Apartides et Expulsés

Coalition Contre la Déportation des Réfugiés Palestiniens

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Coalition Against the Deportation of Palestinian Refugees

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The Gazette

September 19, 2004 

 

Hundreds protest against deportation of Palestinians: Demonstrators say failed refugee claimants to be returned to Gaza Strip and West Bank Montreal Gazette Sunday, 

 

By CATHERINE SOLYOM

Whatever side of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict you may be on, it's clear from the endless headlines that the Gaza Strip and the West Bank are not the safest places to be. 

 

Yet Canada is nevertheless set to deport about 40 Palestinians over the next few months, said a group of about 500 demonstrators as they marched through downtown Montreal yesterday. 

 

"They're deporting people back to military occupation," said Rabie Masri of the Coalition Against the Deportation of Palestinian Refugees, one of several groups that organized the demonstration down Ste. Catherine St. W. yesterday. "We hope (Paul Martin's) minority government will finally put an end to this situation." Masri said it's not easy - bureaucratically speaking - for the Canadian government to deport stateless Palestinians. Sometimes it must deal with two different countries: first with Jordan for those going back to the West Bank, and with Egypt for those going to Gaza. There are currently six young Palestinians in Montreal living underground to avoid being sent back there, Masri said. 

 

Ahmad Mustapha, 26, may soon be in the same situation. "Like the 40 others, I have been refused refugee status," said Mustapha, an engineer who was born and raised in a refugee camp in Lebanon. "I'm basically waiting to be deported." He and others at the march decried the system that refused them in the first place. Since 2002, it is up to one Immigration and Refugee Board judge to decide the fate of refugee claimants, often with little knowledge of the home country, and with no chance for claimants to appeal based on the merits of their case. 

 

When Mustapha explained that he couldn't get work in Lebanon, for example, an IRB judge told him he hadn't looked hard enough. "But as a Palestinian it is illegal for me to work as an engineer in Lebanon," he said. 

 

As demonstrators marked the anniversary of the massacres at the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps in Lebanon - on Sept. 16 to 18, 1982, up to 2,000 Palestinians were killed by right-wing Christian militias - they also expressed particular concern for the Ayoub family here. 

 

Before coming to Canada three years ago, Khalil Ayoub, 67, Nabih Ayoub, 69, and his wife, Therese Boulos Haddad, 62, had been living on the run or in refugee camps for about 50 years. Now they have spent more than seven months confined to the basement of a Notre Dame de Grace church to avoid deportation, with no response from Immigration Minister Judy Sgro other than to say refugee claimants should not seek sanctuary in churches. 

 

"(The Ayoubs) could be your parents or your grandparents," Masri told the crowd of about 500 people. "All we want is for them to be able to live the last few years of their life in dignity and peace in Canada."

 

 csolyom@thegazette.canwest.com -----------------------

 

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Coalition Contre la Déportation des Réfugiés Palestiniens / Coalition Against the Deportation of Palestinian Refugees

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