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opinion B A C K PA GE BY EZRA LEVANT There are worse places than Pakistan I t's rare for white-collar professionals to take to the streets in protest, so when 150 Canadian lawyers recently did just that — on a cold Sunday morning in Ottawa, no less — it's worth looking at more closely. That demonstration, organized by the Canadian Bar Asso- ciation late last year, was even more impressive in that it was for an abstract principle: the rule of law in Pakistan. No doubt the protesters were inspired by TV footage from Pakistan itself that showed lawyers in fisticuffs with police. President Pervez Musharraf had briefly suspended the country's constitution and placed its Supreme Court judges under house arrest. Pakistani lawyers fought back. "The least we can do is to grant them our full support and admiration," the CBA president Bernard Amyot said at the rally. He's right, and the CBA should be applauded for its defence of the rule of law and democracy. But why did the CBA choose Pakistan as its issue to take to the streets? Just a week after the CBA's rally, Russia held its parliamentary elections, which were widely con- demned as rigged. Vladimir Putin has steadily eroded Russia's rule of law and democracy, and distorted the constitution to suit his ambition to rule indefinitely. Dozens of investigative journalists have been assassinated, opposition politicians are routinely arrested, and activists are jailed or murdered. The country's organized crime task force, UBOP, now targets po- litical and media opposition. By comparison, Musharraf is a pussycat: his suspension of the Pakistani constitution was temporary, not terminal; instead of killing his political rivals, he invited them back to Pakistan from exile; and the reason the CBA members saw the TV news clips in the first place was that Pakistan still has a relatively free media. More to the point, unlike Russia, Pakistan faces a con- stant existential threat from terrorists — such as those who committed the series of attacks that killed Musharraf's rival, Benazir Bhutto. (For perspective, consider that Pierre Trudeau invoked the War Measures Act after just two kidnappings. He used that constitutional hiatus to arrest 497 political oppo- nents, of whom only 62 were charged with any crimes.) Russia and Pakistan were in the news at the same time. So why did the CBA focus on Pakistan? Or how about Venezuela? That same week, President Hugo 54 FEBRU AR Y 2008 www. C ANADIAN Law ye rmag.com Chavez tried to constitutionally entrench his dictatorial pow- ers. Chavez is already using "emergency" powers to rule, largely by decree, without the consent of Venezuela's legislature. In May, he shut down Venezuela's largest TV network, replacing it with his own propaganda organ. And he long ago gutted the judiciary, summarily sacking 190 judges. Chavez makes Mush- arraf look like a member of the ACLU. Chavez has rigged votes in the past, so it was amazing that his power-grab was defeated at the polls. But if the issue is threats to rule of law and democ- racy, where was the CBA? Six years ago, when Robert Mugabe arrested the executive of the Law Society of Zimbabwe, the CBA wrote a polite note of con- cern to then-prime minister Jean Chrétien. Those arrests, said the note, "demand an urgent and vigorous protestation" — but apparently not from the CBA, which didn't even send a copy to the Zimbabwe High Commission. But how about the world's largest violator of civil liberties, most prolific practiser of the death penalty, and largest dictatorship? In a five-page China brief sent last year to Parliament's subcommittee on international human rights, the CBA didn't mention a single instance of brutality — such as China's policy of killing prisoners to "harvest" their bodily organs for transplants. Instead, the CBA chastised the Cana- dian government for considering reducing foreign aid for its "human rights" projects — such as the CBA's involvement with the All China Lawyers Association. But the ACLA is an arm of the Chinese government; it is not a real professional body, and certainly not a civil liberties association. It is a placebo, a public relations gimmick for the Chinese politburo to roll out whenever the subject of human rights is mentioned. The CBA did the opposite of what it did with Pakistan: it ignored China's human rights abuses and pos- itively lobbied the Canadian government on behalf of China. What's going on here? Perhaps the answer is found by look- ing at the most frequent target of the CBA's human rights press releases: the United States and the broader war on terror. Musharraf is the American ally most desperately fighting against al-Qaeda and the Taliban. The CBA hates that war. And that is why Pakistan was singled out. Ezra Levant can be reached at ezra@ezralevant.com SCOTT PAGE