DEMONSTRATION AND COURT ROOM SUPPORT
Tuesday October 26, 2004, @ 12:30 PM
Citizenship and Immigration Canada Vancouver, 300 West Georgia

Adrian Dragan, a Roma refugee that has been held for 16 months awaiting removal to Romania will have another detention review hearing on Tuesday. Last week Dragan was put into solitary confinement and he was on hunger strike at Fraser Pre-trial in Coquitlam, BC after refusing to sign documents that he is willing to return to Romania.

Dragan is a Roma (also known as “Gypsy”) and faces serious danger and repression if removed to Romania, where Roma people are regularly attacked and persecuted. In fact, Adrian renounced his citizenship in Romania in 1993 to condemn the racism against Roma there, and since he does not have formal citizenship, he is now being held in jailed limbo, without rights as a citizen in either Canada or Romania.

Canada has already tried once to send Adrian to Romania, but he was refused at the Romanian border. Since he is no longer a citizen of Romania, it would have been against international law to force him to enter, so he was sent back to Canada and now in continued detention by Immigration Canada.

As a stateless citizen, Dragan has no homeland and no country of residence. As a signatory of the United Nations 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, Canada has an international duty to accept and protect stateless people.