How the U.S. asylum system’s biases affect migrants’ chances

2020/08/26 Leave a comment

Good data-based analysis, showing how outcomes depend upon nationality, where seekers wait (what part of the country, whether in detention or not), and the judge assigned. Sean Rehaag continues his annual analysis with respect to outcome differences, showing wide variations between IRB Members, some explicable, some not:

For the world’s most vulnerable, protection in the United States has all but disappeared.

Wait times for asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border that already seemed indefinite now seem impossible. Families struggle to find food and shelter to outlast a pandemic order with no end date.

Those who cross north are sent back to Mexico in a matter of hours — or even put onto planes back to the countries from which they fled — without any opportunity to explain why they came.

In its response to COVID-19, the Trump administration achieved what it long sought, a shutdown of the U.S. asylum system. And with new regulations introduced this summer, the administration has moved to squeeze out any real chance at refuge in case the pandemic order is lifted.

But even before the current president began his campaign against asylum in the United States, people often struggled to win protection — no matter how strong their cases appeared to be.

In its 40-year history, the system has chronically fallen short of its promise of safety.

The Trump administration has used statistics about grant rates to justify closing off access to asylum, saying that those who lose their cases are illegitimate asylum seekers.

The facts show a different story: Thousands of people turned away based not on the merits of their cases, but on the capriciousness of a system so riven with inequity that many outcomes seem little more than arbitrary.

A San Diego Union-Tribune analysis of 10 years of court outcomes uncovered many symptoms of the system’s biases — shortcomings that date to the system’s creation.

Numerous factors can sway a case’s result, calling into question the administration’s assertion that a denial means an asylum seeker was lying.

Where asylum seekers wait for their day in court can mean the difference between protection and deportation.

That “where” depends on two decisions mostly out of asylum seekers’ control — whether they are held in detention and in which part of the country their hearings are scheduled.

It can ultimately influence several other important factors: their chances of finding legal representation, the judge assigned and what legal precedents the judge must follow.

Outcomes also vary by nationality, discrepancies that cannot be fully explained by the human rights violations that vary from country to country.

Mixed into all of this are the tendencies of each judge. Even among judges at the same court, grant and deportation rates vary widely.

Stories of different outcomes for similar cases, even for family members fleeing the same danger, are common.

Not a simple yes or no

When people ask for protection at the border, they enter a maze of bureaucracy that is the U.S. asylum system.

Herding them along are thousands of federal employees and contractors — asylum officers, detention center guards, deportation officers, immigration judges, court interpreters and government attorneys.

The process is an adversarial one, with a goal of determining whether the person is deportable from the United States, not whether that person merits protection.

U.S. asylum law, based on international agreements, protects people who flee persecution based on race, nationality, religion, political opinion or membership in a social group such as the LGBTQ community. Persecution must come directly from the government or from someone whom the government cannot or will not control.

In the decade of cases analyzed by the Union-Tribune, immigration judges granted asylum about 19% of the time.

These findings are based on roughly 146,300 immigration court cases with asylum applications filed that reached initial decisions from fiscal 2009 through 2018, excluding some asylum requests that didn’t originate at the border.

But asylum is not always a simple yes or no.

About a quarter of cases were closed without judges making decisions on the merits of the asylum applications. These closures generally meant that asylum seekers were allowed to stay, at least temporarily, in the United States.

Judges ordered deportations in nearly half of the total cases.

The Executive Office for Immigration Review, the agency within the Department of Justice responsible for immigration courts, did not respond to a request for comment about the various findings of the Union-Tribune’s investigation.

Where they wait

Asylum seekers often have little control over where their cases end up — and it’s not necessarily tied to where they arrived at the border.

Though the Trump administration drastically changed where asylum seekers wait beginning in 2019, during the decade analyzed by the Union-Tribune the federal government had two main options.

If immigration officials decided to keep asylum seekers in custody, they were sent to detention centers around the country depending on bed space.

If released, they went wherever someone was willing to help them — a cousin in New York, a friend in Colorado, or an unknown sponsor linked to an advocacy group.

Where this fateful combination of circumstances takes an asylum seeker can make a big difference.

Based on the 10 years of case data analyzed by the Union-Tribune, a detained asylum seeker in Texas was 9.3 times more likely to be ordered deported than a non-detained asylum seeker in New York.

Nationwide, asylum seekers who remained in custody were ordered deported at a higher rate — in 74% of cases — compared with 44% for those who were never detained. Those who were initially detained and then released were ordered deported in 37% of cases.

Being detained doesn’t necessarily reflect anything about the legitimacy of an asylum seeker’s case or hint at a criminal past. Rather, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency responsible for immigration detention, has longstanding policies to keep many asylum seekers in custody regardless of their circumstances.

In or out of custody, the region where an asylum seeker ends up dictates what legal precedents will be used to decide their cases.

The example most widely cited by attorneys is the debate over the definition of what constitutes a “social group” for asylum purposes. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which governs Texas, along with Louisiana and Mississippi, has long used a narrow interpretation.

How courts define which categories count as social groups makes a difference for people whose persecution claims are based on their membership in a family, or as part of a broader group such as women fleeing domestic violence in countries that don’t protect them or as young men targeted for gang recruitment, among others.

Records show judges under the 5th Circuit ordered 3 in 4 asylum seekers deported from fiscal 2009 through 2018 — more than any other circuit in the country.

At the other end of the spectrum, judges in the 2nd Circuit, which guides case law in New York, Connecticut and Vermont, ordered fewer than 1 in 3 deported.

Judges in the 9th Circuit, which includes California, ordered just over 2 in 5 asylum seekers deported.

Location also dictates how many immigration attorneys, particularly those willing to work pro bono, are available. It is notoriously difficult for asylum seekers held in rural detention centers to find attorneys.

Asylum seekers who did not have representation were ordered deported in 60% of cases in the Union-Tribune analysis, compared with 42% for those with legal help.

Unlike cases in criminal courts, attorneys are not provided to those who cannot afford them — not even when the asylum seeker is a child.

Where they’re from

Geography plays a role in another way — the Union-Tribune’s analysis revealed disparities in outcomes based on nationality.

Part of that has to do with conditions in the country and whether they create reasons to flee that are clearly defined under asylum law.

But another part may have to do with biases and preconceptions in U.S. culture about that country.

This may help explain why asylum seekers from China are much more successful than those from Somalia.

Out of the 10 nationalities with the most asylum applications filed, those two countries of origin, both with long histories of human rights violations, are near the top of the list for grant rates. China ranks second, and Somalia ranks third.

And yet, the odds of asylum seekers from China being granted asylum were 2.2 times higher than those from Somalia, according to the Union-Tribune analysis.

This disparity might be explained by the outsized focus on China in U.S. media coverage and in federal government. China’s notorious treatment of Uighurs — an ethnic minority — and the country’s violent repression of pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong are just the latest examples of human rights violations in the public eye.

In contrast, the decades-long rampant human rights abuses in Somalia that have created hundreds of thousands of refugees do not often make front-page headlines.

Add in racism and xenophobia toward people from certain regions of the world, as well as potential anti-Muslim bias, said Karen Musalo, director of the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies at UC Hastings College of the Law, and the potential for discrepancy grows.

“The relationship between the United States and the country you’re from is a big factor,” said Jeremy Slack, a University of Texas at El Paso professor and author of the book “Deported to Death.” “Chinese people get asylum right now much, much easier than most other countries because we like to poke China as a human rights abuser.”

China’s affiliation with communism is another likely influencer, especially after Congress, in 1996, made it easier for people fleeing the country because of its one-child policy to claim asylum.

These kinds of systemic biases regarding nationality have been in place since the asylum system was created.

In the early days, immigration officials who processed asylum requests relied on U.S. State Department recommendations for each individual case, guidance that was heavily influenced by U.S. foreign policy — in particular, the country’s war on communism.

Under the Reagan administration, Central Americans fleeing powerful communist leaders were granted asylum far more often than those fleeing right-leaning strongman governments because of the United States’ involvement in proxy wars in their countries.

“There was a refusal to recognize that the governments we were supporting were engaging in human rights violations,” said Lucas Guttentag, who teaches immigration law at Stanford University and Yale University.

This meant that Nicaraguan migrants, who were fleeing the left-wing Sandinistas, were granted asylum at a rate of 26%, according to a report published in the book “Threatened Peoples, Threatened Borders: World Migration Policy” in 1995, compared with Salvadorans at 2.6% and Guatemalans at 1.8%, who were fleeing right-wing regimes.

Guttentag was one of the lead attorneys in a lawsuit calling for an end to systemic discrimination based on U.S. foreign policy.

A 1990 settlement in the case allowed Salvadorans and Guatemalans to have their claims reassessed, and Congress made other changes to try to account for the system’s shortcomings.

But as the Union-Tribune’s data analysis suggests, systemic bias based on country of origin has not disappeared.

“It’s cynical to say this, but it needs to be said, which is even though the refugee definition is supposed to be applied in a neutral way, the same way to all nationalities, that has never been the case in the U.S.,” Musalo said.

The difference a judge makes

Even for nationalities with higher grant rates, family members fleeing the same persecution can be split apart by different results.

There are glaring examples among many Chinese families that sought asylum based on the country’s former one-child policy. On multiple occasions, immigration judges granted asylum to the father who was seeking refuge from forced abortions, but not the mother.

“It is difficult to imagine how a rational system of law could tolerate such inconsistent results,” appellate judges in the 2nd Circuit wrote in changing the outcome for a mother in one such case.

The difference for many of these families came down to which judges decided the cases.

The Union-Tribune found large differences in decisions among judges at the same immigration court, even when taking into account that asylum seekers held in detention facilities tend to be ordered deported at higher rates.

Take, for instance, the three judges in San Diego who heard mostly detained cases over the course of the decade analyzed by the Union-Tribune.

Judge Robert McSeveny had the highest deportation rate and ordered about 81% of asylum seekers before him deported. He also had the lowest grant rate at 13%.

Judge Carmene “Zsa Zsa” DePaolo ranked somewhere in the middle, ordering 41% deported. She granted asylum in about 55% of cases.

Judge Anthony Atenaide ordered about 20% deported and granted about 76% asylum.

These gaps between judges — some well over 60 percentage points — exist in courts across the United States.

