Canada Should Remember the Afghanistan War With Shame
It was five years ago today that Richard Colvin delivered his explosive testimony to a House of Commons committee examining Canada's role in the torture of Afghan detainees. Colvin, a diplomat at the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT), had served in Afghanistan for 17 months, first as a senior representative at the Kandahar Provincial Reconstruction Team run by Canada, and later as the acting ambassador in Kabul. And in no uncertain terms, he told the House committee on November 18, 2009, that Canadian Forces personnel were capturing Afghans and turning them over to Afghan authorities to be tortured in contravention of the Geneva Conventions.
"The most common forms of torture," he said, "were beating, whipping with power cables and the use of electricity. Also common was sleep deprivation, use of temperature extremes ... and sexual abuse -- that is, rape." Moreover, he noted that "many of the Afghans we detained had no connection to the insurgency whatsoever...we detained and handed over for severe torture a lot of innocent people." The torture allegations were also corroborated by the Globe & Mail's correspondent in Afghanistan, Graeme Smith, who later wrote in his memoirs on the war that it was "common knowledge that bad things happened to prisoners who were handed to the Afghans, but nobody talked about it." Colvin did talk about it, however, warning his superiors about the matter only to be repeatedly ignored.
READ MORE: http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/larry-rousseau/afghanistan-canada_b_6172404.html
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