Breaking the Silence: Reflections from the Road on the Caravan to End Canadian Involvement in Torture (A selection of photos from the Caravan appear at [link] ) At the bottom of this article are four links to video footage of the Caravan, including an interview with Muayyed Nureddin, as well as information on follow-up actions to end Canadian complicity in torture)

May 10, 2008 -- As members of the Caravan to End Canadian Involvement in Torture reached their final stopping point May 7 at the national headquarters of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), agitated spies in the massive architorture structure in east-end Ottawa simply pulled the blinds. It was a fitting symbolic gesture consistent with the thematic continuum that greeted Caravan members during their eight day journey through Central and Eastern Ontario as they confronted sites of Canadian complicity in torture. A combination of denial and transfer of responsibility to some other party typified responses of government and corporate officials who refused dialogue and met caravan members with lines of police and RCMP, surveillance cameras, and locked office doors. While not surprising -- who wants to admit that they are complicit in torture? -- the closed-door response seemed to prove one of the points of the Caravan: the hallmarks of openness, transparency, and accountability that serve as the foundation of democracy get shut down when infected by such noxious practices as torture and complicity in human rights abuses. The Caravan sought to break the silence around such complicity, including the training and teaching relationship the Canadian government holds with the U.S.-based “School of the Assassins”, ongoing efforts to deport refugees to torture from Canada, the government’s refusal to condemn the Guantanamo Bay detention centre, Canada’s role in hosting potential CIA rendition to torture flights, the Canadian rendition to torture of Algerian refugee Benamar Benatta on September 12, 2001, and Canada’s subcontracting the torture of Canadian citizens in Syria, Egypt, and Sudan, among many other issues.

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