I am not talking about the bailout here. I am talking about a serious rescue.
Abousifian Abdelrazik is a Canadian who has found himself in a big pickle. He returned to his birthplace in Sudan in 2003 to visit is ailing mother. While there, the CSIS, our spy agency, apparently had him arrested. He was later allegedly interrogated by CSIS, the FBI and Sudanese intelligence officials about ties to Osama bin Laden. He was in and out of detention for years in Sudanese jails, where he alleges he was also tortured. In the meantime, his passport expired and his wife divorced him.
In April of 2008, he took refuge in the Canadian embassy in Khartoum but the Department of Foreign Affairs refused to prepare travel documents for him because he was on the US and the UN no fly lists. After much effort and a huge amount of opposition here in Canada, the federal government finally relented and said he would be allowed to return if he could produce a pre-paid airline ticket. By this time Mr. Abdelrazik was destitute and had no means to pay for a ticket. Instead 115 Canadians defied the federal government’s threat to charge them under anti-terrorism legislation and raised money to buy him a ticket and bring him home.
The ticket was paid for and the clearences offered, but yesterday the federal government reneged on its commitment and claimed that unless Mr. Abdelrazik got himself off teh UN no-fly list he could not return home. I can’t imagine how it is possible that one individual could do such a thing without the help of his own government.
Mr. Abdelrazik has not been charged with any crime. Both the RCMP and CSIS have cleared him of any wrongdoing, and in fact CSIS has even launched and internal probe to see what happened in this case. In short, Mr. Abdelrazik is no different from any other Canadian citizen travelling the world. He is in a bind not of his doing and his own government refuses to help him come home.
This is highly alarming for me and it should be for the thousands of other Canadians who leave our country every day. If you are wrongly arrested in a foreign country, does your Canadian passport mean anything? Will your government come to your rescue or will you be abandonned to rely on your own wits and resources? Do you know under what conditions the federal government will come to your aid?
With this concern in mind, today I sen the following letter to my Member of Parliament, John Weston:
Dear Mr. Weston:
As you are aware, the case of Abousfian Abdelrazik is ongoing. After creating near impossible conditions for his return to Canada, his country of citizenship, and then clearing him of any wrong doing, the federal government has now said that he must clear himself from the UN no-fly list before he can return home. It seems clear that this could be a simple matter for the Canadian government, as a UN member, to speak for the integrity of its citizens and have Mr. Abdelrazik removed from the list and not have that act subject to the veto of any other country. Surely a government can be expected to come to the aid of its citizens in such a predicament.
I am an international traveller who does business in the United States and Europe. Like Mr. AbdelrazikI I work legally and am not involved in any criminal activity. I am very concerned with this case and with the government’s intransigence in bringing this man home even after he has been cleared of any wrongdoing by our own intellegence services.
As a citizen of your riding, I would like to know that if I was ever caught in a similar situation, that my family could rely on you to do everything you can to bring me home. I would like to know, for my own peace of mind and as a citizen, what Mr. Abdelrazik has done to deserve this treatment from his own government. I know you have also travelled extensively around the world, and I would strongly request that you place yourself in Mr. Abdelrazik’s shoes and do everything you can to bring him home without any further delay.
I would like to know under what conditions I would be assured of help from the federal government should I be wrongly arrested while travelling in another country. I think legions of other business travellers and tourists would like to have the same assurances.
Mr. Weston has never responded to any of my emailed requests for information, but perhaps this time will be different. I will post his response here. I am very concerned that something is changing about Canadian citizenship and that our own government no longer has the final say in what happens to our own citizens.
A cold day to be on the outskirts of a cold city in a cold part of the world. When you travel midweek into Canada’s hinterlands and northern small cities, you share a plane with mostly hard and tired men who work for government or various companies doing business in the far flung nether regions of this nation. Whether it’s travel to Prince George, Thunder Bay, Prince Albert or Yellowknife, it seems like the same guys are on the flight – steak eating, overworked, tired, introverted, hard men. Once in a while, if they are coming home from a job well done, and travelling in groups, they are more garrulous, raucously celebrating and teasing one another across the rows of the small regional jets and Dash-8s that seem to be bulging at the seams to contain them.
