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RIGHTS: Canadian Police Seize Algerian Asylum-Seeker From Church

Marty Logan

MONTREAL, Mar 9 2004 (IPS) - Activists will rally across Canada on Tuesday to protest the deportation of a failed refugee claimant from Algeria, who was seized by police after taking sanctuary in a church, a first in this country observers say.

About a dozen police officers in Quebec City entered Saint-Pierre United Church on Friday and seized Mohamed Cherfi. At 6 p.m. he was delivered to officials of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and late Monday he was reported to be in a New York State prison. He was deported to the United States because he entered Canada via that country.

The move spotlights Canada’s lack of an independent appeals system for refugee claimants, a move the federal government promised more than a year ago but has still not delivered, according to advocates for asylum seekers.

Cherfi, 35, who fled military service in Algeria in 1998, was ordered deported from the country in January and also told not to leave Montreal. But in February, he left the city for the church in Quebec City, three hours east, the capital of Quebec, Canada’s only French-speaking province.

The Algerian and his supporters say he was singled out for deportation because he is an activist who led a loud, public campaign that resulted in officials agreeing to "regularise" some 1,000 Algerians who fled their violence-riddled nation in the 1990s.

"Presumably the government would frame it in a sort of way, but I think that is what distinguishes his case from the others," says Janet Dench of the Canadian Council of Refugees (CCR).

Canada had established a moratorium on returning refugee seekers to Algeria in 1997 but lifted it in 2002, and began processing claimants from that country, most of whom are in Quebec Province. While the majority were accepted as refugees, Cherfi was rejected for failing to "integrate".

Dench and other activists say he should have had recourse to an independent appeals system within the immigration department, which the government promised but later said it could not afford to establish. Appellants now must file cases in Federal Court.

"That’s one of the reasons why normally law-abiding church folk agree to give sanctuary, because these are people who are as inclined as anybody to think that Canada is a decent sort of country with a good system and that anybody who has to leave the country should leave," she told IPS.

"But when they hear in more detail people’s individual experiences of the refugee system, and they learn that the government has not implemented the part of a law that was passed by parliament that gave refugees a right to appeal, then many people feel they are conscience-bound to fill the gap that the government has created."

Cherfi argued he fled the northern African country, where as many as 150,000 people have died and between 7,000 and 18,000 have been "disappeared" in a decade-old conflict pitting the government against Islamic extremists, to avoid participating in the fighting.

In a statement issued Feb. 18, he wrote that he sought refuge in the church because he feared for his life if he returned to Algeria.

"My deportation to Algeria via the United States will put my life in danger due to the systematic violation of human rights (disappearances, torture, imprisonment) that have taken place, principally against the defenders of human rights."

"For having been the spokesperson of the Action Committee of Non-Status Algerians (in Montreal) for almost two years, and having publicly expressed criticisms against the Algerian regime, I am exposed to serious risks," wrote Cherfi.

He added that a report to be presented to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights this month by the International Federation of Human Rights Leagues will describe Algeria as a country "where a civil conflict that has lasted for more than 10 years has resulted in 150,000 deaths and more than 7,000 disappearances".

"The state of emergency continues, which allows for the systematic violation of human rights. Moreover, the Algerian authorities have refused access to the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights, the FIDH and other organisations, so that they may investigate the situation."

In its annual report on human rights released last month, the U.S. State Department says that in 2003, "there continued to be problems with excessive use of force and the failure to account for past disappearances" in Algeria.

"Short-term disappearances of prisoners deemed ‘threats to national security’ reportedly increased. The incidence and severity of torture declined markedly; however, new allegations continued."

A Canadian official says Ottawa has no plans to review its 2002 decision that failed claimants can be returned to the northern African nation.

"There still is violence in Algeria of course, but it’s now concentrated in the rural areas, and there is much less in the cities where the majority of Algerians live. We do remove individuals to a country even though there could be violence, but if the violence is localised he can remain in parts of the country where there is no general violence," said Robert Gervais in an interview.

The official characterised Cherfi as a man who exhausted the country’s legal process but would not abide by its final verdict that he was not a bona fide refugee.

Canada’s refugee determination process is "one of the most generous in the world", and includes a hearing before the refugee board, a possible federal court appeal if that fails, and further possible appeals on humanitarian grounds at the ministerial level, Gervais added.

"In the end, what we ask is that everyone obey the law. No one should declare themselves above the law … Cherfi used all those procedures but in the end did not accept the decision of these courts."

Quebec City police arrested Cherfi after a Montreal court issued a warrant because he violated a condition of his bail by leaving the city. He was granted bail last year after being arrested during a sit-in at a government immigration office.

Gervais said he had no idea what U.S. officials have planned for Cherfi, but the Algerian’s supporters say Ottawa could reverse the deportation and return him to Canada.

"We call on the federal authorities to ensure a rapid return of Mohamed Cherfi to Canada, on the basis of the most obvious humanitarian considerations. Ministers Judy Sgro (Immigration) and Anne McLellan (Public Safety) … and Prime Minister Paul Martin, have the power to intervene with American officials and allow Mohamed to return home to Canada," says a statement from the Solidarity Committee for Mohamed Cherfi.

But late Monday a spokesperson for McLellan indicated that was unlikely.

"Once a person is removed, a removal order can’t be stayed or delayed," said Alex Swann, reported the ‘Montreal Gazette’. "That person would have to reapply through the normal channels".