Diaspora groups join calls for public inquiry on foreign interference

2023/06/08 Leave a comment

We continue to fail diaspora groups (interesting that it was the Bloc that organized the meeting):

A day after embattled special rapporteur David Johnston defended his approach to investigating foreign interference before a parliamentary committee, multiple Chinese-Canadian diaspora groups say he should have consulted them and are calling for a public inquiry.

“Mr. Johnston’s report is a huge disappointment,” said Gloria Fung, president of the Canada-Hong Kong Link, during a joint news conference with other diaspora groups organized by the Bloc Québécois.

Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet said Johnston has failed to reach out to the diaspora organizations.

Johnston’s committee testimony on Tuesday dominated question period Wednesday afternoon. Opposition MPs have voted three times for a public inquiry already and have asked the special rapporteur to resign his position.

“While the prime minister is protecting the secrets of the Liberal Party, he’s not protecting people oppressed by the China who still family that have stayed under the thumb of the Chinese regime and deserve to be safe in Canada and Quebec,” Blanchet told the Commons. “Will the prime minister act like a leader and launch a public inquiry?”

In response, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said protecting diaspora communities is a priority for his government.

“We know the first targets of  Chinese interference are diaspora communities,” he said. “That’s why we’re so firm in protecting them and are getting them involved in the decisions we’re taking.”

Trudeau reminded Parliament that Johnston plans to start touring the country in the summer to speak to diaspora communities and issue recommendations to government “on the best way to protect them.”

The special rapporteur’s office did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

During his testimony before the procedure and House affairs committee Tuesday, Johnston discussed his plans to speak with diaspora communities, government representatives, experts and intelligence officials in July.

“For this work, I will be supported by three special advisers with expertise in national security intelligence, law and diaspora community matters,” he said.

He said those advisers have not yet been chosen.

Speaking to CBC’s Power and Politics Wednesday evening, Therchin said at first he would participate in the public hearings if asked, but then said he would want to think about it more.

“If boycotting the engagement with David Johnston sends a stronger message, then that’s something that I should discuss with my community,” he said.

“Canada is a free democratic country. Why the hesitation to have a public inquiry?”

Source: Diaspora groups join calls for public inquiry on foreign interference

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‘Nobody in the Chinese Canadian diaspora was surprised’: Diaspora communities balance fears of foreign meddling with political organizing

2023/03/25 Leave a comment

Of note:

As revelations continue to surface about interference by the Chinese government in recent Canadian elections, Canada’s diaspora communities say they’ve been warning about this issue for years.

They also insist that their communities have every right to organize politically and influence policy at every level of government and hope the recent revelations don’t cast a pall over these efforts.

Many members of the Chinese community said they had been warning government and security officials about foreign political interference from the Chinese government for years. 

“I can say with confidence that nobody in the Chinese Canadian diaspora was surprised at all when Global News first broke the story,” says Karen Woods, a co-founder of the Canadian Chinese Political Affairs Committee, a Toronto-based non-profit. 

Workers at the Chinese consulate in Toronto helped mobilize Chinese-Canadian voters to vote for Liberal candidate Han Dong in the riding of Don Valley North, according to recent reporting by Global News. Also reported were similar actions on behalf of the Chinese government in B.C. that contributed to the defeats of Conservative incumbents Alice Wong and Kenny Chiu in their Richmond ridings.

A string of stories by Global News and the Globe & Mail paint a picture of an intricate interference network set up by Chinese government actors to influence the 2019 and 2021 federal elections to ensure a Liberal victory. 

Calgary-based political scientist and Hub contributor Rahim Mohamed believes diaspora politics are organized to obtain greater cultural recognition within a country, or to influence a country’s foreign policy towards the “homeland,” which he notes is the right of any Canadian. 

“It may be an unseemly sort of politics to some, but it generally falls within the bounds of legitimate democratic activity,” says Mohamed. “If the recent intelligence leaks are to be believed, this is a clear-cut case of a hostile foreign power meddling in our democratic process, which is a totally different ball game.” 

Nonetheless, Mohamed believes diaspora politics can open the door to foreign interference in democratic elections.

“New Canadians have democratic rights just like all other Canadians. If they want to mobilize organically to influence public policy, I take no issue with that,” says Mohamed. “The challenge for policymakers will be dealing with the opportunities these diaspora networks give interloping foreign powers to meddle in our democratic processes.” 

With over 300,000 Cantonese speakers, 500,000 Mandarin speakers, and families that arrived last year or five generations ago, Woods says the Chinese-Canadian community is far too diverse to ever be fully under the sway of the Chinese government. 

“The Chinese-Canadian diaspora consists of people who have settled in Canada for more than five generations or people like me, who came to Canada at 12,” says Woods, who says most Chinese Canadians do not like the Chinese government. “We are no different than your everyday Canadian…we certainly are part of Team Canada.” 

Within the Chinese-Canadian community, Woods says some fault lines have developed between those whose families have lived in Canada for decades and new arrivals, as well as those born in Hong Kong, Taiwan, the Mainland, or outside China. 

“Based on these factors, your attitude toward Beijing and the CCP is going to be very different. And that is why you now have HK, Taiwanese voters that will never vote for a mainland candidate in elections,” says Woods. 

However, Woods says the Chinese government’s influence has helped silence divergent points of view on Hong Kong’s anti-extradition movement and the treatment of the Uyghur Muslim minority in western China. 

Hong Kong-born Canadians and residents, and pro-democracy activists more generally, are often confronted by supporters of the Chinese government when conducting demonstrations in cities like Vancouver and Toronto.

At the height of the 2019 anti-extradition protests in Hong Kong, crowds of pro-democracy and pro-Chinese government demonstrators at a busy Vancouver intersection had to be physically separated by the police. 

Kash Heed, a city councillor in Richmond, where over half of the population is of Chinese descent, says that diaspora communities have attempted to influence Canada’s relations with their ancestral homelands for hundreds of years, and this is present in every democracy. He says there is a marked distinction between members of a diaspora community attempting to influence Canadian politics and a foreign government directly interfering in Canadian elections. 

“If I can directly relate it to a foreign government, I don’t have a strong indication that they’re actively involved in it (electoral interference),” says Heed. “If I could relate it to foreigners that have come to Canada (and) that have settled in Canada, trying to influence which way we go, yes absolutely,” says Heed. 

When the Chinese government does target the diaspora in Canada, Woods says it is mostly the Mandarin-speaking community from Mainland China. 

“A large percentage of the Chinese Mainland diaspora certainly still supports Beijing, but I would also like to add that is not necessarily an ideologically driven affinity to the CCP,” says Woods, who notes there are many economic interests at play with China being Canada’s second-largest trading partner. “That adds a lot of weight.”  

Mohamed says one example of diaspora politics was the political shift of the Chinese-Australian community in the country’s 2022 federal election. 

Pointing out that Australian electoral districts with the largest Chinese-Australian populations swung heavily towards the Labor Party, Mohamed says it was reported as a response to the Liberal-National government’s deteriorating relationship with China. 