“There shouldn’t be that much difference,” said Paul Schmidt, a former immigration judge. “It’s hard to make sense out of the system because there are so many variables superimposed on each other.”

Ashley Tabaddor, president of the National Assn. of Immigration Judges, said that different rates among judges should be expected.

There might be details in cases of two people fleeing the same harm in the same country that lead to different outcomes depending on how good their attorneys are — if they have them — as well as how much the government attorneys push back and what the judges’ own previous courtroom experiences are, she said.

Even in cases where details are exactly the same, Tabaddor said, judges can have different opinions.

“It’s not unusual for people looking at the same set of facts and same set of rules to have differing opinions about how much weight to give evidence and what the conclusion should be. That’s in every court,” Tabaddor said, pointing to differences among U.S. Supreme Court justices.

Judges’ grant rates are also influenced by their work history, according to a study from 2007 titled “Refugee Roulette” by researchers from Temple University and Georgetown University Law Center.

The Union-Tribune analysis corroborated this finding. Judges who previously worked as ICE attorneys — generally arguing in immigration court against asylum seekers and other immigrants requesting to stay in the U.S. — were about 1.4 times more likely to order asylum seekers deported during the decade analyzed.

A little more than half of immigration judges who heard cases analyzed by the Union-Tribune previously worked for ICE.

When they make the career switch, they go from one federal agency to another.

That’s because, like ICE employees, immigration judges work for the executive branch rather than the judicial branch.

The judges’ boss is the attorney general, the nation’s highest-ranking prosecutor in the Department of Justice.

Tabaddor and other leaders of the judges’ union have long argued that immigration courts should be part of the judicial branch instead — a solution that could help reduce the mistrust that many critics have toward the system.

“Why don’t you trust the judge?” Tabaddor said, addressing those critics. “It’s because you know the court is run by a law enforcement agency. You feel like the court is stacked. You feel like there’s something inherently wrong. And on those grounds I say, ‘You’re absolutely right.’”

A family separated

For one asylum seeker from Central Asia, this fateful lottery of circumstances could mean that he is deported while his family stays in the United States.

The Russian-speaking man, Mr. U, declined to fully identify himself, as well as the country that he fled, to protect family members he left behind. But he allowed the Union-Tribune to review his case files.

His experience navigating the system presents a striking example of how an asylum seeker’s physical location can impact other factors in a case — and ultimately the outcome.

Mr. U first entered the asylum system in San Diego.

He was separated from his 13-year-old son, as well as his adult stepson and his stepson’s wife, shortly after the family arrived at the San Ysidro Port of Entry in 2017.

The physical separation meant their immigration court cases were split, as well.

Though their asylum claims were all tied to the stepson’s political activities, their separation would ultimately result in dramatically different asylum outcomes.

Mr. U would spend the remainder of his case locked up at Otay Mesa Detention Center while his son was taken to a facility for unaccompanied migrant children in Chicago.

His adult stepson and the stepson’s wife ended up at a detention facility in Adelanto, a few hours north. Mr. U did not know where they were.

The day before his trial, Mr. U got some of the best news he’d received since his arrival. He finally found a pro bono lawyer willing to take his case.

“I was very happy,” Mr. U told the Union-Tribune through a translator. “I had a new hope to see my son sooner.”

On the day of his trial, he handed the judge a written statement explaining that the attorney, who then worked at Catholic Charities, was unable to be in court that day because another client had a hearing.

The statement added that Mr. U’s adult stepson was also in immigration custody and that their cases were related. Mr. U hoped that his stepson could be a witness in his case.

Mr. U asked to postpone his trial for about a month and a half.

“I do not wish to prolong my case any longer than necessary,” Mr. U said in his statement. “My young child has been taken from me and is in the custody of the government far away. He is alone and without me, and I need to get back to him.”

Immigration Judge Scott Simpson insisted that Mr. U proceed with his trial that day without the attorney and without his stepson as a witness.

“You’ve been detained for over eight months,” Simpson told Mr. U, according to court records. “That’s ample time to find an attorney. So, there’s no good cause to continue any longer.”

On his own, Mr. U, who has a high school education, struggled to explain his story clearly to the judge.

The Russian interpreter also struggled to understand him, frequently interrupting the dialogue between Mr. U and Simpson to get clarifications.

Both Simpson and ICE attorney Guy Grande called out details from his testimony that were slightly different from what a fellow detainee had translated into English for Mr. U’s asylum application.

For instance, Mr. U testified that his wife had loaned money to someone, but his application said, “I lent” the money.

He also testified in court about an incident in which police threatened him that he did not mention in his application. His application did mention other instances of threats.

In the end, Simpson did not find him credible. He ordered Mr. U deported.

Mr. U felt fear flood his body, terrified what might wait for him in his country.

“It was a big shock and a hit for me. I immediately felt bad,” Mr. U said. “My blood pressure spiked, and my heart was hurting because I cannot return home.”

Simpson had the highest deportation rate of judges at Otay Mesa Detention Center, according to the Union-Tribune analysis.

The judge, who previously worked as an ICE attorney, ordered asylum seekers deported in more than 80% of the cases he heard. He granted relief in about 15%.

About a month after Simpson decided Mr. U’s case, the stepson and the stepson’s wife were granted asylum by a different judge. They did not have a lawyer either.

That judge, Ian Simons, had the highest grant rate and one of the lowest deportation rates among judges who heard cases at Adelanto at the time. He granted asylum in more than 30% of cases and ordered asylum seekers deported in over 60%.

Holding out for appeal

Appeals are an increasingly important part of the path toward protection, a reality often reflected in high reversal rates among some judges.

The Board of Immigration Appeals, or BIA, part of the same agency in the Department of Justice that employs immigration judges, is the first step in the process.

In the cases analyzed by the Union-Tribune, the BIA told more than 1 in 5 judges nationwide that their decisions were wrong at least 20% of the time.

Judges with fewer than 25 appealed cases were not included in the analysis.

A reversal rate of 20% is a common measure when looking for red flags with judges’ decisions, according to University of San Diego law professor Shaun Martin.

Four judges had reversal rates of 40% or higher.

“A consistently high reversal rate like that would cause you to look very closely to see if the judge was doing something systemically wrong,” Martin said.

Cases appealed beyond the BIA go to the federal circuit courts of appeal, leaving the immigration court system and entering the traditional legal process in the judicial branch. Data analyzed by the Union-Tribune did not include those court decisions.

Attorneys worry that more and more asylum seekers will have to go to the circuit courts to be granted relief. Under Trump, most recent appointees to the BIA are former immigration judges who had some of the highest asylum denial rates in the nation.

Ten members of the current 23-person board are former immigration judges appointed to their positions during the Trump administration.

All but one had deportation rates of more than 70% in at least one of the courts where they heard cases during the decade analyzed by the Union-Tribune. Eight of them had asylum grant rates below 10%, including two judges who didn’t award a single grant of asylum while at a particular court.

The board includes two other Trump appointees who worked in the Office of Immigration Litigation in the Department of Justice, which argues against asylum seekers who have appealed their cases to federal circuit courts, and one Trump appointee who worked for ICE before the administration hired her as an assistant chief immigration judge and ultimately a board member.

Six board members were appointed under the Obama administration, and four were appointed by earlier administrations.

So much is riding on appeals that attorney Dree Collopy, who wrote a 1,680-page legal guide on asylum, encourages lawyers to make sure that the record created in immigration court is incredibly thorough.

“We honestly can’t depend on immigration courts or the Board of Immigration Appeals to give any kind of due process or meaningful review of asylum cases anymore,” Collopy said.

But navigating the appeals process can be daunting and often takes years. Those who are already detained usually stay in custody for the duration. Many give up before they get that far.

Mr. U is better positioned than many.

Because of the outcry over family separation at the border and a class-action lawsuit in San Diego, he was released from detention and reunited with his family in Chicago. And he has a pair of attorneys — Bardis Vakili with the American Civil Liberties Union of San Diego and Imperial Counties and Luis Gonzalez, the attorney who’d originally agreed to take his case — working on his appeal.

They argued that Simpson denied Mr. U his right to an attorney, as well as his right to present evidence.

The BIA sided with Simpson.

Now Mr. U is waiting to find out if the 9th Circuit will change the outcome in his case.

He’s not allowed to work while he waits, so he has to depend on his stepson, who already has a green card.

He hopes to learn English and one day find a profession that will allow him to be useful to the country he wants to call home.

And he worries about the family members left behind.

Dwindling odds

Though asylum has become an increasingly polarized topic, building enough political will to make the system more equitable has historically been difficult.

“Asylum was always a political football,” said Ruth Wasem, who specialized in immigration policy at the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service before becoming a professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

The asylum system is part of a worldwide effort that grew out of failures to protect Jewish migrants during the Holocaust. It took the United States decades to fully codify its commitment to help victims of future atrocities.

Larry Gollub, a retired asylum officer, said that low grant rates are not proof that asylum seekers are filing frivolous or fraudulent claims.

“It’s just proof that they can’t meet the high standard for asylum,” Gollub said.

And they are struggling with the obstacles built into the system that make it less likely for them to win.

Methodology

Immigration court records are collected, tracked and released monthly by the Executive Office for Immigration Review within the Department of Justice. The San Diego Union-Tribune used the June 2019 release in its analysis.

Since case information is entered manually, various columns throughout the more than 50 million rows of data in the various tables contained slight inconsistencies, and the Union-Tribune cleaned these entries when necessary.

The analysis includes any cases with asylum applications that were completed from fiscal 2009 through fiscal 2018. Cases flagged as legal permanent residents, rider cases, cases originating with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and cases that did not include either a charge of being present without admission or arriving without a valid entry document were excluded from the analysis. Cases with incomplete information on these distinctions remained in the analysis.

Judges who heard less than 50 cases in a particular location and nationalities with less than 100 cases during the 10-year period were excluded to prevent skewed results.

Judge work histories were gathered by the Union-Tribune based on summaries released by EOIR when the judge was hired. When necessary, histories were confirmed or clarified using news clippings, court records, law firm biographies, law school newsletters, and in some cases, contacting individuals directly.

With guidance from statisticians, the Union-Tribune performed various statistical tests, including logistic and multivariate regressions, to determine the significance of findings.

Case data and analyses steps can be found on the Union-Tribune’s GitHub page.

