With his immigration bill, Canada's prime minister is bowing to Trump
But right now, Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, is bucking all of that lore after pressure from the US in the form of Donald Trump's 'concerns' about undocumented migrants and fentanyl moving across the US-Canada border. In response, the recently elected Liberal PM put forward a 127-page bill that includes, among other worrying provisions, sweeping changes to immigration policy that would make the process much more precarious for refugees and could pave the way for mass deportations.
If passed, Carney's Strong Borders Act (or Bill C-2) would bar anyone who has been in the country for more than a year from receiving refugee hearings. That would apply retroactively to anyone who entered the country after June 2020. If they arrived on foot between official ports of entry, meanwhile, they'd have to apply for asylum within 14 days of entering Canada – a disastrous outcome for people fleeing Trump's persecution. The bill also gives the immigration minister's office the authority to cancel immigration documents en masse.
This bill has been widely condemned by politicians and advocacy groups such as Amnesty International and the Migrants Rights Network, who are rightly worried about just how much havoc a change like this could wreak. Jenny Wai Ching Kwan, a member of Parliament for Vancouver East, told reporters the bill would breach civil liberties and basic rights.
So what excuse does Canada have for this kind of 180 on its immigration legacy? According to the government, the aim of this legislation is to 'keep Canadians safe by ensuring law enforcement has the right tools to keep our borders secure, combat transnational organized crime, stop the flow of illegal fentanyl, and crack down on money laundering'.
In reality, the Bill C-2 contains measures that public safety minister, Gary Anandasangaree, has admitted were a response to 'the concerns that have been posed by the White House'.
'There are elements that will strengthen [our] relationships with the United States,' he said in a press conference. 'There were a number of elements in the bill that have been irritants for the US, so we are addressing some of those issues.'
Tim McSorley, the national coordinator for the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group, condemned the federal government over the senselessness of this move. 'If the government is serious about addressing concerns regarding illegal gun and drug trafficking, it must introduce legislation specifically tailored to that goal, as opposed to a wide-ranging omnibus bill,' he said.
The demonization of immigrants has been a talking point for populist leaders throughout the west, so it's not surprising to see Carney lean into that rhetoric in order to appease Trump. Spurred on by the xenophobic rhetoric coming out of the US, Britain, and large swaths of Europe, anyone who comes from away is forced to bear the blame for the economic messes and ensuing societal erosion these countries have found themselves battling.
By feeding directly into this pipeline, Carney makes Canada not the powerful country poised to beat Trump at his dangerous games (elbows up, my foot), but a cowardly ally in the US's campaign of terror against immigrants.
Tayo Bero is a Guardian US columnist
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Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
Inside China's horrifying torture jails from gang-rape, human experiments and organ harvesting to inmates having nails ripped out and limbs bent back on notorious 'tiger chairs'
Mass sterilisation, mysterious injections, organ extractions and gang rape - these are just some of the sadistic conditions prisoners face in China, according to activists. Horrifying accounts of sexual abuse, torture, forced confessions and human experimentation have led rights groups to accuse the country of crimes against humanity. A shocking 2015 Amnesty International report revealed the inhumane conditions prisoners endured, and detailed how they were routinely slapped, kicked and hit with shoes or water-filled bottles. Prisoners described being strapped in so-called 'tiger chairs', with their legs tied to a bench as bricks attached to the bottom of their feet forced their legs backwards, causing them unimaginable pain. Amnesty also found that dozens of Chinese firms were producing 'tools of torture', ranging from electric chairs to deadly metal spiked rods. A separate report from Human Rights Watch in 2015 claimed Chinese detainees were being beaten and hanged by their wrists. 