Come One, Come All!

"Never use threat, force or pressure to make someone have sex."

"Women can ... choose who they marry."

"If you have sex with someone without their consent, this is called rape"

"Rape is a serious crime in the U.K. You could go to prison, lose your support and accommodation, and it will affect your asylum claim."

New U.K. orientation manual for migrants 

 

"All permanent residents and protected persons are eligible for IRCC-funded settlement services [to] help them integrate and build a successful life in Canada as quickly as possible and include information on rights and freedoms of individuals according to Canadian law, understanding of Canadian values, as well as their responsibilities and obligations."

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada spokesperson

600 Gaza refugees enter Canada in 2005  CBC News

 

The United Kingdom, overwhelmed by the presence of migrants, faces a long string of social/cultural problems related to different customs and values being transplanted alongside the migrants into Britain. An epidemic of violence has erupted for several years unlike what the United Kingdom has previously experienced, a stream of non-stop incidents that fall far outside the normal social contract of the Emerald Isle's traditional population. Rapes by migrants perpetrated against vulnerable men, women, teens, even children, taking place in wooded areas, parks, beach change-rooms and rental units.

 

Grooming Gangs in the U.K. Machiavelli Foundation

 

It took long enough for the British Government to pay attention to the scandals that for years had stalked communities where Muslim men, mostly of Pakistani origins, whose sex culture was responsible for grooming gangs focused on raping and using young Caucasian girls as sex slaves, renting out their services for fun and profit. It wasn't that the situation was unknown to British authorities, but that it was quite simply too inconvenient for them to 'notice' much less act on the practise, given the large Muslim population and accusations of 'Islamophobic' racism to be avoided at all costs.

 

Canada too, as it happens, finds itself in inconvenient waters with the surge of the past decade of immigrants, refugees and migrants infiltrating Canadian society. And in Canada not-too-subtle incidents of migrants in the country bringing with them customs contradictory to Western human rights values where incestuous relations, stranger-rape, organized crime, underage marriages, polygamy, genital mutilation offend Canadian customs and laws.

 

In 2015, during the federal election Prime Minister Stephen Harper's election campaign was rife with outrage from civil rights groups and the growing Muslim community in Canada over his government's release of 'instructions for immigrants' booklet Discover Canada: The Rights and Responsibilities of Citizenship that advised foreigners entering Canada as landed immigrants and permanent residents on their way to achieving citizenship, that Canada's welcome did not include 'barbaric cultural practices' such as spousal abuse, 'honour killings', female genital mutilation, and forced polygamy.

 

Burqa ban in Great Britain?  Independent

 

How times have changed; the instructions of yesteryear rejected by the electorate have, by necessity since then been rejuvenated where marriage fraud warning is circulated by government auspices. In Canada too there are those requiring an explanation why it is frowned upon to rape children. A 'Pre-Departure Guide for Newcomers to Canada', published in 2025 focuses on newcomer rights rather than their responsibilities to the new country they will inhabit. 

 

Gently there are hints as to what is now of vital importance to this current progressive government; an acceptance of the presence of transgenderism, where readers are instructed that the LGBTQ-2 community in Canada is not only accepted, supported and valued, but so too is the right of the nation's children to question their from-birth designation as male or female. Issues such as 'lining up', 'making eye contact' and 'using underarm deodorant' are given their due place in the booklet.

 

Criminal activities are also addressed such as a jail term will come with carrying a firearm without a permit, and unwanted sexual touching or remarks may elicit a fine, or even prison. Bribery, polygamy, female genital mutilation and 'Making, sharing or owning photos of naked children', 'forcing others into marriage', and 'having sex with children', are similarly frowned upon and the letter of the law may be applied. Although truth to tell, the justice system goes easy on skin tones and ethnicity and cultures, with reduced sentences applied.

 

Family violence is frowned upon and "Killing a family member as a way to save a family's honour", is definitely unacceptable. Also addressed is the virtue of working for a living, rather than becoming wholly dependent on Canada Child Benefit payments which, when enough children in a family receive those generous benefits can sustain a family, without a breadwinner breaking a sweat. ($679.75 per month ($8,157 per year) for each child under 6, and $573.58 per month ($6,883 per year) for each child aged 6 to 17 for the 2026–2027 year.

 

What Muslim female dress means as a  wedge issue in Canada  TVO Today

 

 

Black-On-Black Intolerance, Persecution, Aggression, Violence

"I've been harassed. For us, it's not about whether you are legal or not, and that is why everyone is very careful right now."

"As long as you are a Nigerian, you are profiled and you are stereotyped immediately."

"We are all very careful."

"We are in the dark because we don't know how our government [in Nigeria] is going to react if any of us is to be affected or is to be killed."

"[Both Pretoria and Johannesburg have the] biggest [migrant communities]."

Chairman, Nigerian Union in South Africa, Olaniyi Abodedele

 

"It is not okay because we are blacks, we are brothers... everybody comes here just to survive."

"It's not what we expected as fellow African."

"It's just making us scared - imagine if we're scared in our own African continent - what if we go to Europe?"

Immigrant Security Guard

 

"[The president ordered the] evacuation of imperiled Nigerian citizens who consider their lives at risk by continued stay in South Africa."

"The price of  your peace, and the safety of your children is not worth any sacrifices you have to make, or any assets you have to leave behind when fleeing a conflict zone or hate-infested environment."

Nigerian Foreign Minister Bianca Odumegwu-Ojukwu 

 

"[Nigerians] living in South Africa legally [are being dreadfully mistreated]."

