Canadian Refuge
What is it about Canada that seems to attract so many of the world's sadistic, dictatorial, perpetrators of human rights abuses from abroad? Our lax immigration laws, we are informed. So why in the world don't we tighten them? We seem always to have had the ill fortune to welcome among us people who represent the very worst of what human beings can attain to. From Nazi collaborators to members of the armed forces of the governments of countries like Sudan and Somalia, Bosnia, Cambodia and Rwanda
We don't want these people here, to live out the rest of their lives in comfort, leaving their backgrounds behind to be forgotten that they had preyed unmercifully on other human beings. On occasion our immigration officials discover that someone gave false witness when applying for asylum, for a visa, for citizenship. Extradition proceedings take place, but those whom we wish to rid ourselves of by returning them to their countries of origin are able to take evasive, legal action and remain here for years.
Now, despite that our government says it absolutely refuses to welcome members of the former Tunisian ruling family, we have been burdened with at least four members of the extended family of the deposed and despised former president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who has fled to sanctuary in Saudi Arabia with his wife, and the looted gold from his country's treasury.
There were rumours circulating initially that Ben Ali and his wife would attempt to flee to Canada where a daughter and son-in-law are in the process of building a house in an upscale area of Montreal. They do not appear to be in Canada at the present time, but a brother of the president's wife and his wife have arrived in Montreal. They would have to have acquired official permission to do so.
Not, of course from the government directly, but through a government agency, Immigration Canada, where a representative in Tunisia would have had to supply the Tunisian couple with return visas. Given the fact that many members of the Ben Ali extended family have been arrested and charged with pillaging and looting their country's financial resources, is it likely that these two plan to return to Tunisia?
A visa would only have been issued with the proviso that a return to the country of origin was guaranteed. Any visa-examining-and-issuing immigration official who believed that this pair, under the circumstances, would be eager to plan a scheduled return to Tunisia would have to be suffering from advanced frontal lobe dementia.
"Mr. Ben Ali, deposed members of the former Tunisian regime and their immediate families are not welcome in Canada", assured Citizenship and Immigration Department spokesman Douglas Kellam, in a newspaper interview. He claims that "appropriate action" would be taken ... if someone not wanted in Canada has managed to get here. Well, they have, so what now?
Members of the Canadian Tunisian community are not overjoyed with this turn of events, and nor are ordinary Canadians. Tunisia, understandably, after what has turned out to be a relatively peaceful exercise in civil disobedience resulting in the overthrow of the existing, brutal regime, is on the brink of handing over its secular identity to an Islamist party that the current, teetering government had outlawed.
Unless Tunisian-style, born-and-bred Islamists are somehow far removed from the strident ideological belligerence and tendency to jihadist violence, along with insistence on Sharia overtaking the country's systems of jurisprudence, it seems feasible that in the not-too-distant future the dedicated Tunisian Islamists who attend the Al-Quds Mosque in downtown Tunis will soon have the upper hand.
The Islamist party Ennahdha's exiled founder Rachid Ghannouchi is preparing to return to Tunisia from exile in London. Must be something about the Commonwealth and its political aura, that seems to welcome all manner of political, ideological and religious strays to its ample, welcoming bosom. Currently secular Tunisia seems set to follow the lead of Iran and Turkey, more's the pity.
We don't want these people here, to live out the rest of their lives in comfort, leaving their backgrounds behind to be forgotten that they had preyed unmercifully on other human beings. On occasion our immigration officials discover that someone gave false witness when applying for asylum, for a visa, for citizenship. Extradition proceedings take place, but those whom we wish to rid ourselves of by returning them to their countries of origin are able to take evasive, legal action and remain here for years.
Now, despite that our government says it absolutely refuses to welcome members of the former Tunisian ruling family, we have been burdened with at least four members of the extended family of the deposed and despised former president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who has fled to sanctuary in Saudi Arabia with his wife, and the looted gold from his country's treasury.
There were rumours circulating initially that Ben Ali and his wife would attempt to flee to Canada where a daughter and son-in-law are in the process of building a house in an upscale area of Montreal. They do not appear to be in Canada at the present time, but a brother of the president's wife and his wife have arrived in Montreal. They would have to have acquired official permission to do so.
Not, of course from the government directly, but through a government agency, Immigration Canada, where a representative in Tunisia would have had to supply the Tunisian couple with return visas. Given the fact that many members of the Ben Ali extended family have been arrested and charged with pillaging and looting their country's financial resources, is it likely that these two plan to return to Tunisia?
A visa would only have been issued with the proviso that a return to the country of origin was guaranteed. Any visa-examining-and-issuing immigration official who believed that this pair, under the circumstances, would be eager to plan a scheduled return to Tunisia would have to be suffering from advanced frontal lobe dementia.
"Mr. Ben Ali, deposed members of the former Tunisian regime and their immediate families are not welcome in Canada", assured Citizenship and Immigration Department spokesman Douglas Kellam, in a newspaper interview. He claims that "appropriate action" would be taken ... if someone not wanted in Canada has managed to get here. Well, they have, so what now?
Members of the Canadian Tunisian community are not overjoyed with this turn of events, and nor are ordinary Canadians. Tunisia, understandably, after what has turned out to be a relatively peaceful exercise in civil disobedience resulting in the overthrow of the existing, brutal regime, is on the brink of handing over its secular identity to an Islamist party that the current, teetering government had outlawed.
Unless Tunisian-style, born-and-bred Islamists are somehow far removed from the strident ideological belligerence and tendency to jihadist violence, along with insistence on Sharia overtaking the country's systems of jurisprudence, it seems feasible that in the not-too-distant future the dedicated Tunisian Islamists who attend the Al-Quds Mosque in downtown Tunis will soon have the upper hand.
The Islamist party Ennahdha's exiled founder Rachid Ghannouchi is preparing to return to Tunisia from exile in London. Must be something about the Commonwealth and its political aura, that seems to welcome all manner of political, ideological and religious strays to its ample, welcoming bosom. Currently secular Tunisia seems set to follow the lead of Iran and Turkey, more's the pity.
Labels: Canada, Conflict, Crisis Politics, Traditions
posted by Pieface | 5:12 PM
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