David Matas, international human rights lawyer and 2010 Nobel Peace Prize Nominee

Human Wrongs – Making Things Right

Public forum tackles sex, politics and religion
by Katie Chalmers-Brooks

With little emotion, David Matas recounts the horrific details of a major human rights injustice in China that he helped to expose.
The Winnipegger, recently co-nominated for a 2010 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts, reveals how individuals, Falung Gong practitioners, were thrown behind bars for doing exercises similar to yoga and then as prisoners killed for their organs. They were left to die on the operating table, their heart, lungs or liver then sold to transplant tourists.

Matas, a U of M grad who was keynote speaker at a recent human rights forum on campus, say it is important to keep emotion out of it to be his most effective. It’s not always an easy task, given the longtime immigration and human rights lawyer hears shocking tales of abuse from his refugee clients on a daily basis.

“I don’t think I’m helping people by just getting upset. In fact, that would hamper my work. There’s no point in getting upset with the realities of the world. They are what they are and I have to deal with them,” said Matas.

In the case of the organ harvesting victims, that meant Matas and co-investigator David Kilgour, a former MP, had to take on the Government of China – a “mammoth” job for only two people and one that is ongoing. Challenging communist China also doesn’t come without risks.

“But the reality is somebody like me is a lot safer than somebody in China or Iran or the places I’m dealing with,” Matas said. “A human rights lawyer in Iran or China and some other countries becomes a human rights case himself. These people are subject to torture, beatings. Their families are victimized.”

Conflicts between religious rights and sexuality rights

Law professor Karen Busby, one of three U of M faculty members who spoke at the forum, said there is also a long way to go when it comes to combating discrimination against gays and lesbians, noting sexual relations with someone of the same sex is still a criminal offence in 85 countries.
“These laws are not historical artifacts,” Busby said. “They’re still enforced today.”

South of the border, the United States Armed Forces’ ban of openly gay men and women from military service still exists, which means soldiers could lose their jobs if spotted in a gay bar or even seen in the company of known gays and lesbians, Busby said.

“Estimates vary but one study determined that this policy has cost the American government $400 million because it has had to recruit and re-train so many military personnel as a consequence of firings under this policy,” she told the audience, noting President Barack Obama has called to have this policy revoked.

Closer to home, a local faith-based social services agency, well-respected by the public, requires their participants be “celibate outside of heterosexual marriage,” Busby said. And some Manitoba school divisions still prohibit teachers from revealing to their students they have a same-sex partner.

Genocide and storytelling

Forum speaker Andrew Woolford, a sociology professor, discussed genocide and Aboriginal Peoples in Canada. He spoke of the need to take a broader view of the meaning of genocide than is currently in the United Nations Convention to include attacks on a group’s environment. Woolford said it is important all Canadians be open to hearing the facts of what went on in the colonization of Aboriginal Peoples.

Peace and conflict studies professor Jessica Senehi explored the relationship between human rights and storytelling. “It’s a driving force for social movement. It puts a human face on a movement,” said Senehi.

She encouraged audience members to become storytellers, insisting it takes just one person willing to share their story and bring awareness to a human rights injustice.

Matas reminded the audience that crimes against humanity affect us all. “We are all in this together and we have to fight it together,” he said.

The forum, Human Wrongs: Making Things Right, was co-sponsored by the Office of the Vice-President (Research) and the Royal Society of Canada (RSC: The Academies of Arts, Humanities and Sciences of Canada) as part of its series of Taboo Topic Fora. The discussions are intended to provoke informed debate about matters of national urgency.