'Police are torturing criminal suspects to get them to confess to crimes and courts are convicting people who confessed under torture', the report said. The rights group cited former detainees as saying they were physically and psychologically tortured during police interrogations, including being whacked with electric batons, sprayed with chilli oil and deprived of sleep. Meanwhile, the UN Human Rights Council has been warned that China is actively selling human organs on an industrial scale, with body parts of prisoners - such as kidneys, livers and lungs - removed from them while they are still alive. While Beijing has repeatedly denied accusations that it forcibly takes organs from inmates, one survivor of organ harvesting in China revealed the horrific ordeal he endured at the hands of state-sanctioned surgeons. Between 1999 and 2006, Cheng Pei Ming faced relentless persecution for his religious and spiritual beliefs by the Chinese Communist Party, during which he is believed to have been repeatedly tortured. Cheng says he was taken to a hospital where doctors pressured him into signing consent forms for surgery In one of the most chilling episodes of his captivity, Cheng was taken to a hospital where doctors pressured him into signing consent forms for surgery. When he refused, he was immediately injected with an unknown substance which knocked him out. He awoke with a massive incision down the left side of his chest, and scans later confirmed that segments of Cheng's liver and lung had been removed. Images that surfaced on a website that shares information about the practice of organ harvesting clearly show an unconscious Cheng, which he suspects were taken by a shocked nurse or hospital worker. Beijing has denied any wrongdoing, but it admitted that organs were taken out of executed prisoners up until 2015. But many human rights organisations insist that China continues to harvest the organs of the country's oppressed ethnic minorities held in prisons. Internationals detained in China have also exposed the country's vicious treatment of prisoners and its brutal psychological torture methods. One Canadian man, who was detained by Chinese authorities for more than 1,000 days, claimed he was put into solitary confinement for months and interrogated for up to nine hours every day. ormer diplomat Michael Kovrig, his wife Vina Nadjibulla and sister Ariana Botha walk following his arrival on a Canadian air force jet after his release from detention in China, at Pearson International Airport in Toronto, Ontario, Canada September 25, 2021. He described the mental torture he suffered while detained Michael Kovrig, a former diplomat, was taken into custody in December 2018 in China and was accused of spying. In an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corp last year, he described how there was no daylight in his solitary cell, where the fluorescent lights were kept on 24 hours a day. At one point, his food ration was cut to three bowls of rice a day. 'It was psychologically absolutely, the most gruelling, painful thing I've ever been through,' he said. 'It's a combination of solitary confinement, total isolation, and relentless interrogation for six to nine hours every day,' he said. 'They are trying to bully and torment and terrorize and coerce you ... into accepting their false version of reality.' Another example that has sparked international condemnation are the harrowing prison camps hidden deep within the remote Xingjiang province in western China. Branded by the government as re-education facilities, the camps are believed to hold approximately one million inmates - most of whom are Uighur Muslim - for 'vocational training', which the government argues is necessary in the region to alleviate poverty and fight extremism. Horrifying accounts of the inhumane conditions inmates endure in these facilities have led human rights groups to accuse China of crimes against humanity and possible genocide. Picture shows watchtowers on a high-security facility near what is believed to a re-educatiion camp on the outskirts of Hotan in Xiangjing The barbarity of Beijing's clandestine prisons has been detailed by those who have been lucky enough to escape. Sayragul Sauytbay, a Uighur Muslim, was forced into a camp in 2017, where she was made to teach other prisoners Chinese in a bid to strip them of their identity and indoctrinate them into the Communist regime. After being released from the camp a year later, she fled China and bravely told of the savagery she witnessed in a 2019 interview with Israeli newspaper Haaretz. She described a world where prisoners were shackled, sleep deprived and subjected to humiliating punishments inside Beijing's brutal gulags. In her testimony, Sauytbay also went as far as comparing the Chinese bid to crush traditional cultures in the Xinjiang