"If there were issues of illegality, that would be determined on a person-to-person basis. You can't just crown the entire Nigerians living in South Africa as living there illegally."

Nigerian Humanitarian Affairs Minister Bernard Doro  

Hundreds took to the streets of Pretoria to protest against immigration   BBC / Thuthuka Zondi

"I am very scared and traumatized."

"The people came to my house and told me: 'You must leave. We don't want you people to stay here any longer, so you have to go to your country.' There were 10 and they were carrying weapons [machetes and whips]."

"They cut my husband on his head and his neck. They were holding his neck like they wanted to kill him."

"Because of God he still survived, but he's in the hospital."

Esnat Joseph, 36, Malawian 

Esnat Joseph said a gang of men came to her home in Durban to threaten the family - forcing her to flee with her triplets   Thuthuka Zondi / BBC

"If you come into South Africa with a passport that allows you to stay for 30 days. When it's 50 days, when it's two years, when it's five years, you know you're breaking the law."

"We can't have South Africa being turned into a refugee site for all failed African states… every country prioritizes its citizens and we want the South African government to do the same."

March and March leader Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma    

Ghana's diplomatic mission told Ghanaians in the country to "place the highest priority on personal safety... [and] take precautionary measures" during the protests. BBC / Thuthuka Zondi

 

Part of repatriation ordered by the government of Nigeria following violent anti-immigrant protests, the initial group of Nigerians returned home from South Africa this week. On board the flight to Lagos was a total of 262 passengers and three officials, according to the Nigerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs which earlier stated that over 1,000 Nigerians have registered with them for voluntary return.

 

According to authorities in South Africa, those returnees were found to be in the country illegally, effectively contradicting the Nigerian officials who had stated unequivocally that Nigerians were fleeing xenophobic attacks against them by hordes of South Africans who march in the streets, intimidating migrants as well as legal immigrants with the violent vehemence of their expressed hatred of the presence of 'foreigners'. Bearing sticks the marchers chant: "Mabahambe" - a Zulu phrase meaning "They must go".

 

Such flights have been organized from South Africa by other African nations whose nationals have been targeted by hate messages and threats of violence, including Zimbabwe, Malawi, Ghana, Mozambique and others which make up the 3 million non-South-Africans in the country, representing 5 percent of the population. Many of whom are there in South Africa, welcomed for their cheap labour. While South Africa is the wealthiest and most-developed of the regional African countries, it has a high unemployment rate.

 

Countries like Nigeria have taken note that since April, a series of new anti-immigration protests have resulted in attacks against some foreigners in South Africa; protests that highlight tensions between foreign workers and locals who claim their jobs are being taken by foreigners. Some South African officials speak of the protests and the threats inherent in them as acts of xenophobia; words lacking any action leading to a solution to the anger, resentment and fear. 

 

According to some returnees questioned by authorities in their home countries, they lacked proper documentation in South Africa, while others stated they had been unable to renew their residency papers for years, the result of immigration bottlenecks imposed on Nigerians by South African authorities. "I was in South Africa for 11 years, and I was treated badly/ They did not give us [Nigerians] resident permits because we were Nigerians", complained Eminaba Beatrice.  

 

Around 7,000 people have gathered in Durban asking to be repatriated to Malawi  AFP via Getty Images

  

"Political parties are scraping the bottom of the barrel in trying to lie to people that all our problems are the migrants, and if we get rid of the migrants, then we'll have no problems in South Africa."

"This has been an ongoing phenomenon in South Africa and more recently, it has been associated with elections."

Sharon Ekambaram, human rights lawyer, member, Kopanang Africa Against Xenophobia movement 

Counterfeit Chinese-Tibetan-Canadian Friendship Group

"This year has been a special year -- the 60th anniversary of democratic reform in Tibet. Because of Chinese government support and help, Tibet has changed a lot. There's a big change in Tibet."
"Such as people's standard of living ... religious rights. And so on and so on."
"The purpose and aim of our association is to persist in reunification and oppose separation."
Dorjee Tenzin, president, Tibetan Association of Canada

"It's very disruptive. People are not able to distinguish between which is a genuine community-based organization, and which is a foreign-government-funded organization who's lobbying on behalf of another government."
Tsering Shakya, professor, Tibet expert, University of British Columbia

"This is definitely another propaganda tool by the Chinese State."
"I see it as a threat to me personally. I will not know about my Tibetan history if these entities gain power and start to influence our academic institutions and other cultural spaces."
Chemi Lhamo, president, University of Toronto Scarborough campus students union

"We are shocked at the extent this Chinese government-backed group went to deceive Canadians that they represent Tibetans in Canada."
"We call for a criminal investigation of this association and appropriate actions be taken. And for all their claims of development in Tibet, let’s start with opening of Tibet for international media, independent researchers and human rights experts."
Sherap Therchin, Canada Tibet Committee

Tibetan monks protesting, with the prohibited Tibetan flag and image of the Dalai Llama

A purportedly new Tibetan-Canadian organization held an opening gala to which they invited as many government officials as would respond positively to their invitation. The new group had the inestimable assistance in their set-up of the Toronto Confederation of Chinese Canadian Organizations which co-hosted a news conference for Chinese-Canadian media, to introduce the presence of this new group.

With their history of close relations with Beijing, the confederation's assistance to another group ostensibly one dedicated to furthering Tibetan interests should have smacked of suspicious origins to a sharp eye.

