 In today's episode of Amir Improved, I am joined by Kyle Matthews, who is the executive director of the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies at Concordia University. Kyle, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me on. And we have a lot of things that we can talk about on today's episode, specifically what's happening around the world and human rights. I've been following a lot with the Human Rights Foundation, what they've been doing, or Alex Gladstein, and my question to you is for people who are interested in human rights. And obviously it's a pretty broad question because human rights in Canada versus human rights in China versus Russia, it's quite different, very different context. But generally speaking as a whole, as I'm a firm believer, a more educated populace is a better society. The more we educate people, the better it is. And so for the general population out there who are listening to this or watching this on YouTube, what are things that people should be concerned about right now when it comes to human rights? Well, I think generally, I mean, right now the coronavirus outbreak has us all kind of focused on our own families, our own safety. And we're seeing some of our basic human rights, like freedom of movement being curtailed, and that's for a wider sense of good. So we're all focused on that. But if you take, go back and have a bigger picture of the world, is that we are in, I think, a very challenging time for human rights. We have many Western countries who would tend to be unified, would support human rights norms at the UN. They haven't been as strong particularly about the U.S. with President Trump. He seems not to really care about human rights, he's been studying with more authoritarian government, so that's deeply troubling. And then we also have a rise of, I guess, competing political systems around the world that really don't care about human rights. So one is China, China, which is an authoritarian, you know, it's a one-party state, they don't believe in individual human rights. They've locked up one million minimum Uighur Muslims. That's a frightening scene. And legitimate concentration camps. Well, they're called re-education camps, but they're basically there. Re-education camps. Well, that's what they call them, but people are not there voluntarily. My institute has been harassed by Chinese diplomats in Canada for inviting Uighur Muslim leaders to speak at a university. So I would say that the China issue is one, it's a threat of democracies, freedom of speech, access, you know, what the Chinese are developing, this kind of surveillance state, which is being exported around the world to Africa and to others. So that's one issue. And we also have, of course, a rise of what we call liberal authoritarianism. And that, if you look at Russia, which, you know, you just look at the position of Russia at the Supreme Council backing the Assad regime in Syria. And we've seen, you know, the Syrian war, which is still ongoing over, I think now 9 million people minimum displaced, some refugees, some internally displaced, attacks on hospitals. So we have these wider issues. And then we have cases of now more than ever, more than 50 million people that are displaced around the world. That's the largest number of displaced people since the Second World War. That's troubling. We have climate change that's resulting in calamities and natural disasters. And we also have, you know, also, I think is also concerning, is a shutdown and attacks against journalists. We have many states, bloggers, and it's to shut down any critique of what certain governments are doing. So we put this all together. And I think we're very lucky in Canada. We, you know, we sometimes talk about, oh, yeah, we've got problems here. But our problems compared to what's going on in the rest of the world are nowhere near the same. So we need to fight for those hard-to-run rights. But we also have to be vigilant about what's happening overseas because we can't just fall into this kind of, as we self-isolate, that we self-isolate ourselves from the wider international system. And countries we need, other countries, other people around the world need countries like Canada to stand up for human rights, norms, and laws that we've all signed on to. Is there any kind of red flags that we should be looking out for here in Canada? Like one of the red flags that I saw in the United States is the, I don't know what they define it, but I'll call it the Military Act, where it's a decree, President signs it, the Constitution is temporarily put on the side, and it's kind of pretty much a one-party system. And we can commandeer your property, we can do whatever we want. It's actually the Patriot Act on steroids. Whatever we want, we can do, and you can't say nothing about it. And so that's kind of like a red flag for me. But, you know, since we're Canadian, is there any red flags that citizens should be looking out for, like lingo, language, or things that once they see it, that kind of starts the alarm in their mind? Well, you know, I think we are different than the United States, but we should not be complacent. I mean, it's in cases where there are emergencies, real