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EESTI ELU reedel, 18. detsembril 2020 — Friday, December 18, 2020
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LIFESTYLE
Interior designer Kristiina Roosimaa’s holiday picks Here are some fun ideas for your Christmas Eve table setting for the décor and for how to decorate your food. I love the sweet little strawberry-whipped cream Santas along with the candy cane starter of mozzarella and tomato. The satin brass and white combination definitely adds some sparkle along with the blissful aroma of the holy eucalyptus wreath. Eucalyptus leaves are said to have the purifying effect and would remove any negativity where the leaves are burned. Merry Christmas!
Truli Wetsuits for women by Mia Toose Tobermory, Ontario
Canada’s failure to implement Sergei Magnitsky Law risks failing global human rights activists Marcus Kolga, The Toronto Star, December 2020 This week, the European Union followed the U.S. and Canada in adopting Mag nit sky human rights legislation, which allows these govern ments to place targeted asset freezes and visa bans on cor rupt international human rights abusers. The European move could open a door to co-ordinated and thus more effective Western sanctions that would sting corrupt authoritarian leaders and the kleptocrats who keep them in power, from Moscow to Tehran, Caracas to Beijing. Magnitsky legislation, as it’s commonly known, is named in honour of Russian anti-corruption whistleblower, Sergei Magnitsky, who was detained and killed in a Moscow prison after discovering a U.S. $230 million tax fraud by Russian officials, in 2008. It places responsibility for corruption and human rights abuse on indivi duals instead of punishing entire nations with broad sectoral sanctions. The effectiveness of targeted Magnitsky sanctions is demonstrated by Vladimir Putin’s aggressive campaign against them – including the now infamous 2016 Trump Tower meeting, where Kremlin lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya lobbied for the repeal of U.S. Mag nitsky legislation. Canada’s legislation faced similar opposition from the Putin regime and its embassy in Ottawa, which engaged in information warfare to discredit Canadian elected officials who supported it. Such efforts exploited Canada’s multiculturalism and led to the creation of Astroturf “community groups”
that lobbied against it. Former Canadian diplomats and academics, who acted as the Kremlin’s surrogates, warned about damaging Arctic and trade relations with Russia. But that has always been an empty threat, as Canada exports less goods to Russia than it does to Botswana or Bangladesh. Canada’s then-foreign minister, Stéphane Dion, clearly misjudged the impact Magnitsky legislation would have on Canada’s reputation – prioritizing his fear of Putin’s reaction over principles. His resistance against Magnitsky legislation caused some leading inter national allies, including Barack Obama’s Ambassador to Russia, Mike McFaul, to ask the Trudeau government: “Do you stand for human rights or not?” In direct contradiction to pro-Kremlin advocates, Russian pro-democracy opposition and human rights leaders, Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir KaraMurza, urged Canadian legis lators to pass Magnitsky legis lation, telling them that it was the most pro-Russian action they could take to protect acti vists. Despite warnings from Moscow about expanding the “list of Canadian officials banned from entering Russia,” The Sergei Magnitsky Law passed unanimously in October 2017. In 2017, Canada announced 52 names to Canada’s new Magnitsky list, including Rus sian officials who were responsible for the detention and murder of Sergei Magnitsky. A group of 17 Saudis linked to the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi were added a year later. Since then, not a single name
has been added to Canada’s Magnitsky list. Canada has inexplicably failed to follow the rest of Western world in placing sanctions on the killers of Alexander Litvinenko, who was poisoned with radioactive polonium by Russian agents in 2006 or the Russian GRU agents respon sible for the Skripal poisoning in 2018. Yevgeni Prigozhin, the man behind the internet Research Agency (commonly known as the Russian Troll Factory) and who owns Russia’s private military contractor The Wagner Group, which according the U.S. Treasury Department “conducted dangerous and destabilizing operations in foreign countries, such as Ukraine, Syria, Sudan, Libya, and Mo zambique,” has been sanctioned by the U.S. and EU. Yet he remains free to do business with Canada. Three Canadians – Husseyin Celil, Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig – remain in Chinese prisons. The whereabouts of Celil, an UyghurCanadian, are unknown, even as the Chinese government commits what is widely being re cognized as genocide against the Uighur minority in Western China. There is evidence that Beijing is preparing for similar mass incarceration in Tibet, while mass repression continue to take place in Hong Kong. Yet not a single Chinese official has been placed on Canada’s Mag nitsky list. As the EU, and soon Australia, embrace Magnitsky legislation, Canada must finally begin implementing and using this human rights tool. This includes harmonizing our sanctions lists with allies in order to
From paddling with an old broom at the family cottage to scuba in Caribbean waters and now based in Tobermory, Mia Toose has come a long way in water sports. Her father, Madis’ adventurous nature and mother, Taimi’s eye for design have been passed down to help this Estonian Canadian woman to launch her own women’s wet suit company, Truli Wetsuits. Mia recounts that in 2009, she left a rewarding career in the non-profit world to follow her dream of being a scuba diving instructor in The Carib bean. She worked in all-inclusive resorts, dive shops, and also lived aboard boats – wearing all kinds of weird, ill-fitting wetsuits to work every day and spending time with people who also struggled with their wetsuits. Even though there were so many women actively involved in diving and kiteboarding recreationally and professionally, she couldn’t understand why these industries still focused on creating equipment predominantly for men. In 2013, she sat down and started to put her ideas in place and over the next 3 years researched, designed, tested, built, and finally launched the Truli Wetsuits e-commerce business in 2016. She was still living in The Caribbean, but established the business in her hometown, Toronto, Canada.
Since then, Mia stays connected to women who love the water and listens to what they really need. She has introduced new designs and created an innovative sizing system that works specifically for women’s bodies. Today, she’s put down roots in the active water sport community of Tobermory to continue to develop and focus on the business. As her business garners more attention, more women are getting in touch. It’s not just adventurous or extreme sport enthusiasts who love Truli Wetsuits, but it’s every woman of all ages and abilities. Women who simply need a bit more warmth and coverage from a wetsuit so they can enjoy all the benefits our lakes offer. For more information: Mia Toose – Truli Wetsuits 647 522 3483 PO Box 78 Tobermory PO hello@TruliWetsuits.com
identify perpetrators who we have missed, and to work with them to strengthen our own monitoring and enforcement regimes. Former justice minister Irwin Cotler, who first introduced a Magnitsky private members bill in 2011, and his colleague Brandon Silver recently suggested that “Canada should establish an international contact group for the co-ordination of Magnitsky sanctions.” They also suggest a more transparent
Magnitsky sanctioning system like that in the U.S., which would encourage submissions from civil society and NGOs. Such actions would strengthen Canada’s efforts to defend human rights. If Canada’s failure to put The Sergei Magnitsky Law into action continues, we risk becoming an outlier among our Western allies and an unwitting enabler of the corruption and human rights abuse we seek to defeat.
