With Regime Strongholds Joining Protests, Iran's Leaders Appear Nervous

Karl Vick
Tue, October 11, 2022 

A motorcycle on fire in Iran's capital Tehran on Oct. 8, 2022, amid the biggest wave of social unrest in almost three years
Credit - AFP/Getty Images

Evidence is accumulating that protests in Iran, now in their fourth week, may be seriously undermining the regime. While government forces continued to knock heads in the streets, the head of the Judiciary on Monday publicly spoke of “mistakes…weaknesses and failures” by a government that has never previously acknowledged anything remotely resembling fault. “Citizens or political groups should know that we have an ear for protests and criticism and that we are ready for dialogue,” said Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejei, a former intelligence minister regarded as among the hardest of Iran’s hardliners; he once bit a journalist.

The striking change in tone came after a sobering weekend for the country’s authoritarian rulers. The protests are far from the biggest the Iran has seen – in 2009, hundreds of thousands marched to protest a stolen election. But the current unrest appears to have penetrated the bedrock of the Islamic Republic. Over the weekend, protests took place in Tehran neighborhoods long regarded as regime strongholds, including Naziabad, Fallah, and Valiasar. Historically, those districts have produced Basiji, the state-sponsored paramilitary who enjoy state patronage and pour into the streets to break up protests. (In 2009, middle-class protesters chanted, “Basiji go home, no free meal today”). Now the same neighborhoods are producing the kind of unrest the Basiji would typically be called to extinguish. In one ambiguous but much-discussed snippet of footage, uniformed police are seen not confronting the protesters but walking beside them.

“They’re not typical areas for protest,” notes Tara Sepehri Far, the Iran researcher for Human Rights Watch. “The crack has gotten much much closer to them,” she said, of the regime, “much closer to their base.”

“I’m not sure you can call it their base now, because a base has to be loyal to you,” adds Maziar Bahari, editor of the London-based IranWire. On Tuesday, the news site reported that security forces are plagued by low morale, defections, and private fears the armed forces may collapse. The site quoted an unnamed former security official as saying: “The question of many in the military and security forces is: ‘For what? For this government that’s corrupt from top to bottom?”

On Saturday night, the government’s slipping control was broadcast nationwide. Activists briefly commandeered state television during the main newscast, interrupting a report on Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, with a placard depicting Khamenei in crosshairs and the words “The Blood of Our Youths Is on Your Hands.” The placard also featured a photo of Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old whose death in the custody of “morality police” sparked the protest, as well of as the images of three young women killed while protesting her death. “Join us and rise up,” the card read. The soundtrack was the protest chant, “women, life, freedom.”

After a few seconds the screen returned to a live shot of an anchorman looking understandably hapless. The IRIB, or Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, is the regime’s main propaganda arm, and directly controlled by Khamenei. Press reports described the episode as a “hack,” but an IRIB spokesman pointed out that, since the broadcast was not online, it was actually an act of “infiltration” carried out from within the organization.

“The Islamic Republic’s collapse—while not inevitable—is no longer inconceivable,” Karim Sadjadpour, an analyst for the Carnegie Endowment, tells TIME. “It will eventually go the way of the Soviet Union, but the timing of when it happens and what comes next is entirely unpredictable. The question is whether the regime can crush these protests without further enflaming them and while keeping their security forces intact. They’ve succeeded in doing so in every mass uprising up until now, but the geographic scope and intensity of these protests have been unprecedented.”

“Street protests may be contained with repression,” Sadjadpour added. “But if large and sustained strikes begin among petrochemical workers and the bazaar, things could start to unravel quickly.”

Read More: Why Students Joining Iran’s Protest Wave Matters

In fact, as Ejei spoke on Monday, oil workers at state-owned petroleum facilities in two provinces called a strike in support of the protests, marching and chanting, “Death to the dictator” and “Don’t be afraid, we stand together.” The next day, the strike reportedly spread to a refinery at Abadan. Petroleum forms the basis of Iran’s economy.

The regime appeared to be under assault from every side. When President Ebrahim Raisi ventured on Saturday to Al-Zahra University, an all-women’s school, the hand-picked audience listened respectfully while hundreds of students outside the hall chanted, “Get lost, Raisi.”

Videos emerging from the country toggle between horror and heart-lifting. In one, a mother calmly describes the condition of her daughter’s corpse after its release by security forces: “Her teeth were crushed and there was a big cavity at the back of her skull.” Another documents schoolgirls chasing away the middle-aged men dispatched to tell them to put back on their headscarves.