region to Nazi efforts to eradicate the Jews. During her time at the camp, she claims to have witnessed the use of mass surveillance by authorities, forced marriage, secret medical procedures, sterilisation and torture. Sauytbay described how inmates were stripped of all of their possessions upon arrival and were handed military-style uniforms. She also claimed that punishments were carried out in a so-called 'black room', a nickname given to it by prisoners because they were banned from talking about it. Tortures included being forced to sit on a chair covered with nails, beatings with electrified truncheons and having fingernails torn out. In one chillingly cruel instance, she saw an elderly woman get her skin flayed off and her fingernails ripped out for a minor act of defiance. Describing the sleeping arrangements at the camp, Sauytbay said around 20 inmates were crammed into a room measuring 50ft by 50ft, with a single bucket for a toilet. She also highlighted how people were constantly watched, with cameras installed in dormitories and corridors. Women were systematically raped, she claimed, and said that she was forced to watch a woman be repeatedly assaulted. In one instance, she saw how a woman was raped by guards as part of a forced confession. 'While they were raping her they checked to see how we were reacting. People who turned their head or closed their eyes, and those who looked angry or shocked, were taken away and we never saw them again,' she said. 'It was awful. I will never forget the feeling of helplessness, of not being able to help her.' Sauytbay also claimed that inmates were routinely starved, but on Fridays, Muslim inmates were force-fed pork and spent hours learning political slogans such as 'I love Xi Jinping.' Mysterious medical experiments were also commonplace, with Sauytbay witnessing how prisoners were given pills or injections. 'Some prisoners were cognitively weakened. Women stopped getting their period and men became sterile.' Another Uighur woman who escaped a detention camp detailed the torture and abuse she experienced at the hands of Chinese authorities. Mihrigul Tursun told reporters in a 2018 press conference in Washington that she was interrogated for four days in a row without sleep, had her head shaved and was subjected to intrusive medical examination following her arrest the year prior. 'I thought that I would rather die than go through this torture and begged them to kill me,' she tearfully told reporters at a meeting at the National Press Club. She also spoke of how her and other inmates were forced to take medication, including pills that made them faint. One day, Tursun recalled, she was led into a room and placed in a high chair, and her legs and arms were locked in place. 'The authorities put a helmet-like thing on my head, and each time I was electrocuted, my whole body would shake violently and I would feel the pain in my veins,' Tursun said. 'I don't remember the rest. White foam came out of my mouth, and I began to lose consciousness,' Tursun said. 'The last word I heard them saying is that you being an Uighur is a crime.' But their account are not the only evidence of of China's atrocious treatment of Uighur prisoners. Drone footage released in 2019 showed apparently Uighur prisoners being unloaded from a train. The detainees appeared to be blindfolded and shackled, their heads shaved. In 2022, a series of police files obtained by the BBC revealed details of China's use of these camps, and described the use of armed officers and a shoot-to-kill policy for those who dared escape. Other reports have claimed that Uighur women have been forced to marry Han Chinese men, many of them government officials. According to a report from the Uighur Human Rights Project, the Chinese government has imposed forced inter-ethnic marriages on young Uighur women under the guise of 'promoting unity and social stability'. But defectors claim that women who have fallen victim into coerced marriages often endure unimaginable abuse, including rape. Another brave Chinese whistle-blower exposed the brutal tactics used by police and guards at re-education centres in Xinjiang. The unnamed Chinese defector spoke to Sky News in 2021, in which he revealed the conditions he witnessed as a police officer in one of the prison camps. He spoke of how prisoners were brought to the re-education facilities on crowded trains and detailed how they would be handcuffed to each other and have hoods placed over their heads to prevent them from escaping. He also revealed how detainees would not be given food onboard the trains and would only be given minimal amounts of water. They were also forbidden from going to the toilet 'to keep order'. It