[P2P-F] Fwd: [bgcon] Refugee Policies: "Never Home" > UN|COMMONS

Sun Sep 13 17:46:46 CEST 2015

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Krystian Woznicki <kw at berlinergazette.de>
Date: Mon, Sep 7, 2015 at 4:16 PM
Subject: [bgcon] Refugee Policies: "Never Home" > UN|COMMONS
To: digi-yards at berlinergazette.de

Hello,

activist and writer **Harsha Walia** from "No One is Illegal"
in Vancouver, who is speaker at UN|COMMONS conference,
has just put together an amazing online multimedia report on
the Canadian govt's immigration and refugee policies. It's a
very impressive piece of online, collaborative work entitled**Never
Home** > http://neverhome.ca

Coincidentally, it launched just a day or two before the most
recent heartbreaking stories out of **Turkey**, with news that
the family of the drowned boy had been denied refugee status
in Canada by the present government.

As I have just heard in a message from **Max Haiven**, who will
be also a guest at the UN|COMMONS conference, "Canada is
now amidst general elections, and refugee questions have, at
least for now, become the key issue. So the report Harsha and
others worked on is now very central to national debates, which
is quite exciting. The former immigration minister even took
time away from campaigning to slander them in the press and
on Twitter."

Check our Harsha Walia on Wikipedia:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harsha_Walia

Please scroll down for Harshas message explaining
further details about the context of "Never Home".

Please spread the word!

Krystian

-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: 	Never Home & Refugees Welcome
Date: 	Sun, 06 Sep 2015 16:45:20 -0400
From: 	harsha at resist.ca

It's been a tremendous week in migrant justice. Like all of you, I am
continuously horrified and pained at the photos pouring in of the global
refugee crisis unfolding before our eyes. This has been going on for
years and then last week the photos and news hit of the Kurdi family and
their attempts to come to Canada. This has, finally, rightfully sparked
national and international outrage, as well as immense solidarity.

The Kurdi family are three of almost 60 million displaced people around
the globe this year, and over 45,000 people have died crossing borders
since 2000. Even though international leaders posture about
'humanitarian solutions', the reality is that the roots of the crisis
remain unaddressed and borders remain closed. AS MAX FISHER WRITES, “A
SINGLE DEAD REFUGEE CHILD IS A TRAGEDY, BUT A MILLION SUFFERING REFUGEES
ARE A THREAT."

THE NUMBER OF REFUGEE CLAIMS IN CANADA DECREASED BY 50 PERCENT AND THE
NUMBER OF ACCEPTED REFUGEES DROPPED BY 30 PERCENT BETWEEN 2006 AND 2012.
The federal government deported 117,531 people between 2006 and 2014,
including to countries with official moratoriums on deportation.

I know these statistics inside and out because this week we released our
multimedia project HTTP://WWW.NEVERHOME.CA [1] ON THIS GOVERNMENT'S
DISCRIMINATORY IMMIGRATION AND REFUGEE POLICY OVER THE PAST DECADE.
Never Home has garnered lots of attention and the Toronto Star calls it
[2] "an innovative multimedia project that puts a human face on the
impact of the drastic changes made by the Conservative government to the
immigration and refugee system in the past decade." Here is an oped I
wrote on it in the Vancouver
Sun:http://www.vancouversun.com/life/Opinion+does+Canada+jail+migrants/11330390/story.html
[3]

Fifty people have spent over one thousand unpaid hours to bring these
stories and information to you because we know that lives depend on it.
Lives like the Kurdi family. AS DIANA, SHARES IN NEVER HOME, _"IT WAS
THE CANADIAN GOVERNMENT THAT REALLY KILLED MY DAD... I DON’T WANT THIS
TO HAPPEN TO ANYBODY ELSE LIKE IT DID TO MY FAMILY." _Our
comprehensive_Never Home_ [1] website features a report with
multilingual resources,
videos and stories of migrants, and high impact visuals. I ask you to
take some time to check out _Never Home_ [1], to talk about it with your
friends and family, and share it with your networks.

This week newspapers are also filled with headlines of Harper and
European leaders saying that further military action in Syria is
necessary to resolve the crisis. (Here Sozan Savelaghi's response to
this on CTV National News Channel: http://on.fb.me/1NWtrNV [4]) This
makes me so angry and I have a lot of rage. Rage because FURTHER
MILITARIZATION WILL NOT BRING LIBERATION and exclusionary border
policies kill. Rage that families have to make **private** sponsorships
and wait over a year instead of the government welcoming refugees. Rage
that many Canadians believe refugees are terrorists, undesirable,
unwelcome. Rage that politicians have no context for living in war
zones, have no context for deep poverty, for trauma, for running from
bombs and still feel they can judge whether others are 'legitimate'
refugees or not.

CANADA IS NOT ONLY COMPLICIT IN REFUGEE EXCLUSION, BUT ALSO COMPLICIT IN
CREATING MASSIVE DISPLACEMENT AROUND THE WORLD, JUST AS IT DOES UPON
THESE INDIGENOUS LANDS - from its role in the coups in Haiti, to
Canadian corporations creating devastation like Nevsun in Eritrea or
Goldcorp in Honduras, to Canada's overwhelming role in causing climate
change that impacts countries like Bangladesh and the Philippines and at
the same time forcing export-free zones and Structural Adjustment
policies that ensures the exploitation of labour within (like
sweatshops) and from (like the temporary foreign worker program) these
countries.

NAOMI KLEIN focused a talk yesterday on the refugee crisis and these
kinds of connections, watch here: http://youtu.be/a5LuIAJEFUc [5]

This is not inevitable. WE CAN ALL CREATE THE MOMENTUM NECESSARY TO
SHIFT FROM INDIFFERENCE AND RACISM TO SOLIDARITY. Around the world and
across Canada [6], tens of thousands are taking to the streets declaring
"Refugees Welcome." I have received dozens of humbling messages from
Indigenous land defenders, friends and mentors offering refuge based on
Indigenous laws and protocols, affirming _No One Is Illegal, Canada Is
Illegal_. German residents have convinced their government to allow over
800,000 refugees to enter the country, while over 10,000 Icelandic
families have opened their homes to refugees. It's time for us to
collectively assert the freedom to move, stay and return. _IN THE WORDS
OF LATE GREAT EDUARDO GALEANO "THE WORLD WAS BORN YEARNING TO BE A HOME
FOR EVERYONE."_ Thanks for reading

xo Harsha

Links:
------
[1] http://www.neverhome.ca
[2]http://www.thestar.com/news/immigration/2015/09/02/migrants-slam-impact-of-immigration-overhaul.html
[3]http://www.vancouversun.com/life/Opinion+does+Canada+jail+migrants/11330390/story.html
[4] http://on.fb.me/1NWtrNV
[5] http://youtu.be/a5LuIAJEFUc
[6] https://www.facebook.com/events/1703064886579884/

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