The regime appears uncertain of its footing. In putting down previous protests, authorities played successfully on Iranians’ sense of nationalism, nursing latent fears that unrest might serve as a cover for separatist movements among the country’s ethnic Kurdish, Baluchi, and Arab minorities. Amini’s death appeared to transcend all that. She was an ethnic Kurd who had been visiting Tehran when she was abducted and allegedly beaten for “inappropriate hijab,” or religious dress. The first protests were outside the hospital where she was declared dead on Sept. 16, then in her hometown. But within days they had erupted in more than 80 cities across the country — including Qom, the holy city. The Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights says it had documented 185 protester deaths in 17 of Iran’s 31 provinces.

Read More: The Iranian People’s 100-Year Struggle for Freedom

The authorities have concentrated forces on the Kurdish region — firing artillery across the border into opposition camps in Kurdish territory inside Iraq, and, on Monday night, launching a brutal sweep of the streets in Kurdish cities inside Iran. But so far the protesters appear to be united in opposition to a regime that over four decades in power has grown more isolated and oppressive, especially toward women. Days before Amini died, a woman in the Iranian Kurdish city of Marivan leapt to her death from her own apartment to escape being raped by a neighbor. After local women protested systemic violence against women, Iranian Vice President for Women and Family Affairs Ensieh Khazali praised the victim for choosing to protect her honor over her life.

At the other end of the country of 84 million, regime forces killed some 90 people in the ethnic Baluch city of Zahedan, where a protest for Amini blended with a local outrage: the rape of a 15-year-old by a local police official. Protesters in Tehran claimed the victims as martyrs.

Read More: The Protests in Iran Have Shaken the Islamic Republic to Its Core

“The solidarity beyond ethnic lines still holds, largely,” says Sepehri Far of Human Rights Watch. “The protests, as I understand it, are widespread. They’re not huge in numbers. If you remember in 2009, it was very concentrated in a political movement. This one feels very scattered, and across ethnic divide in a way that is, again, different. There’s a new connectivity.”

No one claims to know where events are headed. In a Sept. 28 interview with TIME, the internationally renowned human-rights attorney Nasrin Sotoudeh spoke of “a very real possibility of regime change.” Sociologist Asef Beyat, author of Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East, cautiously observed in an interview with the Iranian daily Etemad that the spontaneous nationwide outrage over Amani’s death bore parallels with the death of Mohamed Bouazizi, the Tunisian street vendor whose self-immolation over repeated humiliations by city officials led to the Arab Spring. But for Iranians, the first point of reference remains the 1979 revolution that brought the mullahs to power.

“It’s a lose-lose situation for them, really,” said Bahari, adding that Iranians know Ejei, the Justice chief, “as a conniving, insincere person.” In any event, his offer of “dialogue” can hardly be answered. The protests are entirely leaderless, and the regime has dismantled every organization of the civil society that might be pressed into service as a go-between.

“Who are they going to bargain with?” asks Sepehri Far. “The labor unions they closed? The teachers they put in prison? The political parties they outlawed?”

Headcovers have always been political in Iran – for women on all sides

Eliz Sanasarian, 

Professor of Political Science and Gender and Sexuality Studies, 

USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
Mon, October 10, 2022 

THE CONVERSATION

Iranian newspaper headlines about the protests that started

 with death of Mahsa Amini. 

Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

A friend and I were strolling through Tehran’s streets one afternoon when she was approached by a member of the “morality police,” an agency tasked with enforcing modesty laws in public. First, the policewoman warned her to cover her hair by pulling forward her scarf. Next, she was ordered to remove her sunglasses.

“What do you have there?” the policewoman asked loudly, examining my friend’s green eyes for makeup. There was none, but her stare was full of hate. “Behave yourself!” the policewoman warned.

As we walked away, my friend stopped, turned and looked back at her, pulling the scarf back again while putting her sunglasses back on. Her husband lamented, “Woman, one of these days you will be arrested, and if lucky you will be alive when I come to pick you up from the police station.”


This was 30 years ago. Similar scenes still play out daily. Since mid-September 2022, when a young woman named Mahsa Amini died in detention after being detained for not wearing her headscarf “properly,” protests against the morality police and the broader regime have erupted across the country and from sympathizers around the world.

Acts of defiance, big and small, have continued uninterrupted across multiple generations. Women’s activism has been constant, as has their imprisonment.
Role of the state

In Persian culture, the main variation of the veil has historically been the chador, a long cloak covering the body from head to toe, which the wearer holds closed in front of her.

Early women’s groups did not push back against it. Instead, they focused mainly on raising the marriage age, granting more rights to women in cases of divorce and custody and allowing girls to attend school. During the 1920s, some began to address the veil, as I wrote about in my book on the women’s rights movement.

This was a risky move. For example, when a woman’s magazine in the city of Mashhad published an editorial in favor of unveiling and equal rights, the editor’s house was looted and she had to flee, though she continued her work in other cities.

