Statement made on 01 March 2011 by Senator Roméo Dallaire
Hon. Roméo Antonius Dallaire:
Honourable senators, I rise to draw your attention to the abhorrent situation of mass atrocities ordered by Colonel Gadhafi and his government against a legitimate opposition movement in Libya.
Though exact figures are difficult to ascertain, some reports have put the death toll from the ongoing clashes with the regime's military aircraft, armed forces and hired mercenaries from across Africa and the Middle East at as high as 6,500, with the figure for refugees and internally displaced persons at over 100,000.
Senator Segal and I described last week, in the pages of the Ottawa Citizen, how Colonel Gadhafi's use of terms such as "cockroaches" to describe protesters, as well as the threat to "cleanse Libya house by house," recall other cases of mass slaughter including, notably, those in Rwanda and Kosovo. These were the exact terms that were used by the dictatorship in Rwanda 17 years ago as we watched that genocide unfold.
It is laudable that Ottawa has decided to finally take action in regard to Libya, including sending a reconnaissance mission to Malta and finally getting aircraft on site. However, the truth of the matter is that we were silent while atrocities were being reported early last week and even during the initial days of protest. Our government sat on its hands, waiting to take its cue from our allies, a defensible strategy when time is not a critical factor for decision making. In Libya, protesters were being massacred by an evil megalomaniacal regime while democratic governments and world powers, including ours, remained mute.
The actions on Libya that are now being outlined by this government in press releases and speeches such as the one Minister Cannon gave at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva and the bilateral communications with our allies, including those by the Prime Minister, are all positive and are being produced much faster than they were 17 years ago during that other humanitarian catastrophe. However, they are actions that could have and should have been taken several days ago. Sanctions, assets and travel freezes, and humanitarian deployments should have been automatic, not requiring the direction from or approval of the United States, Britain, France or others, including the United Nations as an independent body.
Simply because the international community came late to the game in Libya should not have precluded Canada from asserting its willingness to act. Actions thus far have demonstrated a willingness to engage in the periphery, but will not provide security to those still being massacred in the streets of Libya.
One week ago at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, Minister Cannon asked the United States to "respect Canada's ability to contribute and find space of our own on the world stage."
Our ability to contribute positively to global unrest, situations of mass atrocities and gross abuses of human rights will not come from a superior military intervention capability. In fact, we participated in cancelling the only rapid reaction capability of the UN, the Standby High Readiness Brigade, SHIRBRIG, two years ago, which we commanded.
To be sure, we do have military assets and knowledge to contribute to a multilateral effort during any of those challenges, but Canada's ability to contribute must come from its strong moral voice — the voice that once stood clearly for unequivocal support for democracy, human rights and the protection of innocence everywhere, including the intervention and the will to intervene when catastrophic massacres and human rights are massively abused as per the responsibility to protect doctrine that we introduced into the United Nations.