CLAIHR Film Festival Inspires Student Action at Queen's

Members of the CLAIHR film festival committee: (back row) Tanya Rocca, Alastair Clarke, Matthew Morden, Gwen May; (front row) Mandy Seidenberg, Heather Webb, and Sharon An.

On March 10, 2007, some 80 Queen's students and community members packed Dunning Hall Auditorium for the 6th Annual Canadian Lawyers for International Human Rights (CLAIHR) Film Festival. The event was organized by a committee of Queen's Law students, and was designed to raise awareness about human rights abuses both abroad and here in Canada.

In preparation for this year's festival, the CLAIHR committee members reviewed several films before coming to a consensus on the three that were shown on March 10. Guest speakers associated with each film held a discussion session after the filming. "We selected films that we thought had the most impact and conveyed a strong message on international human rights," said Mandy Seidenberg, Law ‘07, one of the festival's coordinators.

The first film shown was Killer's Paradise, documenting the killings of thousands of women in Guatemala that are rarely investigated and largely ignored by major media outlets. The movie tells the story of several women and their families, including Claudina Isabel Velasquez, a Guatemalan law student whose 2005 murder was never investigated by local authorities. Nobel Peace Prize nominee Norma Cruz was in attendance along with the film's director/producer and Velasquez's father to field questions from students following the film.

The next film, Secure Freedom, offered a critique of the Canadian government's use of security certificates, which allow authorities to detain terror suspects indefinitely without charging them or holding a trial. The movie was made by Alexandre Trudeau, son of former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, who made the documentary in his fight against what he considers an infringement of basic human rights. Following the film, Sophie Harkat told the story of her husband Mohamed, who was being held in Canada on a security certificate, and is on a bail order that places him under house arrest.

CLAIHR wrapped up the festival with the inaugural Canadian screening of My Country, My Country, which was nominated for best documentary at the 2007 Academy Awards. The film investigates the state of democracy in Iraq in the months leading up to the country's historic 2005 national election. After the screening, Omar al-Dewachi, an Iraqi refugee who worked as a translator for My Country, My Country, spoke to the audience. He explained how the United States revoked his Hussein-era passport, forcing him to give up his Ph.D. studies at Harvard and flee to Canada for asylum.

The event was sponsored by the Law Students' Society. Funds for the event were also raised through ticket sales and a raffle with prizes donated by community businesses. Through these fundraising initiatives, CLAIHR was able to make donations to the Justice for Mohamed Harkat Foundation and Fundacion Sobrevivientes, a Guatemalan organization that seeks to prevent violence against women.

If the success of the CLAIHR Film Festival can be measured by an increase in student awareness and grassroots action, then the event was a hit. "There have been some students at Queen's Law who took up the cause, and [initiated] a letter writing campaign to Amnesty International," said Seidenberg. "We were really happy to see that."

Secure Freedom can be borrowed from the Queen's Law Library.