Canada Accepts Iranian Christians' Application- (03.09.2002)
Controversy over Sikh kirpan continues in Quebec - (05.06.2002)
Iranian Christian family faces quandary in Turkey - (03.05.2002)
Canada Accepts Iranian Christians' Application
Stranded Convert Family Rated Eligible for Asylum
by Barbara G. Baker
Compass (30.08.2002)/ HRWF International Secretariat (03.08.2002) Website http://www.hrwf.net - Email info@hrwf.net - Iranian Christian Mahmoud Erfani received notice through a post office in central Turkey yesterday that Canadian immigration authorities in Ankara have accepted his family's application for permanent residency in Canada.
In a letter dated August 23, Canadian visa officer Judy Aubut declared that following the family's July 30 interview in Ankara, "... after carefully assessing all factors relative to your application, including the additional information you provided at that time, I am satisfied that you are a member of the country of asylum class."
"I am therefore accepting your application," Aubut wrote. The visa officer specified that the family's eligibility for application was based on Section 147 of Canada's Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.
Erfani's first application to the Canadian Embassy in Ankara had been rejected in April by a Turkish visa officer, who stated the family did "not satisfy the definition of Convention refugee or member of the country asylum class."
For his appeal interview last month, Erfani produced new evidence regarding Iranian government persecution of some of his relatives after he fled the country. In addition, a court indictment from the Turkish city Nevsehir confirmed that the Erfani family had been harassed there last April by an Iranian Muslim for having left Islam to become Christians.
"We are so grateful!" Erfani told Compass by telephone from Nevsehir yesterday. Earlier this aweek, he had reported that due to the extreme summer heat, his wife had become "somewhat worse." Now in a wheelchair, Mrs. Erfani was diagnosed eight years ago with advancing multiple sclerosis.
Erfani and his wife, Atefeh, had become baptized Christians 21 years ago in the fanatically religious Iranian city of Mashhad, where since the Islamic revolution a convert pastor has been executed and several other converts jailed for apostasy. In the spring of 1999, the family was evicted from their home on a former church compound and subjected to growing hostility by agents of the secret police and paramilitary Muslim vigilantes of the Islamic regime.
After fleeing with their three daughters across the Iranian border to Turkey in July 1999, the couple was turned down three times by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), who declared them ineligible for official refugee status. Officials examining their case noted that Erfani was unable to provide any documents to "prove" his claims of overt and ongoing religious persecution.
Canada, however, remains one of the few Western governments willing to accept immigrants who have not been able to obtain formal UNHCR refugee status.
The Erfani family has been pledged full sponsorship by an Anglican church in Toronto who has pursued their immigration case since June 2001. After the family's rejection this past April by the Canadian Embassy in Ankara, their plight was also taken up by Paul E. Forseth, a member of the Canadian House of Commons.
Erfani said that he also received yesterday detailed instructions on the required medical examinations required by Canadian immigration for all five members of his family, including a doctor's preliminary exam, laboratory tests and chest X-rays.
According to established government policy, the final formal acceptance of the Erfani family by Canadian Immigration cannot be issue until these medical procedures have been completed.
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Controversy over Sikh kirpan continues in Quebec
By Jean-Fran?ois Mayer
Religioscope.com (03.06.2002)/HRWF International Secretariat (05.06.2002) - Website http://www.hrwf.net - E-mail info@hrwf.net - The Superior Court of Quebec gave a young 12-year-old Sikh the right to wear the kirpan (ceremonial sword) at the school he attends. However, this is not yet the last word, as this decision is being appealed by the Quebec government.
The decision was handed down on May 17, 2002, in the Superior Court of Quebec, which established in principle a legal precedent for all the schools in the province. After already having authorized the young Sikh to return to school with his kirpan while waiting for the judgment, the Superior Court adopted a compromise solution, supposedly taking into account security concerns within a school framework as well as respect for religious liberty. The Sikh will be allowed to wear his ten-centimeter-long kirpan, but it must be kept in its wooden sheath and wrapped in fabric that is sewn shut. Furthermore, it must be worn under the clothing of the student.
The absence of any violent incidents regarding a kirpan in the province tipped the balance in the decision, explained the judge, Danielle Grenier. Nevertheless, Quebec's Minister of Justice announced on May 27 that the government had decided to appeal the decision. Even symbolically, a weapon was still a weapon, asserts the government, which has adopted a policy of "zero tolerance" to the wearing of weapons in schools.
We recall that the anglophone provinces of Canada already made pronouncements on the wearing of the kirpan, several years ago. In 1990, following a similar incident in Ontario, an official commission of inquiry concluded that forbidding wearing the kirpan on school grounds violated the Code of human rights of Ontario and constituted a discrimination regarding the Sikhs.
Conditions similar to these posed by the Superior Court of Quebec were delineated.
