Time Immortal

Yeah, yeah, I know the usual drill for saying something like that. I’m supposed to admit that the Church has done its share of killing in the past, and I’m supposed to acknowledge the possibility that the declared atheism of either or both of the state and its leader(s) may not be the only/major contributing factor to the ongoing bloodbaths. The first is true, the second a lie, but these are the things one is expected to say in these circumstances.

So let’s take all that as read and get down to the nuts and bolts. In at least four countries today, Christians will lose their lives because they are religious believers and the state in which they live is ruled by atheists eager to stamp out religious belief from amongst the general populace.

There are four atheist countries in which atheists are presently jailing, torturing, and murdering Christians. These countries are China, Laos, North Korea, and Vietnam. (Cuba was doing the same in the past, but has shown some respect for religious freedom for nearly a decade now.) While American atheists customarily try to fall back on a spurious No True Atheist defense, government documents prove this defense to not only be illogical, but incontrovertibly false. For example, the motivation for China’s most recent wave of anti-Christian persecution was laid out in a government document entitled “Notice on Further Strengthening Marxist Atheism Research, Propaganda and Education“. This proves that the motivation underlying the persecution is atheism; specifically the Marxist variant which is the heart of a godless worldview that correctly sees Christianity [and other Religions — Ken] as a serious threat.

…

Given that at least 1,600 Falun Gong practitioners have been tortured to death and a number of recent Christian deaths have also been confirmed, such as the beating death of Ms. Jiang Zongxiu in prison on June 18, 2004 and the death of Bishop John Han Dingxian on September 12, 2007, there is absolutely no question that Chinese atheists are murdering Christians today and intend to continue doing so.

The situation is much worse in North Korea. In TIA, I quoted a 2004 article published by The Guardian: “The number of prisoners held in the North Korean gulag is not known: one estimate is 200,000, held in 12 or more centres. Camp 22 is thought to hold 50,000. Most are imprisoned because their relatives are believed to be critical of the regime. Many are Christians, a religion believed by Kim Jong-il to be one of the greatest threats to his power.” These North Koreans are not “Kim Jong-ilists”; they are atheists and correctly identify themselves as such.

…In Vietnam, the atheist regime is currently persecuting the Montagnards, a predominantly Christian minority. This is probably done as much for ethnic reasons as anti-religious ones, but the persecution has been purely religious and directed against ethnic Vietnamese Christians in the recent past.

…In Laos, Christians are considered to be enemies of the state and have been viciously persecuted since 1975. Although the persecution has not been as intense in the last three years, it still continues: “At least thirteen Christian villagers who were falsely accused of stirring rebel dissent have been killed by authorities in Laos over the past month, according to an August 7, [2007] report from Compass Direct. The report also states that approximately 200 Christians in the village of Sai Jerern have been arrested and imprisoned.”

The long and short of it is this: the atheism of the ruler can be strongly correlated with the state engaging in brutal and murderous campaigns against its own populace, to the tune of over 50%. In just shy of a century, the bodycount of regimes headed by atheists and/or espousing atheism as state policy has launched itself well clear of 100 million, and the estimate I see most commonly given tends to be on the order of about 148 million (if memory serves). That is a number against which Christian regimes simply cannot compete in the modern era, and I’m pretty sure that if we took a 91-year slice of history — any 91-year slice will do — we would not be able to see a similarly high bodycount generated by Christian hands, even allowing for the fact that technology back then wasn’t geared toward mass-casualty destruction.

And yes, I’ve heard it said that what’s really to blame is the sociopathy of the leader, not his atheism. Sociopaths are, essentially, those who lack any innate moral sensibility. When advantageous, they may adhere to the morality of the surrounding culture. When advantageous, they will flout that same morality in the pursuit of a selfish end. Obviously, their own philosophcal point of view will play a role in determining when and how they do this.

Of course, sociopaths come in all sorts of philosophical colours — funnily, though, history demonstrates to us that it would seem to be the irreligious ones that have the stongest tendency toward mass murder and large bodycounts.

Eh, atheist persecution of Christians is nothing new, any more than was pagan persecution of Christians way back when. In the end, the Church will emerge stronger for its suffering and blood, and the ones who set themselves against her will vanish into the dusty pages of the history books. ‘Twas ever thus.

I haven’t really been commenting much on Omar Khadr, mostly because until recently there wasn’t much to comment about. Khadr, as I understand it, comes from a Canada-based family that has been investigated numerous times for ties to Islamis terrorism. In fact, aren’t some other members of the Khadr family currently incarcerated for their connections to terrorism?

