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RECENT MEDIA COVERAGE
Montreal Gazette, Saturday September 6, 2003
HOW TO NIP REFUGEE HORROR STORIES IN THE BUD
Something Seriously Wrong in Canada
by Richard Goldman
No refugee protection system is perfect. There is always the risk that someone will fall through the cracks and be sent back to face torture or even death. But something is seriously amiss when Canada's refugee protection system, with eyes wide open, is poised to place a woman's life in serious danger.
In the next few days, as the Gazette has recently reported, Canada is expected to deport Bilquees Fatima, 63, a woman who can barely walk, suffers from a heart condition and needs dialysis treatment three times a week. She will likely be sent to the United States, through which she passed on her way to Canada.
Medical authorities have declared her unfit to travel and, according to refugee aid workers in Vermont, she is unlikely to get proper medical attention in the United States. After all, millions of American citizens have no health coverage.
Fatima, who is now being held at an immigration detention centre in Laval, was part of the Shia minority in her native Pakistan. The Sunni majority's record of attacks, including bombings and targeted killings, against the Shia minority has been well documented by groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. According to Fatima, it was the murder of her husband in such an attack that led her to flee Pakistan with her teenage son three years ago.
Fatima's is not the only compelling case to which immigration authorities are currently turning a blind eye. A record number of six families were in sanctuary in Canadian churches this summer (five are still there). In Montreal alone, a Colombian university professor and human rights activist, with visible signs of torture, is holed up in a Ville St. Laurent church with his family. In Little Burgundy, a church is providing refuge to a single mother from Ethiopia and her three children. Evidence has been provided to show that she suffers from a post-traumatic stress disorder due to her detention, torture and the disappearance of her husband.
But didn't these families have their day in court? Yes and no. The Immigration and Refugee Board, which decides refugee claims, has been plagued by inconsistency of decision-making since its inception in 1989. Plainly put, it is a simple roll of the dice as to whether a refugee's destiny will be determined by a well-qualified member or by a political patronage appointee with no prior knowledge of law or refugee matters.
Due to an overhaul of the law last year, refugee claimants now appear before just one decision-maker (instead of two under the old law). This aggravated the risk of bad decisions. In recognition of the need for additional safeguards, the new law provided for a right of appeal on the merits for each case, presumably to be heard by a panel of the most qualified IRB members. It also provided for a last minute "risk of return" review of each case by immigration agents.
Unfortunately, after Parliament passed the whole package, Immigration Minister Denis Coderre, decided to suspend indefinitely the implementation of the right of appeal. As for the "risk of return" review, the national acceptance rate is under 3%, indicating that immigration agents have been given some very restrictive guidelines.
A third recourse, applying for permanent residence on humanitarian grounds, is also theoretically available. However, based on the compelling cases turning up in the news and in churches, immigration agents seem to be applying this in an overly restrictive manner as well.
The appeal procedure is the ideal means of correcting bad decisions early on. The minister contends that a huge backlog of cases waiting to be heard by the IRB makes it impossible to implement the appeal for now. However, he is ignoring the most obvious solution: twice in the past two decades, when there was an overhaul of the law, Canada set up programs to allow the accumulated backlog of refugee claimants to apply for permanent residence under special conditions.
Under the first program, applicants had to demonstrate economic self-sufficiency. Under the second program, they had to show that their refugee claim had at least a "credible basis". In addition to reducing the backlog, this allowed many thousands of people in limbo to obtain permanent status and get on with their lives.
For a variety of reasons, including Canada's effectiveness at preventing refugee claimants overseas from ever getting here, the number of new claimants currently arriving in Canada is manageable. Minister Coderre could improve things dramatically with a few timely initiatives: review personally with a more humanitarian perspective Fatima's case and those of the families in sanctuary, establish a special program to allow claimants caught in the backlog to apply for permanent residence, and introduce an appeal on the merits for refused refugee claimants, to nip future horror stories in the bud.
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Richard Goldman is coordinator of the Montreal-based Committee to Aid Refugees
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GLOBE AND MAIL Refugee bids refused, Pakistanis say By BERTRAND MAROTTE Tuesday, September 2, 2003 - Page A4
MONTREAL -- A wheelchair-bound 63-year-old Pakistani woman with a serious medical condition is among a growing group of refugee claimants from Pakistan being targeted for deportation from Canada in the current climate of fear, activists say.
