By Martin Lukacs

The minders of Canadian PM Justin Trudeau’s brand are surely displeased. He’s spent two years cultivating an image of Canada’s refugee system as the political equivalent of airport hugs and teddy-bears. And now the pressure is on him to act like that were remotely the truth.

The image of the country as a welcome haven was pitched to win the support of millions of people in Canada who rightly feel two things: compassion for the plight of refugees and disgust for the antics of Donald Trump. But refugee rights advocates had warned what would come to pass: desperate people would take Trudeau at his word.

Hence an influx of thousands of Haitian refugees from the United States—afraid of being deported back to Haiti by Trump—now await an uncertain fate in Canada. The Liberal government may have been happy to reap the political benefits of Trudeau’s PR posture. But apart from accepting a small number of Syrian refugees, they have dumped hundreds back in Haiti since they lifted a ban on deportations to the country in 2016. And they have studiously avoided removing other barriers that would make Canada a truly welcoming country.

The current debate has so far focussed on one such barrier: a 2004 agreementwith the US that bars almost all refugees from making an asylum claim at a Canada-US border post. That’s why they are increasingly turning to precarious crossings—at which point they can at least get a hearing. This agreement—whose basis is the indefensible notion that the United States is safe for refugees—should long ago have been scrapped.

Instead Trudeau has turned to admonishing Haitians, dispatching a minister to the United States to warn Haitians against seeking asylum in Canada. “For someone to successfully seek asylum it’s not about economic migration,” Trudeau warned. “It’s about vulnerability, exposure to torture or death, or being stateless people.”

“Economic refugees,” of course, are not entitled to asylum. And this is where the base ranting of right-wing tabloids and anti-immigrant racists, who have stoked hate and fear of “selfish queue-jumpers,” dovetails with the high-minded reasoning of elite pundits and Liberal policy-makers preaching pragmatic limits and strict refugee criteria.

Both adhere to a brand that is much more enduring than this latest Prime Minister’s: the brand of an innocent Canada, whose benevolence is indisputable, whose humanitarian impulse is never in doubt. What they disagree about is whether Canada should bestow it on refugees.

Astonishingly, what has merited not a single mention in mainstream discussion is that Canada doesn’t stand at a remove from the misery that Haitians are fleeing: we had a direct hand in it. Ignoring this history—and absolving Canada of responsibility for Haiti’s situation—has created the greatest barrier of all to refugees receiving the welcome they deserve.

Haiti’s long-suffering people, who have endured a line of dictatorships, had a brief respite in the last quarter century: a popular democratic wave that swept priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power. He raised the minimum wage from mere pennies, disbanded an army that bullied the population, and started providing education and medical care to the poor majority.

Defying the agenda of the Haitian elite and multinational companies who used the country for cheap labour made Aristide enemies—the US, France, and sadly, Canada. in 2003, the Liberal government of the time hosted US and French officials to plot Aristide’s ouster. They cut aid to his government. And when US marines invaded the country, Canadian soldiers guarded the airport while they flew out Aristide and dumped him in Africa. A United Nations military force, commanded for a period by Canadians, occupied the country, providing cover for the regime installed after this coup d’état. Thousands of Haitians were killed.

The Canadian government’s role was hardly based on humanitarianism: having refused a full role in the US war on Iraq, they needed to get back in the good graces of George Bush. In a moment of candour out of sync with our humanitarian brand, ex Liberal Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham explained: “Foreign Affairs view was there is a limit to how much we can constantly say no to the political masters in Washington…eventually we came on side on Haiti, so we got another arrow in our quiver.”

The cost to Haitians of this cynical calculus was incalculable. Since the coup, Haiti has lurched from disaster to disaster, compounded by governments more accountable to the US than its own people. The devastating earthquake of 2010 was shaped by inequality and deliberate under-development that Haiti was plunged back into after Aristide’s ousting. The impact of similar storms on neighbouring Cuba—whose measures to lift people out of the most impoverished infrastructure have not been blocked by western governments—was a fraction of what it was in Haiti.