Beijing's Overseas Affairs office has praised the work of the confederation, extremely helpful in working with the Chinese consulate in Toronto, in putting on a lavish China exhibit about Tibet at city hall in 2001. Harmony, you see, is anti-splittist; the former the goal, the latter anathema. And portraying Tibet as wholly content and privileged to be a part of China -- and not as the Dalai Llama and most Tibetans would prefer, wholly independent of Chinese rule -- the very picture of harmony.

The Toronto school board was convinced that to establish a branch of the Confucius Institute would be of enormous benefit, thanks to the energetic lobbying of the confederation. The launching party of the new Tibetan-Canadian organization attracted the diplomatically supportive presence of provincial and municipal politicians accustomed to taking turns among their colleagues in attending such ethnic events to demonstrate just how obligingly inclusive Canadians are while at the same time demonstrating their oblivious innocence to deeper plots beyond their ken.

Several months ago Tibetan Chemi Lhamo experienced an organized campaign from thousands of Chinese students, both residents and foreign, to her elevation as president of the U.of T. student council at the Scarborough campus. She is a Tibetan activist, speaking openly of the Chinese takeover of her country, the People's Republic of China's repression of Tibetans, Buddhism and its insistence that Tibet is part of China, not a wholly autonomous nation.

She was threatened with violence on line and thoroughly distressed, but not intimidated.

On Chinese-language websites the two-month-old organization is referred to as the Tibetan Canadian Friendship Association. At the announcement of its existence at a news conference, speakers stood before a row of Chinese and Canadian flags. Signs were in English and Chinese, not Tibetan, at the group's launch where Chinese and Canadian anthems were sung.

With China's 1950s takeover of Tibet, many of the country's Buddhist monasteries were shuttered. A Chinese-approved-and-sponsored Tibetan replacement for the Dalai Llama was put in his place. Tibet's religion and language were suppressed, its people's rights as a sovereign nation abused. Han Chinese were encouraged to settle in Tibet to make them the dominant population base. 

"The strategy of this group, strongly supported by the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese government, seems to be to divide the Tibetan community in Canada. As well, it is misleading senior Canadian officials into thinking that this new group actually represents Tibetans in Canada. A similar strategy by the Chinese government and the Communist Party have also been used in the United States."
"Even more troubling are the claims made by the president of the new group stating that Tibet now enjoys freedom of religion, economic development, ecological and environmental preservation, and improvement of Tibetans’ livelihood."
Joint statement from five Tibetan organizations in Canada

Take Tibet Train from Xi’an

Refugee Baggage

"That's the main thing that we gained. Nobody who is a refugee wants to be convicted of any indictable offence, because it's going to bring them under the purview of deportation."
"[This case represents a] very critical clash of cultures [bringing a clear message to the Syrian community in Canada]."
"Their words were taken literally instead of figuratively. In my interaction with the entire family, I came to the conclusion that this is a manner of speech that they never really intended to carry any of this out, but they do it so to say, 'You should mind me, because this is what I think'."
"Throughout the time from which her [complainant] parents were arrested and detained [Bayan] was recanting and saying 'All this is my fault'. But of course, just like in domestic assaults, the police -- and rightly so -- don't take the recanting seriously."
David Lutz, lawyer for Ahmad Ayoub, Syrian refugee in Canada

Bayan Ayoub, left, her mother Faten, top right, and father Ahmad outside the courthouse in Burton, New Brunswick, on May 15, 2018.    Don MacPherson and Caitlin Dutt/The Daily Gleaner

Having spent 72 days imprisoned for issuing death threats against their daughter, 52-year-old Ahmad Ayoub and his wife Faten, aged 48, are now free. They pleaded guilty to uttering threats in an obvious agreement to treat the matter as a summary conviction offence. Their sentence amounted to the time they served in prison. The more serious indictable offence of uttering threats was dismissed; were it not they would be facing a summer trial and the sentence for a conviction in that instance would have been six months to a year, to a maximum of two years.

Threats uttered by traditional Muslim immigrants are no trifling matter when family 'honour' is involved. Muslim and traditionally orthodox Indian families whose children refuse to honour the traditions of their culture and religion have shocked the West in honour-based killings to prevent a family member from disobeying the patriarch's orders, and to restore honour to the family when it has been too late to stop the revolting family member from deviating from custom.

The notorious Shafia family from Montreal where father, mother and son conspired to murder the family's three teen-age girls for disobeying orders not to mingle with Canadian boys and not to discard traditional Muslim head coverings enraged the parents by the girls' immodest behaviour. They blamed the father's first wife who had acted as a more genuine mother to the girls than their own did, and murdered her along with the girls. All three are now serving sentences for first-degree murder.

Honour killings are not entirely rare across the Muslim world, where girls and women are seen as akin to property, where females are subject to male direction in all matters and not viewed as autonomous individuals. Free will, individual choices and human rights are concepts that bear no weight in societies whose traditions and religious instructions are geared toward ensuring women are compliant and subservient to the menfolk in their lives.

Despite this Canadian lawyer's assurances that the threats were mere admonitions not to be taken seriously as threats, but to be viewed as concerned parents wishing the best for their rebellious daughter refusing to heed their command to stop seeing a Canadian man in an intimate social relationship, the daughter, Bayan Ayoub, knowing her culture and her parents, took the threats seriously enough to contact police.

