Fighting deportation
Sara
Falconer
According to Rabie Masri, almost 99 per cent
of Palestinians up for deportation receive a negative ruling.
Masri, in over a year of work with the Coalition Against the
Deportation of Palestinian Refugees, has witnessed many changes.
When Montreal's Palestinian community began meeting in January 2003
to fight deportation orders, many still believed that it was all
some kind of mistake, Masri remembers.
"For them it's inconceivable... to have made it so far to Canada,
where they believe human rights are respected," he says. "Most of
them thought there was some process of appeal that would protect
them." The prospect of a judicial review has long since ceased to
give hope to the refugees.
Ahmed Abdel Majeed, one of the original organizers of the
coalition, was deported in November to the Ein el-Hilweh camp in
Lebanon - returned to life under the shadows of poverty,
checkpoints, curfews, house demolitions, torture and illegal
killings.
Such deportations have fuelled the growing support for the
refugees' rights to stay in Canada on compassionate grounds. "One
major thing is definitely that Immigration Canada now has a battle
on its hands," Masri says. "That's a victory for the coalition."
He knows that change takes time. The elderly Ayoub family, who
gained attention when they took sanctuary in Notre-Dame-de-Grace to
escape deportation over seven months ago, still languishes quietly
underground.
But Immigration Canada will find it difficult to sit still as the
coalition cranks up the heat
on
its campaign this fall.
They will hold a demo on Saturday, September 18, with the
now-familiar rallying cry "Stateless and deported." The event also
commemorates the thousands of Palestinian refugees killed in the
1982 massacre at Sabra and Shatila during the Israeli occupation of
Beirut, condemned as an act of genocide by the United Nations.
Tune in to the finale of CKUT's special week of programming at
5 p.m. on Friday on 90.3 FM or http://www.ckut.ca/. The demonstration will start
at the corner of Atwater and Ste-Catherine (Atwater metro) on
Saturday at 2 p.m. For more info: refugees.resist.ca.