Labor, which ultimately unseated the Liberal-National government, has pursued a more moderate relationship with Beijing but has not reneged on regional security agreements aimed at countering China’s geopolitical ambitions in the Pacific region.

Source: ‘Nobody in the Chinese Canadian diaspora was surprised’: Diaspora communities balance fears of foreign meddling with political organizing 

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Amal Attar-Guzman: Diaspora communities in Canada are an incredible asset—if only we would take them seriously

2023/03/21 Leave a comment

The one point missing from this analysis is the divisions within the various diaspora communities. Members in most communities have diverse interests and viewpoints and thus the question of “who to take seriously” is not as straightforward as it may appear.

In the case of China, it appears the government was too cozy with Chinese Canadians who were more aligned with the Chinese regime than Chinese Canadians who were more independent:

China’s foreign interference in Canadian democracy has been the hot topic these past few weeks. The Conservatives and Bloc Québécois are demanding a public inquiry to investigate how the last two federal elections were compromised and who in the government knew what and when. 

This is not just a federal issue, either. In Ontario, the Progressive Conservative government has faced own its backlash, with allegations that PC MPP Vincent Ke served as a financial intermediary for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Toronto-area network.1

Canadians have strong feelings on the matter. A recent Angus Reid Institute poll finds that a plurality (40 percent) of Canadians now view China as a potential threat to Canadian interests, while over a quarter (26 percent) say that the Canadian government should proceed cautiously with Beijing. Only 12 percent of Canadians are favourable towards China.  

While the coverage of this story has been extensive and shows no signs of slowing down, one major element has been under-discussed in this affair: the impact on the Asian diaspora and other diaspora communities as a whole. 

Here in Canada, we love commending ourselves for having a pluralistic, open, and inclusive society where people from many parts of the world can live together peacefully and in harmony. Where diversity, famously, is our strength.

While I tend to agree with the premise, how does that shake out in practice? What’s the use of praising ourselves when government officials do not listen to diaspora communities when they are being harmed?

That has been the case in this current scandal, where warnings from the Chinese diaspora of potential foreign interference were not taken seriously. In fact, members of the community reported the issue of Chinese foreign interference as early as 2006. Instead, the Canadian political establishment, both Liberal and Conservative governments, mostly ignored them. 

Because of the severity of the scandal, there have finally been talks of officially setting up a publicly-available foreign influence registry, as outlined by Senate Bill S-237. This bill would require individuals or organizations that have ties with foreign governments to be officially registered,especially in the case where they seek to contact Canadian public officials. It would fall in line with what other allies have done, particularly in the U.S. and Australia. 

Many are apprehensive of this bill. There have been growing concerns that a foreign influence registry would be used to further incite anti-Asian sentiment in Canada, which has been prevalent in recent years. Over the course of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a 47 percent increase in racist incidents against the Asian community, according to a Chinese Canadian National Council Toronto Chapter and Project 1907 survey.

I am sympathetic to these concerns. Racism and xenophobia in times of crisis are not new here in Canada, and can at times be reflected by a political establishment. In fact, sadly, I have been on the other side of such treatment. Being half-Iraqi, I have experienced racist and xenophobic sentiments over the years following America’s invasion of Iraq 20 years ago, despite Canada not officially joining the war.2

But why did these sentiments persist? The answer is in large part because there was little to no national discussion on how these difficult situations impacted our communities, nor did the political establishment of the day care to hear our experiences or insights. And this didn’t just happen to my community. Ask any diaspora community and they’ll have similar stories. 

Dynamics in diaspora communities are complex. For those of you not part of a diaspora, let me paint a picture. Being a part of a diaspora community in Canada is to be living in two worlds. Not only do we operate on a daily basis within the larger local, regional, and national culture of the country that we immigrated or were born into. But many also retain strong communal connections with their respective diaspora community, either with other fellow community members or by maintaining professional, social, or familial ties back in their countries of origin. The WhatsApp groups that many of our older relatives are a part of are no joke. 

Additionally, people within diasporas have complicated relationships among themselves. Social, cultural, or political grievances are often uprooted and replanted in the soil of their new homes.

Diaspora communities are then often stuck between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, given these ties to their countries of origin, diasporas can be threatened by malicious adversarial actors back from their country of origin. This has often been the case with the CCP targeting members of the Chinese-Canadian community.

On the other hand, entire diaspora communities in Canada get chastised by the larger adoptive community and painted as the malicious actors themselves. As a result, many can feel as though they are living in a no man’s land, alienated by both their home country and their adopted country.

But there is a major upside. Because diasporas live and operate in two worlds and are culturally versed, they can provide the essential knowledge and intelligence that can be used to serve and protect Canada and its interests. Diaspora communities are the ace in Canada’s card deck. Their wealth of knowledge is an underutilized resource that Canada can tap into, if only we would listen.

But instead of being taken seriously, diaspora communities tend to be viewed by larger Canadian society in one of two ways: childlike and ignorant or dangerous and distrustful. By placing us in either category and not factoring us into the conversation, we are not seen as living, breathing communities that impact Canadian society at large. Both our issues and, importantly, our insights are ignored.

Thankfully, these last few weeks may be the wake-up call we need. Diaspora communities from the Canadian Coalition for a Foreign Influence Registry (CCFIR) have called on the federal government to start a foreign influence registry that will serve and protect diaspora community members. Hopefully their calls do not go unheeded. Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino announced that there will be public consultations on any foreign agent registry to broadly engage with all Canadians, including the Chinese diaspora and other affected communities.

Ultimately, not actively involving diaspora communities in our policymaking not only does a disservice to Canadian democracy, national security, and our institutions, it puts diaspora communities at risk. If a “Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian,” then those in diaspora communities ready to participate in building this country must be both 1) protected from harmful foreign influence and 2) taken seriously as valuable contributors to our national project.

Would this entire mess have been avoided if prudent care was taken to seriously listen to marginalized members of the Chinese diaspora who were ringing early alarm bells about foreign interference? Maybe, maybe not. But we would be a lot further along in solving this problem than we are right now.

Source: Amal Attar-Guzman: Diaspora communities in Canada are an incredible asset—if only we would take them seriously

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Cohen: The unspeakable silence of the Canadian Jewish establishment

2023/03/20 Leave a comment

Of note:

In its 75 years of nationhood, Israel has lived under a regime of unrelenting threat. Challenges to its security, unity and prosperity are as old as the country itself. Whatever the danger – invasion, war, terrorism, intifadas, boycotts, sanctions – it has come from beyond Israel’s borders.

No longer. The forces convulsing Israel over the past 10 weeks are made in Israel. They come from citizens protesting a religious, revolutionary government that wants to make the judiciary less independent, weakening the checks and balances that have protected minority rights. If Israel is in upheaval today, blame not marauding infidels, foreign armies or fifth columnists. Blame Israelis.