With few exceptions, most of the changes to the system since it was created have made the process more difficult for asylum seekers, particularly for those who come to the border.

Among recent changes is the Trump administration’s “Remain in Mexico” program, which forces many asylum seekers to wait for their cases across the border.

Most recently, the administration published new rules that would narrow longstanding definitions in parts of asylum law and fundamentally shrink what options asylum seekers have if they manage to get their cases into immigration court. A second set of proposed rules would allow the government to bar people from asylum because of the pandemic.

The changes would further erode access to a system that is meant to function as part of an international screening process, one that determines which migrants should be recognized as refugees.

“I see our current moment as one of real crisis,” said Denise Gilman, co-director of the immigration clinic at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law. “Even as limited and paltry as the system was, we’re experiencing a moment of doubt as to whether it will even exist in any meaningful way.”

The Trump administration has argued that because the majority do not win their cases, many people applying for asylum do not have valid reasons to ask for help. Recent outcomes appear even lower than in previous years, partly because the administration changed the way outcome statistics are calculated in official reports.

Source: How the U.S. asylum system’s biases affect migrants’ chances

Filed under Refugees Tagged with , , , ,

Bangladeshi blogger faces death threats for criticizing Islamic fundamentalism

2020/08/26 Leave a comment

Sigh:

Asad Noor, an outspoken Bangladeshi blogger, has been facing threats and intimidation from both state and non-state actors for supporting minorities and criticizing Islamic fundamentalism.

The atheist blogger crossed the Bangladesh-India border illegally on February 14, 2019, with the help of an agent after intelligence officers confiscated his passport. He has been living in India ever since.

“In my YouTube and Facebook videos, I have been criticizing Islam and Prophet Mohammad, referencing the Quran and the Hadith. At the same time, I am critical about political Islam. That’s why Islamists are angry with me,” Noor told DW.

“Local police frequently search our house (in Bangladesh) to try and arrest me … my family has been paying the price for my activism,” he added.

Alleged attack on monastery

In July, Noor published several video blogs protesting the persecution of Bangladesh’s minority Buddhist community in Rangunia, a town in the southeastern part of the country.

A local leader of the country’s ruling party Awami League (AL) sued the blogger in July 2020 under the Digital Security Act, accusing him of “hurting religious sentiments” and “running propaganda against the spirit of the liberation war.”

One of Noor’s video blogs featured the apparent vandalism of a Buddhist statue under construction in a Buddhist monastery in Rangunia. Noor claimed that the attackers were supported by forest officials and the local MP of the AL party because they wanted to evict the monks from the area.

After Noor published his videos, local Islamist groups protested against the blogger and accused him of damaging religious harmony between Muslims and Buddhists.

Police raided Noor’s family house in Rangunia and allegedly harassed his family members while he was in India. “On the early morning of July 18, police forcefully picked up my parents as well as four other family members, and kept them in illegal detention for nearly 48 hours,” Noor said.

‘Nothing to do with religion’

Both the Buddhist monastery and an AL leader claim ownership over the disputed land in Rangunia.

Abu Jafar, a former official in the disputed area, told DW that the land belongs to the government and “has nothing to do with religion.”

“The Buddhist monastery was built two years ago without any permission from the government. Some local political leaders also use some parts of the area without any permission,” he said.

Noor said he wanted to support the area’s minority Buddhist community and “save Rangunia from another Ramu incident.” He referred to the September 2012 attack on a Buddhist community in the southeastern town of Ramu. A mob of Islamist fundamentalists vandalized at least four temples and set fire to dozens of homes after a photo they considered defamatory to Islam was circulated online.

Life on the run

Noor’s stance against Bangladesh’s religious fundamentalists has triggered numerous protests in the past.

Hefazat-e-Islam, a radical Islamist group in the country, has called for the blogger’s arrest and the death penalty for blasphemy.

Noor was first detained in December 2017 while he was trying to travel abroad after an Islamic religious clergy sued him for creating and spreading content on social media that “hurt religious sentiments.” He was then released on bail in August 2018, only to be detained again one month later by the military intelligence agency.

The blogger was eventually released mid-January 2019 and decided to leave Bangladesh and continue his online activism. Now in India, Noor still receives frequent death threats from fundamentalists.

He said some bloggers critical of religious fundamentalism in the past had been hacked to death by religious fanatics.

“Although serial killings of bloggers have stopped, it doesn’t mean that Bangladesh has become a safe haven for bloggers. No one can guarantee that it will not start again,” Noor said.

Bangladeshi bloggers critical of religious fundamentalism have often faced attacks

Recaptured in India

After living in India for over 3 months, Noor was arrested on May 19 and detained in prison for six months. He awaits bail and hopes his court appearance will be rescheduled “when the pandemic crisis ends.”

“My fate might be decided then,” he said.

Paris-based rights organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has urged Bangladeshi authorities to immediately withdraw all charges against Noor and return his passport. The organization ranked Bangladesh 150th out of 180 countries in its 2020 World Press Freedom Index.

Human rights NGO Amnesty International released a statement on July 21 urging Bangladeshi authorities to “stop the harassment and intimidation of the parents of Asad Noor, who have been targeted because of their son’s human rights activism.”

It added, “human rights defenders must be able to carry out their important work freely and without fear.”

Source: Bangladeshi blogger faces death threats for criticizing Islamic fundamentalism

Filed under Religion Tagged with , , ,

In Italy, legal migrants renew fight to be true citizens

2020/08/26 Leave a comment

Restrictive second generation citizenship policies compared to jus soli:

Inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, Italy’s second generation of immigrants is renewing the fight for automatic citizenship in a land where migration is at the heart of the political debate.

“Jus soli!”, the Latin term which literally means “right of soil,” or birthright citizenship, has become the new rallying cry among the children of Italy’s 5.3 million legal immigrants.

In early June, thousands of demonstrators marched in Rome in memory of African American George Floyd, who died on May 25 when a white policeman kneeled on his neck for more than eight minutes, triggering an outcry in the United States and around the world.

The march spurred renewed vigour among the children and grandchildren of migrants in Italy, who share the language and country’s cultural references but do not have the right to citizenship until they turn 18.

Even then, it is subject to strict conditions and often gained only after a lengthy and heavily bureaucratic process.

“In this country, citizenship is treated not as a right, but a concession,” said Fatima Maiga, who was born in Italy but is of Ivorian origin.

Legal immigrants say their plight has been overshadowed by the migrant crisis in the Mediterranean Sea, which since 2014 has seen more than half a million new immigrants arriving on Italy’s shores.

They claim their fight for citizenship is also weighed down by anti-immigrant sentiment at home, fomented by the far-right League party, which left government in 2019 after only a year in power.

Of the 5.3 million foreigners living in Italy in 2019, around 1.3 million were under 18 and three quarters of those were born in the country.

Among those most affected are the children of Albanians, Moroccans, Chinese, Indians and Pakistani immigrants.

– Italian/not Italian –

Maiga, 28, co-founded Italiani Senza Cittadinanza, or Italians Without Citizenship, in 2016 to help second-generation migrants — known as the G2 — become Italian.

Under a 1992 law, anyone born in Italy can apply for citizenship at the age of 18, on condition of having legally lived here “without interruption”.

However, the process must be launched before they turn 19.

Up until that point, they are given residence permits.

If that window is missed, people can also become a citizen on the grounds of legal residency for a decade and on the condition of a minimum income of 8,500 euros ($10,000) a year over three years.

Nevertheless, the process can take a long time and involve complicated paperwork.

“I applied when I was 18. I had to wait for four years before getting my papers,” Marwa Mahmoud, 35, told AFP.

“I know what it’s like to live as an Italian in everything but in law,” Egyptian-born Mahmoud said.

Mahmoud and others also worry the ongoing migrant crisis — in which hundreds continue to arrive on Italy’s shores every day — is pushing their own struggle further down the agenda.

The numbers of people arriving in this way have risen by nearly 150 percent over the past year, the majority coming by boat from Tunisia, Italy’s interior ministry said last week.

“Our situation is being passed over in silence,” Mahmoud lamented.

“Since Italy started getting embroiled in the migrant crisis it’s like we’re starting at zero again,” she said, adding that Italians “tend to put everyone in the same basket”.

“But the situation of an unaccompanied minor who arrived yesterday is not comparable with that of an immigrant child born and raised here,” she said.

– ‘Not a priority’ –

During his year-long tenure in 2018-2019 as interior minister, Matteo Salvini, the head of the League party, pushed through new rules extending the waiting time to process Italian nationality applications from two to four years.

“Nationality is not a ticket to the funfair,” Salvini said in 2017.

Supported by the G2 network, Italy’s governing centre-left Democratic Party (PD) is now pushing for reforms — among them, advocating for five-year continuous residency to qualify for citizenship.

But so far, the PD’s coalition partner, the anti-establishment Five Star Movement, has been non-committal.

Still, a fairer birthright citizenship system is under discussion in parliament.

But “it’s not a priority”, said Giuseppe Brescia, a Five Star deputy, who heads parliament’s committee on constitutional affairs.

The G2 movement now plans to hold a demonstration on September 19 in the hope of advancing the cause of what it calls Italy’s “forgotten non-citizens.”

Source: In Italy, legal migrants renew fight to be true citizens

Filed under Citizenship Tagged with ,

A Radical German Program Promised a Fresh Start to Yazidi Survivors of ISIS Captivity. But Some Women Are Still Longing for Help

2020/08/25 1 Comment

Interesting and somewhat dispiriting, given the mixed results of the program, long read:

When Hanan escaped from Islamic State captivity, there wasn’t much to come back to.

She and her five children had survived a year in a living nightmare. After her husband finally managed to arrange their rescue in the summer of 2015, they joined him in a dusty camp in Iraq where he lived in a tent. The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) still controlled the territory they called home, and they were unsure if they could ever go back. And Hanan was unsure if she could ever escape the darkness she felt inside.

So when, in the fall of 2015, Germany offered her the promise of safety and a chance to heal from her trauma, it wasn’t a difficult decision. Accepting a place in a groundbreaking program for women and children survivors of ISIS captivity did mean leaving her husband behind in the camp, but she was told he could join her after two years. So she and her children boarded the first flight of their lives, out of Iraq and away from their tight-knit community, in search of safety and treatment for what still haunted them.