Be that as it may, Omar is a dutiful son of this family, and signed on some years ago with the Taliban in Afghanistan vis-a-vis his father, who had moved to Afghanistan in 1996 and who later (in the wake of the September 11th attacks, in fact) moved into the mountains of that country, where it is thought that he closely associated himself with Osama Bin Laden (to such a degree, in fact, that the bin Laden and Khadr children were playmates).

Omar received weapons training at some point, produced videos for the Taliban, and was even photographed handling explosives for them. He looks like a fresh-faced youth, but it would seem that at every turn he has chosen to align himself with Islamic terrorists.

Khadr was captured after a firefight between Taliban militants and American soldiers worked out decidedly in favour of the Americans. The battle was fairly intense, requiring air support, and the Americans had thought that all of the Taliban fighters had been killed. Khadr, however, had survived. Confilcting reports exist, but it appears that Khadr took one last opportunity to throw a grenade at approaching U.S. troops before being subdued, mortally wounding Sergeant Christopher James Speer.

Recently, footage of Omar Khadr being held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba was released to the Canadian public. In it, two CSIS officers interview Khadr about his condition. He appears wounded in the video, and complains of his injuries. Information coming out of Guantanamo isn’t exactly the most reliable, but what evidence is available suggests that Khadr was tortured by U.S. interrogators at various points, using methods such as short shackling and stress positioning, as well as sleep deprivation and a few other methods.

Which, if true, is disgusting. Torture is a grave moral evil, regardless of how depraved the recipient thereof might also be. Yes, Omar Khadr seems to be neck-deep in terrorist connections, and he evidently has no small measure of blood on his hands as well. That doesn’t mean it’s right to torture him.

Now, a brief tangent. I like Matthew Good’s music, for the most part. When he wants to rock, he rocks, and then very well. And his subject matter, while often strange, tends to be a bit deeper and more thought-provoking than one might typically expect of alt-rock and post-grunge music.

That said, I don’t entirely agree with his stance on the Khadr issue:

Legally, Khadr should never have been taken to Guantanamo. International law dictates that he should have been classified a child soldier and treated as such. Instead he was shipped off to the world’s foremost black hole and has been a prisoner there ever since, subjected to God knows what. If FBI documents released this year are any indication, entirely unethical interrogation practices were certainly on the menu.

International law is actually not on the side of Omar Khadr in this matter. For the record, Khadr was 15 when the firefight in which he was captured took place. With that in mind, it should be noted that the UN convention on children’s rights stipulates that “state parties shall take all feasible measures to ensure that persons who have not attained the age of 15 years do not take a direct part in hostilities.” Of course, there are two obvious problem with applying this principle to Khadr’s situation: first, the Taliban are not a “state party”, in that they do not represent a national government but are, rather, a terrorist organization attempting to violently overthrow the government of Afghanistan. The second, of course, is Khadr’s own age at the time of his capture.

There is an optional protocol to the aforementioned UN convention which stipulates that state parties “shall take all feasible measures to ensure that persons below the age of 18 do not take a direct part in hostilities and that they are not compulsorily recruited into their armed forces.” Note that this does not explicitly prohibit people between the ages of 15 and 18 from voluntarily participating in hostilities. From what evidence we have available, Omar Khadr very gladly and freely participated in the cause of Islamic terrorism.

Moreover, as has been noted, the Taliban (and, by extension, al-Qaeda, which Khadr has also been associated with) are (again) not “state parties”. One could argue that this is a semantic objection, and that while the letter of the convention’s stipulations is perhaps left unsatisfied, the spirit thereof still applies. This, I think, is true. But even in that case, by the UN’s own definition a “child soldier” must be under the age of 15 years. Khadr did not meet this criteria at the time of his capture. So if one wants to appeal to UN conventions to decry Khadr’s situation, one is (sorry to say) out of luck.

Of course, the question can be raised as to whether a UN convention is really the foremost international legal authority in this matter. It might be better to look at the International Criminal Court’s statutes instead, since (unlike the UN), the ICC actually has power to prosecute “war criminals” to some degree.

With that in mind, the ICC’s Rome Statute stipulates that “conscripting or enlisting children under the age of fifteen years into the national armed forces or using them to participate actively in hostilities” is a war crime.