On a late winter Tuesday afternoon the flight from Ottawa to Thunder Bay isn’t at all out of the ordinary. Mostly public servants on this trip, a couple of guys wearing jackets with CAT logos on them, two or three professional women, and a young couple who have seen better days, and who seem to be holding out for better days to come. The flight is quiet, descending through an oncoming blizzard to land on a snowy runway. When we disembark, the jetway doesn’t fit the fuselage very snugly and a blast of cold Northern Ontario air stings the face.
Here at the Valhalla Inn – a nod to the nordic history of this part of the world – wood trim and gas fireplaces in the lobby distract the eye from the cinder block hallways, and new carpets in the room offset the aging wood and vinyl topped room furniture. It seems like the meeting rooms are full of Aboriginal women and non-Aboriginal men. Almost every space has a sign that says that people are planning, and being the end of the fiscal year, everyone is turning their thoughts to next year, which starts on April 1.
There is something about the bleakness of being out here, far from downtown Thunder Bay, that brings loneliness on. I have two days of work here, but already I can’t wait to get home to my little house on an island in Howe Sound, where my family are.
It has been a long winter in many ways, and I’m ready for a rest and for spring to come on. Here, it feels a million miles away from that – not even the geese have dared venture this far notth yet, and the storm coming in deepens the mood.
Hunker down , do some good work with local First Nations leaders and youth and then get home. That’s the work of this week. Looking forward to ten days with the kids, writing some reports and getting my hands into the soil of the spring garden.
For the second time in two weeks, I’m back in Ottawa, one of my former residences, and a part of Canada that I love very much. I arrived yesterday afternoon and spent the evening walking around my old haunts on Elgin Street, going to see Milk and then finishing with a late dinner at The Manx Pub, a place located four doors down from the first place Caitlin and I lived after we moved to Ottawa in 1991. The Manx opened three weeks after we got there and it’s still going strong.
Today a day of teaching hosting, cricle practice and Theory U with a group of people involved in our Urban Aboriginal Economic Development Network of learning circles. Many of the people with us today are involved in setting up learning circles BC and Ontario on Aboriginal women’s social entreprenuership inspired by the work of Penny Irons and the Aboriginal Mother’s Centre in Vancouver.
Tonight its off to supper at Canada’s second Aboriginal restaruant, Sweetgrass Bistro in the Byward Market, another former stomping ground. Good to be back here, good to be working with friends, good to be doing good work.
San Jose, CA
I’m in San Jose this week to help host a Core team retreat for the folks planning and executing the 2009 Food and Society Gathering, which will be here in April. Here’s how I got here today.
- Left BOwen Island last night on the 6pm ferry in the teeth of a southeasterly gale that drove sleet into the skin on my face. Rocky ride across the Queen Charlotte Channel, but uneventful otherwise.
- Grabbed a cab that arrived as I did and shared it part way with a lovely Finnish woman returning from a visit on Bowen. It was snowing so hard in Vancouver that cars and buses were stuck on all the hills so we drove around looking for clear and free aterial roads to try to get me to my mother in law’s place in South Dunbar. At one point it felt like we were just looking for the clean streets. I remarked to my Persian accomplice that we were driving rather like Nasruddin, who seaches for his lost key under the lamp, because it’s light there. The driver and I share a good laugh and some excellent conversation about Iran, Canada and Sufism. The ride is an enjoyable 1.5 hour crawl.
- Retire for the night but up at 4:45 to find a cab. Get to the airport and it’s a disaster. Lots of lines for all kinds of things, but mine are pretty manageable. Check in for 30 mins, US customs is 45 mins (with a secondary approval for my work visa) security is a mere 15 mins. IN Vancouver if you are an Air Canada elite member they give you a fast lane for security…looks like the regular lane was close to 45 mins long. Lots of folks rescheduled on flights that were cancelled last night. They were all tired and cranky, and it was kind of funny to see a planeload of sourpusses heading to Maui.