Hanan, now 34, was one of 1,100 women and children brought to Germany in an unprecedented effort to aid those most affected by ISIS’s systematic campaign to kill and enslave the ancient Yazidi religious minority. (TIME is identifying Hanan by her first name only for her safety.) Launched by the German state of Baden Württemberg in October 2014, the program aimed to help survivors of captivity receive much-needed mental-health treatment and support. In Iraq, there had been a rash of suicides among the heavily-traumatized survivors, who had minimal access to mental-health care and faced an uncertain future. In Germany, far from the site of their suffering, state officials hoped the women and children could find healing and a fresh start.

But for Hanan, those promises remain unfulfilled. German officials never granted visas to any of the women’s husbands, leaving families, including Hanan’s, indefinitely torn apart. Like most of the women, she’s not undergoing promised trauma therapy. She often thinks about killing herself. The only thing stopping her, she says, is her children.

Not all the women are desperate. Some are thriving in Germany, and others have become global advocates for their community, like 2018 Nobel Prize winner Nadia Murad. She is the most prominent face of a program that was so ambitious and well-intentioned it inspired other countries, like Canada and France, to follow suit. But Hanan’s experience illustrates how parts of the program failed to live up to their full potential, and shows how difficult it is for refugees to gain access to mental health services, even in a program designed for just that. Michael Blume, the state official who led the program, sees it as a “great success” overall. But he is troubled by the state’s failure to bring the women’s husbands to Germany. “A great humanitarian program should not be sabotaged by bureaucracy,” he says. “But that’s what is taking place.”

Before she left Iraq, Hanan said she was given a piece of paper with information about what awaited her in Germany. “I wish I could find that paper now,” she says, “because the promises they gave us, they didn’t keep all of them.”

By the time ISIS swept across Sinjar, the area in northwest Iraq that is home to most of the world’s Yazidis, Hanan had already endured more than her share of hardship. Her parents were murdered in front of her when she was six. She and her two siblings went to live with their grandfather and his wife, where they were beaten, starved, and forced to work instead of going to school. Her baby sister died soon after.

In her early twenties, she escaped the torturous conditions at home by marrying Hadi. It was the first good fortune of her life, she says; they loved each other. Over the course of about seven years, they had four daughters and then a son, who was just a few months old in August 2014, when ISIS captured Sinjar and unleashed its systematic campaign to wipe out the Yazidis.

In conquered Yazidi towns, fighters executed the men and elderly women. Boys were sent off for indoctrination and forced military training. Women and girls weresold into slavery, traded among fighters like property and repeatedly raped. Hanan and her children were among more than 6,000 people kidnapped. Hadi, who was working as a laborer in a city beyond the reach of ISIS when their village was captured, was frantic when he learned his family was gone.

Within days, President Barack Obama launched U.S. airstrikes on ISIS militants, and U.S. forces delivered food and water to besieged Yazidis trapped on Sinjar mountain. In the following months, as Yazidi women and children started emerging from captivity—some escaped, while others were rescued by a secret network of activists—with tales of horror, Yazidis pleaded for more international action. Former captives were severely traumatized. Mental-health care in Iraq was limited. And because the Yazidi faith doesn’t accept converts or marriage outside the religion, the women raped and forcibly converted to Islam by ISIS members feared they were no longer welcome in the community.

In Germany, home to the largest Yazidi population outside of Iraq, officials in Baden Württemberg decided to act. In October 2014, state premier Winfried Kretschmann decided to issue 1,000 humanitarian visas and earmark €95 million ($107 million) for what became known as the Special Quota Project for Especially Vulnerable Women and Children from Northern Iraq. The state recruited 21 cities and towns across the southwestern state to host the refugees, agreeing to pay municipalities €42,000 ($50,000) per person for housing and other costs, while the state would cover the cost of their healthcare. Two other states agreed to take an additional 100 people.

Program officials interviewed survivors of ISIS captivity in Iraq, selecting those with medical or psychological disorders as a result of their captivity who could benefit from treatment in Germany. The project was not restricted to Yazidis, and a small number of Christians and Muslims also were chosen. That was when the officials told each woman that after two years, immediate family members like husbands could apply for a visa under German rules for family unification.

The program was groundbreaking. No German state had ever administered its own humanitarian admission program. And instead of waiting for asylum-seekers to make dangerous journeys across the Mediterranean, officials were seeking out the most vulnerable and bringing them to safety. The first plane arrived in March 2015. The last of the flights—including the one carrying Hanan—landed in January 2016.

Hanan, along with 111 others, was sent to a pleasant hilltop town of about 25,000 people at the edge of the Black Forest. (Officials asked that the town not be named to protect the survivors, whom they fear could be targeted by ISIS members.) For the first three years, she lived with about half of the group in an old hospital in the town center that had been converted into a communal residence.

Hanan and her five children occupied two rooms off a central corridor—one they used for sleeping, and the other, with a sink along one wall and a worn leather sofa along another, as a living room. They shared a bathroom and a kitchen with a large family next door.

“The neighbors are worse than Daesh,” she joked with a grimace, using a pejorative name for ISIS. It was May 2017, more than a year after her arrival. She sat on the floor to breastfeed her youngest child, Saber. At three, he was small for his age, but Hanan was small too. Her long dark hair was pulled back, and she wore a long blue skirt and a dark hoodie. Her next youngest, Sheelan, climbed into a wardrobe in the corner, peeking out from underneath thick black bangs. Haneya, her oldest at 10, and Hanadi and Berivan, eight and seven, were fighting with the neighbor’s children, their shrieks competing with the Kurdish music videos blaring from the television. Hanan yelled at them to stop.

Caring for her five children alone was wearing Hanan out. She was often sick, but found it difficult to go to the doctor because she didn’t have help with childcare. She complained about painful and unresolved gynecological issues from being repeatedly raped. She wanted to go back to the doctor, but she relied on social workers to make appointments for her and said they were blowing off her requests. And most days, she suffered debilitating headaches.

A trauma therapist came once a week to the shelter for a group session with the women, but Hanan usually wasn’t able to attend because of the children. And she didn’t want to talk about her experiences in front of the other women. When she slept, nightmares came. One night she dreamed she was back in captivity and an ISIS fighter was trying to take her oldest daughter, Haneya. Hanan woke herself and the children up with her screams. The older girls talked about their time in captivity often and sometimes had nightmares too. “They’re not like normal kids,” Hanan said. “When it’s nighttime, they ask me, ‘Mama, do you think Daesh is going to come to get us?’”

A year earlier, around six months after her arrival, that nightmare had become reality. She was out shopping for food when she spotted him. He had trimmed his hair and beard, and exchanged his tunic for a blue T-shirt. But it was him—the ISIS member who had been her captor for a month.

She stared, frozen in place. He saw her, too: His eyes widened in recognition and surprise. Panic shot through her and then her feet were moving, carrying her out of the store and around the corner. By the time she went to the police, he was gone. She said they treated her as if she had mistaken a random refugee for her former tormenter. But she knew what she saw. “How could I forget the face of the man who raped me?”

Germany was supposed to be a sanctuary. Now, inside the old hospital walls was the only place Hanan felt safe. She rarely ventured out, remembering threats from her captors that they would find her if she ran away.

She worried the man she’d spotted might come back to harm them. The only identifying information she could give police was his nom de guerre. And though police were stationed outside the shelter for some time after she made the report, Markus Burger, head of the department for refugees and resettlement in the town’s social office, said his office eventually received a report stating there was no direct threat. The police referred questions about the incident to the federal public prosecutor, and a spokesman for the prosecutor said the office was aware of the incident but could not comment further. At least one other woman in the programsaw her own captor in Germany, and she later returned to Iraq because she no longer felt safe.

Hanan couldn’t understand why the police couldn’t find the man. She began to see threats anywhere she went. Muslim people speaking Arabic terrified her. Once at a park with her children, a bearded man on a bench called out to her. Though she had never seen him before, she was afraid. She gathered the children and rushed back to the shelter.

Yazidis are no strangers to trauma. The religious minority has endured centuries of persecution and attacks, from the Ottoman empire to Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda. Jan Kizilhan, an expert in psychotraumatology and transcultural psychotherapy who was the program’s chief psychologist, was born to a Yazidi family in Turkey and immigrated to Germany as a child. Survivors of ISIS captivity are dealing not only with their own individual trauma from the violence and family separation they endured, he said, but also the historical trauma borne by their people, and the collective trauma from ISIS’s attempted genocide.

But after the women arrived in Germany as part of the program, trauma therapy wasn’t a top priority. At first, most of the refugees were focused on adjusting to life in Germany, said Kizilhan. They were also following the situation back home, where a multinational coalition was wrestling territory away from ISIS. With every victory, Yazidi families waited for news of their missing relatives, hoping they would not be among the bodies discovered in mass graves. Most had family members in camps, and others still in captivity. They weren’t ready to work through past trauma in therapy, because it was still part of their present.

There was another, more basic, obstacle to treatment: Most of the women were unfamiliar with the concept of psychotherapy. “To even help them understand why they would need this or how it would help, it takes time,” said Kizilhan. In many Middle Eastern cultures, including the Yazidi community, psychological trauma is often expressed somatically, he explained — many women complained of a burning liver, headaches, or stomachaches when the root was a psychological, rather than physiological, problem.

In 2017 and 2018, Tübingen University Hospital and the University of Freiburg, which were also involved in psychotherapeutic care for program participants, carried out surveys of 116 of the women in the program. Ninety-three percent of those surveyed fulfilled the diagnostic criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder during the first survey, and the number remained the same a year later. That makes the fact that just 40% of the women have received trauma therapy, years after their arrival, striking.

But Kizilhan insists the figure does not represent a failure. Some women simply don’t want therapy, he says, and it can’t be forced. He expects that an additional third of the women will be ready for therapy in the coming years. “And then we will be there to help them,” he says. “Each person is individual, different, and needs different timing.” The state decided to cover the cost of the womens’ healthcare indefinitely—initial plans were to foot the bill for three years—after it spent only €60 million ($71 million) of the allocated €95 million ($113 million) on the program.

Kizilhan acknowledges the challenges, including finding enough therapists and translators to work with the women. Kizilhan and Blume, who led the Special Quota project, say the program was an emergency intervention, and that a more long-term solution is building capacity for mental health care in Iraq. The state of Baden Württemberg has put resources toward that, too—donating €1.3 million ($1.5 million) to help establish the first master’s program for psychotherapy in Iraq, started by Kizilhan at the University of Duhok in 2017.

