Matters of Concern to Movement to Defend Palestine and Stop Israel
Canadian Government Condemned for Its Disregard for Palestinian Lives
During a press conference on April 2 marking Samar Alkhdour's sixth sit-in protest outside the riding office of Immigration Minister Marc Miller, a member of the Palestinian Youth Movement explained that the "Alkhdour family is one of many cases where Palestinian families have lost their loved ones because of the discriminatory measures of our government." She added that many people in Canada "are desperately attempting to reach their families and get them to safety. We are here to demand justice from the Canadian government for not acting fast enough and to demand that they act before any other families here are in the same situation."
In 2017, the plan was for Samar, her husband, her severely handicapped daughter Jana, and their two other children to leave Gaza for the U.S., so that she could pursue a master's degree. However, that did not work out because the Israeli authorities denied her husband's request to leave. Samar nonetheless decided to exit Gaza with two of her children and leave Jana in her father's care.
In 2018, Samar's husband was allowed to leave, but because ambulance transportation could not be secured between Gaza and Egypt, Jana was forced to stay behind with a family member.
In 2019 Samar, her husband and their two other children moved to Quebec and began the process of reuniting with Jana. However, two months before Samar got the green light from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) for her daughter to join them, Jana died. Samar says that the IRCC ignored her repeated demands to bring Jana to Canada before it was too late, years -- not just months -- before the genocide started. She said, "All that negligence and inaction has been covered under the title of 'normal processing times in Canada.'"
She requested that the federal government "expand and expedite the Gaza program." As of April 2, not one person has been able to exit Gaza through the program. "If you did it for Ukraine, you can do it for Gaza," she stated, "and don't tell me it's complicated. We're not talking about a relationship here, we're talking about a genocide. She concluded by demanding that the federal government "act promptly for a ceasefire, because this is the father and mother of all crimes that we are witnessing."
Nazar Saaty, an immigration and criminal lawyer, provided a context of how Canada has dealt with crises in the past. He spoke of how the Canadian government had treated Chinese immigrants over a hundred years ago and of how the country refused to welcome Jewish people fleeing Nazi persecution. "This is what Canada is built upon," he said. "And after the horrors of the Holocaust, Canada signed the 1951 Convention on Refugees and is supposed to enact it. And yet we've seen conflict after conflict. Canada has failed. But then you saw a sharp contrast with the way the Ukrainian war was handled." The Ukrainians, he said, "were given expedited process, some ... had their tickets paid for, ... their fees waived. Some ... had tuition at the same level as Canadian citizens..., employers getting subsidies to hire them. They were treated in a manner very befitting of how a refugee should be treated and yet you haven't seen that experience mirrored with other refugees and you have to ask yourself why. I can only honestly think of an implicit, biased and structural racism within the Canadian immigration system."
"All we're asking is that the same courtesy be extended to the Palestinian people and other refugees fleeing from conflict zones. ... Canada is doing absolutely nothing. This isn't even a half measure. There is a cap of 1,000 people from Gaza. That's it!"
Saaty requested that the cap be removed, that the process be
expedited and that the discriminatory policies within the
application process be removed. He noted that for the Ukrainians,
there was no cap and that over 900,000 applications had been
accepted. As for the request for an expedited process, he
explained, "It is unacceptable that people are languishing
and dying of malnutrition and lack of medical care, being
bombarded." As for the request that the discriminatory policies
contained in the application be removed, he remarked that
"essentially these application forms tell people to disclose a
plethora of personal information" never seen in any other
applications, such as "pictures of scars, ... what people were
doing since they were sixteen. They want all their social media
information ... all their What's App information, every single
application they've ever used. And to add insult to injury, what
they say is that this information may and will probably be shared
with Israeli and Egyptian intelligence. And within the forms it
says that by signing ... you are basically releasing Canada from
any responsibility ... which is completely unacceptable.... The
Canadian government is volunteering very sensitive personal
information to foreign intelligence agencies."
Saaty also noted that since Samar's daughter Jana had cerebral palsy, "there was no reason for the Canadian government to have postponed and delayed the application for so long, and yet her case is not the only one. There are many more out there, not just Gazans, not just Palestinians, from every country you can imagine. People are waiting ... and they are given the same template response over and over again: "We are processing your application. These are the wait times." That is not a justifiable reason. These people, when they are fleeing war and they leave their families behind, their families can be subject to persecution by the same authorities they're fleeing.... There needs to be an awakening as far as how these applications are processed. The status quo cannot continue. ... We demand ... that the special measures for Gaza be completely overhauled, updated, facilitated."
The government's response, he added, "has been like this for decades. This is our system. We need to change it. There needs to be a major overhaul of the entire immigration system in Canada."
A member of the Montreal Chapter of Independent Jewish Voices said that "Jana, like others, died as a result of a racist, ableist and inhumane border policy of the Canadian government as well as the diplomatic cover, arms, technology that has been provided to Israel since the beginning of the genocide.
"Those of us who have been working in migrant justice over the years know that people who Canada refuses at the border are also people who have been displaced by Canadian policies, namely mining companies over the years and here we also see the support for Israeli apartheid." He also noted that "between 1933 and 1945 Canada accepted less than 5,000 Jewish refugees, the least of any among all Western industrial countries." He added, "In classic Canadian style, though, the government did not have a law that exclusively barred Jewish refugees, but instead created insurmountable bureaucratic barriers and political considerations, including the 'red scare' that Jewish migrants would bring socialism, communism, etc. So here's where we see lots of rhyming today, with a government that dragged its feet to implement the so-called special measures to facilitate safety for Palestinians." Of the federal government's temporary program for some Gazans, he said: "We should be clear this is anti-Palestinian racism couched in bureaucratic doublespeak," ending his intervention with "Long Live Palestine!"
This article was published in
Volume 54 Number 26 - April 15, 2024
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmlm2024/Articles/MS542614.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca