David Matas

Education

David Matas was born in Winnipeg; his grandparents were immigrants from the Ukraine and Romania. He obtained a B.A. from the University of Manitoba in 1964, and a Masters of Arts from Princeton University in 1965. In 1967, he obtained a Bachelor of Arts (Jurisprudence) from the University of Oxford, England, and in 1968 he obtained a Bachelor of Civil Law. In 1969, he became a Middle Temple United Kingdom Barrister, and he joined the Bar of Manitoba in 1971.

Government work

Matas served as a Law Clerk to the Chief Justice of Canada in 1968-69, and was a member of the Foreign Ownership Working Group, Government of Canada, and was special assistant to the Solicitor General of Canada in 1971-72.

He served as a member of the Canadian delegation to the United Nations General Assembly, the Task Force on Immigration Practices & Procedures, the Canadian delegation to the United Nations Conference on an International Criminal Court 1998, the Canadian Delegation to the Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust, and from 1997 until 2003, the Director of the International Centre for Human Rights & Democratic Development. On Nov. 13, 2009, Mr. Matas was appointed to the board of this Centre, also known as Rights and Democracy (R&D), which was headed by Professor Aural Braun. Shortly afterwards, a number of illicit actions by the staff of R &D and secret grants to radical organizations were exposed, and Matas joined Braun in initiating a major investigation. As a result of the investigations, funding was cut and in 2012, the government closed the Rights and Democracy framework.

Teaching work

Matas has also taught constitutional law at McGill University, Introductory Economics, Canadian Economic Problems, International Law, Civil Liberties, and Immigration & Refugee Law, at the University of Manitoba.

Politics

He ran for the Canadian House of Commons in the 1979 and 1980 federal elections as a Liberal candidate in Winnipeg—Assiniboine district and came in second place both times.

In 2009 David Matas was a signatory to a letter opposing the appointment of Professor Christine Chinkin to a UN Human Rights Council fact finding mission on the 2008-2009 Gaza War (also known as the Goldstone Commission), alleging that Chinkin signed a prejudicial letter that indicated that, without examining the evidence, she "concluded that Israel was acting contrary to international law." Chinkin did not resign, and endorsed the widely criticized UN report, which was later denounced as biased and ill-informed by its primary author - Judge Goldstone.

In his book "Aftershock: Anti-Zionism and Anti-Semitism", Matas accused critics of Israel's post-1967 war policies regarding the West Bank of having double standards in not also criticizing China's occupation of Tibet.

Human rights work

He has been actively involved as Director of the International Defence & Aid Fund for South Africa in Canada, Director of Canada-South Africa Cooperation, Co-chair Canadian Helsinki Watch Group, Director Manitoba Association of Rights & Liberties, Amnesty International, B'nai Brith Canada, the Canadian Bar Association, the International Commission of Jurists, Canadian Jewish Congress, and Canadian Council for Refugees.

He represented Lai Changxing in his extradition proceedings.

He is also counsel for Justice for Jews from Arab Countries and is co-author of "Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries: The Case for Rights and Redress".

He presented various papers on the legal issue of prosecuting war criminals in Bangladesh.

Organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners in China

In 2006, with David Kilgour he released the Kilgour-Matas report, which stated "the source of 41,500 transplants for the six year period 2000 to 2005 is unexplained" and "we believe that there has been and continues today to be large scale organ seizures from unwilling Falun Gong practitioners". In 2009, they published an updated version of the report as a book. They traveled to about 50 countries to raise awareness of the situation. Later Matas stated, "We estimate in the period between 2000 and 2005, there were 41,500 transplants which have no other explained source".

In 2012, State Organs: Transplant Abuse in China, edited by Matas and Dr. Torsten Trey, was published with essays from Dr. Gabriel Danovitch, Professor of Medicine, Arthur Caplan, Professor of Bioethics, Dr. Jacob Lavee, cardiothoracic surgeon, Dr. Ghazali Ahmad, Professor Maria Fiatarone Singh, Dr. Torsten Trey, Ethan Gutmann and Matas.

Ethan Gutmann interviewed over 100 witnesses and estimated that 65,000 Falun Gong practitioners were killed for their organs from 2000 to 2008.

CBA Committee on the Constitution

Matas is a member of the Canadian Bar Association. In 1977, following the election of the separatist Parti Québécois government the previous year, he was asked to sit on the CBA Committee on the Constitution. The Committee's mandate was to study and make recommendations on the Constitution of Canada. The members of the Committee were drawn from each province of Canada, and included two future provincial premiers, a future Supreme Court of Canada justice, two future provincial chief justices, and a future Canadian Ambassador to the United Nations. The Committee presented its report to the CBA at the next annual meeting, in 1978. The Committee made wide-ranging recommendations for constitutional change, including a completely new constitution, abolishing the monarchy, changing the Senate, entrenching language rights and a bill of rights, and changing the balance of powers between the federal government and the provinces.

Books, Chapters and Articles

Awards

He is the recipient of numerous honours and awards including:

Documentaries

He appeared in Red Reign: The Bloody Harvest of China's Prisoners (2013) and Human Harvest (2014).