[antiwar-van] When voting remember the Palestinian refugees

[hanna kawas]

      http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=36&ItemID=5765

      Stateless and Deported
      An Interview with the Coalition Against the Deportation of Palestinian
Refugees


      .........  by Justin Podur  June 24, 2004
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        For over a year, the Coalition Against the Deportation of
Palestinian Refugees has been working in Montreal to stop deportations
against these members of an already stateless and oppressed community.  The
coalition's political campaign and case work has afforded some of the only
protection and publicity for those few Palestinians who have managed to
escape from the refugee camps in Lebanon or the occupied Palestinian
territories.  The Coalition itself is a part of is part of the Solidarity
Across Borders Campaign, which brings to together various self-organized
immigrant and refugee communities who are fighting for collectively for
their status, against deportations and detentions. Members of the coalition
visited Toronto to share their experience with Toronto organizers and
community members in June 2004.

      Justin Podur (JP): Last year (1), the Coalition had begun its work,
identifying over 100 Palestinians facing deportation.  It was built up of
community members, activists from No One is Illegal who had experience
campaigning against the deportation of Montreal Algerians (2), and others,
including Palestine solidarity activists.  Can you describe the experience
of the past year?

      Coalition (CADPR): The most searing experience of the year for us was
the deportation of Ahmed Abdel Majid in November.  He was one of the most
active organizers.  He was the first one to get a deportation order.  He was
deported to the United States, which was his point of entry, and is now in
the refugee camp in Lebanon where he came from, Ein El Helweh, and trying to
leave again.

      We learned a lot from that experience, about the lies the immigration
authorities are willing to tell to make a deportation happen.  We've learned
a lot about the system: the dynamics, the politics between the Refugee
Board, Immigration Canada, the Ministry of Immigration, the Minister
herself, the lawyers, the consultants.

      JP: How does immigration policy work?

      CADPR: It doesn't work, in fact.  Or, it doesn't work for the people
who are most vulnerable.  There is a battery of lawyers and immigration
officials, politicians and their offices, a battery of forms and
applications and laws.  But when you need a straight answer to a simple
question, you can't get one.  You get inconsistent answers.  We had a very
hard time.  People with language barriers, cultural barriers, financial
barriers, find it nearly impossible to navigate this system.

      Immigration authorities also have a fortress mentality.  They look for
ways to close doors, and they give you bureaucratic answers out of some
catalog.  They use all this bureaucracy to hide from the human tragedies
that their policies bring about.

      They are hiding from their own mistakes.  The bureaucracy cloaks
injustice.  Let's get into some specifics.  There are different officials
working in different aspects of immigration.  There are removal officials,
enforcement officials, and intelligence officials.  Within Immigration
Canada there are different people dealing with refugee claims and with
enforcement.  The Minister herself is unaware of regulations and laws.  Can
that be accidental, when her ignorance helps serve Canadian foreign policy
and economic policy?

      JP: How does immigration policy relate to foreign policy in this case?

      CADPR: Canada has a free trade agreement with Israel and business
interests in Lebanon.  It doesn't want to take a strong stand against the
treatment of the Palestinians in the refugee camps or in the occupied
territories, which is at the root of the problem here.  Canada was one of
the first regimes to recognize the partition in 1948 when the Palestinian
refugee problem began.  Canada was part of the 'refugee working group' of
the Oslo accords of 1993, a body created to help the Palestinian refugees.
There was a Canadian mission to the camps in Lebanon in 1997, and it stated
part of the reality on the ground.  It asked for funding increases for the
UN refugee works organization, UNRWA, and discussed the humanitarian
disaster of the camps.  But UNRWA is still underfunded and it is the only
body that offers anything to the Palestinians: they lack even the protection
of the UN High Commission on Refugees.

      Many of us are active in the Palestine solidarity movement.  One of us
was talking on the phone to a Palestinian friend in a camp in Lebanon.  We
began talking about the right of return and resolving the Palestinian
refugee problem, and he asked: "Why are you talking about 4 million refugees
when your country won't even accept 100?"  The fact is the refugees are a
manifestation, on Canada's doorstep, of the occupation, displacement,
economic and military warfare waged on the Palestinians, and it is something
the Palestine solidarity movement has to deal with.

      The Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT)
travel advisory is a great illustration of the racism inherent in the
system. DFAIT specifically warns Canadians against going to both the refugee
camps in Lebanon and Occupied Palestine - even telling Canadians to leave
the territories immediately, although that may be difficult due to curfews,
closures, and incursions.  Yet they see no problem sending non-citizens back

      JP: Let us go back to the deportation of Ahmed Abdel Majid.

      CADPR: He was born in Ein El Helweh refugee camp in Lebanon.  In
Lebanon, Palestinian refugees are barred from working in 78 professions,
can't own or inherit property, and has no access to public services.  He
arrived in Canada in March 2001 and claimed refugee status.  His claim was
refused, so he lived underground without access to basic services.  He
worked with the coalition and helped other refugees.

      On November 4 2003 four Canadian Immigration agents picked him up
outside his work, handcuffed him, and took him to detention. He called us.
We went to the Immigration offices and got a meeting with Rene D'aoust, the
head of removals.  We explained why he shouldn't be deported to a life of
statelessness and persecution.  D'Aoust said - and the one of us who met him
will remember this forever - "We know we are not dealing with cargo here,
but the life of a human being."  He told us we had to get a letter from the
Minister of Immigration and that he wouldn't be deported for 48 hours.  We
had sympathetic Members of Parliament intervene.  While we tried to get the
letter, Ahmed was told he would have a detention hearing at 1pm on November
6.  We went to the detention centre that morning, at 6am.  He called us and
told us about the hearing.