Had the parents who arrived in New Brunswick as refugees in 2016, under sponsorship by the federal government been found guilty of the more serious charge, their refugee status giving them landed immigrant status in Canada could have been revoked. This is as good an example as any of the unwillingness or inability of some refugees and immigrants who arrive in Canada to integrate into the prevailing culture, accepting Canadian values and leaving their constricted social values inimical to the well-being of women back in their war-torn countries where they belong.

This family of two culturally-obtuse adults have five children in Canada, the youngest ten years of age. The parents cannot be classified as educationally ignorant since both had the advantage of post-secondary education; one in business the other in the service industry. In Canada since 2016 with their five children, neither parent has yet succeeded in finding employment. Daughter Bayan, 25 years of age, informed her Canadian boyfriend of her parents' threats against her. He encouraged her to report the threats.

She was described in court proceedings as a reluctant participant in the prosecution. Natural enough when a young women feels dismayed seeing her parents imprisoned and later in a court. She would naturally feel guilty about reporting them. Which wouldn't have made the threats against her any less worrisome. When  her mother became aware she had gone to police, another threat was forthcoming, that this would result in her being killed; stated via a telephone call which the daughter recorded. If she was disinclined to take the threats seriously she would hardly have reported, much less recorded them.

The Ahmads were enraged their daughter won an iPad in a contest; the first threat consisted of a promise to poison her food. She was warned that contact with local men would be prohibited for her. When Bayan's parents discovered her to be in communication with a Canadian man through social media, her father informed her that "for his own dignity, it would be better to slaughter her". However, since Mr. Lutz, the father's lawyer, assured the court that the words used were hyperbolic, exaggerated and non-literal, all is well.

"[The Ayoubs' threats were] careless, bordering on reckless, and they have learned from this experience that this kind of language may be acceptable in Syria and Afghanistan, but now they know, better than most, that it's not acceptable in Canada". Which means what, exactly, that they will take care in future lest they be caught while in the passionate throes of committing a commonplace cultural-religious strategy to control their children to protect family honour using a time-honoured stratagem familiar and valued?

Supporting Immigrants : Spurning Nationalists

"I was born in '58, and both of my parents were marked by the Nazi period. The older I get, the more I understand how traumatized my father, in particular, was."
"Today, seventy years later, you have the feeling for the first time that history could repeat itself. That's not out of the question."
Raif Teepe, German foreign service, bookstore client

"I think in the next few years we are going to need to not just 'protest' against, but really come up with a 'for'. What do we want in our society?"
"We wanted to take back the public space. At a certain point, you just have to do something."
Jorg Braunsdorf, proprietor, independent bookshop, Tucholsky Bookstore

Tucholsky Bookstore helped organize protests against right-wing extremists last month. Credit Gordon Welters for The New York Times

Mr. Braunsdorf's bookstore is a neighbourhood installation, much frequented by the people living there. The area in Berlin is known as the old Jewish quarter. The street the bookshop is located on is named after a German-Jewish writer of some renown who in the 1930s wrote critically of the new fascist movement in Germany. His name was Kurt Tucholsky and the street was named in his honour. When Mr. Braunsdorf opened his bookshop he thought it appropriate to name the shop after Mr. Tucholsky and he maintains a section in his shop dedicated to the author's work.

Mr. Braunsdorf was offended and angered when in 2016 a group of 'right-wing extremists' marched through his neighbourhood in a free-speech expression of nationalism. In speaking with his customers who were also his neighbours a general consensus of anger against the entitlement of the fascist movement to express its rancid message of hatred through the old Jewish quarter gripped them. And Mr. Braunsdorf went into consultation with his neighbours and they conceived of a counter-march plan.

Meant to inform the marchers in no uncertain terms that their loathsome message was not appreciated, and they had no business littering their street with their hate propaganda and their wretched presence so reminiscent of the dreadful past. They looked elsewhere also for support and linked with "Berlin Against Nazis" group targeting racism and anti-Semitism.

One customer said that he visits Tucholsky Bookstore once a week, in lieu of church, for spiritual enrichment. Credit Gordon Welters for The New York Times

Posters were designed along with fliers and three protest stations were set up along the route the marchers were taking, to be manned by some among the 200 to 300 people who showed up to demonstrate solidarity. They brought spoons to bang on pots and pans. The rise of groups such as the Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West and Alternatives for Germany (AfD) has convinced ordinary Germans that the far right is making inroads they would prefer they not do.

The 58-year-old Mr. Braunsdorf is an agreeable man who considers himself and his shop to be something more than merely a purveyor of books. He hosts readings at his shop and has done so for refugee children with German-Arabic reading events. As well as moderating meetings on subjects as diverse as gentrification, the economy, politics, saying he "can't imagine running a bookstore just as a selling point".

Neighbors gather at Tucholsky Bookstore to discuss topics such as gentrification and how to respond to neo-Nazi marches. Credit Gordon Welters for The New York Times

For hundreds of years German Jews prided themselves on how seamlessly they integrated into German society. They considered themselves German first, Jews after. They felt secure in Germany, it was a country they loved and considered themselves an integral part of. Until the National Socialist Party took it all away, bit by bit and then entirely, including their lives. None of which could have happened without the compliance of the German public.

So it is very nice to see now that Germany is willing to be so inclusive as to introduce another ethnic and religious group to be given free reign to prosper and to multiply in numbers that Jews never achieved. And whereas Jews were content to be Germans, the new immigrants, refugees and migrants seek to achieve a milestone of their own, the Islamification of Germany, stifling its native culture with their own.