The Canadian press has discussed this issue broadly. For the Ontario precedents, see "Religious Expressions in Public Schools: kirpans in Canada, hijab in France," by Sarah V. Wayland, in Ethnic and Racial Studies, 20/3, July 1997, pp. 545-561.
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Iranian Christian family faces quandary in Turkey
Canadian Embassy refuses immigration status
By Barbara Baker
Compass Direct (02.05.2002)/ HRWF (03.05.2002) Email info@hrwf.net - Website http://www.hrwf.net - The Canadian Embassy in Ankara turned down an Iranian Christian family's immigration application last week, closing the last known option for religious asylum for former Muslims Mahmoud and Atefeh Erfani and their three daughters.
After nearly three years as refugees in central Turkey, the Erfani family faces eventual deportation by Turkish authorities back to Iran, where Muslims who convert to Christianity can be executed for apostasy.
The Canadian government's refusal came nine months after its embassy in Turkey pledged in writing to examine the family's application for immigration. The August 6 document had specified that the family could be processed to leave for Canada within eight months "if all our requirements are met." At that point, three previous applications filed for U.N. refugee status had all been denied.
After waiting more than nine months for their first immigration interview with Canadian authorities, the Erfani family was summoned to Ankara for an April 18 interview.
Erfani told Compass by telephone from Nevsehir that his formal appointment at the Canadian Embassy consisted of a one-hour interview. "They did not speak with my wife or daughters," he said, "and they did not give us any medical or other tests."
Erfani's wife, whose health is deteriorating from advancing multiple sclerosis diagnosed eight years ago, is now in a wheelchair. But with considerable effort, she was able to accompany her husband and daughters to Ankara by bus from Nevsehir, where the family has been temporarily settled by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) since their arrival in Turkey.
Just five days later, the Canadian Embassy issued a letter declaring that based on "a careful consideration" of his April 18 interview, Erfani did "not satisfy the definition of Convention refugee nor member of the country of asylum class."
"Consequently, I have refused your application for permanent residence in Canada," Canadian Embassy Visa Officer Umit Ozguz wrote in the April 23 letter, which Erfani received on April 26.
The embassy letter gave no specific reason for the refusal. Church sources in Canada, however, said they believed Mrs. Erfani's health problems were most likely the determining factor.
According to definitions cited in the refusal letter, a "Convention refugee" is any person who "by reason of well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, or membership in a particular social group or political opinion" has left his country and "by reason of that fear, is unwilling to return to that country.
In the second category, the "asylum class" was defined under Canadian policy as someone who "has been and continues to be seriously and personally affected by a massive violation of human rights" with "no possibility, within a reasonable period, of a durable solution."
Although converted and baptized 21 years ago, Erfani and his wife had faced deepening hostility and harassment from police authorities in Mashhad during their last 12 months in Iran, which finally frightened them into fleeing the country.
Known as a center of Shiite fanaticism, Mashhad authorities executed a convert Christian pastor for apostasy in 1990. Then the city's two Protestant churches were forced to close, and three convert Christian couples were arrested, threatened, and formally charged with apostasy. All three families managed to escape from Iran and obtain religious asylum in Europe and North America.
In the meantime, the convert pastor in Tehran who baptized the Erfanis, as well as the local Presbyterian elder who first brought Erfani to local church services, were granted religious asylum in Europe.
Although Erfani himself was subjected to a series of terrifying abductions by local secret police during the last half of 1998, he had no documents to "prove" officially that he was being persecuted for his faith by the Iranian government. After his family was forcibly evicted from their home on the former Presbyterian church compound in March 1999, he moved them to Tehran.
But a few weeks later, when Erfani learned other Christian believers were being arrested and questioned about his own whereabouts, he secretly packed up his family and fled across the Turkish border.
Erfani confirmed this week that Turkish police authorities in Nevsehir have consistently treated him well. In consideration of his wife's poor health, he said, they have only required him to report once a week to sign in at police headquarters. Although he said they had not been able to afford many of her needed medications, they have scraped by on what a Presbyterian church source called "meager monthly support" from abroad.
In February 2001, after the Erfanis were refused UNHCR refugee status for the second time, the Turkish Interior Ministry had issued an order for their deportation. Although the notice was temporarily stayed by the Canadian Embassy's letter last August, the family's Turkish residence permits expired on March 28.
Erfani said he had turned the permits over to the Nevsehir police authorities the day they expired, along with the Canadian Embassy's August letter.
"I have nothing in my hands now," Erfani said. "I am afraid that we could be sent back to Iran," he admitted.
"Just pray that God's will be done for our family," Erfani asked, "and that we will be filled with the Holy Spirit, to bear all these problems with God's peace."
According to a representative of an Anglican church in Toronto which pledged full sponsorship for the stranded family, the Erfani family's case is now closed with Canadian immigration. Even "if there is new evidence presented," the representative told Compass, "there is no way to reopen the case."
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