SANSAD News-release November 26, 2017

Canada Should Sign the Nuclear Ban Treaty

A screening of the new documentary on the devastating effects of nuclear weapons testing in Kazakhstan and the US, “Where the Wind Blew” was held at SFU Harbour Centre, Vancouver on November 24. The film was introduced by Dr. Jennifer Simons, founder and President of The Simons Foundation and followed by a panel of experts comprising Alimzhan Akhmetov, founder and director of the Centre for International Security and Policy, Astana, Kazakhstan, Paul Taylor, former Canadian Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the United Nations and the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, and M. V. Ramana, Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security at the Liu Institute for Global Issues, UBC. The event was organized by The Simons Foundation and the Institute for the Humanities, SFU, and was supported by SANSAD.

The following call to the Government of Canada to sign the Nuclear Ban Treaty was presented by Chin Banerjee, President of SANSAD and endorsed by people gathered for this event:

VANCOUVER DECLARATION ON THE NUCLEAR BAN TREATY

A Call on Canada to sign the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons

We, the undersigned citizens of Canada gathered in Vancouver, BC on November 24 to discuss the devastating consequences of the testing, development and use of nuclear weapons at this time when the world is facing the most urgent threat from the deliberate or accidental employment of these weapons, call on the Government of Canada to sign the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

The Ban Treaty has been agreed upon by the majority of the world’s nations and opened for signature on September 20^th, 2017 despite the opposition of all nuclear-weapons possessing states and their military allies.  We understand that, though neither possessing nor developing nuclear weapons, Canada has opposed the treaty because of its military alliances, compromising its long-held goal, shared with the global community, of a world without nuclear weapons.  We urge Canada to sign the treaty to add its voice to the considerable moral force of the treaty against the catastrophic humanitarian and environmental consequences of the continued development and potential use of these weapons of mass destruction.

We believe moral force is a great power in defense of humanity. By signing the Ban treaty Canada will not only strengthen this force in the world but also show its commitment to the elimination of nuclear weapons and in good faith work to end NATO’s reliance on nuclear weapons and in order that NATO conforms both with the NPT and the Ban Treaty. Canada will then be able to join and lead other signatories in the further goal of a nuclear-weapons free world.

—thirty—

South Asian Network for Secularism and Democracy, sansad.org

News-release IAPI-SANSAD joint statement September 19, 2017

Open doors for Rohingya refugees

Indians Abroad for Plural India (IAPI) and South Asian Network for Secularism and Democracy (SANSAD) condemn the Government of India’s endorsement of the Myanmar government’s treatment of the Rohingya minority that has been described by the UN as “ethnic cleansing” and the Hindu nationalist BJP government’s determination to expel the Rohigya refugees already in India as “illegal migrants”. 

Rohingyas are a historically persecuted Muslim minority in Myanmar, who have been denied citizenship and recognition as an ethnic minority though they have been settled in the Arakan district for hundreds of years, with the majority of them being settled there by the British after they conquered Arakan in early nineteenth century. They have been denied even the right to call themselves “Rohingyas,” being instead labeled “Bengalis” by the state. They have been subjected to genocidal violence since 2012, which has led to the fleeing of hundreds of thousands and the internment of thousands in camps in abysmal conditions.  Thousands have languished in camps in Bangladesh since 1976. Hundreds have perished at sea and hundreds captured and enslaved by pirates. They are a people without a state.

In the current spate of state violence, triggered as genocide often is by the attack of a group of Rohingya resistance, the military and Buddhist extremists have unleashed a terror that has led to hundreds of deaths and driven more than 400, 000 Rohingyas to already over-burdened Bangladesh. The attack on August 25 by Rohingya militants on a police outpost in northern Rakhine state that triggered this current violence and exodus has given both the Buddhist nationalist Myanmar and the Hindu nationalists of India the justification of framing this genocide/ethnic cleansing as a fight against Muslim terrorism. We deplore this familiar genocidal alibi that falls within the currently popular bogey of Muslim terrorism.

We deplore religious nationalism in Myanmar and India. We demand that the Modi government immediately stop its attempts to deport the Rohingya refugees. We demand that the Government of Canada take the strongest measures to stop the genocidal violence against Rohingyas in Myanmar and strip Aung San Suu Kyi of the honorary citizenship in Canada. We further demand that the Government of Canada use all diplomatic means to persuade India to respect its international commitments and refrain from violating international law by protecting rather than deporting the Rohingya refugees currently resident in India.

—30—

www.sansad.org