File:Hitler with Catholic dignitaries.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

commons.wikimedia.org

But there are those like the good Germans living in what was once the Jewish quarter who are swift to come to the defense of the immigrants, the refugees and the migrants, willing and eager to aid them in any way conceivable, and to counter the ill intentions of the nationalist Germans who unaccountably press for a Germany for Germans. It is, of course, the Jews remaining in Germany who are now increasingly targeted with anti-Semitism by Islam. As they are throughout Europe.

Where Nazi Germany once occupied Europe and succeeded in exterminating six million Jews, millions of Muslims now occupy Europe and many among them promise that they are more than capable of aspiring to finish what Nazi Germany never quite completed. And that would be the ambition to conquer Europe and to rid it entirely of any Jewish presence.

The Night of Broken Glass
On November 9, 1938, Jewish people in Germany and German-controlled territories were beaten, arrested and killed. Synagogues were burned and Jewish businesses were vandalized. In most cases, the police made no effort to control the mobs that carried out these crimes. Bettmann / Corbis

“I think in the next years we are going to need to not just protest ‘against,’ but really come up with a ‘for,’” he said. “What do we want, in our society?”Read more: https://forward.com/culture/398534/berlin-bookstore-owner-anti-nazi-protest-organizer/

“I think in the next years we are going to need to not just protest ‘against,’ but really come up with a ‘for,’” he said. “What do we want, in our society?”Read more: https://forward.com/culture/398534/berlin-bookstore-owner-anti-nazi-protest-organizer/

Taking Citizenship Lightly

"[Vujicic] failed to disclose his conviction for manslaughter in his application for permanent residence, knowing that he had been found guilty and sentenced for that offence in 1998."
"His conduct is consistent with an intention to deceive Canadian immigration officials."
Federal Court Justice James O'Reilly

Bozidar Vujicic arrived in 2002 and was granted permanent residence status and then Canadian citizenship. He swore his citizenship oath in 2006.  John Moore / The Canadian Press

Failure to disclose a criminal record when applying for a visa to enter Canada leading to residency and Canadian citizenship is grounds for revocation of that citizenship and removal from the country. The Federal Court of Canada ruled that Bozidar Vujicic, a resident of British Columbia, fraudulently obtained residency through the concealing of his conviction of manslaughter. He had shot another man in the heart during a drunken brawl that turned deadly, in Bosnia.

Bosnian Vujicic took steps to apply for permanent residency to Canada in 1999 while in his country of origin. When his application was reviewed by immigration officials who interviewed the man, no mention was made that he had been found guilty of murder and was awaiting the next move of the justice system on his sentence. Immigration officials granted him permission to move to Canada where he arrived in 2002 and was granted permanent residence status followed by Canadian citizenship in 2006.

After the passage of three years, officials came into possession of information about Mr. Vujicic's background in Bosnia, information that caused them to begin the process of citizenship revocation. Translated court records derived from Serbia describing a drunken brawl that took place in southern Serbia in 1995, in Leskovac were examined by the Federal Court, where Vujicic was named as being one of several men involved in a violently lethal episode.

Named as an instigator of a nighttime fight with a number of other men, some later charged along with him, Vujicic had been drinking heavily on that occasion. Evidence from Serbia did not excuse charges of manslaughter levelled against Vujicic on the basis of his inebriated state, holding rather that his level of intoxication was not seen as preventing him from fully understanding the significance of his actions.

As the brawl was proceeding, Vujicic fired a gun in the direction of Dragan Stojanovic. When a bullet hit Stojanovic in the heart, he bled to death, according to court records. The Serbian court rejected Vujicic's claim of self-defence. Forensic evidence relating to the gunshot wound failed to support his explanation of innocence and he was convicted of manslaughter in1994. There was a second conviction after a 1998 retrial, but he was not taken into custody immediately.

When he left court he soon afterward made application to emigrate to Canada. Vujicic claimed the fact he hadn't been taken immediately to prison left him confused, uncertain what had occurred in court, he testified at the recent hearing into his case in Canada. He hadn't 'realized' the court had convicted him of manslaughter, nor was he conscious of any sentencing that would impact on his Canadian citizenship status.

He failed to consider it useful to discuss his uncertainty with his trial lawyer, choosing instead to come to Canada. Presenting two official certificates both of which indicated he had no criminal convictions against him; one from Bosnia, the second from Montenegro -- neither from Serbia where his conviction took place -- he had been accepted into Canada.

He thought, he claimed, that the certificates were ample confirmation that he had not been convicted. Nor that he had to serve the 8-year prison sentence brought down by the Bosnian court.

Bozidar Vujicic, School of Engineering Science
Simon Fraser University

Balancing the  Scales

"We have worked and paid taxes in this country, our parents built it up."
"How can it be that we are turned away [at area food banks] and those who just arrived get what they need?"
Marianne Rymann, 62, client, Essener Tafel, Essen Germany

"If you fight back, you're a Nazi."
"[The charity] was not founded to deal with the chaos of [Chancellor Angela] Merkel's refugee policy but to meet the demand that was already there."
AfD party Facebook campaign in defence of food bank decision 

"[We] felt compelled to ensure reasonable integration [after having seen an] increase in the number of migrants in recent years [with the proportion of foreign citizens rising dramatically]."
"We want German grandmothers to continue coming to us."
"[For the time being new customers will be restricted to Germans] until the scales are balanced again [between locals and foreigners]."
Jorg Sartor, manager, Essener Tafel 

Graffiti sprayed on the door to the entrance of the food charity in Essen. Photo: DPA

German authorities, when the government decided to open its doors in an unrestrained fashion to all the migrants that managed to make their way through Europe to their preferred destination in Germany known for its social networks, planned to distribute the 1.2 million arriving between 2015 and early 2016 evenly across the country so the cost and optimization of integration opportunities would be shared by all communities.

