by Klaus Rohrich
June 22, 2004
Here’s a novel thought: the more civilized and reasonable that a country is, the more likely it is to be criticized by the bureaucrats at the UN for not being civilized enough. Or so it seems, taking the latest outrage perpetrated by the UN’s Human Rights Commission (HRC). This time around they are unhappy with Canada because they felt that 9 years was not enough time to allow an Iranian assassin to appeal deportation orders, after the Supreme Court of Canada ordered him deported.
You may recall the case. One Mansour ahani entered Canada in 1991 under a false refugee claim and after an investigation by the Canadian Security Investigation Service (CSIS), was arrested in 1993 as a risk to Canada’s security. This happened right after he returned from Italy on a false passport, where he had been sent by his bosses in Tehran to perform a hit on an Iranian dissident.
That’s when the fun started. ahani hired a bevy of so-called "refugee lawyers" who initiated a series of legal clauses designed to stall his deportation. The process lasted nine years and ended with a ruling by the Supreme Court of Canada that ahani was indeed a foreign agent and as such posed a threat to our national security. He was then put on a plane for Tehran.
However, the UN’s HRC felt that Canada was unreasonable in deporting ahani and has "ordered" the country to compensate him for not determining whether he was at risk of being tortured upon his return to Tehran. The HRC has given Canada 90 days to comply.
In the meantime ahani is living in Tehran with his parents. apparently his only "torture" there consists of being unable to find a suitable job. In an interview with the National Post last year, ahani had nothing but contempt for Canada and its silly legal system. I guess if you’re from a country where summary executions and public stonings are part of the normal jurisprudence, then the Canadian legal system might seem ineffectual and silly.
This brings me back to my original thought about civilized countries and the UN. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, a document to which Canada has been a signatory since 1966, proscribes deportations of undesirable aliens back to their homeland if there is a risk that they might be tortured or killed upon their return.
It was this covenant that kept the notorious sadist and serial killer Charles Ng from being deported to the US, as Canadian authorities wanted iron clad assurances from California prosecutors that Ng would not face the death penalty. Of course Canadian authorities sang a different tune when the California prosecutors, who did not wish to give these assurances, said "O.K. keep him. He’s your problem." Subsequently Ng was deported.
Now the UN HRC wants the Canadian taxpayer to pick up ahani’s cost of living, sort of like paying him unemployment insurance. It seems Iran has an oversupply of trained assassins and he can’t find work there.
Why is it that the UN’s HRC keeps bashing countries where stonings are not part of the daily itinerary, where people do not disappear forever in the middle of the night or where dissenters are not fed into industrial shredders? Why is it that countries like Egypt and Tunisia, whose own human rights records are appalling, are even sitting on the HRC? Isn’t that like putting an alcoholic in charge of the liquor control board?
What’s more, if Canada, or any other country for that matter, subjugates its own sovereignty to a bunch of unelected bureaucrats from countries with questionable interests and values it is basically abandoning its ability to govern itself. The thought of having some UN functionary impose rules and regulations on Canada gives me the willies, particularly in light of the fact that to the UN it seems perfectly logical to call for the destruction of Israel and the eradication of every Jew in the world. Somehow that isn’t genocide and racism is only racism if it is perpetrated by whites against people of colour.
The UN has passed its ‘best before’ date a long time ago. Events of the last few years have demonstrated that this organization has become a tool of despots, racists, murderers, and those who would deprive everyone of liberty. The sooner this really sick organization is put out of its misery, the better it will be for all civilized countries. But with hundreds of third world kleptocrats controlling it and western nations lacking the testosterone to abandon it, it looks like the UN might be on life support for a long time.