Women’s rights pioneer Sediqeh Dowlatabadi. 'Iranian women in Mashrouteh movement,' by Abdolhossein Nahid/Wikimedia Commons

Around the same time, in the city of Isfahan, another publication owned by a feminist who advocated unveiling barely escaped a mob attack. The journalist, Sediqeh Dowlatabadi, left instructions that no veiled woman should be allowed to participate in her burial or visit her grave.

The founder of the Pahlavi Dynasty, Reza Shah, banned the veil in 1936 as part of his modernization program. By most accounts, this edict left an overwhelming majority of women, who had been veiled most of their lives, in a state of shock and isolation. Many did not leave their houses until the state allowed the wearing of hats and scarves.

When Reza Shah was forced to abdicate in favor of his son Mohammad Reza Shah in 1941, the prohibition was disbanded and headcovers returned in full force. During his reign the veil became optional in public.

The Board of directors of Jam'iyat-e Nesvan-e Vatankhah, or Society of Patriotic Women, a women’s rights association in Tehran in the 1920s and 1930s. 

Wikimedia Commons

Yet the psychological and cultural aspects were rarely discussed or debated. I recall schoolmates of mine who were unveiled in school, but when our bus reached their neighborhood, they covered their heads before disembarking. Duality was the name of the game.
Role of the revolution

With the fall of monarchy in 1979 and the subsequent rise of the Islamist government, the headcover issue returned with a vengeance.

At this stage not only were many women wearing chadors, but a second variation of headcover emerged: an often but not always black veil that fit the head closely and a coatlike covering that loosely covered the body. During the past few decades, however, women have been allowed to wear a scarf instead.

The first demonstrations against the new rules were held in 1979 when authorities declared that female government employees must wear the hijab and lasted five days. The compulsory hijab went into effect in June 1980, sparking demonstrations by women dressed in black attire as a symbol for their loss of freedom. All women’s demonstrations were met with violence.

There were many women – often referred to as traditional, religious or pro-regime – who favored forced veiling, as there are today. Yet, it is never easy in Iran to speak of positions along simple party lines. There were practicing Muslim women who were veiled but opposed forced veiling. On the other hand, there were men and women on the left who did not see a problem with forced headcovers, arguing there were more important issues to be addressed.

During the early days of the revolution, female members of recognized religious minorities such as Zoroastrians and ethnic Christian groups opposed the forced headcover as well. They argued that the government’s order went against the constitution, which permitted every community to adhere to its own traditions. A small group of women wore their traditional historical attire in public, as a substitute, but were ordered to stop.

By 1985, all minority school girls were ordered to wear the Islamic headcover and full body attire. Teachers instructed mothers to cover their daughters’ heads while testing them on spelling and dictation at home, in order for the children to get used to hearing muffled words through the headcover.

The critical significance of the hijab in the state’s eyes was best expressed by the first supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini: “if the Islamic Revolution had no other outcome but the veiling of women, this in and of itself is enough for the Revolution.”

Veiled girls in Tehran in 1986.

Eslami Rad/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images

Pushing back

Women in Iran have never been passive. To the contrary, they have put the regime on the defensive whenever possible by employing their own logic and interpretations of Islam. The state elite have been pontificating on gender for more than 40 years, and women’s rights activism has been just as constant.

What the authorities did not seem to realize was that their own comments and actions sparked women’s consciousness. Every time they compared Muslim women with Western women, arguing that women have been oppressed in the West but not in Islam, they raised awareness. And every time authorities admitted that oppression of women was ongoing in Iranian society, they raised demands. At one point, pro-regime women protested against lax dress codes for men, and authorities were forced to admit that they too must observe modest dress codes and behavior.

The last 10 years have brought two extremely important developments. First is the sharp rise in education levels among women and girls. Today, the majority of university students are women. Yet their participation in the labor force is only 17%, and according to the Global Gender Gap report, Iran ranks 143rd out of 146 countries for gender equality and economic participation. With education comes rising expectations; unfulfilled expectations foment deep frustration and anger.

Second is the role of the internet and social media. Research shows that in the age of leaderless movements, they are powerful tools for mobilization. The problem is that governments also have access to these tools – and strong security forces.

These transformational forces are powerful instigators of discontent and go far beyond a headcover issue. Today’s protests began with the hijab but have expanded to include economic frustrations, desire for freedom, the environment and other issues.

In the past, major demonstrations were crushed, including the 2009 uprising when protesters claimed incumbent president Mahmud Ahmadinejad had stolen the election. But regardless of how the current protests turn out, they underscore that the headcover issue is not going away – and has the potential to amplify anti-regime sentiments in Iran and abroad.