Kizilhan and Blume say the program in Germany has been successful despite the challenges. In the Tübingen University study, 91% of the women surveyed said they were satisfied to be in Germany, and 85% said they were satisfied with the program. When asked if they were satisfied with the psychosocial care, the number who said yes dropped to 72%. Hanan was among those who found it lacking.

Her struggle to access medical care and therapy were two of the ways she felt let down by the program. For her first three years in Germany, Hanan received minimal therapy, even though she wanted it. She rarely attended the group sessions, both because she found them unhelpful and because of the ongoing childcare issues. She said she was not offered individual sessions. Burger said when social workers saw some women were unhappy with group sessions, they arranged for individual therapy, and Hanan began talking with a therapist every few weeks. She said it helped a little, but she felt the same after each session.

***

On a Wednesday in July 2018, Hanan left German class early to shop for food. Before leaving home, she pulled on a fitted black blazer over her beige shirt and leggings. The clothes were new; she had recently cast aside the long, dark skirts and sweaters that she had worn ever since her escape for a more modern wardrobe. Friends had urged her to make the switch, teasing her that she dressed like she was still living under ISIS. Hanan walked to the store, passing traditional timber-frame buildings and window boxes overflowing with geraniums and petunias. She spotted a friend outside the supermarket and stopped to chat before buying chicken legs and vegetables. Managing the family’s budget alone—something she had never done in Iraq—was challenging. Sometimes she didn’t have enough money at the end of the month.

Two years on from encountering her former captor, the town was beginning to feel less threatening, though Hanan still didn’t like going out at night. She attended German language class four mornings a week. She’d never learned how to read or write as a child, so learning German was doubly hard, but she was making slow progress. She was also making a few German friends, and she’d found a way to decipher their text messages even though she couldn’t read. When she received a message, she’d paste it into the Google Translate app and press the audio button. A robotic voice would read it aloud and she’d reply via voice note.

Back at home, she put a pot of rice on the stove and began browning the chicken, preoccupied by the logistics of her upcoming trip to Iraq to visit her husband, Hadi. She’d learned through her social worker that her stipend would be paused while she was away, and Hanan wasn’t sure how she would make it through the month without the money.

It would be the second time she had to travel to see Hadi. (The women were admitted as humanitarian refugees, rather than asylum seekers, which spared them the process of applying for asylum and meant they were allowed to return to visit family in Iraq, unlike asylum holders.) Saber, now four, had spent most of his life separated from his father, and didn’t recognize him. The girls no longer even missed him. He was becoming a faraway memory.

Two and a half years had now gone by since she left Iraq, well past the two years after which Hadi had been promised he could apply for a visa. Hanan’s social worker helped her file papers related to his visa application. But whenever Hanan asked what was happening, she was given the same answer: Not yet.

What she didn’t know was that Germany’s position toward refugees had shifted. The welcoming stance the country adopted when more than a million people poured into the country seeking asylum in 2015 had hardened amid a backlashfueled by far-right anti-immigration parties. When he interviewed the women in 2015, and told them their husbands could apply for a visa after two years, Kizilhan was in line with the rules at the time. But now laws governing refugees and family unification visas were tightened. German courts even began ruling against Yazidiswho requested asylum, saying it was safe for them to go back to Iraq.

To date, no husbands of women in the Special Quota Project have received visas. It’s hard to know how many are waiting: Kizilhan says he has identified 18. According to the study, 28 percent of the women surveyed had husbands in Iraq.

A spokesman for the Baden Württemberg Ministry of Interior, Digitalization and Migration said that “special rules” apply to family reunifications for those granted humanitarian admission, and may only be allowed “for reasons of human rights, on humanitarian grounds or to protect political interests.” The special rules “must be considered on a case by case basis,” he said, and added the federal authorities are responsible for issuing visas, not the state.

Kizilhan said the ministry could intervene to make sure the family members are issued visas. But the political will behind the creation of the Special Quota Project has evaporated. In January, Kizilhan said he had recently met with state interior ministry officials to ask that they find a way to bring the husbands to Germany, but that they told him the change in federal law made it difficult to do so. “This is ridiculous,” Kizilhan says. “If you can take 1,100 with the special quota, you can take 18 people in one day.”

On trips back to Iraq, Kizilhan said he’s been confronted by husbands demanding answers, and is distressed that the state has not followed through. He notes that bringing the women’s immediate family to Germany would improve their psychological health—the goal of the program—by helping to reduce post-traumatic stress symptoms and easing their integration into society. Hanan often spoke of waiting for Hadi’s arrival to move into an apartment on her own. She was fearful of handling all the responsibilities of living in a new country without him. And she desperately needed help caring for the children, help she thought would be provided in the program. They’d spent a year separated from Hadi in captivity. Now, they were once again separated, once again waiting for their family to be reunited.

After Hanan’s visit to Iraq, months went by with no news about Hadi’s visa. They both began to despair that it would ever materialize, their frustration compounded by a dearth of information about the delay.

In the spring of 2019, after waiting three years, Hadi decided he could wait no longer. He borrowed money and set out for Germany along irregular migration routes. It took him eight months—he was detained in Greece on the way—but eventually he made it to Hanan. Their reunion, though, was far from perfect. After his arrival in Germany, the once-happy couple separated. Hanan would not discuss the details of their estrangement except to say that it took root because of their physical separation and left her distraught. He is now in a relationship with another woman and Hanan said he is not in touch with his children. His future in Germany is uncertain, too—it is unclear whether he will be permitted to stay.

Last summer Hanan moved into a light-filled two-bedroom furnished flat rented for her by the municipality in a quiet residential neighborhood. It’s decorated brightly in orange—a peach wall, tangerine dining chairs, an ochre shag carpet, and a sofa the color of carrots. While there’s a bunk bed in the kids’ room, they usually end up sleeping in Hanan’s king-size bed every night, a tangle of arms and legs. She was finally able to see a doctor to resolve her lingering gynecological health problem, although the daily headaches are still there. She’s no longer afraid of going out at night.

On a Sunday morning in January, she awoke late, groggy from hosting friends the night before. Saber, now six, and Sheelan, seven, plopped on the sofa to watch Tom and Jerry on the television as Hanan made bread in the kitchen. Squeezing small lumps off the dough, she quickly slapped each one from hand to hand, stretching it into a thin disc. In Iraq, she would have baked the loaves in an outdoor clay oven. Here, she used a small metal box oven, heated with an electric coil, placed on the countertop. She placed each loaf on top to let it brown, then baked it inside the oven before stacking the finished loaves on the windowsill.

When she was done, the children gathered at the table, scooping up fried eggs, yogurt, tahini, and cheese with the fresh bread. They chattered together in German; they rarely spoke Kurdish with one another anymore. Saber, impish and sensitive, speaks German with a near flawless accent. After breakfast, the three older girls clear the table, wash the dishes, and sweep the floor unbidden. Hanadi, now 11, and Berivan, now 10, both with round cheeks like their mother, are learning how to swim at school. Haneya, now 13, reads and translates the mail and types messages in German for her mother.

“Sometimes I look at my kids and think ‘OK, I’m all right.’ But I just feel bad,” Hanan said, lowering herself onto the sofa. “It’s a bad feeling inside of me, I don’t know how to explain it. Sometimes I want to hit myself, because of this bad feeling inside, and I don’t know how to deal with it. Many times I thought about killing myself, but then I remember my kids, that they need me.”

The situation with Hadi has her so upset she doesn’t think about ISIS anymore, Hanan said, adding that she doesn’t know what to do or where to turn. She’s spent hours crying with a Yazidi friend, another survivor, who lives nearby. That’s the closest she gets to therapy now.

After Hanan moved into the apartment, her therapy sessions ended. A few months later, social workers took her to an appointment at a new therapist’s office, but she hadn’t gone back. She said the appointment time of 7 p.m. was impossible as there was no one to watch the children at home. But she knows she needs help. “It’s too much for me,” she said. “I can’t hold all these problems alone.”

Burger, of the town’s department for refugees and resettlement, said that as more of the women moved into private apartments last year—all but 10 now live on their own—it became harder to arrange therapy sessions. Some therapists have waiting lists, and there is always the problem of timing, he said. “It’s difficult finding a time when the trauma therapist and the translator both are available, and also when someone can take care for the children, and when the German classes aren’t at the same time. But we are working on it.” He could not give a number for how many of the women in the town were undergoing therapy, saying it was constantly changing, but said therapy was available to all who wanted it. “We can only offer it,” he said. “In the end it is the decision of the women if they want to take part in the programs, and we don’t want to and can’t force anyone to take part.”

Hanan knows it was right to come to Germany. She’s better off than she would be in Iraq, where despite the territorial defeat of ISIS, most Yazidis are still displaced, and their future is uncertain. She feels safe now in Germany, and she can see bright futures for her children here.

But she can’t muster any of that hope for herself, not after losing Hadi. The darkness she had hoped to escape never went away. “Maybe I’m going to go crazy, or I’m going to kill myself. Maybe I won’t find a solution for myself except to die,” she said. “Now I’m 34, and I didn’t see any hope in my entire life. And for the future also, I don’t have any hope. Only God knows.”

Source: A Radical German Program Promised a Fresh Start to Yazidi Survivors of ISIS Captivity. But Some Women Are Still Longing for Help

Filed under Refugees Tagged with , ,

Exclusive: Cyprus sold passports to criminals and fugitives

2020/08/25 Leave a comment

Not surprising given earlier stories and the kinds of people these programs can attract:

Convicted fraudsters, money launderers and political figures accused of corruption are among dozens of people from more than 70 countries who have bought so-called “golden passports” from Cyprus, according to a large cache of official documents obtained by Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit.

The Cyprus Papers is a leak of more than 1,400 passport applications approved by the government of the island nation between 2017 and 2019, and it raises serious questions about the Cyprus Investment Programme.

Passports from the Republic of Cyprus can be important for individuals from countries that have restricted access to Europe, as Cyprus is a member of the European Union (EU) and a passport offers its holder access to free travel, work and banking in all 27 member states.

In the coming days, Al Jazeera will reveal the identities of dozens of people who acquired Cypriot citizenship who, according to the country’s own rules, in many cases should not have received a passport.