Many of the migrants had ideas of their own, where many among them decided to leave those designated homes and to move on instead to other areas, some of which had already received and were coping with a fairly dense concentration of migrants. The city of 600,000 people that is Essen has experienced a growth in its Syrian community from 1,300 in 2015, as an example, to close to 11,000 currently.

"It is a challenge", explained Peter Renzel, an official with the city of Essen. Most migrants live within the working-class districts of the north. "Some districts carry a disproportionate burden", he elaborated. To the extent that several food banks have taken steps to limit tensions that arise when needy Germans seeking assistance come hard up against Syrian migrants seeking the same, amidst rising tensions.

A Tafel Deutschland location in Berlin. Photo: Tafel Deutschland/Dagmar Schwelle

New rules have arisen segregating immigrants and Germans approaching the food banks for assistance, by time or by day. One of these food banks have gone further, banning young men from signing up entirely. The majority of the migrants that have streamed into Germany have been single, unattached young men looking for economic opportunities; in the process overwhelming Germany's social assistance programs.

Jorg Sartor is an ex-coal worker in retirement, since his mine closed. He has operated the Essener Tafel food bank as a volunteer for the last dozen years. Germany has about 930 food banks in operation, all dependent on the work of volunteers. And his is the only food bank exercising this new policy. The door of Mr. Sartor's food bank and its eight delivery vans have been defaced with Nazi graffiti in reaction to his decision to put a stop to allowing foreigners to sign up for assistance.

"It's absurd", he says.

One in three food bank users were foreigners until three years ago, he explained. But by last November that number changed to three in four. Leading him to decide to block any greater numbers of non-Germans from signing up so the food bank could continue to serve those foreigners already on its lists, only.

The problem is that Chancellor Merkel's government which generously opened its doors to over a million migrants and immigrants, decided that the burden of integrating them would fall where it might, and typically that burden has fallen on Germany's poorest regions. Where everyone competes for subsidized apartments, school placements, and free food from food banks.

Recently, many of those Germans who had lined up outside the food bank called Mr. Sartor a "people's hero". "He stands up for us", Peggy Lohse, 36, a single mother of three, stated. She might have been referring to the groups of young migrant men who sometimes simply elbowed their way to the front of the line. Leaving her to return home empty-handed on more than one occasion.

And according to Ms. Lohse, that kind of entitled assertiveness so intimidated some of the older German women that they simply stopped coming to the food bank for help altogether.

The word 'Nazis' sprayed on one of the charity's trucks. Photo: DPA

A Young Offender Seeking Justice for Honour Killings

The Shafia family vehicle found at the bottom of the Rideau canal in eastern Ontario seemed to trace a very deliberate path, a murder trial heard on Oct. 21, 2011. (CP)

"Even had a youth justice court convicted the Applicant on the same offences, the sentence would have been significantly reduced. Instead of the most severe sentence known to Canadian law [life imprisonment without eligibility for parole for 25 years], the Applicant would have received either a youth sentence or, if sentenced as an adult, life imprisonment with parole eligibility set at ten years."

Hamed Shafia appeal of guilty verdict in "honour" killings as an adult

This stupendously mind-boggling interpretation of honour favoured in most Muslim majority cultures whereby a clan's, or a family's honour is restored when the one who ostensibly brought dishonour on the family has been punished, found expression in 2009 in the Shafia family of Montreal, immigrants from Afghanistan. Outrage expressed by the father, echoed by the mother and reworked into a murder scheme carried out by the son, horrified the nation when three young woman and their step-mother were discovered to have drowned at the Kingston Mills lock in Ontario.

The 'accident' soon unravelled into a multiple murder investigation identifying three family members as having been involved in the deliberate killing of four other family members. The three Shafia sisters, Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13, were found dead along with Rona Amir Mohammed, 50, who was the first wife of Mohammad Shafia. A month after the discovery of their tragic deaths, Mohammad and his wife Tooba Yahya and their 18-year-old son were all three arrested and charged with the murder of their four family members.

(Photograph by Vincenzo D’Alto) Mohammad Shafia, Tooba Yahya and Hamed Shafia escorted by police in Kingston, Ontario.

Subsequently, at trial the three were found guilty in January of 2012 of four counts of first degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder, clearly linked to honour killing. The penalty for first degree murder in Canada is a 25-year prison sentence, with no chance of parole before that time has expired. All three guilty Shafia members appealed their guilty verdicts and the response of the Ontario Court of Appeal was to unanimously reject their arguments in a ruling brought down in November 2016.

Here it is, several months later, and Hamed Shafia is putting forward an argument to the Supreme Court of Canada that the Ontario Court of Appeal erred in failing a test for the admission of new evidence by rejecting documents from Afghanistan proving his birth date sets him at age 17, not 18, at the time of the murders he committed. That, in effect, justice was not done when he was tried as an adult, not as a youthful offender. It is the man's unrepentant contention that he should have been tried separately from his parents.

They, his parents deemed it a necessity that their wayward daughters who subscribed to a Western way of life with its attendant casual attitude to the sexes mingling in social situations, bringing shame and dishonour to the highly conservative Shafias had earned the early death he planned for them as 'whores'. Under Canadian law multiple marriage is illegal, and Mohammad Shafia brought both his wives to Canada, one of whom he plotted to murder alongside his daughters and for the same reason. 