This article is republished from The Conversation, an independent nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Eliz Sanasarian, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. If you found it interesting, you could subscribe to our weekly newsletter.

Read more:

Why Muslim women choose to wear headscarves while participating in sports

US and Iran have a long, troubled history

Eliz Sanasarian received funding from United States Agency for International Development Grant (with several colleagues), 2006-2009 for work on street children and HIV/AIDS in Kenya, Africa.

Factbox-Iran's minority Kurds in focus after woman's death in custody


Women protest over the death of Mahsa Amini in Iran, in the Kurdish-controlled city of Qamishli

Mon, October 10, 2022 

DUBAI (Reuters) - Nationwide protests over the death of a young Iranian Kurdish woman in the custody of Iran's morality police have been at their most intense in the northwestern areas where the majority of the country's 10 million Kurds live.

The protests, now in their fourth week as demonstrators defy a crackdown by security forces, pose the biggest challenge to Iran's clerical rulers in years.

The demonstrations began in reaction to the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini and then spread to every one of Iran's 31 provinces.

The death of the ethnic Kurd raised tensions between the establishment and Iran's Kurdish minority, which human rights groups say have been long oppressed by Iran's leadership.


The Islamic Republic denies persecuting Kurds.

Tehran has blamed Kurdish dissident groups and foreign enemies for fomenting some of the protests, and its armed forces responded to the turmoil by striking Iranian Kurdish opposition groups inside neighbouring Iraq.

The elite Revolutionary Guards have put down unrest in the Kurdish community for decades, and the country’s judiciary has sentenced many activists to long jail terms or death.

Here are some facts about Iran's Kurds, part of a community that is spread across several Middle East countries and one of the world's largest people without a state.

HISTORY

Minority Kurds, mainly Sunni Muslims in Shi'ite-dominated Iran, speak a language related to Farsi and live mostly in a mountainous region straddling the borders of Armenia, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey.

Kurdish nationalism stirred in the 1890s when the Ottoman Empire was on its last legs. The 1920 Treaty of Sevres, which imposed a settlement and colonial carve-up of Turkey after World War One, promised Kurds independence. Three years later, Turkish leader Kemal Ataturk tore up that accord.

The Treaty of Lausanne, ratified in 1924, divided the Kurds among the new nations of the Middle East.

Kurdish separatism in Iran first bubbled to the surface with the 1946 Republic of Mahabad, a Soviet-backed state stretching over Iran’s border with Turkey and Iraq. It lasted one year before the central government wrested back control.

Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution touched off bloodshed in its Kurdistan region with heavy clashes between the Shi'ite revolutionaries and the Kurdish Party of Iranian Kurdistan (KDPI) which fought for independence.

After the 1980 eruption of the Iran-Iraq war, regular Iranian armed forces and Revolutionary Guards doubled down on their repression of Kurds so as to prevent them becoming a fifth column in Tehran’s fight against Saddam Hussein.

New militant groups such as the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK) have emerged over the past two decades and have occasionally clashed with security forces. Their leaders have often sought refuge in Iraqi Kurdistan and have been attacked by Iranian missiles.

Kurdish claims have oscillated between full-on separatism and autonomy within a multi-ethnic Iranian state, spanning a wide political spectrum from left-leaning secularism to right-wing Islamist thought.

SOCIETY

With eight million to 10 million Kurds living in Iran, Tehran fears pressure for secession will grow among a minority with a long history of struggle for its political rights.

Rights groups say Kurds, who form about 10 percent of the population, along with other religious and ethnic minorities face discrimination under Iran's Shi'ite clerical establishment.

"Kurds in Iran have long suffered deep-rooted discrimination. Their social, political and cultural rights have been repressed, as have their economic aspirations," human rights group Amnesty International said in a report.

"Kurdish regions have been economically neglected, resulting in entrenched poverty. Forced evictions and destruction of homes have left Kurds with restricted access to adequate housing."

(Writing by Michael Georgy, Editing by William Maclean)

Nigerian universities’ eight-month strike is nearing its end

Alexander Onukwue
Tue, October 11, 2022 

University students in Nigeria have been at home since Feb. 14 thanks to an indefinite strike by lecturers across the country. But following recent interventions by federal lawmakers, and court rulings, classrooms could reopen later this month.

On Oct. 10, the union representing the lecturers met with members of Nigeria’s House of Representatives. A video of the meeting seemed to show both parties amicably agreeing that the eight-month strike will be resolved “in a few days.” Emmanuel Osodeke, the president of the union that comprises over 80 government-owned universities, said the result of the strike will be that Nigerians will “be proud” of the universities in the country.