Security risk

To apply for a Cypriot passport, applicants must invest at least 2.15m euros ($2.5m) in the Cypriot economy, usually by buying real estate, and have a clean criminal record.

However, applicants provide their own proof of eligibility, and although Cyprus claimed to check applicants’ backgrounds, the documents obtained by Al Jazeera prove that this did not always happen.

Since its inception in 2013, the programme has received repeated criticism from the EU, which has called for it to be closed down.

“It’s high value for everyone who comes from a country where there’s a lot of dirty money involved”, German MEP Sven Giegold, a strong critic of the programme, told Al Jazeera.

“You open a bank account, a business relationship and less questions asked, no visa requirements, easier to get access to get everywhere to travel than if you are from Russia, China or even more doubtful countries.”

Since 2013, when the passport programme started, the country has made more than 7 billion euros ($8bn), used to keep afloat the nation’s failing economy.

Burisma and Gazprom officials

Between 2017 and 2019, the countries with the highest number of people applying were Russia, China and Ukraine.

Among the approved applications seen by Al Jazeera was Ukrainian tycoon Mykola Zlochevsky, owner of the giant Burisma energy company.

When Zlochevsky bought his Cypriot passport in 2017, he was already under investigation for corruption in his home country.

In June 2020 Ukrainian prosecutors said they were offered $6m in cash to drop the investigation.

Zlochevsky and Burisma deny any knowledge of the bribe.

Like many on wanted lists in their home country, Zlochevsky’s Cypriot passport allows him to live beyond the reach of Ukrainian law enforcement.

A similar application came from Russian national Nikolay Gornovskiy, former boss of the state-owned energy giant Gazprom.

Gornovskiy was already on Russia’s wanted list for abuse of power when Cyprus approved his passport in 2019 and has so far thwarted all attempts to extradite him.

Other applications were approved even after the applicant had been arrested and sometimes even served their time in prison.

Ali Beglov, a Russian national, bought his passport despite serving a prison sentence for extortion, which should not have been possible according to Cyprus’s rules.

Chinese businessman Zhang Keqiang also received a Cypriot passport, despite having spent time in prison for a fraudulent share deal.

Vietnamese businessman Pham Nhat Vu’s passport was approved a month after he was charged with giving millions of dollars in bribes in a telecoms deal.

He is now serving three years in jail.

According to Laure Brillaud, Senior Policy Officer with Transparency International, an NGO focused on combatting international corruption, these results are worrying but not surprising.

“These programmes bear inherent risks of money laundering, corruption and tax evasion. They were designed to attract people just looking for a fast track to the EU,” she told Al Jazeera.

Stricter rules

In May 2019, Cyprus introduced tougher rules on who was eligible for citizenship, which banned anyone under investigation, wanted, convicted or under international sanctions from buying a passport.

Cypriot parliamentarians in July finally passed a law that gave the country the power to remove citizenship after several scandals involving notorious golden passport investors, but politicians voted against any move to publish the names of those who buy Cypriot citizenship.

The new stricter law applies to anyone who commits a serious crime, is wanted by Interpol or subject to sanctions in the 10 years after they bought their passport.

Cyprus is reviewing all past applications and announced about 30 unnamed people face losing citizenship, but The Cyprus Papers reveal many more may fall foul of the new law.

They include people such as Venezuelan Leonardo Gonzalez Dellan, an ex-banker, who was sanctioned by the United States for laundering millions in illegal currency deals for the Venezuelan government.

Another person who could lose his passport is Oleg Bakhmatiuk, under investigation in Ukraine for embezzlement and money laundering relating to his giant agricultural firm.

He called the charges “a complete fabrication and politically motivated”.

Although Bakhmatiuk told Al Jazeera the proceedings against him had ended with the charges dropped, the country’s official prosecutor confirmed he is still on Ukraine’s wanted list.

Embezzlement and money laundering

Some other examples of passport holders facing serious charges are Russian brothers Alexei and Dmitry Ananiev, who bought citizenship in 2017.

They are accused in Russia of embezzling from the bank they once owned.

Another person who received Cypriot citizenship is Chinese national Li Jiadong, who was sanctioned by the US for laundering $100m in cryptocurrency related to North Korean hackers.

Lastly, there are Maleksabet Ebrahimi and his son Mehdi, who are both on Interpol’s most-wanted list for money laundering and fraud in Iran and facing similar charges in Canada.

Maleksabet Ebrahimi denies the charges against him and says he complied at all times with Iranian and Cypriot laws.

‘Cyprus should be ashamed’

In response to questions from Al Jazeera, Cypriot Member of Parliament Eleni Mavrou said: “The way the programme was implemented the last few years was obviously a procedure that allowed cases for which the Republic of Cyprus should be ashamed.”

“I believe that the new regulations will not leave room for foul play or for stepping over the boundaries that a state should respect,” she added.

The Minister of the Interior, Nicos Nouris told Al Jazeera: “No citizenship was granted in violation of the regulations in force at the given time.”

Source: Exclusive: Cyprus sold passports to criminals and fugitives

Filed under Citizenship, citizenship-by-investment Tagged with ,

Nesrine Malik: British hypocrisy is to blame for the deadly plight of migrants

2020/08/25 Leave a comment

Of note:

It is often argued that once it became clear that the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting wasn’t going to tip the United States towards adopting national gun control laws, that was the moment the gun control argument was lost for good. The equivalent moment, as far as British and European attitudes towards refugees and asylum seekers is concerned, was when the body of Alan Kurdi washed up on the shores of Turkey, almost five years ago.

Despite the global grief, the front pages, the renderings of Kurdi’s little body in paintings, his elevation into a symbol of a world that had lost its way, nothing happened. In fact, EU migration policies became even harsher. Last week, the British public was again moved when the body of a Sudanese migrant, Abdulfatah Hamdallah, was found on French shores, drowned after trying to make it to Britain. In the same time frame, another more fortunate migrant made it safely to Kent, and was immediately assaulted.

This duality lies at the heart of our attitudes towards migrants, asylum seekers and refugees: an outpouring of grief one minute, a political pummelling the next. We like to think of ourselves as kind, and touched by the tragedy of specific cases, but we do nothing beyond expressing sympathy. We are horrified by the treatment of Windrush victims, but not the hostile environment and the policies that led to the scandal. We are haunted by the desperation of people who take treacherous and fatal journeys to the UK, but many of us are complicit in their fate by voting for politicians who pledge to make those routes “unviable”.

Source: British hypocrisy is to blame for the deadly plight of migrants

Filed under Immigration Tagged with ,

Bouchard: La souveraineté du Québec, plus nécessaire que jamais

2020/08/24 Leave a comment

Ironic to cite COVID-19 as a justification for Quebec independence while ignoring that Quebec has the highest number of infections and deaths per million of all Canadian provinces and on par with the most affected European countries.

And of course, both multiculturalism and interculturalism are similar models of civic integration, with more semantic rather than substantive differences:

Du point de vue de notre avenir politique, deux leçons peuvent être tirées de l’actuelle pandémie. Nous avons pu constater que, presque partout, les populations plongées dans l’insécurité se sont tournées vers leur nation pour se protéger. Les instances supranationales, à commencer par l’Union européenne, se sont montrées étonnamment impuissantes à mettre en œuvre des initiatives efficaces pour contrer la pandémie.

Chacun a pu ainsi prendre conscience du recours indispensable que l’État-nation continue de représenter comme rempart dans un contexte de crise. Cette enceinte a montré une grande capacité à susciter une solidarité, montrant ainsi qu’elle est loin d’avoir perdu sa pertinence. Il y a intérêt à la soutenir et à la perpétuer. C’est la première leçon.

La pandémie a aussi révélé la fragilité des réseaux supranationaux. La mondialisation ne s’en trouve pas pour autant condamnée, loin de là, mais elle a accusé d’inquiétantes carences. Il sera prudent de mieux définir nos engagements et nos articulations avec cette sphère qui demeure largement chaotique et imprévisible. On voit l’importance de pouvoir se reposer sur un État doté de tous les pouvoirs essentiels. C’est la deuxième leçon.

Les raisons profondes qui ont toujours motivé le mouvement souverainiste restent d’actualité : le combat pour le français, l’émancipation économique, sociale et culturelle de notre société, le renforcement d’une francophonie nord-américaine et, plus généralement, une plus grande liberté collective pour traiter à notre façon, suivant nos traditions et nos choix, les grands problèmes de l’heure. Ces raisons sont clairement rappelées et mises à jour dans le dernier numéro de la revue Action nationale. La pandémie en fait voir d’autres : renforcer la nation-refuge et procurer à l’État une marge de manœuvre accrue qui lui permet de mieux naviguer à travers les écueils de la sphère planétaire.

Sur l’enjeu identitaire

Tout cela survient au moment où le Parti québécois, occupé à se redéfinir, se donnera bientôt un nouveau chef. J’aimerais, dans ce contexte, soumettre trois réflexions. La première concerne la thématique identitaire, toujours bien vivante au sein de ce parti. Écartons d’abord un malentendu. Il est incontestable qu’une nation a besoin d’une identité comme expression d’une appartenance et source de solidarité. On imagine mal comment, privée de ces ressorts, elle pourrait mobiliser ses citoyens et ses citoyennes autour d’idéaux et de projets communs.

Le danger, c’est lorsque la quête d’une identité glisse vers une auscultation de soi qui l’appauvrit et rétrécit le « nous » de la nation. Un déplacement de ce genre est néfaste pour une société diversifiée. Il tend aussi à diminuer la place d’une dimension essentielle, celle de l’action collective, des grands projets que nous pourrions réaliser tous ensemble comme Québécois. Or, la mémoire de ces réalisations contribue justement à fortifier l’identité.

La population québécoise est de plus en plus diversifiée et le vieux noyau francophone jadis largement majoritaire se contracte progressivement (de 79 % en 1971, sa proportion serait passée à 64 % en 2014). Il est donc nécessaire d’ajuster la définition de la nation et de l’identité à la nouvelle réalité.

Est-ce là succomber au multiculturalisme ? On en est loin. Premièrement, il s’agit simplement de reconnaître les droits de tous les citoyens du Québec, en particulier là où ils sont compromis. Cette règle n’est pas copiée du multiculturalisme, elle fait partie de l’héritage général de toutes les horreurs commises durant la première moitié du XXe siècle en Occident. L’éthique qu’elles ont engendrée invite à respecter la diversité plutôt que de la broyer. Le multiculturalisme canadien en est lui-même une expression parmi bien d’autres, tout comme l’interculturalisme québécois.

