they (the investigative commissions) almost always run way over time, way over budget, and often the recommendations prove to be of limited utility,” and attend the Colombo summit?

Courtesy: Asian Tribune