Bill C-51 violates Universal Declaration of Human Rights, OSCE finds

When the world’s largest security-oriented intergovernmental organization says Bill C-51 violates the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, you know we're in trouble.  Article by ThinkPol The Harper government’s controversial anti-terrorism bill violates the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Canada has ratified, according to legal analysis by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the world’s largest security-oriented intergovernmental organization.

The Vienna-based group, which Canada joined in 1973, found that Section 16 of Bill C-51, which contain amendments to the Criminal Code outlawing “advocating or promoting the commission of terrorism,” places a number of direct restrictions on freedom of expression.

“International standards, in recognition of their potential overbreadth, call for restrictions on freedom of expression in this area to be limited to direct and intentional incitement to terrorism, instead of broader notions such as advocating, promoting or encouraging, and they also rule out indirect intent requirements such as recklessness,” OSCE report read. “This is potentially of particular concern to the media, which has a professional responsibility to report on terrorism and to ensure that the public are informed about terrorist threats and activities.”

Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

Section 16 of the Bill also gives the responsible minister the power to seize and otherwise suppress ‘terrorist propaganda’, defined as anything that advocates, promotes or counsels the commission of a terrorist offence.

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