Why we should welcome boatful of Tamil refugees into Canada
by Harsha Walia, from Vancouver Sun, August 14, 2010.
From the Komagata Maru carrying 376 Punjabi passengers and the SS St. Louis travelling with 900 Jewish asylum seekers, to the boats with 600 people from China's Fujian province and the Ocean Lady that docked in B.C. last year with Tamil refugees - there is something about boatloads of migrants that triggers a national hysteria. Perhaps it is the realization that the expanse of ocean is not enough to enforce the divide between the West and the so-called Third World.
This past week has been no different with the arrival of the MV Sun Sea and approximately 500 Tamil migrants. With little substantiation, officials and media are regurgitating the refrain of "terrorists," "illegals" and "queue jumpers." Yet refugee advocates have repeatedly reminded us that there is no queue for refugees. It is inherent to the refugee experience that one does not wait in a line, fearing serious harm or death, to make the difficult decision to flee. Nor are they so-called illegals; they are asylum seekers. Canadian and international refugee law recognizes that many asylum seekers will be forced to travel irregularly, including by boat, to seek safety.
Relying on sound-bites about organized crime and terrorism is the best way to close public debate about government actions. Instead of relying on sensationalism, let us ask: On what basis are the Tamil migrants being declared terrorists? Is it even logical that well-financed and often state-backed terrorists or traffickers would suffer in a three-month long, arduous journey risking death? Even if we believe that women and children were forced onto this boat, how do we justify jailing them as a humane response?
What we do know is that United Nations Secretary-General Ban Kimoon has appointed a panel to investigate war crimes committed by the Sri Lankan government against Tamils. Human rights organizations have documented government and military atrocities including indiscriminate killings, arbitrary detentions and imprisonment, and mass displacement of Tamils. Canada has itself accepted more than 90 per cent of refugee claimants from Sri Lanka in the past two years.
Last year we succumbed to unfounded panic when the Ocean Lady landed with 76 Tamils aboard. All the men were eventually released when the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) was forced to admit they had no evidence of terrorist connections. Ottawa even tried to use Section 86 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, a draconian section that allows for secret evidence in closed hearings, to make their case. Still, based on a lack of evidence, in January the CBSA announced that it would not contest the release of the last group of detainees.
Rohan Gunaratna, the anti-terrorism expert who is the government's primary source, was discredited by immigration lawyers as well as adjudicator Otto Nuppanen during the Ocean Lady proceedings. As detailed in news articles, his unverified sources were questioned, as well as his credibility, given his close relationship with the Sri Lankan government. Following a recent investigation by the newspaper the Sunday Age in Australia, Gunaratna has retracted some of his alleged credentials.
So Canadian officials are either continuing to make uninformed statements despite the lack of evidence, or they are deliberately relying on the racist stereotyping of all Tamils as likely being associated with terrorism in order to fuel public fears. Their irresponsibility is facilitating a climate where anti-immigration advocates are gaining more traction in their demands for the boat to be sent back and for Canada to stop welcoming refugees.
Frankly, I think there is more reason to be mistrustful of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney and Public Safety Minister Vic Toews than of the migrants. Their regime has advanced an agenda of corporate bailouts and economic austerity; ballooning military, police and prison budgets; unmitigated resource extraction and environmental destruction; and an immigration policy that is moving toward the repressive Australia and Arizona models of accepting fewer refugees and jailing more asylum seekers and undocumented migrants. These politicians sell us strange paradoxes - military occupation as liberation, refugees as terrorists.
Instead, author McKenzie Wark reminds us, "Those who seek refuge, who are rarely accorded a voice, are nevertheless the bodies that confront the injustice of the world.
They give up their particular claim to sovereignty and cast themselves on the waters.
Only when the world is its own refuge will their limitless demand be met."
Harsha Walia has a law degree and is a local activist with, among other social justice groups, No One Is Illegal.
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5 comments:
Harsha Walia could be more useful to Canadian society by applying her law degree in defence of Canada's international and border security laws fighting illegal immigration, trafficking and international terrorism, as well as by steering her social justice skills towards helping those who need it most here Canada. I would absolutely love to see her claiming one signle contribution to this country that is sensible and tangible enough for the readers of this blog.
Hi Tom. I'd be happy to engage with the substance of your arguments, but you haven't actually made any arguments. You've made some ungrounded personal assertions about the author while ignoring the actual content of the piece. If you have a point to make about politics, make it and back it up, don't just talk trash about a smart and dedicated activist and author.
And I'm not sure how the people living in poverty, the indigenous people, the people of colour, and the migrants in whose struggles Walia is involved manage not to be "those who need it most here in Canada." Who else did you have in mind?
You will find that in this piece and in other pieces of writing both by Walia as an individual and by the various No One Is Illegal collectives there are very sophisticated analyses of things like borders, immigration, and terrorism -- and actions to accompany those analyses. If you disagree with those analyses, talk about why.
The Tamil Tigers paid former diplomats, journalists and academics to attack Rohan Gunaratna, the acknowledged authority on the LTTE. Despite threats, both physical and verbal, by al Qaeda, Tigers and multiple groups that kill civilians, Gunaratna has continued the fight against terrorism. Despite threats by the Tamil Tigers, Rohan Gunaratna has constantly exposed the Tamil Tiger presence in the West including their fronts such as Illankai Tamil Sangam, Canadian Tamil Congress, Sydney Tamils, and Tamil Justice. He has provided accurate information and analysis about the transformation of the Tigers from a terrorist to a criminal network engaged in human and drug trafficking. His work has led to the proscription and designation of several terrorist groups and breaking up of several cells. He was the first to inform the world and Canada that the two ships - Ocean Lady and Sun Sea - now in Canada are Tiger controlled ships. Because Canadian genorosity was been abused repeatedly, the Federal Government of Canada invited him to advice them. Rohan Gunaratna has been attacked by Tiger fronts, Tiger paid activists, lawyers, media personnel, and a few leftist, rights, and civil liberties activists.
Rohan Gunaratna is part of a much larger problem. Particularly since 9/11, though beginning long before, national security establishments have developed in most Western states -- including both government officials and supposedly independent experts like Gunaratna -- which pursue particular policy agendas using rumours, sensationalism, and profiling. That isn't to say that there are not also sometimes useful facts mixed in. Nonetheless, the experience in Canada with things like security certificate cases, security delayed individuals, and individuals rendered for torture with the complicity of the Canadian government, show that this national security establishment does not deserve to be trusted. Lies, rumours, sensationalism, and profiling are standard operating procedure. This has been clearly and repeatedly demonstrated.
Whatever else he may have done, Gunaratna is openly and enthusiastically a part of that establishment, and his use of these techniques in specific instances has also been demonstrated. He has been an enthusiastic proponent of the so-called "War on Terror," a horrific and violent endeavour which has in many instances been based on lies and has brought violence to a great many lives. Both attacks on racialized communities in Western countries, and the invasion, occupation, or other forms of domination of non-Western countries by the U.S., Canada, and other allies have been justified by the so-called "War on Terror." Gunaratna, therefore, is part of a larger political project which deserves our deep suspicion. He does not deserve to be trusted 'just because.'
And yet, rather than specific information deployed in an open and transparent manner about specific individuals, we have vague rhetoric with no sources about entire groups of people which play into longstanding practices in the West, both by governments and media, to treat migrants of colour as threats in predictably oppressive ways.
I think Walia's piece addresses the specifics far better than I could, so I won't repeat what she says -- I would just encourage readers to go back and have another look at her piece.
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