Deuxièmement, le modèle canadien en matière de relations interculturelles est très différent de l’approche québécoise. Dans le premier cas, les groupes ethnoculturels se voient accorder une latitude exceptionnelle, si bien que le souci de cimenter ces minorités devient quasiment secondaire.

Au Québec, au contraire, c’est une priorité. Nous sommes une petite nation constamment soucieuse d’intégration, de solidarité, de concertation, de rassemblement — et de survie. Troisièmement, le multiculturalisme canadien reconnaît l’existence de minorités mais nie celle d’une majorité. Comment ce modèle pourrait-il s’appliquer ici ?

Le prochain chef du PQ

Je reviens au Parti québécois. La recherche d’une identité forte, au sens défini plus haut, et la promotion d’une conception vraiment inclusive de la nation ne sont nullement incompatibles. Il suffit de revenir à la tradition instaurée par le parti à ses années glorieuses. La loi 101 en est une parfaite illustration. D’un côté, elle servait les intérêts de la majorité en renforçant le français. De l’autre, elle servait les intérêts des minorités en leur procurant le moyen de mieux s’intégrer à la société et d’y faire leur chemin.

Dans l’intérêt du parti et de celui du Québec, il est éminemment souhaitable qu’il renoue avec cette philosophie qui lui a valu une grande partie de ses succès. Cette tradition est toujours porteuse d’avenir parce qu’elle est étroitement alignée sur le Québec en devenir que les fondateurs avaient remarquablement anticipé.

Concernant la course à la chefferie, ces réflexions invitent à favoriser le candidat qui incarne le mieux à la fois la grande tradition et l’avenir du parti suivant les voies esquissées ici. Parmi les candidatures en lice, celle de Sylvain Gaudreault me semble la plus proche de ce profil.

Source: La souveraineté du Québec, plus nécessaire que jamais

Filed under Interculturalisme, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Immigration fraud in Canada, foreign workers should be cautious

2020/08/24 Leave a comment

Yet another instance:

When the video call ended, Rami Al-Americani felt confident he would get the job.

The four people who had interviewed him for a position at a Montreal-based construction company had asked him detailed questions, but Al-Americani owned and operated an engineering consulting firm in Lebanon. He knew he could do the work.

The address for Montreal Construction Group corresponds to a non-existent lot that would be in the middle of René-Lévesque Blvd., near Place Ville Marie. Workers in the area say they have never heard of the company. It isn’t real.A Montreal Gazette investigation has confirmed that the firm is part of a network of ghost companies concealing an elaborate immigration scam. Those who orchestrate the network use the prospect of living and working in Montreal, and in Canada, as a lure to target educated workers in the Middle East, gaining their trust with a lengthy application period before requesting money to pay for the immigration process.

The scam is convincing. The network operates under the guise of three interlinked companies: a recruitment agency, a construction firm and an immigration consultant firm. Multiple people act out different roles, from human resource representatives to hiring managers. The jobs they offer and the companies they purport to run are not real. They have websites that mimic those of real firms and use the stolen identities of real immigration consultants to assure victims of their legitimacy.

Those who fall victim to the scam have little recourse. The network exists largely in a jurisdictional vacuum online. Even when regulators do catch on, the network just shuts down and restarts under a new name.

“It’s a big network,” Al-Americani said. “It’s amazing that they took the time to do a fake website and some of them act as the recruitment, the other ones act as the company people, operations, HR. Another part acts as the immigration consultants.”

A chance for a job in Canada

For Al-Americani, it began in October 2019, when a woman who said her name was Mellissa Luke called him. She worked for a company called Nova Recruiters, based in Ottawa, she said, and wondered if he was interested in an opportunity to work in Canada. She sent along forms and arranged an interview with Montreal Construction Group.

The application process was thorough, Al-Americani recalled. He did several interviews, including one video call with four people.

“The people who interviewed me are people who understand construction,” he said. “I was interviewed by a so-called senior guy in operations and people who understand the terminology that we used in construction, who understand projects, so they prepared for it and they seemed professional.”

Between the initial phone call and the time Al-Americani was hired, a few weeks had passed. He filled out human-resources forms and Montreal Construction Group transferred him to Canada Immigration Hub, their approved immigration consultant, ostensibly based in Alberta. A man reached out. He said his name was Craig Jackson and that he was a certified immigration consultant. He sent along forms and asked for payment.

It worked. Al-Americani was hopeful about the move to Canada. He had researched the country and was tempted by the prospect of a good education for his children. The process was going to be expensive — Al-Americani knew that. He paid.

The money, $1,000 as an initial fee, was wired to a U.S. bank, which bothered Al-Americani. When he caught on to the scam, he seethed at the thought that someone could go to such lengths to prey on his family’s hopes of moving to Canada.

Others who have fallen — or nearly fallen — for the scam report noticing red flags, but sometimes ignoring them, blinded by the prospect of a new life abroad.

Eslam Emara, a Saudi man with 10 years of experience in transportation and logistics, caught on to the fraudsters. He was skeptical at every turn. He asked for proof of identity, scrutinized the companies’ websites, asked around on online forums and noticed holes in the Montreal Construction Group facade.

When the man calling himself Jackson asked for money, Emara said no. “That’s the time I had to say to them, ‘That’s bulls—. I’m not buying.’ ”

But it hurt him. A little part of him had been holding out hope, despite the red flags.

“It seems ridiculous, because I knew that it’s a fraud, but I was just dreaming on,” he said in a recent interview from Riyadh, uttering a laugh, then a sigh. He had hoped to immigrate to Canada with his wife and child. “It was one of our dreams to do something like this, so they gave us much disappointment.”

A convincing online network

The fake companies’ websites present a facade that at first is convincing to those targeted by the scammers.

But the slick sites don’t stand up to scrutiny. The Nova Recruiters site lists jobs that don’t exist. The Montreal Construction Group site is an exact imitation of a site belonging to a New Zealand company. It lists projects ostensibly completed by Montreal Construction Group that were completed by other firms. And the Canada Immigration Hub website features testimonials from satisfied clients — who aren’t real.

Raghib, from Saudi Arabia, says on the site: “No matter how easy or straightforward Canadian immigration process might look like, it isn’t easy at all. … After getting in touch with CIH, things were different and much better.”Surender, from Bangalore, says: “These people explained to me how studying in Canada can help me with my career and eventually getting a permanent residency.”

But the photo for Surender is really a stock image, available online, titled “Portrait of a middle-aged Indian with folded hands.” The photo of Raghib is another stock image: “Horizontal portrait of young smiling Arab man.”

Perhaps the most convincing tactic used by Canada Immigration Hub is the name of the person they use to contact their potential victims: Craig Jackson.

An identity stolen with impunity

Craig Jackson is a real immigration consultant, registered with the Immigration Consultants of Canada Regulatory Council (ICCRC), a non-profit organization that has been mandated by the federal government to regulate immigration advising services. But he does not work for Canada Immigration Hub. The fraudsters used his identity to gain their victims’ trust.

The real Craig Jackson said he began receiving emails in late 2019 and early 2020 from people who were being strung along by Montreal Construction Group, signalling that his name was being used as part of an elaborate fraud.

“My initial reaction was of outrage and anger, followed by wonder,” Jackson said. “(I) was curious as to why they targeted my identity.”

The ICCRC had advised him to report the fraud to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre (CAFC) — so he did.Al-Americani also reported the fraud. He emailed the Canadian embassy in Beirut, but received a generic response. Emara said he was considering reporting the scam to Saudi police.

But the international nature of the scam hinders law enforcement efforts.

Jeff Thomson, a senior RCMP intelligence analyst at the CAFC, said well-trained, resourceful groups are likely behind the Montreal Construction Group fraud.

“People ask, ‘Who’s behind this stuff?’ It’s organized crime at the end of the day,” Thomson said. “When you look at the level of organization involved — the multiple countries where the money is going, the websites — the sophistication, the steps they set up to run the scams.”

The CAFC has received multiple complaints about Montreal Construction Group, but Canadian authorities lack the ability to investigate and prosecute those behind the fraud, in part because there is little connecting the perpetrators to Canada.

“What we see with a lot of these things is oftentimes the fraudsters use Canadian government entities or business names … but none of the money ends up coming here,” Thomson said. “They’re just using Canadian entities because people want to come to Canada for our reputation.”

Though the Montreal Construction Group fraudsters — and others like them — often avoid prosecution, Canadian authorities can make it more expensive for them to do business by targeting their websites and bank accounts.

But immigration fraud is rampant. It keeps the authorities busy, and shutting down websites and bank accounts only delays the scammers. They tend to crop back up.An Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada spokesperson said in a statement that the government had earmarked $51 million to improve enforcement and public awareness of immigration fraud and establish systems to better crack down on fraudulent immigration consultants.

“The government of Canada takes any kind of citizenship or immigration fraud seriously,” the statement reads. “Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada urges clients to use the official departmental website to obtain information about its programs in order to avoid becoming victims of fraud.”

An ICCRC spokesperson said the agency could not investigate the activity of those who had impersonated Jackson, because the perpetrators were not real immigration consultants. But he said the organization was aware of the situation: “We’ve been looking into the matter and are working with enforcement authorities to combat these schemes.” He also said criminal fraud of the kind displayed by the Montreal Construction Group scams is rare, but that the ICCRC is slated to soon become a new body that would have more power to prevent such fraud.

A hidden network

It is unclear who is behind the fraud, but banking information from an account associated with the fraud points to a man named Nabeel Ahmed, ostensibly living in Wichita, Kan. Phone records also link the listed number for Montreal Construction Group — a Montreal landline — to a man named Nabeel Ahmed.

In 2012, Windsor police arrested a man they said was a prolific fraudster named Nabeel Ahmed, who had a criminal history of committing identity and credit card fraud. He was convicted on fraud-related charges and was sentenced to 10 months in prison.
The Montreal Gazette could not confirm that the Nabeel Ahmed convicted in Windsor is the same person linked to the fraud-connected bank account and the Montreal landline. Attempts to reach Nabeel Ahmed were unsuccessful.