Rona (left) and Sahar Shafia are shown in this photo released by the courts on Nov. 22, 2011. (CP)

While the mother of the three girls who were in fact mothered by the first wife who was murdered with the girls, was in full accord with her husband that their daughters did not deserve to live, it is not difficult to imagine that she viewed her husband's first wife as a competitor and challenge to her own status as wife and if the girls were to die, why not the woman who empathized and loved the girls? But it was the son who investigated the Internet for ways in which murder could be undertaken with a minimum of detection risk, and carefully carried the plan to fruition.

Guilty.
Guilty.
Guilty.

"It is difficult to conceive of a more heinous, more despicable, more honourless crime."
"The apparent reasons behind these cold-blooded, shameful murders was that the four completely innocent victims offended your twisted notion of honour  --  a notion of honour that is founded on the domination and control of women, a sick notion of honour that has absolutely no place in any civilized society."
Ontario Superior Court Judge Robert Maranger 

Now however, the murderous son feels emboldened under Canadian law to challenge the legality of the charges of which he was found guilty, as an adult. A factum filed with the Supreme Court has Hamed Shafia pointing out the "troubling uncertainty" respecting the rules of admissibility of fresh evidence; that 'fresh evidence' the introduction of birth documentation from the government of Afghanistan, testifying to his correct age at the time of the murders: 17. 

Making his act all the more incomprehensible and horrifying.

Horror Revisited

"We lost our honour. They [his three daughters and his first wife] betrayed us immensely. They violated us immensely."
"There can be no betrayal, no treachery, no violation more than this."
Mohammad Shafia

"Honour was a recurrent theme of discussions among the appelants after the deaths of the deceased."
Ontario Court of Appeal

"The notion of honour and of killing another person motivated by besmirched honour originated with Shafia, not with Dr. Mujab. Recall Shafia's diatribe about the importance of honour."
"Charitably put, the evidence of guilt was overwhelming."
Justice David Watt, Court of Appeal for Ontario

Mohammad Shafia, his wife, Tooba Yahya and their son, Hamed, were convicted in 2012 of the murders of the couple's three daughters and Shafia's first wife. CBC News

This family, originally from Afghanistan, emigrated from there to Canada, living in Montreal. The three teen daughters chafed at the demands made of them by their parents, particularly their father, supported by their mother, Mohammad Shafia's second wife, whom he married while still married to his first wife Rona Amir Mohammad and whom he brought with the family to Canada. The girls' father fumed at their disgraceful conduct, being seen in public with young men who were in fact their boyfriends. Rona Amir Mohammad cherished the girls, acted in the capacity of a trusted 'aunt'.

Her support of the teen-aged girls who resented and struggled against the confined nature of their upbringing infuriated their father and their mother. Their brother, the oldest of the Shafia children at 18 was perfectly comfortable in the traditional role of a male in strict Islamist Sharia law and the culture prevailing in Afghanistan among Islam's orthodox faithful. Hamed Shafia aided his parents in their zeal to restore honour to the family by planning to murder the three daughters and their supportive 'aunt'.

The bodies of Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti Shafia, 13, along with Rona Mohammad Amir, 50, were found in the family’s Nissan, submerged in a lock on the Rideau Canal in Kingston, Ont., on June 30, 2009.

All four of the women were discovered, trapped in one of the family vehicles which was found  submerged int he water near Kingston, Ontario at the Kingston Mills locks. Autopsies concluded they had all drowned. An unfortunate event that the three accused, father, mother and son denied they had anything to do with, despite evidence to the contrary, including Internet searches for methods of disposal of unwanted impediments to honour. And material evidence linking another vehicle used by the son, to that of the submerged vehicle.

While at trial in 2012 the prosecution held the deaths to be planned and deliberate, the three accused arguing that the deaths, while certainly sad, were completely accidental. Evidence in the form of vicious remarks about his daughters spoken contemptuously by Mohammad Shafia after their deaths when police had installed listening devices, certainly went far to furthering the prosecution's case, and convincing jurors that they had little option but to find all three guilty of first-degree murder.

Making reference to one's dead teen-age daughters characterizing them as "whores" hardly befits the role of a grieving father. The family had chosen to appeal to have the verdict finding them guilty as charged overturned on the basis of trial error. The presence of a professor from the University of Toronto who was an expert on honour killings as a key witness to give testimony, was one of the gounds raised on appeal; that the evidence of Shahzrad Mojab was prejudicial.

The Canadian Press       Ontario court rejects appeal by Shafia family over honour killings

This was a contention that the Appeal Court gave short shrift to, unanimously rejecting. The Shafia family's appeal on their first-degree murder conviction, turning it down on November 2, 2016. This man fits the description of a dangerous, evil man. While in prison he has engaged in vindictiveness and persecution of other, non-Muslim prisoners, foisting his venomous brand of Islam on people who want nothing to do with either him or his Islamist views. Prisons are well known as breeding grounds for violent jihadist recruiting. And Mohammad Shafia is doing his very best to add to the phenomenon.