Strikes by academic staff in Nigerian universities are very common and many have spanned months. There have been at least 15 strikes since 2000. This year’s episode has not been called off just yet as the union’s zones would have to meet and decide on suspending the action.

But for millions of disillusioned students and thousands of unpaid lecturers, the prospects for a return to the classroom look good after protracted negotiations between lecturers and the Nigerian government. Femi Falana, a popular lawyer who represents the lecturers’ union, said on a TV program that “the strike will soon be called off.”

What has caused Nigeria’s long universities strike?

Like many before it, this year’s eight-month strike has deepened a lack of confidence in Nigeria’s tertiary education system, even with escalating out-of-school numbers at primary and secondary school levels. Mass youth migration abroad for graduate studies has increased due to worsening insecurity and economic crises but also because frequent strikes bring the quality of a Nigerian education into question.

Nigerian lecturers tend to have one reason for this: money.

For the last decade and half, the union has accused the federal government of often reneging on agreements to reform the independence of universities, revenue generation and funding. A 2009 agreement (pdf) reached under two presidents before the current Muhammadu Buhari administration remains contentious between both parties. Among other things, that agreement fixed a 26% minimum allocation from Nigeria’s annual budget to education, half of which should go to universities.

Since 2020, recent strikes have also been about getting the government to pay lecturers through an alternative payments system, separate from the one used to pay government workers in over 700 organizations in Nigeria’s civil service. This has proved a stumbling block with Nigeria’s technology regulator saying that the lecturers’ preferred payment system has failed multiple integrity tests.

Negotiations have gone back and forth all year, leading to a suit by the government at Nigeria’s Industrial Court questioning the legitimacy of the strike, a suit the union lost. An appeals court on Oct. 7 asked the union to call its strike off.

In the week since, lawmakers and president Buhari have become more involved in trying to resolve the strike, increasing confidence in an imminent end. Still, it is not clear that the union will get all it has asked for all year.

At his presentation of the 2023 budget this month, Buhari complained that Nigeria, constrained by resources, can no longer fund tertiary education alone. “This is why we have remained resolute that we will not sign any agreement that we would be unable to implement,” he said.

How 'Coal Miner's Daughter' Loretta Lynn got her big break in Vancouver chicken coop

VANCOUVER — British Columbia is a long way from the Appalachian coal fields, but the role that a south Vancouver chicken coop played in the rise of country music legend Loretta Lynn is being recalled after her death at the age of 90.



The neighbourhood's connection to Lynn is described in a Vancouver Heritage Foundation plaque that marks the former site of a poultry barn on the banks of the Fraser River that also served as a music hall.

The foundation said Lynn was discovered by Canadian producers Don Grashey and Chuck Williams when she performed at the chicken coop in 1959, and their Zero Records label produced her first hit, "I'm a Honky Tonk Girl."

B.C. writer Rob Howatson, who spent years researching Lynn's connection to Vancouver, said he interviewed her in 2012 and she recalled her performance at the chicken coop.

“That was the main piece of information we were able to get from her when I spoke to her,” said Howatson.

He said Lynn was "so polite, down to earth and without guile that she was a pleasure to talk to."

In 2013, Lynn performed at the Red Robinson Theatre in Coquitlam, where Howatson met her backstage and gave her a photo of the chicken coop.

“I think she was quite tickled by that,” said Howatson.

Lynn's family said she died peacefully in her sleep Tuesday morning at home on her ranch in Hurricane Mills, Tenn.

Lynn's biggest hits came in the 1960s and ’70s, including "Coal Miner’s Daughter," "You Ain’t Woman Enough," "The Pill," "Don’t Come Home a Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ on Your Mind)," "Rated X" and "You’re Looking at Country."

She was the first woman ever named entertainer of the year by her genre’s two major awards shows, first by the Country Music Association in 1972 and then by the Academy of Country Music three years later.

Lynn was also awarded the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013.

Howatson said Lynn's life journey, from poverty to superstardom, represented the American dream.

"I will miss Loretta Lynn's presence," said Howatson. "She was a remarkable songwriter and an amazing woman."

— With files from The Associated Press.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 4, 2022.

This story was produced with the financial assistance of the Meta and Canadian Press News Fellowship.

New victims-rights watchdog appointed nearly a year after former ombud's departure

OTTAWA — The federal government is tapping an internationally recognized expert in the field of victimology to take over as Canada's victims-rights watchdog.



Benjamin Roebuck is replacing Heidi Illingworth as the Ombudsperson for Victims of Crime.

He has spent more than 15 years working as a researcher and educator on victim rights, including at Algonquin College where he has been a professor since 2010.

Illingworth was critical of the government before leaving the role last October, saying there had been no meaningful efforts to inform victims of their rights or make the system accountable for its failings to deliver.

