BY MICHEL PRAIRIE AND ALEXANDRE GARNEAU
MONTREAL - "The Canadian government has clearly decided to
deport us all. I made the decision to fight rather than being
deported in silence," said Miriam Vega on September 19.
Vega was part of a group of 15 families from Chile who had taken refuge in the Saint-Jean-de-la-Croix church two days earlier, after being denied political refugee status and facing the threat of immediate deportation by Canada's immigration authorities. Like many others in the church, she had to quit her job as a hotel maid. She explained that before coming to Canada, she had been among a handful of women working in the port of Valparaíso, in her native country.
Several of the refugees in the church participated last winter in a 38-day hunger strike around the same issue. The 20 hunger strikers ended their fast March 24, when a support committee, including Montreal's Roman Catholic Church cardinal Jean-Claude Turcotte and Gérald Larose, president of the Confederation of National Trade Unions (CSN), agreed to survey their cases when they were submitted to immigration authorities.
Ottawa has since continued its policy of expelling Chilean refugees. According to those who took refuge in the church, about 30 families have been deported since the end of the hunger strike. Montreal's La Presse reported September 26 that immigration authorities had issued arrest warrants for some 600 "illegal" Chilean refugees in the Montreal area alone, with a step-up of deportations the previous two weeks.
Nearly 4,000 Chileans have requested political refugee status since 1989, when a dictatorship formally ended in that country. The Canadian government has rejected 14 out of every 15 applicants. Thousands have been deported or forced to leave Canada. Canadian capitalists have investments of $8.4 billion in Chile, and in 1997 Ottawa signed a free trade agreement with Santiago. To cover their imperialist dealings, Canada's rulers maintain that democracy has been restored in Chile.
The refugees in the church maintain that military violence and torture remain in the country. They pointed out that three people were killed by the Chilean police suppressing protests September 11 there, the 25th anniversary of the 1973 military coup that installed the dictatorship.
Most of the refugees in the church are workers. "I did not leave Chile because of poverty," said Eugenia Núñez. "I worked 22 years in a clinic. I decided to leave my family, my friends, my job and to come here where I had to make a new life for myself and learn a foreign language, because I did not want my son to go through the same repression I did."
Raúl Reyes said he has a deportation date of September 29. The 41-year-old welder had to quit his job in order to take refuge in the church. Reyes also explained many refugees have been deported without their children or their spouses. Edith Díaz, for example, was deported September 20 along with three of her four children. The children were arrested while she was at work and detained for a full day. One of them, Astrid, 14, ran away, went into hiding, and has not been heard from since. Now the rest of her family has been deported. It was the arrest of the Díaz family and that of another refugee, Alfredo Vásquez, that convinced the Chileans to seek refuge in the church.
The Chileans have received messages of solidarity from several individuals and organizations, including the Quebec Teachers Federation (CEQ) and the Quebec nationalist Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Montréal (SSJB). Michel Dugré, a garment worker and the Communist League candidate for mayor of Montreal, is also using his campaign to build solidarity in defense of the rights of these workers.
A support group of youth, mainly students from University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM) and the Vieux-Montréal college, have organized actions aimed at publicizing the case of the refugees. On September 24 the group led a demonstration from UQAM to the Canadian immigration offices and then to Concordia University, one of the two English-language universities in this city. When they entered the Concordia main campus hall they were attacked and brutally pushed to the ground, pepper- sprayed, and then ejected by the university cops.
Outraged by this unprovoked brutality dozens of students spontaneously took to the street in front of the hall. Two of the pro-refugee demonstrators and one protesting student were arrested by the city police and released after several hours without charges.
Some of those who claim support for the refugees, however, accept Ottawa's antidemocratic, anti-working-class, and inhumane immigration laws.
At a press conference held in the Saint-Jean-de-la-Croix church September 27, for instance, Réal Ménard, a Bloc Quebecois member of parliament in Ottawa; a representative of the Montreal archdiocese; CSN president Gérald Larose; and others called for Ottawa to stop the deportation of Chilean refugees until Quebec's provincial government completes its study of 73 cases as potential pre-selected "immigrants."
"There will be deportations," said Larose at the press conference. He and others also called on Ottawa to provide financial assistance to the families who will have to go back to Chile and to monitor their return so they are not persecuted. They blamed Ottawa for the "massive arrival" of Chileans following its lifting in 1995 of a visa requirement for this country. This lifting, said Larose, was aimed at convincing the Chilean government to sign the 1997 free-trade agreement with Canada.
Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste president Guy Bouthillier voiced a completely different approach to those he called "our Chilean friends." He said: "We can't remain indifferent to the fate of people who want to live with us. We can't remain indifferent when people fight for their dignity and their freedom just as we, at the SSJB, fight for our dignity and our freedom. You are welcome among us."
On September 28 Canadian immigration minister Lucienne Robillard rejected the call for a moratorium on deportation. The same day, with Ottawa's agreement, 34 Albanians from war- devastated Kosova were forcibly expelled by police from the entrance of the Canadian embassy in Budapest, Hungary. They were trying to get refugee status in Canada.
Meanwhile, the Chilean refugees have called a meeting on September 29 aimed at broadening their struggle to other forces.
Alexandre Garneau is a member of the Young Socialists. Michel Dugré, a member of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees, also contributed to this article.