Oh, the irony. The power of its military, diplomacy and economy ensures Israel dominates the neighbourhood. As political scientist Steven A. Cook has noted, Israel has broadened relations with regional partners while ensuring Israel’s armed forces, brandishing nuclear weapons, are matchless. There is a mortal threat from Iran, yes. But Israel is less vulnerable than it was during the wars of 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973, or any other time. “Israel is in a better strategic position than ever,” Mr. Cook argues. “And its sovereignty is beyond question.”

At home, though, Israel is roiling with insurrection. Its soul is under siege. Ehud Barak, the former prime minister, calls for “civil disobedience” if the new government passes its agenda; he says Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition is using “the tools of democracy in order to destroy [Israel] from within.” From afar, the Jewish diaspora watches this unravelling with a mix of acquiescence, incredulity, resignation, helplessness, fear and anger.

Among Canada’s 400,000 or so Jews, the response is muted. Some have voiced their opposition to Mr. Netanyahu’s plans through the campaigns of progressive Jewish organizations. From more centrist Jewish groups: silence.

It has come to this: In Israel’s hour of crisis, as thousands fill the streets, protesting the assault on democracy and human rights, mainstream Jews in Canada are unseen and unheard. They have been orphaned by timid, tepid leadership out of step with their views. This is the unspeakable silence of the Canadian Jewish establishment.

The emblem of that establishment is the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA). It calls itself the “advocacy agent” of the Jewish Federations of Canada, an umbrella of organizations providing social services and advancing Jewish interests.

CIJA initially called itself “the exclusive agent” of Canadian Jews. Now, more modestly, it “represents the diverse perspectives of more than 150,000 Jewish Canadians affiliated with their local Jewish Federation.” That claim is dubious. Is every one of these 150,000 individuals “affiliated” with a federation (presumably as donors or volunteers) duly represented by CIJA? How does CIJA know? And even if all were aligned with CIJA, this would still represent less than half of Canadian Jewry, suggesting that CIJA – for all its hopes and boasts – is far less relevant than it admits.

Then again, CIJA has overstated its stature since it was created in 2011, when it absorbed the Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) and the Canada-Israel Committee. Discarding its “legacy name” like day-old bagels, CIJA dropped “Canadian” and added “Israel.” It insisted its restructuring had “the overwhelmingly support of the community.” Not necessarily. Bernie Farber, who was at Congress (as it was called) for most of his long, distinguished career in Jewish advocacy, calls it a hostile takeover of what was known as “the parliament of Canadian Jewry.”

For many Canadian Jews, the end of Congress was an affront, reflecting the agenda of wealthy Jews sympathetic to Stephen Harper’s Conservatives. For me, it was a loss. Congress was founded by my great uncle, Lyon Cohen, among others, in 1919. He was president until 1934, supported by my grandfather, Abraham Zebulon Cohen. Although at first the CJC did little beyond establishing the Jewish Immigrant Aid Society, Congress eventually became a spirited democratic voice led by prominent Jews in business, law, the clergy and the academy. Among them were Samuel Bronfman, Gunther Plaut, Reuven Bulka, Irving Abella, Dorothy Reitman and Irwin Cotler.

Prof. Abella, the late eminent historian, called it “a unique organization” with “no parallel anywhere else in the Jewish world.” It was a forum “where all the problems of Canadian Jewry could be debated,” including human rights, equity, immigration, free speech, social justice and interfaith dialogue. “No one doubted that when the CJC spoke, it spoke on behalf of all Canadian Jewry,” he said.

Today no one believes CIJA speaks for Canadian Jewry. It is not a parliament. Its officers are unelected. Its annual budget is secret. It is evasive (after pleasantly acknowledging my queries, none were answered.) The organization does admirable things, such as fighting antisemitism. It also champions Israel, about which, let it be said, its chief executive officer, Shimon Fogel, cannot utter a discouraging word.

Scour CIJA’s Twitter account, its news releases and Mr. Fogel’s interviews, and it’s hard to find a single criticism of the Netanyahu government (except, recently discovering intestinal fortitude, it denounced Israel’s hateful Finance Minister for urging the eradication of a Palestinian village.) CIJA presumably believes its subtlety and caution serves the community, whose views on the unrest in Israel have been unclear.

Now, though, we know more. A comprehensive poll by EKOS Research Associates finds that Canadian Jews overwhelmingly oppose changes to Israel’s high court and other proposed measures, such as banning gay pride parades and imposing gender segregation in public spaces. That is just one poll, commissioned by JSpaceCanada and the New Israel Fund of Canada (NIFC). Still, it provides “a fair baseline representation of Jewish community perspectives in issues of vital importance,” says Robert Brym, a sociologist at the University of Toronto who oversaw the survey.

If this is a correct reading of Jewish attitudes, CIJA is ignoring them, even as Mr. Fogel insists otherwise. “While marginal groups may heckle from the sidelines,” he told the Canadian Jewish News, “in fact, CIJA not only has the access but has used its privileged position to meet with senior Israeli leadership” in and out of government. Those recent meetings were preceded by other private interventions, he reported.

Mr. Fogel, who lacks the influence of the luminaries who ran Congress, suggests his quiet diplomacy is more effective than public pressure. His scorn for other Jewish voices – heckling from the sidelines – reflects an erosion of civility within the community. Relations are so fraught that CIJA has threatened, in writing, to sue the NIFC and JSpaceCanada for attributing statements to Mr. Fogel that he denies are his.

Mr. Farber, who was CEO of the CJC, says this level of rancour is unprecedented in Canada. “There were always differences, sometimes prickly, but it was always ‘Macy’s versus Gimbels.’ It was always kept within the community. There was an unwritten rule that we ought not air our dirty laundry in public. We kept things unzera, in Yiddish, ‘among ourselves.’”

Then, again, it’s understandable that some Jews are reluctant to speak out, even though Jews are acutely sensitive to injustice and have historically protested it everywhere, notably as leading participants in the U.S. civil rights movement. They were raised to revere Israel and to remember the Holocaust. They don’t want to give ammunition to antisemites. The rabbi of my synagogue, who presides over a large, conservative congregation, says that were he an Israeli, he would join the protests. From his pulpit, though, he argues Israel is “a liberal democracy” that will get by without his advice.

There are other explanations for this reticence. It may be our character, which is less assertive than Americans, Australians and Britons. It may be that shutting up is the price of access, be it in Ottawa (which has been less critical of Israel than other governments) or Jerusalem. It may be the absence of a lively Jewish press as a forum for liberal Zionist voices.

And what good, skeptics might ask, is rushing to the ramparts anyway? Do we think Jerusalem really cares? Actually, Mr. Netanyahu might listen to the diaspora and foreign governments, if they made enough noise – and some threats, too. Meanwhile, he pushes his illiberal project forward because he can.

It isn’t that there are no critics among prominent Canadian Jews. Former Supreme Court Justice Rosalie Abella has warned of the dangers to the independence of Israel’s judiciary. So has Mr. Cotler among about 175 jurists who have signed a petition. The NIFC and JSpaceCanada are rallying opposition and raising public awareness, vigorously and effectively, as are Canadian Friends of Peace Now. To them, CIJA and its silent partners are marginal while they are mainstream, and this is no time for nuance.