The Department of Justice has also faced criticism for leaving the position vacant for nearly a year, and for not launching an application process until the end of February.

The office was created in 2007 with a mandate to support and advocate for victims, including making recommendations to the federal government.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 27, 2022.

UN human rights officials press Canada on case of overseas detainee Jack Letts

OTTAWA — The federal government has told United Nations officials that international human rights law does not obligate Canada to actively facilitate the return of its citizens detained in northern Syria.

Ottawa says that instead, the duty of respecting international conventions largely falls on the foreign state that is holding people captive.

Canada spells out its view in an Aug. 24 response to UN officials who pressed Ottawa about the case of Jack Letts.

Letts, 26, is one of several Canadian citizens among the many foreign nationals in Syrian camps run by Kurdish forces that reclaimed the war-torn region from the extremist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

Letts was born in Oxford, England, but the British government stripped him of citizenship three years ago.

He became a devoted Muslim, went on holiday to Jordan at 18, then studied in Kuwait before winding up in Syria and, his family says, getting captured by Kurdish forces while fleeing the country with a group of refugees in 2017.

John Letts and his wife, Sally, say they have seen no evidence that their son became a terrorist fighter, adding that Jack stood against ISIL and was even put on trial for publicly condemning the group.

"I don't think he was one of those people who did horrible things," John Letts told The Canadian Press last December. "I'm convinced of it."

Canada has repeatedly said its ability to provide consular and other support throughout Syria is very limited due to the lack of a physical presence in the country — a position civil society voices have challenged as a weak excuse.

Lawyers at a London-based law firm submitted a complaint against the British and Canadian governments to the UN on behalf of Letts's parents.

The complaint says the U.K. and Canada have breached their obligations by failing to take necessary and reasonable steps to assist the young man and have violated international law by withholding consular assistance.

It also argues that the two countries have a duty to protect vulnerable individuals located outside of their territories when they are at risk of serious human rights violations or abuses, and when actions — or a refusal to intervene — can affect human rights.

In a June 8 message to Canada, UN officials who monitor human rights and arbitrary detention said that while they did not wish to prejudge the accuracy of the allegations, they had "serious concerns" about Letts’s continuing detention "and his rights to life, security, and physical and mental health" due to the dire conditions in the camps.

The UN officials requested information from Canada about what it has done to ensure Letts's well-being and to preserve his rights.

In its response last month, Canada said while it cannot discuss individual cases for privacy reasons, the safety and well-being of Canadians abroad is a priority, and the government aims to deliver consular services in a consistent, fair and non-discriminatory manner.

But it added that Canada believes international human rights law "does not create a positive obligation on states to protect the rights of persons who are detained by foreign entities in another state’s territory."

"Such persons are entirely outside of Canada’s territory and jurisdiction. Rather, the obligations apply to the state in whose territory the detentions are occurring," the response said.

"While this does not preclude the possibility that a state might be held responsible for aiding or assisting human rights violations in another state, this would require that the aid or assistance be given with a view to facilitating those wrongful acts. That is plainly not the case here."

Canada added that while it has received some updates on Canadian women and children in the camps, information about men has been sparse.

The federal government says it has been able to provide some assistance, such as verifying the whereabouts and well-being of Canadians, requesting available medical care and conveying Ottawa’s expectations that Canadians be treated humanely.

"The Government of Canada has also made general requests that affect all detained Canadians on multiple occasions to the Syrian Kurdish officials, such as an update on their current status, and to have phone/messaging access to the Canadian detainees."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 14, 2022.

Jim Bronskill, The Canadian Press

RIP

Canadian artist Tom Benner, known for eye-catching animal sculptures, dead at 72

Kate Dubinski - Sept 22, 2022- CBC

Tom Benner, the Canadian artist whose larger-than-life sculptures depicted nature and forced audiences to reflect on themselves in relation to their environment, has died.

Benner lived and died in London, Ont. His family confirmed his death Wednesday at age 72.

Benner's art was part of the movement known as London Regionalism in the 1960s and '70s, challenging how the artist situates themselves in the art world and in the community.

"When I think of Tom's work, I think primarily of his love of nature and the environment," said Catherine Elliott Shaw, acting manager of the McIntosh Gallery at Western University and its former curator.


Benner's White Rhino sculpture stands in front of Museum London in London, Ont

.© (Dave Chidley/CBC)

"He did an amazing series of art works that tried to focus people on the disappearing natural habitat, animals themselves, their place within our purview of life, but he was also interested in humour and he knew that if he could use that humour, he could reach people better. That's not to say his work wasn't serious, but he knew how to use humour to make people look at his work and take the message in as a person."

