Dear friends and allies -- A Solidarity Across Borders organizer who regularly visits the Laval Immigration Detention Center (official name: "Centre de prévention de l'immigration de Laval") has received handwritten letters from two detainees. These detainees have specifically asked that their letters to be shared more widely with migrant justice allies, and want their messages to reach human rights groups and activists.
We have typed and translated both letters to share with you. The
letters are below, in English and French. One detainee has decided to identify himself, while the other prefers to remain anonymous for now.
We will continue to liaise with these detainees, and others, and will follow-up, during and after the holidays, in the coming weeks and months.
If would like to stay in touch about future detainee support efforts, please contact Solidarity Across Borders by phone at 514-848-7583 or by e-mail at sansfrontieres@resist.ca and leave a message for Reza.
In solidarity,
The members of Solidarity Across Borders
www.solidarityacrossborders.org
514-848-7583
sansfrontieres@resist.ca
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[ [ [ Letter #1 ] ] ]
[The letter below is typed from the exact handwritten version provided to Solidarity Across Borders ...]
Subject : Torture by imprisonment. Immigration Canada use detention as mean to extort consent. The innocent, asylum seekers, suffer months behind bars.
Contact person : Alexander Kopylov, Detainee (IPC, # 301D)
Department of investigation and removals/Immigration Canada in
Montreal use detention as a mean to extort consent or to force those detainees to act in a certain way, as part of its daily practice.
Supposed by law to be « preventive », detention may be used in a case of a) a danger for society; b) unclear identity; c) risk of escape. But it is often used as a method of pressure within investigations and removals, led by the department.
[1] In all cases, total term/duration of detention in immigration
prevention center (IDC), Laval is hidden from detainees. Being asked, agents, members of IRB and lawyers refused or could not tell whether detention is limited or what is the maximum term permitted by the law in Canada. The term may be arbitrarily extended every month and is perceived by victims as practically unlimited.
[2] In some cases, the victims are placed to IDC without proper
relevance to the charges, permitted by the law. For instance, asylum seekers are arrested during interview on ground « risk of escape », even if they present themselves to the immigration office voluntarily and have proven history of conditions follow-up.
On August 31st 2006, Igor Kartsev has been re-arrested and placed
again in IDC after he's been relaeased on bond from 5 ½ months
detention, every week he has reported himself to Immigration Canada, followed up all conditions of his release and has come voluntarily for interview.
In his case, detention has been used by the department to force him to leave Canada with a false passport while he tried to obtain a proper one from consulate of his country.
[3] In other cases detention continues even when initial reason
doesn't exist anymore. For instance, when deportation order cannot be enforced.
Alexander Kopylov is detained in IDC (Laval) for six months even after Immigration Canada has clearly stated that the deportation order issued against him cannot be enforced without his consent.
In this case, detention is used as a mean of pressure to extort his signature for travel documents which permit to send him to a country he refused to go and from which he's been asking protection in Canada.
Kopylov is preparing his application to federal court against Canada to stop the tortures.
[4] Also, release from detention can be granted without any tangible changes in case. A Syrian detainee has been detained for 8 1/2 months and then released on July 2006. No significant changes have occured in his case during the several last months of detention.
Later, after 11/2 month of freedom, he's been re-arrested also without reasonable charges. Being psychologically broken by the
re-arrestation, he has sign the documents and has been deported to Syria. Thus, his consent has been extorted by use of detention under torture
In all cases, detention was a latent form of torture, even if formally hidden (and sometimes not!) under legal-like reasoning. Also, detainees are innocent people and due to arbitrary decisions of immigration Canada, asylum seekers suffer months of imprisonment.
IDC (Laval), department of investigations and removals, Immigration Canada still remains a place in Canada where human rights are severely violated, a territory out-of-law.
Detention on immigration grounds still remains in obscurity, far from the attention of Canadian and international public and human rights organisations.
While the issue of controversal « security certificates », which
allows to keep someone suspected in terrorism or spying requires a signature of the Prime Minister and Minister of security, those
innocents detained on immigration grounds only, can be kept behind bars endlessly ? by signature of IRB member or opinion of immigration officer.
More details, contacts, names, facts related to these and some other facts of human rights violation in Immigration Canada and Immigration prevention center (IPC, Laval) ? such as ue of intimidation, lie, black mailing and paralizing meds as methods of removal and enforcement- can be provided.
Centre de prévention de l'immigration de Laval
200 Montée St-François
Laval, Québec, H7C 1S5
Tél. : (450) 661-4267 Fax. : (450) 661-2600
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[ [ [ Letter # 2 ] ] ]
[Translated from the original French below.]
An Aberration
Let us speak of freedom! Does it really exist in the proper sense of the word? In a country that claims no torture, or executions, where hidden racism and the hypocrisy of disguised torture work to silence through psychological pressure, where immigrants are treated as imported goods, where domestic animals are better treated and respected than humans ? humans with the right to live in full dignity and express themselves?
It is a freedom stained with injustice, especially the injustice
facing immigrants who wait for regularization, who are locked up in the Laval Immigration Prevention Centre as Immigration uproots and destroys family lives and displaces immigrants in handcuffs like real criminals.
Immigration counts on its officers who are on the most part
inexperienced and ambitious ? who are quick and easy to strike down on immigrants in order to prove themselves and get more recognition in their careers. What unforgivable offence have immigrants committed to be so mistreated and humiliated? Is this a life of immigration or humiliation?
For whatever reason, should any young Immigration officer ever have the right to deport immigrants and knowingly throw them back into the lion's mouth? What happens to them when they return? Confronted with this question, Immigration remains insensitive and care-free. It plays down the precarious situations facing immigrants and minimizes their problems to justify their politics of oppression.
-- from a detainee at the Laval Immigration Prevention Centre who wishes to remain anonymous.
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[Original letter in French ...]
L'Aberration
[Un texte d'un détenu au Centre de prévention de l'immigration de Laval.]
Parlons de la liberté! Existe-elle vraiment au propre sens du mot ?
Dans un pays où l'on prétend qu'il n'y a ni torture, ni exécution, le racisme cachée et la torture hypocritement déguisée font rage pour réduire au silence sous pression psychologique où les immigrants sont traités comme produits importés, où les animaux domestiques sont mieux considérés et respectés que les hommes dignes de vivre et de s'exprimer.
Il s'agit de la liberté galvaudée, de l'injustice, surtout de
l'injustice à l'encontre des immigrés en attente d'être régularisés et barricadés au Centre de Détention de l'Immigration à Laval qui déracine et qui détruit sans merci les vies des familles qui sont, quand il faut, déplacées enchaînées comme des vrais criminels.
L'Immigration qui compte sur ses agents pour la plupart inexpérimentés et ambitieux ; ceux qui ne ménagent aucun effort pour terrasser les immigrés afin de se montrer et de se faire valoir juste pour leur carrière, Quels délits impardonnables auraient-ils commis pour mériter d'être malmenés et humiliés ? Est-ce une vie d'immigration ou d'humiliation?
Pour n'importe qu'elle cause, les jeunes agents de l'Immigration
auraient-ils droit de les renvoyer sciemment dans la guele de loup ? Que deviendraient-ils à leurs arrivées ? Face à cette question, l'Immigration reste insensible et insoucieuse. Elle dédramatise la situation précaire des immigrés et minimise leur problèmes pour justifier sa politique d'oppression.
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Solidarity Across Borders
www.solidarityacrossborders.org
514-848-7583
sansfrontieres@resist.ca