Western governments have tried to wash their hands of their victims. In the wake of the earthquake, Obama’s administration built a fortress around Haiti: coast guards cruised the waters to prevent any from fleeing; air force bombers dropped messages in the country, warning that “if you leave, you will be arrested and returned”; and a US private prison company started setting up a detention centre in Guantanamo Bay, while Haitians had not yet dug themselves out of the rubble.

And the reconstruction effort that millions of people around the world compassionately contributed to? Botched by the U.S. and Canada, it left Haiti with plenty of industrial parks for sweatshop employers and luxury hotels for tourists and NGO officers, but virtually no new housing for the million Haitians who had been made homeless. To make matters even worse, the occupying UN force introduced the world’s largest cholera epidemic into the country — it has killed 30,000, infected 2 million people, and rages on.

Canada has “slapped some make-up” on the situation to justify deporting people to the country, says Haitian human rights lawyer Patrice Florvilus, who fled to Montreal from Haiti in 2013 after facing death threats. “Canada claims things have returned to normal. They have not. There is criminalization of homosexuality and dissent, assassinations, a corrupt justice system. So much suffering has flowed from the coup onward, and the state now has no capacity to protects its citizens. Canada should assume responsibility for the chaos and injustice it helped create.”

Haiti is today sliding back toward dictatorship: disastrously bad elections, sanctioned by the US and Canada, have produced a parliament packed with thugs and drug dealers, the old army is being revived, and leading figures in the current government have links to the dictatorships of old. 

All of this could hardly be a better example of the slogan repeated by migrant justice movements around the world: “We are here because you were there.” Western government’s wars, their ransacking of resources, the manipulation and impoverishment of poor countries, has led to an inevitable flow of displaced and persecuted to our shores.
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“If Canada wants to become a real beacon for refugees, here is an opportunity prove it,” says Florvilus, who believes Canada should grant special refugee status to the arriving Haitians. 

He’s right. After all of our crimes toward that country, asylum should serve as the barest of reparations. The refugees arriving are hardly a “flood,” or “unsustainable” — they are drop in the bucket alongside the immigrants that arrive every year. As climate change wreaks devastation around the world, these numbers are sure to grow. 

In past decades, mobilizations led by the Haitian community in Montreal have forced the Canadian government to act more in line with its rhetoric. That can happen again. Now is the time to fight for the values that will govern how we address the graver refugee migrations to come.
​
In the final account, welcoming refugees isn’t a matter of generosity, or burnishing Brand Justin — it’s a matter of justice.
​
The Canadian government’s role was hardly based on humanitarianism: having refused a full role in the US war on Iraq, they needed to get back in the good graces of George Bush. In a moment of candour out of sync with our humanitarian brand, ex Liberal Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham explained: “Foreign Affairs view was there is a limit to how much we can constantly say no to the political masters in Washington…eventually we came on side on Haiti, so we got another arrow in our quiver.”

The cost to Haitians of this cynical calculus was incalculable. Since the coup, Haiti has lurched from disaster to disaster, compounded by governments more accountable to the US than its own people. The devastating earthquake of 2010 was shaped by inequality and deliberate under-development that Haiti was plunged back into after Aristide’s ousting. The impact of similar storms on neighbouring Cuba—whose measures to lift people out of the most impoverished infrastructure have not been blocked by western governments—was a fraction of what it was in Haiti.

Western governments have tried to wash their hands of their victims. In the wake of the earthquake, Obama’s administration built a fortress around Haiti: coast guards cruised the waters to prevent any from fleeing; air force bombers dropped messages in the country, warning that “if you leave, you will be arrested and returned”; and a US private prison company started setting up a detention centre in Guantanamo Bay, while Haitians had not yet dug themselves out of the rubble.

And the reconstruction effort that millions of people around the world compassionately contributed to? Botched by the U.S. and Canada, it left Haiti with plenty of industrial parks for sweatshop employers and luxury hotels for tourists and NGO officers, but virtually no new housing for the million Haitians who had been made homeless. To make matters even worse, the occupying UN force introduced the world’s largest cholera epidemic into the country — it has killed 30,000, infected 2 million people, and rages on.