But where are other Jews – entrepreneurs, doctors, artists, professors? Where are the philanthropists declaring their alarm, as Charles Bronfman, the Canadian co-founder of Birthright, and other Jewish billionaires and foundations have in the U.S.? Where are rabbis as passionate as Micah Streiffer of Toronto, who says it is our obligation to speak up when Israel abandons basic values, a response that is the real expression “of our love”?

In 1965, a young Elie Wiesel visited the Soviet Union to observe the life of its three million Jews. That produced his haunting cri de coeur, The Jews of Silence. Curiously, he confessed that he was less concerned about Soviet Jews than the detachment of his American co-religionists, a lament that has an eerie contemporary resonance amid Israel’s moral crisis.

“What torments me most is not the silence of the Jews I met in Russia,” he wrote, “but the silence of the Jews I live among today.”

Andrew Cohen is a journalist and professor of journalism at Carleton University. His most recent book is Two Days in June: John F. Kennedy and the 48 Hours That Made History.

Source: Cohen: The unspeakable silence of the Canadian Jewish establishment

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The contract of Nigerian citizenship and diaspora voting

2022/09/08 Leave a comment

Of note, Nigerian debate over diaspora/expatriate voting, with relevance to Canada given the large number of Nigerian immigrants (among the top 5 in recent years):

In civilized democracies around the world, the constitutional architecture of public offices rightly prioritises the office of the president, prime minister, governor, mayor, member of parliament etc. Now, none of those offices would exist but for those who put them there and, therefore, to whom they are ultimately accountable: citizens.

The hypothesis therein is that the office of the citizen or, the citizen, is, upon the singular criterion of the power to hire and fire; more important that of the president, prime minister, mayor, governor, member of parliament or national assembly member! That is because all those office holders can be impeached for criminality, wrongful acts or omissions or a combination thereof by citizens, through their elected representatives. More importantly, sovereignty belongs to the people (citizens) of Nigeria from whom government derives all its powers and authority by virtue of section 14 (1) of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999, as amended, (“the Constitution”). What would be the point of any government without citizens anyway?

Who then is a citizen? The Constitution specifies 3 categories of citizenship; first, by birth; second, by registration, and third, by naturalisation. Citizenship, by virtue of section 25 (1) (a), (b) and (c), encompasses; every person born in Nigeria before independence, 1st October 1960, either of whose parents or any of whose grandparents belongs to, or belonged to, an indigenous Nigeria community. It includes every person born in Nigeria post-independence, either of whose parents, or grandparents, or any of whose grandparents is a Nigerian citizen; and every person born outside Nigeria either of whose parents is a Nigerian citizen.

Subject to the provisions of section 26 therein and strict residency requirements, a person, whether single, or married to Nigerian citizen, may be registered as a Nigerian citizen if such a person is of good character, establishes a clear intention to be domiciled in Nigeria, takes the statutory oath of allegiance to the country. Section 27 of the Constitution also establishes the modus operandi of citizenship by naturalisation upon similar foundations as that of registration.

Thus, a de facto social contract is established by the Constitution between citizens and government in that the “security and welfare of the people shall be primary purpose of government”, and the “participation by the people (citizens) in their government shall be ensured in accordance with the provisions of this Constitution” Section 14 (1) (a), and (b) therein, establishes that on the one hand; and, the fact that the people must abide by the laws of the land and, when abroad, obey the laws of those countries, on the other hand. That social contract in turn entitles, upon compliance with the relevant laws, people to the fundamental rights embedded in sections 33 through 43 inclusive of the Constitution. These include the right to: life, dignity of the human person, personal liberty; private and family life; freedom of thought, conscience and religion; freedom of expression and the press; peaceful assembly and association; freedom of movement; freedom from discrimination; and the right to acquire and own immovable property anywhere in Nigeria. These rights are not inviolable and may lawfully be derogated pursuant to section 45 (1) (a) and (b) of the Constitution in the interest of defence, public safety, public order, public morality or public health.

Today, September 7, 2022, Nigerian citizens domiciled abroad that is, Nigerians in diaspora, are not legally allowed to vote in Nigerian elections from their countries of domicile. In other words, they have been, and are being, disenfranchised and discriminated against.

This is a clear and present violation of the explicit provisions of section 42 (1) (a) which establishes that “a citizen of Nigeria of a particular community, ethnic group, place of origin, sex, religion or political opinion shall not, by reason only that he is such a person – be subjected either expressly by, or in the practical application of, any law in force in Nigeria or any executive or administrative action of the government, to disabilities or restrictions to which citizens of Nigeria or of other communities, ethnic groups, places of origin, sex, religions or political opinions are not made subject.”

The extant discrimination against Nigeria’s own citizens by the state, in violation of established constitutional provisions is perplexing and raises several pertinent questions.

One, is diaspora voting technology rocket science in the 21st Century? Alas, it is not! Afterall, if today’s smart encryption technology enables natural and unnatural persons to undertake secure financial transactions on a variety of portable devices, across continents and diverse time zones, why not electronic voting in diaspora?

Two, is there an absence of political will? Self-evidently! The International Institute for Democratic & Electoral Assistance (IDEA) affirms that Belgium, Canada, United Kingdom, USA are some of the western nations with a mature diaspora voting mechanism. IDEA also establishes that Angola, Benin, Burkina Faso, Kenya (as recently as 2022!), Morocco, Togo and South Africa et al have implemented diasporan voting into their electoral practices. The implication is that if the identified African countries, including a neighbouring state, can implement diaspora voting, there cannot be an objective rationale for discriminating against established Nigerian citizens who wish to exercise their rights to participate.

Three, is diasporan voting a back burner issue, which should not be prioritised? Again, the answer is no! Progressive nations consistently advance the security and welfare of their people (citizens), economic development, prudently manage public finances and, concurrently, discard outmoded practices and policies through innovative reforms. Put differently, citizens rightly expect performing governments to multi-task, and successfully deliver, on cross cutting themes impacting their lives whether its fiscal or monetary policy, national security, healthcare transformation, infrastructure development, education policy and electoral reform, the subject of this treatise.

Besides, the Nigerian Diaspora Commission estimates that there are approximately 17 million to 20 million Nigerians in diaspora who remit in excess of $ 25 billion annually to the Nigerian economy. If Nigerians in diaspora are good enough to remit billions to the home economy, which fuels economic growth in agriculture, education, healthcare, real estate, generates fiscal revenue for all tiers of government and, therefore, increasing GDP, upon what rational logic are they barred from participating in elections from their places of domicile?

To put this into some global perspective, the right to vote was routinely denied African- Americans and women in swathes of America, British and South African history. So, although the American Declaration of Independence was adopted on 4th July 1776, and the U.S. Constitution ratified on June 21, 1788, it took the abolition of slavery in 1865, through the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1866, for citizenship to be granted to all persons “born or naturalized in the United States, including former slaves and established “equal protection of the laws” for all citizens.

Whilst the 15th Amendment in 1870 enunciated that voting rights could not be “denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, colour or previous condition of servitude”, women only received the right to vote in the mid-19th Century with the adoption of the 19th Amendment; which impeded voter discrimination on the grounds of gender.

