When a citizen has no rights
It’s an amazing spectacle — a country that prevents a citizen, accused of no offence and convicted of no crime, from returning home.
Not from leaving, as the Soviet Union used to do. Not from entering, has every country has the right. But from coming back to the country of which you’re a citizen.
Last week, Canada’s foreign affairs minister, Lawrence Cannon, denied Abousfian Abdelrazik the emergency passport he had been promised that would have allowed him to fly back to Canada. Several hundred Canadian sympathizers had chipped in to buy his ticket.
Cannon’s refusal reverses a written promise that Mr. Abdelrazik would be given a passport if he could produce a plane ticket. It’s the latest episode of a truly Kafkaesque series of events that has trapped this man since his arrest six years ago in Sudan.
Franz Kafka, as you know, gave his name through his literature to any nightmarishly bureaucratic situation in which an individual finds himself endlessly trapped. No matter which way he turns, as exemplified in Kafka’s 1925 novel The Trial, the citizen becomes yet more deeply enmeshed in a maze of contradictions from which he can never escape.
Mr. Abdelrazik was arrested in Sudan in 2003, apparently on information from Canadian security agencies. He says he was beaten and tortured before being released 11 months ago to the Canadian embassy. He’s since been living in the Embassy, despite Cannnon’s claim that he now represents a security threat.
While Mr. Abdelkrazik was in jail, the Bush administration put his name on the United Nations “no fly” list. Canada appealed to the UN Security Council to have him taken off. Both CSIS and the RCMP agreed in writing that there was no reason for him to be on it.
It was just four months ago that the government promised to give Abdelrazik emergency travel documents. Then they said they would do so only if he got off the UN list on his own. This despite the fact the UN specifically permits those on the list to return home.
The next obstacle Foreign Affairs put in the way of Mr. Abdelrazik returning to his wife and children in Montreal was a ruling that he’d have to produce an airline ticket. When people started raised money, they were warned they might be charged with violating Canada’s anti-terrorism laws. Of course, no such charges have — or likely ever will — be laid.
Then, when money was raised and a ticket bought, came the final contradiction from the Minister. Suddenly, Mr. Abdelrazik was a threat to national security, a clear contradiction of what CSIS and the RCMP have said.
The Liberal justice critic, Irwin Cotler, says the government is in violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which enshrines a citizen’s right to return home.
The Harper government has some explaining to do, says the NDP’s Paul Dewar. “They can’t say he is a threat to national security and still harbour him in the Embassy.”
For his part, Mr. Abdelrazik says “For six years I haver tried to go back home but the Canadian government took my passport and will not give me another one.” He denies he is an Islamic extremist. “I am a Muslim and I pray to God but this does not make me a terrorist or a criminal.”
Clearly, something is going on here. If the government can grab this man’s passport, clear him of any suspicion, then refuse to issue him a new one, they could to it to anyone. You or me.
“First they came for the Jews,” said Pastor Martin Niemoeller in his famous lament for the failure of people to protect their rights in Nazi Germany. ” … then they came for me.”
Mr. Cannon must explain himself. If there’s a reason to deny Mr. Abdelrazik his rights, we deserve to know it. We detest the actions of fundamentalist regimes that oppress their citizens without lawful cause. Now we seem to be doing just that.
If Mr. Abdelrazik has committed a crime, bring him to Canada for trial. If not, he has the right to return unmolested.
