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Ru 54 Fall2005.Pdf (1.647Mb) R E F U G E E U P D A T E ISSUE NO. 54 A joint PROJECT OF the FCJ REFUGEE centre AND THE CANADIAN COUNCIL FOR REFUGEES fall 2005 Inside: How few are Au nom de la Legal aid update Family reuni- Widening our Drop the fee! Watchdog too many?: securite from british fication tents tries to bring A “missing per- Columbia csis to heel sons” report P. 2 P.4 P. 5 P.6 P.8 P.9 P. 11 U.N. Group is Gravely Concerned about Some Immigration Detention By Catherine Balfour According to Dennis Bueckert of Canadian non-citizens and are based on secret evidence. Even Press, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary the suspect's lawyer is not allowed to see it. If the cer- Detention is gravely concerned about Canada's tificate is found to be reasonable by a court, the sus- system of jailing suspected terrorists without pect is deported to his or her country of origin. trial, using national security certificates. Persons de- The Working Group noted that all four tained under security certifi- of the people currently detained under cates are denied the right to security certificates are Arab Muslims, a fair hearing. and one of them has been detained for five years. All four of the suspects now The UN Working Group in detention argue they face a risk of tor- spoke out at a press confer- ture if returned to their homelands. ence held on the 16th of June at the end of its 2005 visit "We consider that these people are de- this year. The committee tained on the basis of suspicion", Work- will issue its report for the ing Group chairperson Leila Zerrougui Spring 2006 session of the reportedly told the news conference. UN Commission on Human Rights in October 2005. Its A fifth suspect, Adil Charkaoui, was re- findings do not have the leased conditionally early in the year force of Canadian law, but before the Working Group visit but must they affect Canada's interna- obey a curfew, wear an electronic track- tional reputation. ing device, is banned from using a com- puter and can't leave the island of Mont- The security certificates can be applied only to real. The conditions are more severe than those 1 Refugee update imposed for the release of convicted Karla Ho- resulted in violations of fundamental human rights. molka. The Working Group chair said it made her heartsick to visit the suspects in detention The certificates have been available under Canadian immi- and talk to their families. gration law since 1991, and by 2003 had been used in 27 cases. But there has been growing controversy about their use. The chair is reported as saying: "All of them said, 'We accept that this would happen to us at Britain has a similar law but key provisions were struck home; we knew, we fled. But here?' They down last year. have high ideas of this country. We hope Can- ada will continue to protect its image and its Justice Minister Irwin Cotler has said he is open to review- place in the world for those concerned for the ing the security certificate process, but so far no action has protection of human rights. been taken. "The fear of terrorism should not make us forget The CCR drew a number of other concerns about immigra- our principles, the rule of law must be preserved. tion detention to the attention of the Working Group in a We can effectively fight terrorism with interna- brief presented during the June 2005 visit to Canada. For tional instruments. example, the CCR is concerned about the growth in immi- gration detention, about the use of discretionary require- "We can't sacrifice democracy on the altar of the ments about establishing identity as a basis for detention, war on terrorism, otherwise we become like the about detention of minors and stateless persons. The terrorists." Working Group’s report will hopefully encourage Canada to do more to avoid arbitrary detention in these areas. Amnesty International has also expressed concern about the security certificates, saying they have Catherine Belfour is a member of the Editorial Board of Refugee Update. v v v v v v How Few are too many?: A “missing persons” report by ken luckhardt and Francisco rico That is the fundamental question that informs our of reasons. analysis of the Safe Third Country Agreement which went into effect at the end of December Firstly, it has already signalled to refugees and potential 2004. asylum seekers the world over that Canada is increasingly hostile to their claims for status here. By June 2005, refu- The Canadian Council of Refugees (CCR) has gee claims made at the border had declined by 50% from concluded its review of the first six months of the the same period in 2004. In the lives of real human be- Agreement as follows: ―In a world that is increas- ings, this means that a potential 1,138 people didn’t ingly hostile to refugees and other migrants, safe make a claim in Canada due to the existence of the third represents a significant further retrenchment Agreement. of the rights and respect that the privileged are pre- pared to accord to the least privileged.‖ The CCR This precipitous decline by nationality is greatest for Co- declares the Agreement a failure and calls for its lombian refugee claimants. At the current rate, only 30% cancellation in the report entitled ―Closing the of the claims made by Colombians in 2004 will be made in Front Door on Refugees‖ (August, 2005) 2005. Again, in human terms and in the context of the worsening human rights crisis under Uribe’s rule in But of course to the “deep integration” protago- Colombia, we are talking about some 2,545 “missing” nists (both those elected and the bureaucrats) who Colombians. try to minimize Canadian sovereignty, the Agree- ment is far from a failure. This is true for a number CCR calculations suggest that the overall number of 2 Refugee update refugee claimants in 2005 will not likely exceed When we recall that the US was not safe for 17,300, well below the average of 29,680 claims since Maher Arar who had a Canadian passport, how the current system of refugee determination came into safe can it be for asylum seekers without any such effect in l989. documentation? For those who still try to make it into Canada, the likelihood of having to resort to Secondly, it needs to be stated repeatedly that this engage smugglers and traffickers with all the asso- Agreement was very much driven by Canadian policy makers and was not simply a consequence of US dic- ciated risks to personal safety is that much greater tates. The Canadian Standing Committee on Citizen- because of the Safe Third Agreement. ship and Immigration reminds us that there was a basic motive behind the Agreement. “Officials … Fifthly, the Canadian government continues with informed the Committee that the purpose of the what is known as its “direct back” policy. Al- Agreement is to reduce the number of refugee though this policy is not part of the Agreement per claims being referred to the Immigration and se, refugee claimants at the Canadian border can Refugee Board”. be sent back to the U.S. with only an appointment date for a future hearing. Many of these people Thirdly, and as a direct consequence of so many will be detained and even deported by US authori- “missing persons‖, it has become much more dif- ties. Effectively, in such cases Ottawa is allowing ficult for the human rights community to expose US officials to determine who gets in to Canada as the inhumanity of the refugee system when the a refugee. Statistics on the number of claimants people are only theoretical, not physically present directed back are also not available. (The Inter- to see and to tell their stories. That too is inten- American Commission on Human Rights is tional. hearing a challenge to this policy on behalf of a number of US and Canadian petitioners, including Fourthly, the ―missing persons‖ do exist and we the CCR, on October 17 in Washington.) know where majority of them are located: they are stuck on the Finally, there is usually an underlying economic other side of the US border. There, a number of logic that accompanies patently unjust policy. For mean-spirited rules and procedures ob- Canada, the number of refugee claims decline as tain. Detention is common for refugee claimants desired by the Canadian state and as documented in the US and this lack of personal freedom mini- above. For the US, however, an additional benefit mizes the chance of making phone calls to get le- is derived from this Agreement: more and more gal support; it also increases the chances of further cheap and very exploitable labour. Just consider physical and mental abuse to an already trauma- the mass of human labour power that is available tized asylum seeker. to bosses in a range of economic sectors, from the factories of downtown Babylon to the agricultural Failure to apply for refugee status within 12 fields of the centre of Empire. months of being in the US deems the claimant automatically ineligible for consideration. Racism There is nothing “safe” about fleeing repression directed against persons of colour (e.g., Haitians) in a distant land when one has to traverse the and Muslims is commonplace. New post 9/11 USA as the “third country” in search of protec- laws (for example, the Real ID Act) renders the tion in Canada.
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