So here again, international law does not work out in Omar Khadr’s favour: at the time of his capture, he was (just) old enough to not be designated, under international law, as a child soldier.

Note that I’m neither agreeing with Khadr’s being incarcerated at Gitmo. Given that prisoners there are often tortured, I can’t really say that I support sending anyone there. However, I do dispute Matt Good’s appeal to international law on this matter; unfortunately, as regards young Mr. Khadr, the law is inapplicable here.

Of course, your average kill-em-all pundit thinks it all pathetic, that the video demonstrates that the CSIS agents that questioned Khadr displayed a semblance of compassion. But let’s remember one thing — they left him there. In fact, they, and the government of this country at the time, and currently, are just as complicit as those holding Khadr.

So what does that make us, exactly?

Well, it doesn’t say much about the moral fortutide of the Canadian government, admittedly. But then, neither does the fact that Henry Morgentaler is still apparently going to be receiving the Order of Canada. And unfortunately, Mr. Good is also over-simplifying matters somewhat in his statement here: it’s not as though the CSIS agents could have just escorted Mr. Khadr out of the prison at their leisure. Yes, he’s ostensibly a Canadian citizen, but he was arrested in the course of engaging in hostilities against American soldiers in Afghanistan. Under the same international law that Mr. Good erroneously appealed to earlier on, the U.S. does have a right to detain him in a facility of their choosing.

We can add to this observation the Chestertonian wisdom that to have a right is not at all the same thing as to be right in exercising it. Equally, though, Matt Good’s charge of Canadian “complicity” in the Khadr affair is off-base and incorrect; under the applicable laws, there’s actually not much the Canadian government can do. And now that Mr. Khadr is 21, the question also might be asked why anyone should feel that the Canadian government is obligated to do anything at all for an open supporter of Islamic terrorism whose own direct actions led to the death of a U.S. medic.

And in typically left-wing fashion, Mr. Good can’t resist implying that those with whom he disagrees are irrational, uncompassionate, and “back woods xenophobes”. Oh, and “Conservative mouthpieces” — leaving aside the fact that Mr. Good is himself something of a mouthpiece for Amnesty International, an organization that I (for one) no longer support because they now include abortion advocacy in their mandate.

Well, if you’re a Conservative mouthpiece from rural Saskatchewan that adorns their blog with the picture of a deal animal, it makes us noble allies in a xenophobic war against a religion of evil. If you’re a rational and compassionate human being that has the ability to view the complexities and personal history of Khadr’s situation, one that isn’t some back woods xenophobe and has grown up in a highly diverse multicultural area, it makes you sick to your stomach. If you’re a Canadian that believes that this nation is not the sort of nation that stands shoulder to shoulder with those that have been responsible for holding individuals for years only to discover that many of them are innocent (see the McClatchy reports from June), despite the fact that they’ve been denied their rights under the law and international conventions while, at the same time, those holding them profess to be globally instilling the virtues of the rule of law, then you have cause for serious concern. Because that is not what my grandfather and two of my great uncles fought to defend sixty some odd years ago, and that is certainly not the nation in which I want to die.

With respect to Mr. Good, I grew up in a fairly “diverse multicultural” environment, but this is not what makes me sick to my stomach regarding the issue of Mr. Khadr. Quite frankly, I don’t care what the colour of his skin is; I care that he chose to side with the Taliban and al-Qaeda, and I care that he killed a U.S. medic with a grenade. What makes me sick to my stomach is the fact that he has been tortured, but I have no problem at all with the fact that he has been captured and incarcerated.

Were he Caucasian, I would say as much. Were he Catholic, I would say as much. Were he my own kin, I would say as much. In each case, I would say as much because I believe that people must accept the consequences of their actions, and I note that Omar Khadr’s documented actions were, at every turn, antithetical to the very principles that Mr. Good’s grandfather and two great uncles fought to defend.

I have traveled across this country almost seventy times, coast to coast, and seen more of it, and its people, than the majority of Canadians ever will. And I can honestly say, given my experiences, the acceptance, and even the participation, in such criminality is not what this country stands for.

If CSIS agents interviewed Khadr that means that our government has been complicit in condoning US detentions and all that they entail.

I agree that Canada should not be complicit in torture. But equally, I don’t think Canada should be complicit in releasing known terrorists back into the wild, so to speak. I don’t think it’s right that Omar Khadr has been tortured — that is, as I have said, a grave moral evil. But by saying that, I in no way mean to suggest that he should be released from custody.