In London, Benner's White Rhino — an aluminum sculpture of a large rhinoceros — stands in front of Museum London.

About his art, he said: "Each piece is strongly rooted within a tradition of narrative and storytelling, but is also equally concerned with materiality. Some stories are grounded with historical research, scouring book stores and libraries for information, some stories come in the form of dreams, memories.

"My sculpture is not solely about the individual piece, but also about the process, the materials, and the space it occupies."

Benner's work has been displayed across Canada, including at Union Station in Toronto and at Charlottetown's Confederation Centre of the Arts, where he created an iconic Moose that stands outside the building.

"He meant a lot to the culture of this region and to Canadian art in general," said Cassandra Getty, the curator of art at Museum London.

"He asserted his own unique voice and way of working that was immediately recognizable. He was very prescient in his work about idea of how humankind was threatening the environment."

On his website, Benner's biography notes he was living with his wife Pauline and brother-in-law.

His brother is the artist Ron Benner, also a London resident.

Benner 'always very serious about his art'

The Benner household was a jovial one in which art was celebrated, said Michael Gibson, president of the Michael Gibson Gallery.

"I used to go over to their house in Grade 9, Grade 10, and they were very, very funny. Tom at the time was making these huge boulders out of fibreglass. We would lift them over our heads, sort of Fred Flinstone-type stuff, to show how strong we were. It was hilarious," Gibson recalled.


Museum London curator Cassandra Getty stands in front of the White Rhino on Thursday. The black band was placed on the rhino's foot by a mourner. The artist, Benner, died Wednesday

.© Kate Dubinski/CBC

"He had humour but he was also very serious about his art."

Tom Benner was best known for his large sculptures made out of cold, rolled, riveted aluminum and copper. In the 1980s, he created a series of works that were about threatened or extinct species, including the white rhino.

"He had messages to get across that were quite serious, but he used humour to help get those messages across," Getty said.

With a sold-out TIFF premiere, a film career is born for this Grade 2 actor from Six Nations, Ont.

Candace Maracle - Sept 14 - CBC

Keris Hope Hill, the seven-year-old lead in the new film Rosie, is still learning how to read but says she's been waiting her whole life to play this role.


Keris Hope Hill, left, was chosen to play the part of Rosie, directed by Gail Maurice, right, after an Ontario-wide search.© Submitted by Rosie film

Hill, Kanien'kehá:ka of Six Nations of the Grand River, Ont., makes her acting debut in this film set in Montreal about love and misfits and self-acceptance in the 1980s. It premiered in front of a sold-out crowd at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) on Friday and has its final screening as part of the festival Wednesday evening.

"Keris was a natural," writer-director Gail Maurice said in an interview over Zoom last week. Maurice shot the film — her first feature-length production — in Hamilton and Montreal in 2021.

"As a six-year-old, there's only so much life experience you have. You're looking for that element. The essence of who Rosie is in the child who auditions and Keris had that. I knew there was a Rosie inside of her."

Keris plays an orphaned Indigenous girl who's just lost her mother and is forced to live with her reluctant Aunty Fred — played by Melanie Bray — a starving artist working at an adult video store who can barely make ends meet.

Rosie soon becomes a member of her aunt's motley crew of friends who are also society's outcasts. She sees this new world through her own innocent eyes and there's an instant connection.

"Fred is an artist and she takes garbage and makes beauty. What I love about Keris' character, Rosie, is that she's actually the one that brings the adults together and shows them their true power. She lets Fred believe that she's capable," said Maurice.

A province-wide search for their Rosie

Maurice's team did a search throughout Ontario for the child to play the part. They held auditions on or near First Nations and had self-tapes that came in from all over the province.

Recalling her audition day, Maurice said Keris was anxiously anticipating whether she had been successful, and took would-be co-star Bray by the hand and asked, "When will we find out? I hope I find out soon. I've waited for this my whole life."

Filmed during the pandemic with strict mandates to follow, in the middle of a Montreal summer heatwave, Maurice said despite these challenges, they were still able to create a beautiful film they could be proud of with the underlying message that "hardships make us stronger," she said.

"That's what the whole theme is about with Rosie and her family."

This was Maurice's first time working with such a young actor. "They play and they're not self-conscious … [Hill] was a real little professional. She came to set every day. She knew all her lines."

TIFF screening a reunion for the cast

The TIFF screening was the first time Keris saw herself on the big screen.

In an interview on Zoom the day before, Keris was doing her best to remain composed with the help of her family.

"I told my dad about this and well I said, I just don't think about it, because the more I think about it the more I get stressed out and more nervous. So I just pretend nothing's happening," she said.

At the premiere, she was reunited with the cast for the first time since filming.