legitimate public health emergencies, or, you know, an act of war that we have to defend ourselves. Very often we must give governments powers to react more quicker than before. However, I think we, you know, there are things to be concerned about. I mean, there's some talks about, you know, if many things get sick because of the coronavirus, there are some people saying that we might have to not treat anyone who's over 60. And I think that's problematic. We start moving to a system where we are going to deny people health care based on their age. That's problematic. I think we need to look at the rise of extremist groups, be it on the far right or far left, that start instigating violence against individual citizens or companies or banks. Now is the time that we actually remain unified. We don't start using this. And there are some voices out there that are, you know, anti-immigrants that want to shut down the border. There are those that actually, you know, want to take pitchforks and go after businesses. I mean, so we have to keep an eye on that. But there's also the government overreach. I think if you looked at the federal government that last week, try to pass, you know, certain emergency pass law. That's ax law. And that really scared people because it basically said you're going to shut down. There'll be no monitoring by the opposition. You'll have, you know, powers that you can just decide who to tax and when and where, what else you could take. So I think in these times, we still have to ensure that we maintain our Democrat institutions and not give away too much power, at least not for a long term. Because, yeah, things we've seen societies across the world change under extreme duress. Even democracies can sometimes go off the abyss. So we have to remain vigilant and hold our government to account and keep an eye on what also is going on overseas. We needed more game theoretical checks and balances. You know, one of the reasons why they say that tax proposal was shut down was because of a minority government. So you had different oppositions coming in as challenging. Obviously, the incentive is like they want to get well. I always say follow the breadcrumbs. What are the incentive models? But for me, it's interesting because once you have, let's say, there's a saying absolute power corrupts absolute all. And once power is given, power is never taken away. It's not like all of a sudden it's like, oh, well, we got all this power. Well, here you can have it back again. Yeah, well, listen, we've seen cases in Hungary. We've seen the Hungarian government pass emergency powers that basically has very vague definitions of what someone can end up in jail for. Or we see people now being brought before the courts or put in jail for criticizing the government's response to coronavirus. I mean, we have to be careful. I mean, I tend to think that Canada, we are a very moderate country. We have strong institutions. So they hold each other account. But we have to keep an eye out for overreach. Like one thing that I don't know about is that with this whole pandemic and our economy basically going to be shut down. It could be shut down for months, if not half a year. We don't know. I consider 2020 right off. It's done. Well, it seems like that. But we're going to have major economic disruptions. A lot of people put into poverty. So is the Canadian government thinking about doing this in order to take extreme measures to tax corporations or to tax the extremely wealthy in order to provide some kind of monetary support to those hard hit, perhaps, but we have to be very careful. Cases from the start of the Soviet Union to communist states can see that sometimes overreacting and targeting people and taking away their private resources can actually backfire and doesn't always work. So we have to keep an eye out and not rush into bad policy decisions when we haven't really thought things through. For the average person, how can they participate in a system like this? Do they reach out to the local MPs? Do they sign petitions? What is the normal day, let's say, Canadian or American can do to participate to make the society more freer or to at least put checks and balances in? Well, you know what, I think, given where we are now and how we've all kind of encouraged, if not soon to be forced, not to actually go out in public, now is the time to really embrace the digital world to use social media to contact your MPs, interact with them to express your concerns, your MPs, your senators and other people at the local, the municipal and provincial level, we can do that. It's also a time that if you're concerned about something, you can get engaged with issues, have discussions online, you can write op-eds for the media, or you can also support organizations that are doing work that you really believe in and they might not have a large profile. They might need your help to actually reach a wider audience. It might need help to actually fundraise and provide resources, but there's a lot of things now. It's not the time to just sit back and watch Netflix 24-7 for the next five, six months. It's also a time to think carefully and critically and think about what we need to