This article was last updated on April 16, 2022
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Yesterday, March 23, 2012, Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced that Canada is contributing $12 million to help detect and prevent South Asian human smuggling operations, Thailand being a major beneficiary. In this case, apart from the smugglers who prey on the hopes of ordinary people, the primary ethnic group blocked from reaching Canada is those Sri Lankan Tamil families attempting to leave Bangkok by ship.Canadian law is currently being altered by the Harper Government to keep out “bogus refugees”. Conservative Party media aimed at the public proclaimed that all Tamil asylum seekers are bogus and probably all terrorists and mainly responsible for the practice of human smuggling. However, established facts revealed that the vast majority of these same asylum seekers were indeed bona-fide refugees needing protection from their country of origin. Notwithstanding the evidence, the Canadian government is currently fighting every claim, asserting either that Sri Lanka is a safe country for Tamil civilians, or by invoking terrorism and rejecting asylum on the flimsiest of grounds imaginable.
The plot thickens. Mr. Harper has threatened to boycott the Commonwealth Summit that is scheduled to take place in Sri Lanka if he does not see improvements there in Human Rights. And two days ago, on March 22, the United Nations Human Rights Council approved a Resolution put forth by the US and co-sponsored by Canada. The Sri Lankan government is being called on to implement its own internal investigation’s recommendations to account for summary executions, kidnappings and other atrocities committed by both government forces and the vanquished rebels during the civil war. It calls on the Sri Lankan government to cease its ongoing practice of impunity in regards to crimes against Tamil civilians. It addresses the fundamental lack of accountability on the part of the government of Sri Lanka and questions its efforts creating a situation where a permanent peace is possible.
The original UN investigation of Sri Lanka included a veritable encyclopedia of Crimes against Humanity and International War Crimes. To avoid “outside interference”, Sri Lanka responded with its own investigation and the current resolution asks nothing but that the SL government implement its own recommendations. Sri Lanka is furiously rejecting even this and vilifying the West, the UN, rights activists and NGOs on state media aimed at the public.
The UN has issued a statement regarding the “unprecedented and totally unacceptable level of threats, harassment and intimidation directed at Sri Lankan human rights activists by the Sri Lankan government delegation” while at the UN debate in Geneva and warns against reprisals back in SL. If this happens at a UN Human Rights meeting, then very likely I’d guess, Sri Lanka is not at all a safe country for anyone the government disapproves of.
So, on one hand, the Harper Government is happily receiving international kudos for its UN stance on human rights for Tamils in Sri Lanka. On the other hand, the Harper Government has, for almost two years now, been orchestrating the indefinite imprisonment of would-be Tamil refugee families, seniors, young children and babies included, who remain confined in horrible, mind-bending conditions in Thailand.
The Harper Government is blocking people’s ability to flee persecution by giving money to foreign governments to keep refugees away from our shores. Canadian refugee laws are being changed to punish those who do reach us. With the new laws, a federal immigration minister can now single-handedly designate countries as being “safe”, and the arrival of refugees as being “irregular”, having shut down the human rights committee that was mandated to give advice about ground conditions in countries of origin.
This shift towards political expediency brings with it disastrous consequences for genuinely desperate asylum seekers. Those already here are now threatened with the prospect of being sent back to their “safe” countries. Regular Immigration laws and programs have also been radically altered, hindering the likelihood of a secure, normal family life for immigrants who now call Canada home.
Yet to stay in power, Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney and Minister of Foreign Affairs, John Baird – those directly responsible for this two-faced mess – enthusiastically court and often get Canada’s “ethnic vote”, targeting the very communities that will be directly impacted by their new anti-immigrant and anti-refugee policies.
I just don’t understand . . .
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If Canada could not, then who can???
It’s look like “Patting on the shoulder by right and slapping the face by left hand”.
Harper cannot have it both ways. If he truly believes that the Tamils in Sri Lanka are repressed as indicated in a jointly sponsored resolution with the US at the Human Rights Council in Geneva ,then he should permit the arrival of Tamil refugees to come to Canada without harassing them on their arrival.
I’ve always sacomment_ID that in general, Canadians are the last to march in the street for anything.
We took the lead role in the Kyoto Accord, Harper killed it.
We used to have a Science Council of Canada to advise the government on all aspects of Science, Mulroney killed it.
We used to be seen as the largest peace-keeping nation in the world, Harper killed that too and sent our soldiers to Afghanistan, you be the judge as to how well the USA “succeeded” in Afghanistan.
Our air force, Harper sacomment_ID, needed new equipment, so we went overboard and ordered the new F35 jets from the USA, which are not the best in the world at all, and are having huge cost over-runs in addition to the Harper government not coming clean with Canadians about the real costs.
Here we have a Canadian government (self-designated comment_content_author_url “Harper” government, brag brag) that in reality had a mandate from maybe 25% of Canadians, acting like a dictatorship behind the scenes, and acting as if they are do-gooders in front of the media cameras.
Now the “Harper” government has so mismanaged immigration, that they are cancelling out thousands of immigration proceedings since 2008 and sending them back. Why? Because the immigration department wasn’t planned properly, not enough people were on staff, and they got hopelessly behind. So do we punish those in charge of immigration, and train and hire enough immigration workers? No, we punish the would-be immigrants themselves.
Canada was built by immigrants, many who arrived with little money in their pockets. Now, it’s usually only the wealthy who get to immigrate. Hmmmmm….go figure…
Most of the immigrants in the 1800’s and 1900’s worked hard and dcomment_ID well. So, one might ask, what’s changed? Not the Canadian people. Just the Canadian government and the exercise of their powers, emanating always from plans hcomment_IDden “behind the scenes”. If we vote again for Harper and his team, we are voting for something far worse than George Orwell’s “1984”. (End of comment_content).