In the United Kingdom, women were only accorded full voting rights via the Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act 1928. This statute gave women equal voting rights as men irrespective of their age and property-owning status. And, after decades of apartheid in South Africa, free and fair multiparty elections were administered for the first time in 1994, which produced “Madiba” Nelson Mandela as the first indigenous President of that country.

The above abridged historical detour is necessary in order to afford legislators and policy makers a broader and deeper understanding of, and the rationale for, the robust quest for electoral reform manifested, in part, in the extant advocacy for diaspora voting rights. After all, it took centuries for African Americans, all South Africans and women, around the world to gain the right to vote. It would be perverse to turn a blind eye to this pressing issue which, arguendo, will reinforce greater participation by a wider critical mass and, by deduction, reduce perennial voter apathy. The inescapable corollary is democratic credence and not democratic deficiency.

Paradoxically, the Electoral Act 2022 is silent on the question of diaspora voting. Section 9, Part III, of the latter statute, on the National Register of Voters and Voter Registration, does not expressly define a voter. It only makes reference at section 9 (1) (a) and (b) to persons: “entitled to vote in any Federal State, Local Government or Federal Capital Territory Area Council election” and “with a disability status disaggregated by type of disability.” A reasonable inductive interpretation to this provision is that “persons” therein assumes the same meaning as Nigerian citizens with the 1999 Constitution (supra), who have attained majority and suffer no legal impediments to participation in elections.

Synthesising the foregoing, it is recommended that: (1) legislators, irrespective of ideological leanings, seize the political will and enact the necessary reforms to place diaspora voting on the statute book without further delay; (2) amendments be made to the Electoral Act and expressly define a “voter” for drafting precision; (3) because the legal impediments to diaspora voting either wittingly, or unwittingly, creates two categories of citizens. That is, those within Nigerian borders and those domiciled abroad; that dichotomy constitutes an affront to the rule of law and the equality of persons. There cannot be two categories of citizens within the 1999 Constitution. Therefore, the lacuna created by the electoral disenfranchisement of Nigerians in diaspora should be tackled urgently.

Paraphrasing Hilary Clinton above, morality dictates that the integrity of the voting process will be enhanced, not diminished, with diasporan voting.

Ojumu Esq is the Principal Partner, Balliol Myers LP, a firm of legal practitioners based in Lagos, Nigeria.

Source: The contract of Nigerian citizenship and diaspora voting

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India is in a COVID-19 crisis. South Asian-Canadians are weeping from afar, but also seeing devastating parallels for our people in Ontario

2021/04/28 Leave a comment

Captures well some of the dilemmas facing diaspora communities:

11,627 km.

That’s the distance from my house in Peel to Delhi, India, where the majority of my family lives.

This past week has been extremely difficult as a first generation Canadian born in India. I watch the devastation occurring in my hometown, and can’t help but see the parallels happening here in Ontario within the South Asian community. Immigrants like myself are fighting two pandemics – one here and one tens of thousands kilometres away, and it weighs heavily, each and every day.

On March 23, India had 40,000 COVID-19 cases. Fastforward to April 22, that number rose to 330,000. This is what exponential growth looks like. Experts believe these numbers are vastly under-reported by a margin of at least 10 times. Even if 10 per cent of these were hospitalized, with the average COVID-19 related hospital or ICU stay being 15 days, there is simply no healthcare system in the world that has the capacity to sustain such volume.

The situation in India is grave and complex. India saw a sharp decline in cases earlier this year, with around 10,000 cases on average per day in February. This unfortunately led to a sense of complacency, with some experts claiming preemptively that the country had achieved herd immunity. Subsequently, life returned to a form of “normalcy,” with weddings, religious festivals and political rallies being commonplace. Even Kumbh Mela, which is one of the largest gatherings in the world that sees upwards of 110 million people over the duration of the festival and up to 30 million people per day, went ahead as planned.

Complacency, however, wasn’t the only factor that led us to this situation. It’s a culmination of other factors. India has one of the lowest testing capacities per capita, with only 0.4 tests conducted per 10,000 people. India also has a much slower vaccination program. While India has manufactured large quantities of vaccines, it has distributed the majority of these globally. It is one of the largest suppliers into the COVAX program, accounting for 60 per cent of global vaccine supply. Meanwhile, less than 10 per cent of India’s own population has received one dose of the vaccine, with only 1 per cent fully vaccinated with two doses.

In addition, India now has a potentially concerning new variant, B.1.617, that amongst many mutations has two critical ones — L452R and E484Q — within the spike protein, making it more transmissible and possibly able to evade pre-existing immunity. It is still unknown whether vaccines are efficacious against this variant.

The stories, pictures and videos coming out of India are devastating. Scenes of people lying on the ground on the street with oxygen masks connected to empty tanks, dying outside of hospitals that did not have capacity to take them in, health care systems collapsing. There are make-shift outdoor hospitals, mass cremations sites, and reports of families having to keep dead bodies of relatives at home for two days because there was no wood left to build a funeral pyre. Hospital with mere hours left of oxygen supply.

Many in the South Asian diaspora are carrying the burden of knowing our own family members are amongst those affected. My father, who lives with me, spends his entire day calling each and every one of his family and friends. So many infected, many hospitalized, many searching for hospitals. Daily updates, sometimes hourly. Everytime he utters Hari Om Tat Sat (a sanskrit mantra) I wait with baited breath. I feel helpless remembering we are again, 11,627 km, apart — a number I can’t stop thinking about.

What hurts my heart even more is knowing that what is occurring to my people in India is also occurring here on Canadian soil. South Asians have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19. The pandemic has been deeply inequitable, from support and protections to testing and now access to vaccines. Further, we are seeing additional stigmatization of South Asians due to this new variant now being found in Canada despite the fact that the primary reason for transmission remains to be structural barriers faced by our racialized communities. And like me, they are dealing with two pandemics — the one here and the one back home.

It really feels like because our skin is brown, our lives mean less. But we didn’t get to choose the colour of skin we were born into our socioeconomic status. We didn’t get to choose the country we were born in.

It was heartbreaking to see the world’s response to India’s crisis. Canada shut its borders. Simultaneously, our Premier’s office contacted the Indian high commissioner to request additional AstraZeneca vaccines in spite of the current crisis. The United States of America continues to sit on unused AstraZeneca vaccines and withhold raw materials required for India to manufacture more vaccines. This ‘me first’ strategy is not only inequitable, it is unwise because we know how the pandemic unfolds in one country will eventually happen in another.

And this is why vaccine nationalism is lethal. Your access to vaccines and subsequent right to life is dependent on factors that are out of your control. It is the stark inequities, the perpetuation of discrimination, the haves vs the have nots, the unfairness of it all that weighs heavily on me.

India gasps for air and burns with funeral pyres. But these lives don’t seem to matter. Because they’re brown.

I can’t stop crying. Because my heart can’t take it anymore.