Canada has “slapped some make-up” on the situation to justify deporting people to the country, says Haitian human rights lawyer Patrice Florvilus, who fled to Montreal from Haiti in 2013 after facing death threats. “Canada claims things have returned to normal. They have not. There is criminalization of homosexuality and dissent, assassinations, a corrupt justice system. So much suffering has flowed from the coup onward, and the state now has no capacity to protects its citizens. Canada should assume responsibility for the chaos and injustice it helped create.”

Haiti is today sliding back toward dictatorship: disastrously bad elections, sanctioned by the US and Canada, have produced a parliament packed with thugs and drug dealers, the old army is being revived, and leading figures in the current government have links to the dictatorships of old. 

All of this could hardly be a better example of the slogan repeated by migrant justice movements around the world: “We are here because you were there.” Western government’s wars, their ransacking of resources, the manipulation and impoverishment of poor countries, has led to an inevitable flow of displaced and persecuted to our shores.

“If Canada wants to become a real beacon for refugees, here is an opportunity prove it,” says Florvilus, who believes Canada should grant special refugee status to the arriving Haitians. 

He’s right. After all of our crimes toward that country, asylum should serve as the barest of reparations. The refugees arriving are hardly a “flood,” or “unsustainable” — they are drop in the bucket alongside the immigrants that arrive every year. As climate change wreaks devastation around the world, these numbers are sure to grow. 

In past decades, mobilizations led by the Haitian community in Montreal have forced the Canadian government to act more in line with its rhetoric. That can happen again. Now is the time to fight for the values that will govern how we address the graver refugee migrations to come.
​
In the final account, welcoming refugees isn’t a matter of generosity, or burnishing Brand Justin — it’s a matter of justice.

Published on The Guardian on August 29, 2017 (www.theguardian.com/environment/true-north/2017/aug/29/welcoming-haitian-refugees-to-canada-isnt-about-generosity-but-justice).

By Daina Beth Solomon and Lizbeth Diaz

The United States and other wealthy nations should do more to resettle migrants and refugees forced to flee their homelands, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said on Friday.

“We must count on U.S. leadership in refugee protection,” Grandi told Reuters in an interview in Mexico City. “Forced displacement is a poor people problem, not a rich people problem. But we need the rich people to do more to share that burden.”

During his first official visit to the region since assuming the post last year, the U.N. official said Mexico also needs to step up protection for asylum and refugee applicants, especially along its southern border.

Every year thousands of people from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, some of the world’s most impoverished and violent nations, head north in search of a better life.
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But that journey has become increasingly dangerous and expensive, with criminals assaulting, extorting and kidnapping migrants as they attempt to pass through Mexico, forcing some to remain south of the U.S. border.
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U.N. figures show some 8,000 people applied for refugee status last year in Mexico, up 5,000 from 2015. Asylum applications in Mexico jumped 150 percent between November 2016 and March 2017, according to Mexican refugee agency COMAR.

“There’s been an increase because of the causes that push people to flee - the unbelievable violence perpetrated against civilians in countries like Honduras and El Salvador,” Grandi said.

Grappling with drug trafficking, extortion and kidnapping, Mexico is witnessing one of its worst periods of violence, and has suffered an estimated 150,000 gang-related murders and about 30,000 disappearances in the past decade.
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Washington, meanwhile, has heralded a drop in unauthorized southern border crossings as proof its crackdown on illegal immigration is working.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has also lowered the cap on refugee admissions, setting the limit at 50,000 compared with about 85,000 approved in 2016.

U.S. officials have said they plan to review the migrant-vetting process as well to counter the risk of admitting terrorists. Grandi said he supported the push to improve security, but urged the United States to expand its refugee resettlement program. 

Mexico is among the countries that could wind up accepting more refugees and asylum seekers if the United States continues toughening its migration policies. 

"If less people go to the United States ... there is a possibility that Mexico will host more," Grandi said.

Published on Reuters on August 25, 2017.

On the occasion of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Mr. Filippo Grandi’s visit to Thailand, we, the undersigned, urge the Thai government to demonstrate its commitment to protecting refugees by ending abusive practices as well as instituting and implementing laws that guarantee the rights of refugees in Thailand. These rights should be guaranteed without discrimination on the basis of race, religion, nationality or national origin, or membership of a particular social group or political opinion.