If Canada stands for human rights, if Canada stands for freedom, and if Canada stands up for what is right, then Canada should work to ensure that known supporters and agents of terrorism are captured, tried, and incarcerated accordingly, with every bit as much vigour as she should work to oppose the use of torture against same.

In saying as much, I suppose that I do disagree, somewhat, with Small Dead Animals, the blog that Mr. Good is directing his ire against. Generally, on political matters, I agree with SDA to one degree or another, and it is one of my daily reads. But as far as I know, the operator of SDA, Kate, is not Catholic, so obviously I don’t agree with her sentiments that Omar Khadr “deserved to be dispatched then and there” (i.e. on the battlefield, by the surviving U.S. troops).

…at the end of the day, he was a Communist thug, a dictator, a murderer…and a censor who was, like all Communist strongmen, terrified of allowing “the people” to have open access to the rest of the world.

“…students and others in Cuba have taken to passing around media on memory sticks, as this is the only way they can get around state-controlled media. Also driving this phenomenon is the fact that there are so few places to get on the internet. In Old Havana there is only one Internet cafe; getting online there for an hour costs 1/3 of the average Cuban’s monthly wages. Local entrepreneurs get the memory sticks from European friends, since they are scarce to find in Cuba through normal channels, and expensive.”

It’s always amazing to see how resourceful people will be in their efforts to circumvent censorship and repression. I think the Canadian blogosphere might take a few notes, in case the vision of Richard Warman ever becomes a reality.

“Fidel Castro, the leader of the island nation of Cuba has declined the possibility of keeping his seat as President, after the February 24th National Assembly election. “I neither will aspire to nor will I accept ? I repeat — I neither will aspire to nor will I accept, the position of president of the council of state and commander in chief,” Castro wrote almost 19 months after a severe illness caused him to hand power temporarily to his brother Raul.”

Well, that’s a step in the right direction for Cuba, although I doubt it will get the people thereof out from under the yoke of a strongman ruler.

And a good thing it is that we did. In theory, the Durban conference is supposed to be a “World Conference Against Racism“, but in practice it turned into an exercise in the very thing it purportedly was convened to oppose.

The so-called Durban II conference “has gone completely off the rails” and Canada wants no part of it, said Jason Kenney, secretary of state for multiculturalism and Canadian identity.

“Canada is interested in combatting Racism, not promoting it,” Mr. Kenney told The Canadian Press. “We’ll attend any conference that is opposed to racism and intolerance, not those that actually promote racism and intolerance.

“Our considered judgment, having participated in the preparatory meetings, was that we were set for a replay of Durban I. And Canada has no intention of lending its good name and resources to such a systematic promotion of hatred and bigotry.”

The 2001 World Conference Against Racism in Durban turned into “a circus of intolerance,” Mr. Kenney said.

One government official on Wednesday called the conference “a gong show.”

Arab and Muslim countries ganged up in their criticisms of Israel. Israel and the United States walked out in protest; the Liberal government of the day remained in an effort to decry the attacks.

With Libya elected to chair the next gathering, Cuba appointed vice-chair and rapporteur, and anti-Israel rhetoric and actions building, Mr. Kenney said his government was left with no choice but to abandon the preparatory process for the followup meeting.

Canada applauded the government, saying Durban I “degenerated into a hate-fest directed at Israel and the Jewish delegates attending the conference.”

The group’s executive vice-president, Frank Dimant, said Ottawa has acted “clearly and decisively by refusing to participate in a venue that pays lip service to anti-racism but in fact provides a platform for the promotion of hatred and bigotry.”

You know, it really is so true, what RightGirl notes: every day that we have a Conservative government, Canada embarrasses me a little less. That’s not to say that ’s government has a perfect track record (far from it, to be sure!), but it is to say that I can’t recall times under past Canadian governments in which I have felt genuine pride at being Canadian. All too often under the Liberals, it seemed that the definition of what was Canada consisted of little more than syncophantic adoration of the UN and all its initiatives. I like that under the Conservatives, Canada is a global player that isn’t afraid to act in its own interests, or in the interests of one or two of the nations it regards as allies, even if it means snubbing other nations or transnational bodies in the process.

And this is a principled rejection that has taken place here. The UN has become the playground of thug states and third-world tinpot dictators; any organization that lets Libya (of all places!) chair a conference about human rights, racism, or pretty much any other issue is not worth the time it takes to acknowledge its existence.