Source: https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2021/04/24/india-is-in-a-covid-19-crisis-south-asian-canadians-are-weeping-from-afar-but-also-seeing-devastating-parallels-for-our-people-in-ontario.html?li_source=LI&li_medium=thestar_recommended_for_you

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For some Canadians, this is the second half of the coronavirus battle. With family overseas, they’ve lived it for months

2020/04/07 Leave a comment

For so many of us, whether first, second or subsequent generations, connections to countries of origin or family members in other countries, this is very much or our reality. In our case, family members and friend in countries in Europe, the USA and the Mid-East mean we follow those statistics and situations as we do the situation in Canada:

Although it may have seemed an eternity, Canada has been on a travel lockdown for only two weeks due to the coronavirus pandemic, and many Canadians didn’t see major disruptions to their ordinary lives until mid-March.

For Canadians like Shahien Alipour, however, who have family in global epicentres of the pandemic, the coronavirus has been a cause of distress for months.

Alipour was born and raised in the Greater Toronto Area, but feels closely connected with his Iranian culture.

The York University student speaks fluent Farsi and together with his parents, he would visit Tehran once or sometimes twice a year to take in the historical sites and spend time with extended family.

“Just today, I got off the phone with my cousin. He told me he got it,” he said in an interview with the Star on Wednesday.

His cousin, who is 32, is expecting to make a full recovery from COVID-19, but several of their older relatives in Iran weren’t as lucky.

“Three of my dad’s cousins died from coronavirus. I hadn’t met them personally, but just …wow,” Alipour said with a tone of disbelief.

He is worried about his surviving relatives, because Iran was already in a precarious state with serious economic and political problems. Now, the country has been devastated by coronavirus, with more than 53,000 confirmed cases and at least 3,294 confirmed deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.

While Alipour has been reading the news from Iran and around the world since early February, he felt that many of his friends and acquaintances in Toronto weren’t taking the highly infectious disease seriously at first.

“I feel that Canadians do tend to live in a bubble where we assume bad things happen elsewhere,” Alipour said.

“Now that the bubble has burst, we’ve been re-examining our lives and I hope that leads to a breakdown of barriers between people and nations.”

As Yue Qian, a Vancouver-based native of Wuhan put it: “If we think of coronavirus as a global battle, there were first and second halves.

“For people with transnational ties, we’ve had to experience the whole battle. This adds more stress because we’ve been worrying about the situation since January,” she said.

Then there was the dynamic where Asians who quickly began to social distance and wear masks at the outset of the pandemic were being mocked for “overreacting.”

Qian is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of British Columbia. Her current research focuses on a cross-cultural analysis of human experiences of the coronavirus pandemic.

“The effectiveness of quarantine and social distancing measures seems to differ between countries,” she said, speculating that cultural norms might have something to do with it, but there isn’t data to prove it.

For Laurel Chor, a Canadian-born multimedia journalist from Hong Kong who recently reported on coronavirus in Italy, the relatively relaxed response she’s seen from some Westerners has been baffling.

Chor lives in Hong Kong, where there has been intensive handwashing, social distancing and a near-universal wearing of masks in public. Despite its proximity to mainland China, there have only been four coronavirus-related deaths in the city.

“In Milan, I was really shocked. I didn’t understand what was going on,” she told the Star, adding she was very surprised by how people were reacting.

“I was there one week after the region had gone into lockdown, and at that point people were getting bored of it and already coming back out and saying the government was taking it too seriously and it was just the flu.

“I was at a café scripting, and on the other side, there was a man coughing uncontrollably at the faces of his three companions, and they didn’t care,” Chor said. “If this happened in Hong Kong, he would be kicked out by an angry mob. I just didn’t understand how everyone was being nonchalant.”

She thinks peer pressure and self-consciousness might have something to do with the different reactions.

“When people around you aren’t reacting, you don’t want to react. You don’t want to be the odd one out. And in Hong Kong, everyone was reacting, so you want to react.

“It’s interesting how the prevailing attitude indicates how everyone acts, because no one wants to be the odd one out.”

Alipour thinks that differing levels of trust in a society are a factor, too.

In Iran, many people have been disillusioned and angered by the government for so long, that even if officials there had responded more quickly, he doesn’t think that would’ve galvanized much public action.

“People in Iran seemed to start taking it seriously mostly after they saw that it was spreading and people were dying, so people started staying home and shutting down businesses … out of concern for their communities,” Alipour said.

“I would say to Canadians, don’t think this will happen only to other people. It can happen to anyone. But there are ways to protect ourselves, so keep your heads up and have hope.”

Source: For some Canadians, this is the second half of the coronavirus battle. With family overseas, they’ve lived it for months

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Daphne Bramham: China’s long reach laid bare by Hong Kong protests

2019/08/21 Leave a comment

Expect we will continue to see many articles like this:

Beijing’s long reach into the Chinese diaspora and beyond has rarely been as evident as it is now.

On Monday, Twitter suspended 936 accounts, which it described as “the most active” of 200,000 accounts representing “a larger, spammy network.” The accounts originating in China were “deliberately and specifically attempting to sow political discord in Hong Kong, including undermining the legitimacy and political positions of the protest movement on the ground.”

Based on “intensive investigations, Twitter said it has “reliable evidence to support that this is a coordinated state-backed operation. Specifically, we identified large clusters of accounts behaving in a coordinated manner to amplify messages related to the Hong Kong protests.”

Based on Twitter’s findings, Facebook also shut down seven pages, three groups and seven accounts.

Fortunately, this weekend’s march by an estimated 1.7 million Hong Kongers was peaceful after several weeks of violence and alleged police brutality.

But there were rising tensions in several Canadian cities as well as Paris, London, New York City and Sydney where pro-Beijing counter-protests were hastily arranged at sites of rallies held in support of Hong Kong’s protest movement.

The counter-protests were strikingly similar with denunciations of the Hong Kong “rioters” and “traitors” and false accusations of Hong Kongers demanding independence from China. They sang the Chinese national anthem under seemingly fresh-from-the-package Chinese flags and scores of identical placards.

With their own citizens protesting in the streets — many of them of Chinese ancestry — Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister Crystia Freeland and the European Union’s foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini were told to mind their own business by China. They had issued a joint statement urging restraint and condemning the “rising number of unacceptable violent incidents” in Hong Kong that might lead to “risks of further violence and instability.”

In Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto, police were busy keeping protesters and counter-protesters separated and safe.

On Saturday, social media chatter among Vancouver-based China’s supporters included boasts about bringing bricks, rocks and knives to hastily organized counter-protests that resulted in a more obvious police presence than at previous events. Whether the threats were legitimate, it’s up to the police to investigate.

Later, scores of counter-protesters gathered outside Nordstrom’s, video posted on Facebook shows one young man marching past the red flags with his arm raised in a pseudo-Nazi salute with Chinese singing in the background. The show of forced convinced the organizers of a nearby pro-Hong Kong event to cancel.

On Sunday, a convoy of flag-draped cars and some landscaping trucks that had blocked the street outside the Chinese consul general’s house on Granville Street during a rally drove to a nearby church.