Of her cast members and their off-screen chemistry, Keris said, "They were really fun and they were really nice to me. They were almost like family to me. I spent six weeks with them and I had a lot of fun."

Although it was the first time Keris acted in a film, she's hoping it's only the start of her career – anything to get her out of Grade 2.

Abundant blueberry season allows for reflection on tradition, importance of staple foods in northern Ontario

Olivia Levesque - Sept 29 - CBC

People across northern Ontario were thrilled to find blueberry patches bursting with colour and rich, round berries this year, especially after a particularly bleak season in 2021.

Last year, much of the region was ravaged by forest fires, and the dry summer season led to many barren patches, in turn leaving some wildlife without a food source and some communities void of carrying out tradition.

"Even through the winter … there was just so much snow and it was so crazy, and the spring was so powerful with its water," said Shelby Gagnon, an artist and community organizer from Aroland First Nation.

"I just had a feeling that it was just gonna be pretty abundant. I was really hopeful that there would be an abundance of, you know, food on the land and berries," she added.

Gagnon is one of many people celebrating the strong, and particularly long, blueberry harvesting season in the region this year. The tradition, rooted in Anishinaabe heritage, allows some people to feel closer to their culture.

"When I think about the blueberry, I initially think of the bear … but I also think about family and kin. Growing up I would always go blueberry picking with my family. It's definitely one of my most cherished memories of growing up," said Gagnon.

"I think about my community, Aroland — they're known to be called the blueberry people just because of the abundance of blueberries in the area."

Gagnon said she's working on learning more about traditional practices when it comes to harvesting food on the land, through her role with the Indigenous Food Circle in Thunder Bay Ont., and also through her own journey of cultural reclamation.

"I've had the privilege to learn more in depth about the 13 moons, and with the 13 moons, it's around July that that's the Berry Moon … that's when all the berries are around the land and ready to pick. So just learning that recently of honouring that moon that comes every year and honouring all the different types of berries … it's a very meditative way to be with the land," she explained.



Wild blueberries grow right across northern Ontario. Pictured are a few of the areas you can find blueberries in the region, and where the people in the story call home.

© CBC News Graphics

Across the region, in Wikwemikong Unceded Territory, Dominic Beaudry has also been using ideas and traditions surrounding food items, like the blueberry, as a tool for cultural revitalization.

He uses Twitter to share words of the day, specifically focusing on the Ojibway language, creating engagement while also transcending communities and cultural backgrounds.

Language 'an eye' into other cultures

"I really enjoy doing that, because it allows me to engage with folks from all over Ontario, or all over Canada or all over the world for those that want to learn more about the language," Beaudry said.

Earlier in the summer, Beaudry posted the Ojibway word "miinibaashkiminisaginibitoosjiganibaakwezhigan," which means blueberry pie.

"I like to use that word. It allows me to engage with more folks that want to learn the language because they think it's an extremely long word, and they become very intrigued and want to learn more about the rest of the language," Beaudry said.

Beaudry said sharing words like this one both generates interest in the Ojibway language and acts as a pathway to have conversation about cultural history.

"People have been harvesting blueberries for a very long time. It's just one of their staple foods," he said. "A lot of the First Nations in the past were not so much hunter gatherer societies, but they are more or less agricultural communities, probably before the contact period."

Beaudry said history carries on through names of people and places in the region, with many popular surnames referencing food or food skills.

"When you learn the language … It's an eye, it's like a perspective and into another culture's worldview. So when you begin to learn about the language of berries and agricultural foods, it gives you a different perspective of who Ojibway people were."

Land-based skills teach respect, protection of environment

Carrying on those traditions is an important goal for Joseph Wesley in Lac Seul First Nation, where he works as an outdoor and cultural educator teaching land-based skills to children.

Wesley said that in his part of the region, blueberry season was exceptionally long this year, with picking going on well into September. That also allowed for some of his students to make it out into the bush before the foliage began to change to its usual fiery red colour.

"One of the little kids said that they're going to remember that for a really long time, and it was just something as simple as going to go pick some blueberries," he said.

"It's important to be able to bring people out, young people out, because we have all of this right in our backyard and we get so distracted with today's technologies … we start to forget what's available right in our backyards."

Wesley and his colleagues will use activities like picking berries as a way to teach land-based skills, and teach about honouring and protecting the land, something he said is becoming increasingly important in the face of clear-cutting activity on his First Nation and as the climate changes.

"For us to be able to to listen to our elders, the ones that have been out there, the ones that know the areas. To be able to keep at it, and keep talking to our children and our grandchildren, and teaching them … about these areas and having their respect for for the land. I really like to encourage people to continue, so that my great grandchildren someday will be able to go and pick blueberries too."