One of the fake company websites — the Nova Recruiters site — is listed as registered to someone in Ontario, suggesting the fraudsters may have some physical connection to Canada, but besides that, little is known about their physical location.

A game of whack-a-mole

Even if authorities succeed in shutting down Montreal Construction Group’s website, or if enough people catch on to the scam, those behind it may well restart the scam under a new company.

A Montreal Gazette analysis has found that an eerily similar fraud network operated in the spring of 2019 — before the Montreal Construction Group scam. The earlier scam offered victims employment on Canada’s West Coast instead of in Montreal, but the similarities between the operations suggest that those who run the Montreal Construction Group scheme have experience rebuilding their network when officials begin to catch on to them.

The earlier scam used the same methods as Montreal Construction Group, and much of the language the fraudsters use in emails from both the old and the new scam is identical.

Instead of Montreal Construction Group, the earlier scam used Richmond Construction Group. Instead of Nova Recruiters, the earlier scam used Oakville Recruiters. Instead of Canada Immigration Hub, the earlier scam used Canada Shores.
Instead of Craig Jackson, the fraudsters impersonated Gregory Batt, another registered immigration consultant.

The real Gregory Batt said he began receiving emails and phone calls in late April 2019 from people asking him when they would receive their permanent residence. “All the guys who contacted me were well educated and articulate, mostly engineers,” he said. “I told all the folks who contacted me that they had been cheated, that Canada Shores was a fake company.”

Ahmed Rashed, an experienced purchase manager from Saudi Arabia who nearly fell for the Richmond Construction Group scam, said the organization and co-ordination astounded him. He was close to paying an initial $1,000 fee to immigrate to Canada, but had a friend in Vancouver check the address of Richmond Construction Group. There was no company.

“I deal with the internet all the time and I was about to fall for this,” Rashed said. “You know why they chose Canada? They chose Canada because they know everybody likes Canada. … That will help them to fool more people. This is because Canada has a good reputation.”

Dreaming of Canada

While wrapped up in the scam, victims spend weeks — sometimes more than a month — planning to move their families, their lives, to a new country.

For Al-Americani, the loss of the $1,000 he paid is secondary to the pain of having his immigration hopes dashed.

“For a month and a half we were living this dream of going to Montreal and having this new life,” he said, “and having our kids become Canadians and ourselves becoming Canadians.”

When he came to the realization that the company was a lie — that there was no job offer, no prospect of working in Canada — Al-Americani was crushed. “We felt really bad about it,” he said. “For like two, three weeks we were depressed.”

The scam also tends to leave its victims distrustful of immigration processes. But Al-Americani is still holding out hope. He said his family has recently begun once more to mull over the idea of coming to Canada.

“You know, it’s been a few days since it’s passed through my head to do the process a second time,” he said. “I think we’re going to do it.”

No one answers the phones at any of the fake companies and, as of publication, their websites are still active.

Source:  Immigration fraud in Canada, foreign workers should be cautious

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Royson James: Be careful who gets the honour of a memorial

2020/08/24 Leave a comment

Good reflections by Royson James on the need for reflection before erecting or removing monuments:

Be slow to tear down; slower to erect.

Heroes and villains are too often aligned — in the same body. So beware the memorials and monuments we construct.

That should be a direct lesson from the mound of past sins now being excavated and tossed on the sculpted images of our once shining heroes.

Once a hero, always a hero — in somebody’s mind. But the conquering coloniser is a miserable picture of pain and suffering to the victims of imperial conquests.

So, rip ‘em down. Tear down that statue. Remove the monument. Behead that statue that causes us so much pain. But be willing to square off against a phalanx of counter-protesters brandishing “Hands off our heritage” placards. America is Exhibit A — raw, extreme, seemingly irreconcilable, attempting to confront the past and a study in how not to get there in the first place.

It doesn’t have to be so, of course. Reasonable human beings can study the lives and contributions of the people our forebears honoured with monuments and memorials and reconsider their place of honour in light of modern norms and practices.

We learn. We grow. We listen to our neighbour. We may have to change our minds.

A tear-down doesn’t have to be a whitewash or a blackout. It can be an opportunity to present an era or person or people in wider context. Still, in real life, on the street, it doesn’t play out that neatly.

Toronto is not a city of statues and monuments. There are a few at Queen’s Park and along University Avenue and on university campuses, but nothing like the affinity found in Europe or the American south.

Maybe it’s because we are so young, compared to ancient cities. Maybe the paucity of public statues serve as a natural inhibitor to erecting new ones. After all, who are you to tower over us when so many before you have not been awarded that honour? Why this hero when we can name another 10 or 20 worthy competitors?

Count me among those who have advocated for more piazzas, grand boulevards, fountains and statues. Maybe we are fortunate not to have a proliferation because it is so difficult to install perfect human beings. Prime Ministers and presidents owned slaves. The British monarchy sponsored slave-ship expeditions. The Anglican Church owned slaves and branded them on the Codrington estate in Barbados.

In the midst of this tangled time stamp, affirming the victims, confronting the ugly truths and moving towards reconciliation and reparations is no easy feat. Denial is the worst option. So is a blanket erasure of evidence of the past.

We could be Richmond, Virginia, where the mother of all statues — the 21-foot high horse and rider General Robert E. Lee, head of the pro-slavery Southern Confederate states in the U.S. civil war — is coming down after years of protest that it is a symbol of white supremacy and racism. Opponents see it as symbol of southern heritage. The work, completed in Paris in 1890 is considered an artistic “masterpiece.” It took 10,000 people to transport the pieces from port to platform. Dismantling it and its granite base that’s almost twice as high as the stature itself, is a feat.

Here, we worry about spray paint on the King Edward VII statue at Queen’s Park.

Here, the city of Vaughan is embarrassed when a citizen pointed out that by changing the name of its August civic holiday in 2013 to Benjamin Vaughan Day, the city was celebrating a man of who not only owned hundreds of slaves in Jamaica but fought against the abolition of slavery. (Educated, Vaughan city council dropped the holiday name this year, returning to Simcoe Day.) There’s no word on the fate of the city’s name itself, cut from the same cloth.

Clearly, we pay scant attention to the names we give our streets. So many streets to name in so many subdivisions. Developers name your street address after their girlfriends. Architects throw in ninny names to satisfy whatever fantasy overcame them. Who’s to know?

Maybe Toronto city planners were a bit more fastidious when they laid out the old city by name. You can’t go wrong with Front or Lakeshore, er Lake Shore, or King, Queen, Princess, John and Jane. Who would suspect Mr. Bathurst or Mrs. Dufferin of having damaging secrets that might render them unfit to adorn our boulevards? Dundas? Harmless.

Oops. Apparently, only as harmless as Ryerson and Macdonald — names and esteemed people now under scrutiny for questionable racial history.

Toronto’s city manager has issued a brief committing to “broadly understand and respond to how systematic racism and discrimination are embedded in city assets, commemorative programs and naming policies.”

Chris Murray says “this might ultimately touch all named city streets, parks and facilities, public monuments, and civic awards and honours, potentially leading to a variety of actions (e.g., renaming streets, removing monuments, revoking awards or reinterpreting any of these).

“Addressing the historical legacy of Dundas Street is one of these steps” necessary in challenging systemic institutionalized racism and build a more inclusive Toronto,” Murray writes.

If these are more than just words — and if city council next month adopts the philosophy and true intent — we are in for a turbulent period that will test our maturity as a city. If the effort doesn’t get messy, it’s a sure sign it isn’t real.

We honour people who touch us and move us to dream and aspire to greatness. When the very visage of our “heroes” evoke the image of “villains” in our neighbour, this clash of vision can only crash at our feet — assuming we are equally invested and rooted and valued.

How we clean up the mess will define our future. It will also remind us: Be slow to tear down; slower to erect.

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Liberals appealing ruling striking down Canada-U.S. asylum agreement

2020/08/24 Leave a comment

Not surprising given that the ruling reflected in part the particular circumstances of asylum seekers that were at the heart of the case:

The Liberal government is appealing last month’s Federal Court decision that ruled the Safe Third Country Agreement — Canada’s asylum agreement with the United States — infringes upon the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

In a decision released July 22, Justice Ann Marie McDonald said the agreement — which stops people from entering either Canada or the U.S. at official Canada-U.S. border crossings and asking for asylum — violates the section of the Charter guaranteeing “the right to life, liberty and security of the person.”

McDonald suspended her invalid ruling for six months to allow Parliament to respond.

Public Safety Minister Bill Blair said in a statement Friday the government filed an appeal today because they believe there are factual and legal errors in some of the court’s key findings.

“There are important legal principles to be determined in this case, and it is the responsibility of the government of Canada to appeal to ensure clarity on the legal framework governing asylum law,” reads the statement.

“Canada has a long and proud tradition of providing protection to those who need it most by offering refuge to the world’s most vulnerable people, and the government of Canada remains firmly committed to upholding a compassionate, fair and orderly refugee protection system. The STCA remains a comprehensive vehicle to help accomplish that, based on the principle that people should claim asylum in the first safe country in which they arrive.”

The 16-year-old agreement, which remains in effect, recognizes both countries as “safe” countries for migrants and states that refugee claimants are required to request refugee protection in the first country they arrive in — meaning Canadian border officials would send back to the U.S. any would-be refugee claimants arriving at an official border crossing into Canada.

The Canadian Council for Refugees, Amnesty International, the Canadian Council of Churches and a number of individual litigants brought the original case forward and argued that by returning ineligible refugee claimants to the U.S., Canada exposes them to risks — including detention and eventual deportation to countries where they could face harm.

Conservative MP and immigration critic Peter Kent immediately issued a statement supporting the appeal.

“While we are pleased the government has decided to appeal this ruling, Canadians’ confidence in the immigration system has been rocked by years of Justin Trudeau’s failure to address these concerns, and his failure to restore integrity and compassion to the immigration process,” he said in a statement.But the NDP’s critic Jenny Kwan called the move the a “heartless and shameful act.”

“By appealing this ruling, the federal Liberals are saying they’d rather let people seeking the safety of asylum here in Canada suffer under Donald Trump’s rules, than stand up for human rights and Canadian values,” she wrote in a statement Friday afternoon.

“It’s un-Canadian.”

Source: Liberals appealing ruling striking down Canada-U.S. asylum agreement

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