CANADA: Ottawa Wants Churches to Turn Away Refugees

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Mark Bourrie

OTTAWA, Aug 9 2004 (IPS) - Six weeks ago Fred Cappuccino, a 78-year-old retired Unitarian minister, went into sanctuary in his own church to protest Canada’s refugee deportation policy.

He joined Mohammed Samsu Mia, 49, a Bangladesh citizen who took sanctuary in the basement of the First Unitarian Church in Ottawa in June 2003. Mia had been ordered deported from Canada after his claim for refugee status was turned down.

Cappuccino was cheered by 250 people as he carried his suitcase into the church, and has the support of Amnesty International, some opposition members of Canada’s parliament and national refugee organisations.

Mia went into sanctuary after exhausting the refugee appeals system the government promised to revamp two years ago, but now says it has no money to fix. He is one of about 10 refugees who have sought protection in churches across the country, but Immigration Minister Judy Sgro said recently she wants the institutions to give up their ancient right to provide safe haven for people who claim to be unfairly treated by governments.

Mia says he decided to ask Canada for refugee status when he became embroiled in an argument with his employer, the Bangladesh High Commission, where he worked as a servant.

He says his fight began when he was not paid, and that officials would not allow him to leave the embassy. Eventually, security personnel took his papers, then seized his shoes, he adds.

The man then left the embassy and went into hiding. Eventually he contacted the city’s Unitarian congregation through a mutual acquaintance. By then, he had already been turned down for refugee status.

“We thought there was a lot of error in the decision,” Cappuccino said in an interview. “We tried to talk to the officials but they would not talk while we had him in sanctuary.”

Mia was sent a deportation order on Jun. 16, 2003. By then, he had already been in sanctuary for two weeks.

“I’m 78. I decided I could do something different and help this man out,” Cappuccino said. “He was really in sad shape when I came in. There was no glimmer of hope.”

Now, “he’s very happy. I eat all my meals with him. He has a lot of people who come in to see him. He teaches them Bangladeshi cooking. They help him with English.”

The Refugee Protection Act that Ottawa passed in 2002 called for a new way of dealing with refugee appeals, which are now heard by boards made up of political appointees with no legal training, and, critics say, very limited knowledge of international affairs.

The new system would have used professional adjudicators to hear appeals. A more effective review system was supposed to reduce the huge backlog of appeals to the country’s federal courts.

At the time the law was passed, then-minister Denis Coderre asked for a year to clear the backlog of claims. The refugee board today faces just under 30,000 cases, down from 53,000 in 2002.

Sgro, the new immigration minister, says she believes claimants have too many avenues of appeal. She has set up a meeting with church leaders Sep. 13, and, until the meeting is over, she will not comment on the sanctuary issue, said her spokesman Derek Hodgson.

Nick Summers, president of the Canadian Council for Refugees (CCR), wrote Sgro in July, arguing that Canada needs a fair system of dealing with refugees, including people who have taken sanctuary in churches.

“Case by case interventions will not be adequate,” he said in his letter. “This is particularly true since there are many refugee claimants who have been rejected in error and have not been given sanctuary. They also need a solution.”

Not all officials are respecting sanctuary.

Ten months ago, police went into St. Peter’s United Church in Quebec City and arrested Mohammed Cherfi, 35, an Algerian national. Prosecutors claim Cherfi, an outspoken advocate for Algerian asylum-seekers, violated his bail conditions by travelling to Quebec from nearby Montreal. Police immediately handed the man over to immigration officials, who deported him.

Darryl Gray, a United Church minister in Montreal and a member of Interfaith Sanctuary Coalition, said at a press conference in Canada’s parliament that Ottawa sends too many refugees back to “dangerous and often deadly situations.”

His church has been a haven for an Ethiopian family for more than a year.

“We have a moral responsibility to challenge a law we consider unfair,” Gray said.

In March, CCR Executive Director Janet Dench told IPS, “normally law-abiding church folk … are as inclined as anybody to think that Canada is a decent sort of country with a good (refugee) system and that anybody who has to leave the country should leave.”

“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,” she added.

At a conference in Toronto last week to respond to Sgro’s demand that churches stop giving sanctuary, Mary Corkery, executive director of KAIROS: Canadian Ecumenical Justice Initiative, said sanctuary is a last resort.

“The churches and refugee activists, they don’t want sanctuary to continue. We want to put in place something to end the need for refugees to seek sanctuary,” she said.