On July 7, the head of UNHCR—the U.N. agency mandated to protect and identify permanent solutions for refugees—is scheduled to meet with Thai Prime Minister General Prayut Chan-o-cha to discuss the protection environment for refugees in Thailand. This is the first time in five years that a High Commissioner has visited Thailand, and it is part of a regional visit to countries in Asia Pacific.

According to UNHCR, Thailand hosts approximately 102,000 refugees, a majority of whom are protracted refugees from Myanmar living in temporary shelters along the Thailand-Myanmar border. Included in this figure are 8,000  “urban refugees” from Pakistan, Vietnam, Somalia, Iraq, Palestine, Syria, China, and other countries living in Bangkok and the surrounding provinces.

Although Thailand is not a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention or its 1967 Protocol, the Thai government has repeatedly expressed a commitment to protect refugees in Thailand, including most recently during the U.N. Human Rights Committee review of Thailand’s obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) in March 2017. As part of the review process, the Thai government affirmed a commitment to “humanitarianism and to take care of various groups of irregular migrants.” In a speech at the Leaders’ Summit on the Global Refugee Crisis on September 20, 2016 in New York, Prime Minister Prayut committed to end the detention of refugee children in Thailand and to establish an effective refugee-screening mechanism. The Prime Minister also committed to ensure that refugee returns to Myanmar would be voluntary and to increase refugees’ access to education, healthcare, and birth registration in Thailand.

These commitments are noteworthy and appreciated. However, we remain concerned by the lack of progress in implementing these commitments and addressing serious and ongoing human rights violations affecting the situation of refugees in Thailand. These include:

Refoulement
Thailand has long failed to respect the legally binding principle of non-refoulement, which is explicitly prescribed by Article 3 of the Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and is considered part of customary international law. Under this principle, states are prohibited from returning an individual to a country where they may face torture or other serious human rights violations.

In recent years, Thai authorities have forcibly returned refugees, asylum seekers, and others based on the requests of foreign governments, despite the credible risk of torture or other grave human rights abuses. Most recently, on May 26, 2017, Thai transferred M. Furkan Sökmen, a Turkish national with alleged links to exiled Turkish cleric Fethullah Gülen, to the custody of Turkish authorities despite warnings by U.N. agencies that he would face human rights violations if returned. In 2015, Thailand also reportedly returned to China approximately 100 alleged Uighurs—an ethnically Turkic, predominantly Muslim minority in China. Uighurs returned to China are known to have faced persecution.

Thai authorities also are known to conduct unofficial deportations by transporting individuals to a border and forcing them into a neighboring country without appropriate regard to the risks of further human rights violations they may face. Thailand has implemented a “help-on” or “push back” policy with regard to possible refugees arriving by sea. Under this policy, Thai authorities have intercepted and towed ill-equipped boats of people out to sea. These policies and practices contravene the principle of non-refoulement and greatly endangering the lives of refugees. These policies and practices continue in Thailand at the time of writing.

In March, the U.N. Human Rights Committee reiterated Thailand’s obligation to “ensure in law and practice that people in need of international protection are not returned to a country where there are substantial grounds for believing that there is a real risk of irreparable harm...” During its review of Thailand’s obligations under the ICCPR, the Committee expressed concern about “reports of deportations and forcible returns without review or adequate assessment…” We share these concerns.

Arbitrary and Indefinite Detention
Thai authorities continue to arbitrarily and, in some cases, indefinitely detain refugees, asylum-seekers, and other migrants in immigration detention centers (IDCs) and government-run shelters. Although Thailand’s immigration detention facilities are designed for stays of up to 15 days, some refugees have been detained for several years. During its review of Thailand’s obligations under the ICCPR, the U.N. Human Rights Committee also expressed concern at reports of the protracted detention of refugees and called on Thailand to “refrain from detaining refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants and implement alternatives to detention…” The Thai government confirmed during the ICCPR review that 121 Rohingya from Myanmar’s Rakhine State and Bangladesh continue to be confined to government-run shelters, where their movement is limited and liberty denied.
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