is believed that China implemented the use of re-education camps following an eruption of anti-government protests and deadly terror attacks. In response, President Xi Jinping demanded an all-out 'struggle against terrorism, infiltration and separatism' with 'absolutely no mercy', according to leaked documents. China denied the existence of camps for Uighur people for years, but when images of the centres began to emerge, Beijing changed its story. The government now acknowledges the existence of the camps but has stood by the fact that they are 'vocational education and training centres' aimed at 'stamping out extremism.' The demonstrators protest against the International Olympics Committee's (IOC) decision to award 2022's Winter Olympics to China amid the country's record of human rights violations in Hongkong and Tibet as well as crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in the northwestern region of Xinjiang. February 03, 2022 President Xi Jinping recently vowed to reduce corruption and improve transparency in the legal system. The crackdown is predominantly focused on the Uighurs, an ethnic minority group of about 12 million people related to the Turks. But efforts from the Chinese government have also targeted other Muslim groups such as Kazakhs, Tajiks and Uzbeks. And just this week, rights groups have claimed that China is preparing to dramatically scale up forced organ donations from Uighur Muslims and other persecuted minorities held in detention camps. The claim comes after China's National Health Commission announced plans last year to triple the number of medical facilities capable of performing organ transplants in the Xinjiang region, home to the vast majority of Uyghurs in the country. The expanded facilities will reportedly be authorised to perform transplants of all major organs, including hearts, lungs, livers, kidneys and pancreas. The move has prompted warnings from rights campaigners and international human rights experts who say the planned expansion aims to fuel industrial-scale organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience. Despite China's attempts to downplay the severity of its prisons , it recently issued a rare admission that torture and unlawful detention take place in the country's justice system and has vowed to crack down on illegal practices by law enforcement. The country's opaque justice system has long been criticised over the disappearance of defendants, the targeting of dissidents and regularly forcing confessions through torture. The country's top prosecutorial body the Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP) has occasionally called out abuses while President Xi Jinping has vowed to reduce corruption and improve transparency in the legal system. The SPP announced last week the creation of a new investigation department to target judicial officers who 'infringe on citizens' rights' through unlawful detention, illegal searches and torture to extract confessions. Its establishment 'reflects the high importance... attached to safeguarding judicial fairness, and a clear stance on severely punishing judicial corruption', the SPP said in a statement. China has frequently denied allegations of torture levelled at it by the United Nations and rights bodies, particularly accusations of ill-treatment of political dissidents and minorities. Drone footage emerged showing police leading hundreds of blindfolded and shackled men from a train in what was believed to be a transfer of inmates in Xinjiang The Chinese government has acknowledged the existence of the camps but has stood by the fact that they are 'vocational education and training centres' But several recent cases involving the mistreatment of suspects have drawn public ire despite China's strictly controlled media. A senior executive at a mobile gaming company in Beijing died in custody in April last year, allegedly taking his own life, after public security officials detained him for more than four months in the northern region of Inner Mongolia. The man had been held under the residential surveillance at a designated location system, where suspects are detained incognito for long stretches without charge, access to lawyers and sometimes any contact with the outside world. Several public security officials were accused in court this month of torturing a suspect to death in 2022, including by using electric shocks and plastic pipes, while he was held. The SPP also released details last year of a 2019 case in which several police officers were jailed for using starvation and sleep deprivation on a suspect and restricting his access to medical treatment. The suspect was eventually left in a 'vegetative state', the SPP said.