"It turned out that he [a non-Muslim prisoner] felt so intimidated by Shafia and some of his lieutenants, that he chose to give up his relative freedom of movement on the range in the general population for a much more restricted life on a social isolation range."
"He could no longer come to see me. I had to go to his cell on the isolation range. He advised me that confinement was worth it to avoid the hassle of dealing with 'the Muslims'."
"This man [Mohammad Shafia] was obnoxious in manner, demanding of the Protestant and Catholic chaplains, and generally offensive."
"The normally pleasant atmosphere associated with the Muslims gathering for prayers was absent. Inmates on the same range as Shafia who came to see me expressed fear of him."
Kingston Penitentiary Psychologist Robert Groves, testifying before the national security and defence committee hearing on security threats facing Canada, May 2015

Tooba Mohammad Yahya is escorted by police officers into the Frontenac County courthouse in Kingston on Wednesday, January 18. 2012.  (Sean Kilpatrick / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

Danish Migrant Backlash

"I've become a racist. Just kick them [migrants] out. These Muslims want to keep their own culture, but we have our own rules here and everyone must follow them."
Johnny Christensen, 65, retired bank employee, Taarnby, Denmark

"[Many Danes believe] We are a multiethnic society today, and we have to realize it -- but we are not and should never become a multi-cultural society."
Bo Lidegaard, historian

"Our problem in Denmark is that we've been too polite. No one dared talk about [immigration] because they were afraid they'd be called racist."
Anders Buhl-Christensen, city councilman, Randers, Denmark

"It's not racism to be aware of the difference -- it's stupid not to be aware."
"We do them a blessing by being very clear and outspoken as to what kind of country they have come to, what are our basic values."
Bertel Haarder, Culture Minister, Denmark

"Freedom of speech is now interpreted as freedom to say anything hateful."
"Denmark is closing in on itself. People are retreating inward."
Julie Jeeg, law student volunteer with a Danish antiracism group

Photograph by Ilvy Njiokikthen for The New York Times

A Randers day care center back in January no longer served pork meatballs in the realization that its Muslim students would reject them. When this came to public notice the town council reacted by requiring that pork be served "on equal terms with other kinds of food", in a bit of a push-back against the kind of accommodation that was recognized as getting that steel-toed foot in the door to open it wider to additional accommodations having the ultimate effect of diluting the familiar in Denmark.

Frank Noergaard of the Danish People's Party who had introduced the measure, portrayed himself as livid that "pork could be abandoned in Denmark. If you give in on pork, what's next?", he raged. Of course, two kinds of meatballs could have been proffered in this situation; students whose religion did not prohibit the eating of pork could indulge in the pork meatballs, while meatballs of beef or fowl could appeal to the Muslim students. That, in and of itself could become more complex with the concomitant demand that the meat used for Muslim students must be halal.

The Immigration Ministry of the country has made an attempt to stifle pushback in the general population, a situation it has named as "parallel societies" where migrants live in "vicious circles of bad image, social problems and a high rate of unemployment". That effectively describes the French banlieues, and in effect almost anywhere in Europe where Muslims arrive in numbers and tend to house themselves in ghettos.

There are, however, always Muslims who will defy the majority rule, who make an effort to fit into the prevailing culture, just as 34-year-old Iraqi engineer Omar Mahmoud has done, with his family, living in a Randers refugee center and attempting to 'fit in'. Attending Danish classes, encouraging their children to make friends with Danish children, and not opposing the eating of pork for them since it is a staple of the Danish diet, however forbidden in Islam.

Generally speaking, this attitude is not necessarily the prevailing one among the 36,000 Muslim asylum seekers who have entered Denmark in the last two years. Mr. Christensen, the retired bank employee, is convinced that migrants are not adapting to the country's customs, while taking full advantage of Denmark's social-welfare system. From a man once sympathetic to immigration and aiding war refugees, he has become a committed critic of asylum offering specifically to Muslims.

Where once tiny Denmark with its 5.7 million population was 97 percent native-born, with the influx of "guest workers" from Turkey, Pakistan and Yugoslavia in the 1970s, that number has dropped to 88 percent indigenous Danes. More recently, a rapid wholesale influx of haven seekers has seen hate speech enhanced in the country, with the anti-immigrant Danish People's Party becoming Parliament's second most representative.

The anti-immigrant reaction is attributable to several issues; fears of terrorism from Islamist jihadis and a drain on Denmark's public benefits. Not that a latent racial bias recently surfacing can be entirely discounted at the entrance of non-Danish demographics at a time when Europe has been overrun with war refugees and economic migrants. Denmark's situation pales beside Germany's acceptance of a million migrants, but it still rankles mightily that their culture is being degraded.

When five thousand Poles and three thousand, three hundred Americans, along with other Westerners emigrated in 2014 to Denmark, there were no demurs at their presence. Westerners are, after all, readily assimilable, featuring similar backgrounds and cultures, as opposed to people entering with all the baggage of a culture and a religion that has proven time and again to be inimical to integration into the prevalent heritage, culture and justice system.

The 15,000 Syrians who arrived in the past several years have, according to their critics, been tardy in learning the language. Danes resent ethnic enclaves. Some 30 percent of new immigrants arrived to the two larges Danish cities, Aarhus and Copenhagen, where men wearing prayer caps and women in abayas become extremely visible. In comparison with employment of 74 percent of native Danes, 48 percent of non-Western-origined people aged 15 to 64 were employed in 2014.

Denmark's Culture minister, Bertel Haarder, observed that Muslims fail to assimilate as readily as Europeans or Asians since their patriarchal culture does not promote women working outside the home. "For a lot of people, being Danish is in your blood, so I will never be Danish", said 28-year-old Danish citizen Patricia Bandak, who arrived in Denmark as a baby from Uganda, in 1989. "I call myself a Dane of a different colour."