- Flight gets delayed an hour once I’m through, so it’s into the lounge, where Air Canada has replaced the formerly excellent espresso machines with slow inefficient machines with too many choices that appear to download your coffee. And then you get half a cup. Went to Starbucks and bought something close to real espresso.
- Boarded at 8:20, took off at 11. Combination of a flight attendant stuck in the snow, delays at the SFO end of things and other stuff which I missed because I fell asleep as soon as I hit my seat.
- Arrive in SFO at 1:00pm, figure I’ve burned enough carbon for one day so I opt for train to San Jose. Two minute Air Train ride. 20 mins on the BART and an hour and 20 mins (including wait times) on the Caltrain. Arrive in San Jose at 3:39, walk the mile to the hotel, in my room at 4:20. Cost me $7.50 cents not including the Subway sandwich I wolfed down for sustenance.
- So I’m here at the Fairmont, a luxery hotel in the middle of a strange city. My first time in Silicon Valley, so passing through Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Sunnyvale and Mountainview was cool. Passing by Redwood City was cool too, as my dharma teachings come from there. One tip for the Fairmont…Internet access is $13.95 a day but if you sign up for their loyalty program when you check in, it’s free, and they give Aeroplan points and other useful perks.
- Waiting for mates to arrive, then I’ll see about dinner. Any recommendations, leave them in the comments.
The “new road” from Nanaimo to Campbell River takes you high above the ocean, across the tops of the lowlands where the Vancouver Island range mountains slope down to the Strait of Georgia. It’s a long fast stretch of double highway, posted at 110 km/h and taking only an hour and a half, which is a full 30 minutes shorter than the more scenic, but interminably slow Ocean Route.
What you gain in speed though, you lose in character, and other than a few stunning lookouts, the scenery is dominated by recovering clearcuts on the mountains all around. You miss towns completely until you descend into Campbell River. The only crossings north of Parksville are mainline logging roads, with the exception of the road up the Comox Valley.
Off the road however, there are a few places to stop and get some good rest. Whenever I do this trip I always stop in at the Java Shack in Campbell River, which has some of the best espresso on Vancouver Island, and fantastic homemade soups and baking. It’s right down by the ferry dock, so is a great place to stop if you’ve missed the Quadra Island ferry.
Today though I’m pausing here on the way north, into high mountaon logging country, up highway 19 to Port MacNeil. North of Campbell River the road cuts inland through incredibly steep terrain and seeks out the Nimpkish Valley, giving equal access to both sides of the mountains that form the spine of this Island. Up here the economy is strictly about access – access to timber mostly, so the main highway splits the difference between both sides of the Island and the clear cuts come right down to the road. In Sayward once I was almost denied service at a gas station because I tried to pay with my VanCity Enviro Card. People are serious about logging here, and the great unspoken terror of fish farming, an industry that is driving a wedge between people and communities. The Broughton Archipelago, a maze of islands and treacherous channels, is the home to two dozen fish farms and a formerly thriving wild fishery. The wild fish fleets are down significantly – it’s hard to even find wild fish on the menu in Campbell River except at the excellent fish and chips stand in the Discovery Marina – and the resulting hit to traditional diets and ways of life in local First Nations is devastating.
I’ve driven this road dozens of times, awed by the scenery and the impact that humans can have on such a vast territory (see Google maps for evidence of the logging activity, none of which is hidden from view north of Campbell River – in the southern part of the Island, a nod to tourism means that clear cuts are carefully contained behind view corridors that give the impression of pristine forests). Not too many tourists wander up here, and I guess people kind of like it that way. A few make the trek for the world class salmon fishing and the whale watching tours out of Telegraph Cove and a few others get up to Port Hardy and board the ferry for the inside passage to Bella Bella, Bella Coola and Prince Rupert. But by and large this land belongs to the people that live here, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, and that’s why I’m here – to run a gathering tomorrow in which these folks will talk to one another about what’s possible together.
Should be interesting.