The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
Wild kangaroo harvests are labelled ‘needlessly cruel' by US lawmakers – but backed by Australian conservationists
The bill, introduced into the US Senate last month, came with plenty of emotive and uncompromising language. 'The mass killing of millions of kangaroos to make commercial products is needless and inhumane,' said the Democratic senator Tammy Duckworth, as she introduced the Kangaroo Protection Act to ban the sale and manufacture of kangaroo products in the US. With the high-profile former Democratic presidential nominee Cory Booker as a co-sponsor, the two senators said Australia's commercial kangaroo harvest was 'unnecessarily cruel' and their proposed ban would protect 'millions of wild kangaroos and their innocent babies who are needlessly killed every year'. Backed by animal rights campaigners, the move is the latest in a string of attempts in recent years in the US Congress to ban kangaroo products. A similar push is ongoing in Europe. Last week the Center for a Humane Economy, which runs the Kangaroos Are Not Shoes campaign, announced British sportswear brand Umbro was the latest to join the likes of Nike, Adidas, Puma and Asics in phasing out the use of so-called 'k-leather' that has most often been used in some of their brand's football boots. But the success of the campaigns, and the ongoing criticism of Australia's regulated kangaroo harvests, hides a complex story and one which, Prof Chris Johnson says, is 'infuriating' for many Australian conservationists and ecologists. 'The public advocacy by opponents has been very effective, but unfortunately it's all wrong, is conceptually muddled and it's not based on knowledge or experience,' says Johnson, a kangaroo expert and professor of wildlife conservation at the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage. The Nationals leader and shadow agriculture minister, David Littleproud, accused the governing Labor party of failing to 'dispel misconceptions around the use and overseas imports of kangaroo products'. 'This has allowed animal activists to spread false information that kangaroos are being killed solely for [soccer] cleats. 'It's important to note that without a commercial industry, conservation culling is still needed to occur to manage populations. 'We know kangaroos can breed easily and are not a threatened species. The practical reality of import bans in the US would be detrimental to kangaroo populations in Australia.' The government did not answer questions sent to the agriculture minister, Julie Collins. Since European colonisation, farmers have grown pasture for livestock and added watering holes across Australia's landscape, both of which help kangaroos to survive and, in times of good rainfall, have backed controls and culls of the kangaroo's natural predator – the dingo. Johnson says grazing from abundant kangaroos can take away areas that other native animals such as bandicoots and dunnarts use to hide from introduced predators like cats and foxes. 'Overgrazing can be a serious ecological threat,' he says. 'The harvest protects other native species because it protects vegetation. If the kangaroo program fails, that would be a contributor to increased extinction threat.' Regulated commercial kangaroo harvesting takes place every year in New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia. Since 2010, data collated by the Australian government shows that between 1.1 million and 1.7 million kangaroos have been killed annually under the commercial harvest. Harvest quotas are set at about 15% of the estimated kangaroo population, but the data suggests less than a third of the quota is used up each year. Kangaroo harvesting takes place at night, and a national code of practice says the animals should be killed by a bullet to the head. Ben Pearson, Australia and New Zealand country director for World Animal Protection, says this method of killing, coupled with a lack of oversight of both commercial and non-commercial kangaroo culling, which is also done under licence, is a concern. 'In other animal farming industries there is a requirement for humane slaughter which includes stunning before slaughter,' he says. 'With wild harvesting, kangaroos are shot outright and evidence suggests that many are not killed instantaneously, instead being merely wounded and thus suffering from gunshot wounds. Kangaroos that are wounded but escape could suffer over a prolonged period.' Sign up to Clear Air Australia Adam Morton brings you incisive analysis about the politics and impact of the climate crisis after newsletter promotion A 2021 inquiry in the New South Wales parliament on kangaroo welfare found there was a lack of monitoring at the 'point of kill' for both commercial and non-commercial shooting, but the state government supported only two of the 23 recommendations in full. The inquiry heard that kangaroo kills were deeply distressing for some Aboriginal people, and animal rights groups said kangaroos had a right to live freely without human interference. If female kangaroos are shot, harvesters can find young joeys still alive in the mother's pouch. A national code of practice for commercial kangaroo harvesting recommends joeys are killed using blunt force trauma to the back of the head, and suggests using the tray of a utility vehicle as a suitable immovable object. It's a method which Pearson says is 'barbaric'. 'On an ethical level, we are opposed to the killing of kangaroos for non-essential items like football boots, particularly given alternatives exist and are in widespread use,' he says. Neal Finch is a wildlife ecologist and executive officer of the Australian Wild Game Industry Council, which represents kangaroo harvesters. He says the codes of practice of the kind covering kangaroo harvesting do not exist in other jurisdictions. 'It is not that we are inhumane. It is that we are exemplary,' he claims. 'Over 6 million native deer are killed in the USA every year. Over-abundant herbivores need management. The code of practice for shooting kangaroos requires a shot to the brain. Virtually all deer shot in the USA are shot in the chest. 'The reason campaigners can quote how many kangaroos are killed is because we actually publish that information,' he said. Kangaroo numbers are known to boom in times of good rainfall and then crash during droughts – swings that mirror Australia's variable climate. Between 2010 and 2023, official estimates of kangaroo numbers across four states show numbers fell as low as 25 million in 2010 and went as high as 53 million in 2013. Latest figures estimate a kangaroo population of 34 million. 'We either choose to sustainably harvest these kangaroo populations or we will see kangaroos starve in their many thousands during droughts, and habitats will be overgrazed and degraded,' says Prof Euan Ritchie, a wildlife ecologist at Deakin University. 'It's a choice.' As uncomfortable as the thought may be for many, Johnson says that in lean times, many kangaroo deaths may not be as short and sharp as one from a harvester's gun. 'The natural alternatives are being killed by a dingo or dying by starvation,' he says. 'There's less suffering entailed by the harvest than by either of those alternatives.'
