Posted by admin on Dec 22nd, 2009
December 22, 2009, Nicholas Keung, Toronto Star
The Ontario coroner is investigating the death of Jan Szamko, 31, who was scheduled to be sent back to the Czech Republic on Dec. 6. Szamko had been arrested on an immigration warrant and was detained at a Rexdale Blvd. immigration holding centre earlier this month. At 1:30 a.m. Dec. 9, a Toronto police officer told Szamko’s widow, Nadezda Peterova, and the couple’s 9-year-old daughter, Sabina, the factory worker had been found dead in his cell at the detention centre.
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Posted by admin on Dec 19th, 2009
Jane Armstrong, Globe and Mail, Saturday, Dec. 19, 2009
The government wants to go behind closed doors to introduce secret evidence at detention-review hearings for 11 Tamil migrants who turned up on the West Coast. Department of Justice lawyers informed lawyers for some of the migrants yesterday that they have applied under a special section of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to keep their information secret as they argue for continued detention of some of the men.
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Posted by admin on Dec 12th, 2009
Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nooneisillegal/
On December 10, 2009 (International Human Rights Day), No One Is Illegal- Vancouver, Coast Salish Territories, and our allies dropped two large banners which stated: “Canada Jails Refugees” above Highway 1 during morning rush-hour traffic. No One Is Illegal continues to condemn and organize against the actions of the Canadian government that perpetuates gross violations of refugee and migrant human rights. Particularly under Minister Kenney’s immigration regime, we have witnessed escalating rates of detention and deportation. The banners were a response to the ongoing detention and criminalization of 75 of the 76 Tamil refugees that arrived in BC on October 2009.
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Posted by admin on Dec 3rd, 2009
By Harsha Walia | December 3, 2009. Rabble.ca
What does the murder of a 24-year-old woman, found with blows to her body and a bullet in her forehead in Mexico, have to do with Canada’s immigration system? To refugee advocates it represents the system’s fundamental failure to uphold the rights of asylum seekers: the 24-year-old victim and her mother and sister had twice sought refuge in Canada from the druglords who are believed to have killed her upon her deportation. Immigrant rights activists are concerned by a pattern of tighter controls, increased deportations and inflammatory anti-immigrant posturing over the past year that further erodes the myth of benevolence in Canada’s immigration policy.
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Posted by admin on Nov 20th, 2009
Wendy Stueck, Globe and Mail, Friday, Nov. 20, 2009
Lawyers for Sri Lankan migrants whose ship landed on the West Coast last month grilled Singapore-based terrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna Thursday on his claims about the men, questioning his sources, connections to the Sri Lankan government and the reliability of the information that he publishes on a terrorism database.
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