Bilquis Fatima fled Pakistan with her son, who is now 17, two years ago via the United States, winding up in Montreal and claiming refugee status on the grounds that sectarian vigilantes killed her husband, her lawyer Stewart Istvanffy said. She has been in detention for the past two months and faces deportation to the United States, and then likely to Pakistan, unless the office of Immigration Minister Denis Coderre intervenes directly, Mr. Istvanffy said. The woman has a serious heart condition and diabetes, requires dialysis treatment three times a week and medical authorities have deemed her unfit to travel. Her case and many others -- which have grown at an alarming rate recently in the Montreal area -- reflect confusion on the part of Immigration Canada authorities about the situation in Pakistan, said Mr. Istvanffy, a human-rights lawyer.
Refugee bids refused, Pakistanis say
Genuine cases being rejected during hunt for terrorists, adds lawyer for ill woman
By BERTRAND MAROTTE
Tuesday, September 2, 2003 - Page A4
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MONTREAL -- A wheelchair-bound 63-year-old Pakistani woman with a serious medical condition is among a growing group of refugee claimants from Pakistan being targeted for deportation from Canada in the current climate of fear, activists say.
Bilquis Fatima fled Pakistan with her son, who is now 17, two years ago via the United States, winding up in Montreal and claiming refugee status on the grounds that sectarian vigilantes killed her husband, her lawyer Stewart Istvanffy said.
She has been in detention for the past two months and faces deportation to the United States, and then likely to Pakistan, unless the office of Immigration Minister Denis Coderre intervenes directly, Mr. Istvanffy said.
The woman has a serious heart condition and diabetes, requires dialysis treatment three times a week and medical authorities have deemed her unfit to travel.
Her case and many others -- which have grown at an alarming rate recently in the Montreal area -- reflect confusion on the part of Immigration Canada authorities about the situation in Pakistan, said Mr. Istvanffy, a human-rights lawyer. Officials in Mr. Coderre's office were not available to comment yesterday.
The hunt for terrorists -- such as the recent raid that netted 19 Pakistani men in the Toronto area, some of them suspected of making false refugee claims -- has dictated a blanket approach by Immigration Department officials who reject genuine claims, Mr. Istvanffy said.
While agreeing that Canada needs to protect its citizens, Mr. Istvanffy said the refugee evaluation process can be refined to ensure that valid claimants get fair hearings.
Sarwat Viqar, of the South Asian Women's Community Centre in Montreal, said an estimated 200 Pakistanis in Montreal are facing deportation.
"There seems to be a lack of knowledge about the political situation in Pakistan," she said. "The state is not providing protection to victims of the violence between Sunni and Shia Muslims and there have been well-documented public attacks and bombings, but Canadian officials don't seem to recognize this."
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have documented the loss of hundreds of civilian lives due to religious and political strife in Pakistan.
Amnesty International's 2003 country report for Pakistan says the state "continued to ignore abuses inflicted by private individuals or groups against members of minority communities. At least 40 members of the minority Shia community, mainly doctors and other professionals, and some 65 Westerners and Christians died in targeted killings.
"Preventive and protective measures were non-existent or inadequate, and action was taken to investigate such killings only following domestic and international pressure."
According to the Montreal-based Action Committee Against the Racial Profiling of Pakistani Refugees, about 400 Pakistani refugee claimants face deportation and detention in Canada because of the "unfair rejection of their applications by the Immigration and Refugee Board."
Thousands of Pakistanis, most of them illegal immigrants, flooded across the border from the United States into Quebec and Ontario earlier this year after a terrorism-related crackdown by the U.S. government.
Refugee claims from Pakistanis in Canada reached almost the same level in the first six months of 2003 as in all of 2002 -- 3,880 -- according to recent statistics cited by the Immigration and Refugee Board.
Refugee claims from Pakistanis in Canada reached almost the same level in the first six months of 2003 as in all of 2002 -- 3,880 -- according to recent statistics cited by the Immigration and Refugee Board.
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