do as society and what the role of individuals in society is. It's to hold people to account and individuals have the power to make massive important changes. I always tell people, if you look at the Second World War, if you look at the Holocaust, for example, in Hungary, there was a Swedish diplomat, Royal Wallenberg, who took individual action, gave out passports to allow people to flee the country, gave out food aid, and he is estimated to have saved between 80,000 to 100,000 people by himself. He saved more people during the Holocaust than any other government did. So the power of the individual is extremely... I think that's a lesson that the listeners to your station and to your podcast, is not to forget that you can make a difference. Don't be complacent, don't think that, you know, I'm just one person. It's always and always has been individuals that can actually bring about, you know, seismic change, dramatic change, and I hope as we hunker down that we don't forget that. Well, one classic example, at least for Canada, was the reason why we have federalized weed was that... I forget the person's name, but he challenged in Supreme Court constitutional right for medicine. One person. He's like, this is my medicine. He's like, how are you denying me? No different than if somebody needs a vaccine or somebody needs some type of other medication and that... I forget the person's name, but that was kind of precipice, the anchoring of the case. It wasn't the pod activist in Vancouver, Mark Emory, was it? No, no, it wasn't Emory, I forget who it was. They fucked him, man, threw him in jail, like, oh my God. No, no, no, listen, there were cases... I worked very close with Canadian parliamentarians. There was one Canadian, his name is Norm King. He's since passed away a few years ago, but he was very concerned about the crime of genocide and mass atrocity crimes around the world. So he approached a bunch of MPs in Ottawa, convinced them to create an all-party parliamentary group for the French on Genocide. It was eventually chaired by Romeo de L'Air, and he made a difference. And he went on to lobby the MPs to adopt April 23rd, which is Lester B. Pierce's birthday, as a day for action against mass atrocity crimes. That's one individual. And doing that, he then got a bunch of high schools in Ottawa, young people to get together and start doing advocacy work, you know, raising public awareness. That's an example. Like, now is a perfect time. If you have an idea and you've got time on your hands, start to implement it and start thinking about long-term where you can make a difference. What organizations would you recommend or suggest for people to check out? You know, there are a lot of great organizations, depending on what your interests are in. I mean, if it's on wider human rights issues, we have Human Rights Watch, Amnesty, they're university think tanks like mine. There's also, there's more specialty NGOs now looking at stuff about tech and human rights. So there's an NGO in the U.S. called Access Now. They do a lot of work on tech, human rights, free human speech. I like Article 19 in the UK that works for free human speech. You know, there's a lot of things. There's a group in New York called Witness that they used to use media to document human rights abuses. And now they're doing a lot of work on artificial intelligence and deep fields. And a lot of the new issues that this emerging technology is impacting society. So there's a lot out there. And sometimes, you know, if you just believe in refugee issues and supporting refugees, then the UN High Commission for Refugees is one to support. There's the Canadian Council for Refugees. There are a lot of different organizations. If you're worried about political prisoners, Amnesty started off that way. You can support them. I've done a lot of work also with the Saudi and prison blogger Raf Badawi. His family live in Quebec. They've got a foundation. They're always looking to make noise on Twitter because the Saudi government has refused to release him for what's basically like a thought crime of criticizing religion. You know, they need support. So there's a lot out there. Just do a little digging, go on Twitter, start following the stuff. And also now there's groups in Toronto that are journalists for human rights. They need support. There's pen for freedom of expression. There's tons of organizations that need people now to help them online and also in giving them their financial or political support. Kyle, thank you so much for sharing. Where can people reach you? What's the best resource? Well, yeah. The best resource for genocide in the right studies is I think Tank in Montreal Company University. You can look, Google us. You'll find us. You can find my email. I don't hide who I am. I'm very active on Twitter. You can find me on LinkedIn. That's how I connected it. I was following on Twitter. Yeah, it works now. I think you followed me before I was on shutdown. I'm not too sure. But reach out if you're interested in an issue. We've got projects going on. We need support. We need each public, both in Canada and abroad. So social media is probably the best way. Well said. Thank you, Kyle. It was my pleasure.