There, about 80 worshippers met to pray for peace, freedom, human rights and democracy in the former British colony. Police kept the 100 or so flag-waving and red-clad demonstrators away from the church and helped escort the worshippers though the crowd when the prayers ended.

Chris Chiu, one of the prayer meeting’s organizers, called it an assault on religious freedom, freedom of assembly and freedom of expression — something protected in Canada, but absent in China.

“We definitely felt intimidated,” he said. “As far as I know this doesn’t even happen in Hong Kong. Some churches there have opened their space during protests so that people can have a rest, get first aid or some water. They’re like shelters.

“It was definitely outrageous and shocking. It makes me feel very angry and unsafe even in Canada.”

Chiu said members of Vancouver Christians for Love, Peace and Justice will be meeting later this week to talk about their future.

“Are we going to hold any prayer meeting for Hong Kong or any other causes that China doesn’t like? Do we have to think about safety? About contacting police or hiring security guards? We don’t know the answers.”

Bizarrely, there were also by noisy drive-bys of flag-draped luxury cars at protests sites in Vancouver and Toronto.

Ferraris, McLarens, Aston Martins and Porsches revved their engines and honking is intimidation on a whole different scale in cities that have been roiled by a different kind of social unrest from residents who have been priced out of the housing market and who have been rocked by a multi-billion-dollar, money-laundering scandal that’s been linked to China.

The revving of cars that cost more than many people’s homes was another ostentatious reminder of China’s economic power.

Canada and Canadians are already suffering the economic consequences of China’s retribution for cleaving to our own values and upholding the rule of law with regard to Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou.

She’s under house arrest in her multi-million Vancouver home, awaiting an extradition trial, while two Canadians — Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig — have been jailed without trial in China and two others jailed in China have been condemned to death.

People in Hong Kong are in a life-and-death struggle to retain the vestiges of freedom that have made the city-state so vibrant. They are struggling to retain their own culture and customs and even the Cantonese language, which is increasingly being replaced by Mandarin.

As the Chinese government exerts ever increasing influence over other countries in Asia, Africa and in Canada, Hong Kongers are not alone in thinking that they may just be the canary in the coal mine.

Source: Daphne Bramham: China’s long reach laid bare by Hong Kong protests

Filed under foreign policy, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , ,

How Canadians are part of an underground network helping Hong Kong protesters in their struggle against Chinese control

2019/07/16 Leave a comment

Good long read:

Dark circles ring Abraham Wong’s eyes. The Vancouver realtor’s phone has been on 24 hours a day since early June, when a series of protests against Hong Kong’s controversial extradition bill intensified.

In a downtown Vancouver office Thursday, Wong’s phone continually buzzed with messages from protesters on the ground in Hong Kong. He is texting and talking to people as young as 14, answering questions about everything from how to immigrate to Canada to how overseas audiences perceive the police crackdowns on protesters.

The 32-year-old businessman, who has both Canadian and Hong Kong citizenship, said he is one of hundreds of Canadian-based supporters of the pro-democracy movement that has spilled onto the streets of the former British colony.

Protests have become part of life for Hong Kongers, ever since it was returned to Chinese rule in 1997 under a “one country, two systems” agreement, which requires Beijing to respect the autonomy of its rule-of-law legal system for 50 years.

Tens of thousands of people from Hong Kong immigrated to Canada in the years surrounding what is known as the 1997 “handover,” but many remain engaged in the city’s struggles.

Wong is the public face of the Canadian supporters, who are part of an informal, international network that has expanded in recent weeks to help Hong Kongers who are protesting the extradition bill.

The unnamed network provides free legal information, public outreach to raise awareness and media relations for protesters, including some who broke into and vandalized the Hong Kong legislature on July 1 and now fear they will be arrested by police.

“If protesters seek asylum in our countries, we are prepared to do whatever we can do to help them settle safely,” says Wong, who was born in Hong Kong and participated in pro-democracy protests before he immigrated to Canada in 2003.

“We would help them find accommodation, find jobs or enrol in school. We have volunteer translators ready to help.”

One by one, organizers such as Wong introduce trusted people into the network. Members now include people from Vancouver, Toronto, New York, Germany and Tokyo. Most have Hong Kong roots, since they are motivated partly out of concern for relatives and friends living in the city.

The groups are careful not to expose the identities of the protesters they are trying to help and use encrypted apps to communicate with people in Hong Kong, Asia’s most Canadian city.

An estimated 300,000 Canadian citizens call Hong Kong home, while more than 200,000 immigrants from Hong Kong live in Canada, according to the 2016 Census. Hong Kongers have a soft spot for Canada, ever since close to 2,000 Canadians bolstered British forces to fight the Japanese at the beginning of the Second World War. Many were captured and kept as prisoners of war until they were liberated in 1945; almost a quarter did not make it home again, according to Veterans Affairs Canada.

Canadians are once again stepping into the fray, this time armed only with cellphones and apps, aiding the fight for what some describe as the soul of Hong Kong.

They include the network of supporters back home, but also Canadians on the ground in Hong Kong, a city on the southern tip of mainland China. The downtown financial district is just a one-hour train ride away from the closest mainland city of Shenzhen.

At the heart of the latest uprisings is a fear of greater Chinese government control over Hong Kong and the erosion of civil liberties, spurred by the prospect of amendments to its Fugitive Offenders Ordinance. The amendments would have made it easier to send suspected criminals to mainland China to face trial in courts controlled by the Communist Party.

“Hong Kongers have seen their rights and core values come under attack: freedom, justice and democracy,” Wong wrote in a June 13 editorial for the Star about the extradition bill.

He feared that, by speaking out publicly against the bill, he could be arrested and sent to mainland China the next time he stepped foot in Hong Kong or even had a stopover at the airport.

The protests, which started in April when Hong Kongers first heard of the amendments, continued after the city government suspended the approval process on June 15 but did not formally axe the bill.

On July 1, the 22nd anniversary of the city’s return to Chinese sovereignty from British rule, a group of young protesters broke into the legislature building and destroyed furniture, defaced portraits and sprayed protest graffiti all over the walls of the legislature that read: “Hong Kong is not China, not yet” and “The government forced us to revolt.”

In Hong Kong four days later, pro-democracy lawmaker Claudia Mo described how she tried to stop a young man from storming the legislature, where she holds one of 70 seats as an independent with no party affiliation.

“He reminded me of my son, a rugby player,” Mo, a graduate of Ottawa’s Carleton University, said in a July 5 interview at a coffee shop while the legislature was closed for repairs. “He was vowing to storm in and I approached him, saying, ‘Hey look, think twice, the rioting charge could cost you 10 years behind bars. It’s just not worth it.’ He put his arm around my shoulders and seemed to appreciate the concern, but told me to get out of the way … they would die for this fight.”

The day before, pro-Beijing lawmaker Regina Ip, chairperson of the New People’s Party, and a backer of the extradition bill, said in an interview that she was interested in how the leaderless protesters were so well organized and noted that solidarity marches have happened around the world against the extradition bill.