Telegraph
2 hours ago
- Telegraph
Home Secretary orders UK-wide illegal working ‘crackdown'
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has ordered a nationwide immigration 'enforcement crackdown' to target illegal working in the gig economy. Officers will carry out checks in hotspots across the country where they suspect asylum seekers are working as delivery riders without permission. It comes after Deliveroo, Uber Eats and Just Eat said they would ramp up facial verification and fraud checks over the coming months after conversations with ministers. Last week, Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, claimed in a post on X to have found evidence of people working illegally for the food delivery firms during a visit to a hotel used to house asylum seekers. On Saturday, the Home Office said anyone caught 'flagrantly abusing the system in this way' will face having state support discontinued, whether entitlement to accommodation or payments. 'Strategic, intel-driven activity will bring together officers across the UK and place an increased focus on migrants suspected of working illegally while in taxpayer-funded accommodation or receiving financial support,' the Home Office said. 'The law is clear that asylum seekers are only entitled to this support if they would otherwise be destitute.' Businesses who illegally employ people will also face fines of up to £60,000 per worker, director disqualifications and potential prison sentences of up to five years. Asylum seekers in the UK are normally barred from work while their claim is being processed, although permission can be applied for after a year of waiting. It comes as the Government struggles with its pledge to 'smash the gangs' of people smugglers facilitating small-boat crossings in the English Channel, which have reached record levels this year. Some 20,600 people have made the journey so far in 2025, up 52 per cent on the same period in 2024. Ms Cooper said: 'Illegal working undermines honest business and undercuts local wages. The British public will not stand for it and neither will this Government. 'Often those travelling to the UK illegally are sold a lie by the people-smuggling gangs that they will be able to live and work freely in this country, when in reality they end up facing squalid living conditions, minimal pay and inhumane working hours. 'We are surging enforcement action against this pull factor, on top of returning 30,000 people with no right to be here and tightening the law through our Plan for Change.' Eddy Montgomery, director of enforcement, compliance and crime at the Home Office, said: 'This next step of co-ordinated activity will target those who seek to work illegally in the gig economy and exploit their status in the UK. 'That means if you are found to be working with no legal right to do so, we will use the full force of powers available to us to disrupt and stop this abuse. There will be no place to hide.' Deliveroo has said the firm takes a 'zero-tolerance approach' to abuse on the platform and that despite measures put in place over the last year, 'criminals continue to seek new ways to abuse the system'. An Uber Eats spokesman said the company will continue to invest in tools to detect illegal work and remove fraudulent accounts, while Just Eat said it is committed to strengthening safeguards 'in response to these complex and evolving challenges'. Responding to the announcement, Mr Philp said: 'It shouldn't take a visit to an asylum hotel by me as shadow home secretary to shame the Government into action.' He added: 'The Government should investigate if there is wrongdoing by the delivery platforms and if there is a case to answer, they should be prosecuted. 'This is a very serious issue because illegal working is a pull factor for illegal immigration into the UK – people smugglers actually advertise it.' Mr Philp also said women and girls were being put at risk because deliveries were being made to their homes by people 'from nationalities we know have very high rates of sex offending', without specifying which nationalities he was referring to.
