Mexican award-winning journalist and whistleblower facing deportation in coming weeks.

MEDIA ADVISORY –

WHAT: Press Conference with Karla Ramirez aka Karla Lottini, her lawyer Lobat Sadrehashemi, UBC Liu Scholar Manuela Valle, and others.
WHEN: Thursday January 19, 2012 at 10 am
WHERE: YWCA (733 Beatty Street)

January 17 2012, VANCOUVER Coast Salish Territories- Award-winning Mexican journalist and now whistleblower Karla Berenice García Ramírez, who writes under the penname Karla Lottini, fears for the safety of herself and her family as she awaits deportation orders.

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(espanol abajo)

Dear friends and allies of No One Is Illegal Vancouver Coast Salish Territories,

We are writing to ask for your support for Karla Berenice García Ramírez, whose pseudonym as a writer is Karla Lottini. Karla is a Mexican whistleblower, award-winning journalist, and writer who sought but has been denied refugee status in Canada. Karla arrived to Canada as an asylum seeker in 2008 with her husband, with whom she now has two Canadian-born children including a 2 month old baby. While in Canada, Karla has continued to write, including the launch of her book “Talent of the Charlatans’ at UBC and SFU. (Link to UBC book launch here and SFU book launch here).

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Dear friends and allies of No One Is Illegal Vancouver Coast Salish Territories,

We are thrilled to be able to share the news with you that Nader has been  released from detention and his Pre-Removal Risk Assessment has been accepted!

Nader is a 46 year old Iranian refugee who had been detained and imprisoned by Canadian Border Services Agency since 2005. Nader spent over SIX years behind bars, without any substantive charges, under the jurisdiction of the Immigration Act. His length of detention has been unprecedented in Canada and Nader had been on a seven-week hunger strike to protest his ongoing, essentially indefinite detention.

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Support at Detention Hearing. Thursday, December 15th at 11:00 am. Immigration and Refugee Board Offices, 300 West Georgia Street

Nader is a 46 year old Iranian refugee who has been detained and imprisoned by Canadian Border Services Agency since 2005. Nader has spent over six years behind bars, without any substantive charges, under the jurisdiction of the Immigration Act.

His length of detention is unprecedented in Canada.

Nader has now been on a six-week hunger strike and will be appearing yet again for a detention review on Thursday December 15th at 11 am at Immigration and Refugee Board offices (300 West Georgia). He is calling on the public and allies in the anti-detention movement to bear witness to this arbitrary, inhumane, and indefinite detention hearing. No One Is Illegal attended his last hearing and he said that it was a huge boost in morale for him. (We ask supporters to please keep in mind about bearing witness and to be cautious of how our conduct will reflect/impact on him.)

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Vancouver Sun, Chad Skeleton Aug 4 2011

After the MV Sun Sea arrived on B.C.’s coast last summer carrying 492 migrants, we filed a number of Access to Information requests to the Canada Border Services Agency for information on the ship and how the migrants were handled. The first batch of records in response to those requests have started to trickle in. So far, they don’t contain anything particularly shocking. However, there was one memo that was kind of interesting. It’s been well-established since the Sun Sea arrived that the federal government has pushed hard to keep migrants in detention until their refugee hearings occur. This memo gives some indication of just how seriously the government is about keeping the migrants in detention:

CBSA Grounds for Detention

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