She said she had no hard evidence that foreign governments had “interfered” in the Hong Kong protests, but noted interference and influence are two different things.

“Naturally, foreign influence is pervasive. Influence is not the same as direct interference,” Ip said in a July 4 interview at her office in Wanchai, in central Hong Kong.

“There are behind-the-scenes organizers no doubt, but it’s not for me to point fingers … The (Hong Kong) government should be proactive in investigating.”

Ip said politicians should focus on economic policies to fight poverty, which she said was the underlying reason for public resentment against the influence of mainland China.

Beijing’s state media has focused on the idea of foreign influence in the protests, where it’s not clear whether “foreigners” include the Hong Kong diaspora. In a June 9 editorial, the China Daily wrote that “some Hong Kong residents have been hoodwinked by the opposition camp and their foreign allies into supporting the anti-extradition campaign.”

An active Hong Kong protester, who did not give her name for fear she would be arrested, said her Canadian passport gave her the courage to engage in peaceful political resistance. She organized a volunteer first aid response team, which attends each protest to help people suffering from heatstroke, tear gas and altercations with police.

“My family was persecuted during the Cultural Revolution in mainland China (from 1966-1976), so they really valued the protection of a foreign passport. My mother travelled to Montreal twice to give birth to my brother and me.”

The protester, who was interviewed in a Hong Kong church July 5, is in communication with the informal network of supporters from Canada. She is aware that people like Ip accuse protesters of actively seeking foreign support for the protests, and although they do want foreign governments to acknowledge their fight for democratic rights, she said governments have no direct role in funding or organizing the pro-democracy movement.

In addition to withdrawing the extradition bill, some protesters are also calling for the right to directly vote in elections, the release of protesters who have been arrested and an independent investigation into the police, particularly in relation to the June 12 protests where police fired rubber bullets on the crowd.

As further evidence of why Beijing can’t be trusted and the people of Hong Kong need democracy to hold their local government accountable, activists like Wong cite the cases of detained Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor and the internment in “re-education” camps of over a million Muslim Uyghurs in Xinjiang.

Protesters have openly appealed for support from people and governments around the world. Last month, a crowdfunding campaign by the anonymous “Freedom Hongkonger” group of protesters raised more than $800,000 to take out front-page ads in prominent newspapers urging readers in the U.S., U.K., France, Germany, Switzerland and Japan to pressure G20 leaders, who met in Japan in late June, to act against the extradition bill and support democracy in Hong Kong. Chinese President Xi Jinping attended the meetings in Osaka, while Hong Kong finance chief Paul Chan was part of the Chinese delegation.

The Vancouver Society in Support of Democratic Movement has organized two rallies outside the Chinese consulate on Granville St. in support of Hong Kong protests, and the group is also in touch with protesters in Hong Kong to offer its support.

“People in Canada are very connected to protesters in Hong Kong. We are having meetings to consider our next steps,” said Mabel Tung, the society’s chairperson, although she wouldn’t provide any details.

Joshua Wong, a prominent Hong Kong activist who has served time in prison for his leading role in the 2014 pro-democracy protests called the Umbrella Movement, said people around the world should care about what’s happening in Hong Kong, even if it’s out of self interest.

“The extradition bill could affect foreign citizens to be extradited to face trial. It’s not appropriate for any government to allow extradition of their people from Hong Kong to China,” Wong said in a July 5 telephone interview in Hong Kong.

“It’s a good move for Canada, and the U.S. and the U.K to speak out. I hope more countries will do the same.”

“We are asking for the government to listen to the voice of people,”

Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland, speaking to reporters by teleconference Thursday from London, said the extradition bill issue is a “special concern for Canada because of the 300,000 Canadians living in Hong Kong. We have a duty of care towards them and we take that very seriously.”

Canada has issued two public statements expressing its concern that the bill could harm the rights and freedoms of people in Hong Kong, including one issued jointly with U.K. foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt on May 30 that highlighted possible effects “on business confidence and on Hong Kong’s international reputation.”

But whether Canada will give refugee status to pro-democracy activists from Hong Kong is unclear. Last year, Hong Kong protesters Ray Wong, 25, and Alan Li, 27, were granted refugee status in Germany.

When Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada was asked whether any Hong Kong protesters have sought asylum in Canada, a spokesperson said they could neither confirm or deny it “for reasons of privacy.”

Jean-Nicolas Beuze, the Canada representative for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, said the UNHCR cannot play a role in advising Hong Kong protesters whether or not to seek asylum in Canada and Canadian authorities would have to assess any claims.

Back in Hong Kong, the protests continued after Hong Kong chief executive Carrie Lam said Monday the extradition bill was “dead” because she did not formally withdraw it. Protesters are organizing another march on Sunday in Shatin, one of Hong Kong’s 18 districts, which is north of Kowloon.

Last Sunday, protesters poured into the streets of Kowloon, a district popular with tourists who come there from mainland China to shop. Chanting “Democracy for Hong Kong,” “Carrie Lam resign,” and “Love your country, come protest,” they moved through the streets in unison, using hand signals to motion to the back of the crowd when it was time to stop for a red light and when it was OK to cross an intersection. They stopped outside malls to wave at mainland Chinese tourists inside, encouraging them to come out and join them.

A woman from China’s Guangdong province, watching the procession with a look of wonder, asked what the protests were about. When she learned that Hong Kongers were opposing the extradition bill because they don’t trust China’s legal system, she only nodded.

Wearing black and hoisting yellow umbrellas to symbolize their hope for democracy, the crowd surged down the streets, singing with deliberate irony the national anthem of the People’s Republic of China called the “March of the Volunteers.”

“Arise, we who refuse to be slaves!

With our flesh and blood,

Let us build our new Great Wall!

The peoples of China are at their most critical time,

Everyone must roar in defiance.

Arise! Arise! Arise!”

Source: How Canadians are part of an underground network helping Hong Kong protesters in their struggle against Chinese control

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Diaspora calls on Ukraine to consider introduction of dual citizenship

2019/04/11 Leave a comment

Call by Canadian Ukrainian diaspora (consideration):

Ukrainian diaspora calls on the authorities to consider a possibility of the introduction of dual citizenship.

“We call on the Ukrainian authorities to consider the introduction of dual citizenship and to listen to the diaspora’s thoughts while balancing security aspects,” President of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress Alexandra Chyczij said in an interview with Ukrinform.

At the same time, she acknowledged that dual citizenship posed certain security risks. “On the one hand, there are just concerns about possible Russia’s interference through the issuance of passports in the border areas. On the other hand, a large Ukrainian diaspora cares about the fate of Ukraine, wants to participate in solving its problems and strives to preserve Ukrainian citizenship,” the UCC President said.

Chyczij added that the Congress had not yet formed its clear stance on this issue since it “is aware of the difficulties arising from such a step.”

As a reminder, Foreign Minister of Ukraine Pavlo Klimkin supports the official recognition of dual citizenship in Ukraine provided that certain “criteria” are introduced.

Source: Diaspora calls on Ukraine to consider introduction of dual citizenship

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