Indigenous Resistance News
Posted by admin on Feb 26th, 2015
‘This system hasn’t killed me yet’: A roundtable on gendered colonial violence
Nearly 1,200 Indigenous women have been murdered or gone missing in Canada over the past 30 years. According to researcher Maryanne Pearce, 24.8 per cent of all missing and murdered women in Canada are Indigenous women despite making up less than two per cent of the total population. Statistics are, of course, wholly inadequate when conveying the scope of violence. Gendered violence is embedded within settler-colonialism: in racist and heteropatriarchal laws such as the Indian Act, in policies of child apprehension which target Indigenous families, in the practices of locking up Indigenous women and youth at alarming rates, in the theft of Indigenous lands that disproportionately displaces and impoverishes Indigenous women, and in the genocidal attempts to annihilate Indigenous laws through the very bodies of Indigenous women, girls, trans and two-spirit people that embody and enact Indigenous sovereignty.
The Tsilhqot’in Decision and Canada’s First Nations Termination Policies
“The reaction to the SCC Tsilhqot’in decision has ranged from the jubilation of Tsilhqot’in Chiefs and other First Nation leaders, to dismay and alarm from industry spokespeople and other Canadian Settler opinion makers. Reaction from Colonial Crown governments was muted or silent for the most part, except for the British Columbia government, Premier Christy Clark called for a meeting between her Cabinet and Chiefs in BC on September 11, 2014.”
Victory! Transportation not Deportation Campaign Forces Transit Police to Terminate Agreement with CBSA
Posted by admin on Feb 21st, 2015
“This afternoon, Transit Police informed representatives of the Transportation not Deportation campaign that they will terminate their Memorandum of Understanding with CBSA, that officers must receive permission from a Watch Commander to initiate contact with CBSA, and that they will not detain people without warrants for items that are simply contravention of immigration law,” confirms Omar Chu of Transportation not Deportation.
Since 2007, Transit Police and the Pacific Region Enforcement Center of CBSA have had a Memorandum of Understanding. Transit Police reported three hundred and twenty eight people to Canada Border Services Agency in 2013, one in five of whom faced a subsequent immigration investigation including deportation. Only 1.5% of all those referred to CBSA even had immigration warrants out. From November 2012 to January 2013, Transit police made had more referrals to CBSA than any other BC police force including the VPD and RCMP.
One of these people was Mexican migrant and hotel worker Lucia Vega Jiménez, who later committed suicide while in CBSA custody. At the coroner’s inquest into her death, a Transit Police officer testified that he turned Lucia over to Canada Border Services Agency, in part, because Lucia had an accent and that he believed “she wasn’t originally from Canada.â€
Migrant Justice News
Posted by admin on Feb 16th, 2015
VIDEO: “Guantánamo of the Pacific”: Australian Asylum Seekers Wage Hunger Strike at Offshore Detention Site
A massive hunger strike is underway at what some are calling “the Guantánamo Bay of the Pacific.” TSome have barricaded themselves behind the detention center’s high wire fences; others have resorted to increasingly drastic measures such as drinking washing detergent, swallowing razor blades, and even sewing their mouths shut to protest their confinement.
Watch Democracy Now video here: http://www.democracynow.org/2015/1/22/guantanamo_of_the_pacific_australian_asylum
Are you already violating the feds’ new anti-terror bill?
Harper introduced Bill C-51, a sweeping piece of legislation that covers everything from what you’re allowed to say and write to who can board a plane, what happens to your tax information and how long you can be detained without charge.
 http://globalnews.ca/news/1803553/are-you-already-violating-the-feds-new-anti-terror-bill/
My call from a former hunger striker inside the Lindsay Superjail
In recent months I’ve been receiving collect calls from a man who’s being held at the Central East Correctional Centre, also known as the Lindsay Superjail. He’s one of about 200 immigration detainees who began hunger strikes at the jail in September 2013 to protest lengthy detentions and seemingly endless immigration hearings. More than a year later, many of them are still in a maximum-security purgatory that sounds like hell on earth.
https://nowtoronto.com/news/my-call-from-a-former-hunger-striker-inside-the-lindsay-supe/
Celebrating Migrant Justice Victories
Posted by admin on Feb 14th, 2015
 Immigration program for parents ‘discriminatory,’ Federal Court of Appeal rules
An appeal court has found that the federal government discriminates against parents and grandparents by delaying their immigration processing. The Federal Court of Appeal ruling this week is a partial victory for Amir Attaran, a University of Ottawa law and medicine professor who applied in 2009 to sponsor his aging parents, both American citizens, to Canada under the family class immigration program.
Refugee claimant who sought sanctuary in a church for four years gets Canadian citizenship
Abdelkader Belaouni, a blind refugee claimant who spent almost four years in a Pointe-St-Charles church to avoid deportation, is now a Canadian citizen. On Jan. 1, 2006, he sought sanctuary in St. Gabriel’s Church, only emerging in October 2009 when the government granted him permanent-resident status. During his long confinement, supporters staged rallies and concerts, created a portable mural and filmed a documentary to publicize his plight. While at the church, Belaouni hosted radio broadcasts on McGill University’s CKUT, learned to play the piano, guitar and flute, recorded two albums and wrote two books — a memoir and a volume on Algerian history.