      Then at 8:30am he called us and told us that he was being released.
Carloads of us went to the detention centre to greet him, assuming the
Minister had intervened.  About 30 people, mostly refugees themselves, went.
We got there - and the security people called the police.  The police told
us we had to leave or we'd all be arrested.  Just like that.  We were
confused - we thought we were going to pick Ahmed up.  But we left, because
we didn't want to be arrested and have more deportations come out of this.

      It turns out that while we were waiting outside, they were deporting
Ahmed, and they were nervous because they didn't know that we didn't know
that the deportation was happening.  They had actually scheduled his hearing
at 1pm, lied to him, and packed him off to a New York county jail, where the
guards were abusive and where we had to go through a great deal of
bureaucracy to get him released on a $10,000 bond.  They lied to him, they
lied to us, repeatedly, so that they could deport him as quickly as
possible.

      JP: Immigration authorities violated sanctuary in order to violate
Non-Status Algerian Mohammad Cherfi.  There are Palestinian refugees living
in sanctuary now too, correct?

      CADPR: There is a Palestinian family of 3 elderly people who have been
in sanctuary since January 5, 2004.  They are living in a church, again
without access to health care services.  The previous immigration minister
had a policy of not negotiating with churches or claims of people in
sanctuary.  The current immigration minister has carried that forward.  So
these people, who have lived through multiple wars and horrors, are now
living in a church basement in fear of deportation because the government
won't negotiate.

      There is another case, of Ashraf, from Jenin.  He had a deportation
hearing and was released from detention on a $2000 cash and $2500 bond
ticket.  The judge was unusually sympathetic.  Her job was only to assess
whether or not he was a flight risk.  Instead, she wrote in her judgement
that if he is deported, he ought not to be deported through Israel.  She
recognized that he is from Jenin, and that if he lands in Israel the fact
that he is from Jenin alone is enough to land him in prison for a very long
time.  So she wants him to be deported through Jordan straight into the West
Bank.  But Ashraf was denied a visa from Jordan.  And then his Palestinian
Authority passport expired.  So now Canada wants to deport him but has
nowhere to deport him to.  He has to check in every Wednesday with an
immigration officer.  This has been going on for three months.

      These are examples of Immigration Canada's fortress mentality.  On the
few occasions when we have secured a meeting with the immigration minister's
office, we were typically allowed to send a single member, under heavy
security escort, after submitting to repeated searches.  We would get to the
office of some member of the immigration office, surrounded by security, and
the person we were meeting would be visibly scared.  One time, as one of us
was being escorted to the elevator after the meeting, a security guard
commented: "Well, that was quite peaceful," as if surprised.

      But it is demonstrative of the attitude of immigration officials
towards Palestinians.  It shows the stereotypes that they believe.
Immigration and Refugee Board judges demonstrate these stereotypes in their
judgements.  IRB member Jeannine Beaubien Duque, for example, has written in
her judgements statements like: "the violence of the Middle East is part of
Israel's attempts at establishing secure political frontiers and preventing
terrorist attacks on its territory," that "it is not the panel's duty to
conclude as to the rightfulness or wrongfulness of the military activities
of the Israeli authorities in the war stricken area", and that "many young
men in their thousands volunteer to take part in martyr operations."  These
are the people that are deciding the fates of Palestinian refugees.

      JP: What have been the coalition's successes over the year?

      CADPR: We do a lot of work in our campaigns, contacting organizations,
generating letters to the minister and the immigration authorities, holding
rallies and demonstrations, we have a weekly picket at the immigration
office, we have leaflets and petitions.  We make an effort to make sure
organizations supporting the coalition aren't just signing on, but giving
support, time, resources, mobilizing people for actions.

      To go along with this political work, we have a legal strategy where
we go case by case and file a Humanitarian and Compassionate claim (H & C)
to land the refugees based on the persecution they would face if they
returned and their integration into Canada and Quebec society.  So we try to
create pressure on all levels.  It costs $550 to file an H & C, so we have
to do fundraising.  We save money in one place: we have found that our
activists do a better job than lawyers who don't know the situation in
Lebanon, don't take the time, don't have the time because they are
overworked (partly because there is not enough of them, due to legal aid
budget cuts).  The H & Cs that are part of a political campaign have a much
better chance of success.

      By fighting cases as part of a larger campaign, we have had some
victories.  One major one is, in spite of all of the difficulties of
underground living, lack of access to services, fear, being hunted by the
CIC, and the deportations and repression, the coalition has managed to
maintain itself over this difficult year and continue its work.  Another
success is that now the authorities know that every single deportation is
going to result in a battle.  Every time there is a Palestinian who wants to
fight deportation, that refugee will have support.  There won't be a
deportation without media, without publicity, without a battle.

      A concrete victory is the staying of the deportation of Osama Saleh, a
Palestinian refugee from the West Bank whose claim was denied in 2002, whose
'appeal' was denied in April 2004, but whose deportation was stayed.  None
of us thought that would happen and we know it is because of the campaign.

      For more information on the Coalition against the Deportation of
Palestinian Refugees, contact refugees at riseup.net

      Notes

      1) See the previous interview with the coalition, 'Stop the (re)
Deportations' July 5, 2004
      2) See the interview with the Action Committee of Non-Status Algerians
of December 2002.  Among those interviewed was Mohammad Cherfi, who was
deported several months ago when police violated a sanctuary of a church in
Montreal to arrest him.


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