~ We acknowledge the funding support of Status of Women Canada and the Urgent Action Fund ~

This document expresses the views of the authors and does not represent the official policy of Status of Women Canada or the Government of Canada.

Direct Action Against Refugee Exploitation
c/o 309 - 877 E. Hastings
Vancouver, BC V6A 3Y1

tel. 604-682-3269, ext. 6467

We, the women of DAARE who live in Vancouver,
thank the Coast Salish Peoples -
the Burrard, Musqueam and Squamish Nations -
for allowing us to be here on their territories.

We call on other non-Native people living on the land known as "Canada" -
whatever the "immigration" status -
to always acknowledge whose land they are on,
and to work in solidarity with indigenous people
here and around the world.

SONG - Written by a Fujianese migrant woman while incarcerated in the Burnaby Correctional Centre for Women and on hunger strike in November 1999: (English translation)

Coming to this far away land, Canada,
My hope is fulfilled.
Why do you treat me like this,
Do you think this is justice?
I wait and wait and
Don't know when you'll release me
Days passed, months passed,
How could I not be sad?
May I ask what the Immigration Board and the Judge
Really want to do with me?

In this civilized country, I couldn't have imagined
That I would be treated like this.
Since I've been locked in prison,
My life has never been peaceful.
I was taken from here to there,
I do not know what crime I have committed,
Days passed, nights passed, my tears never stop.
May I ask the Immigration Board and the judge
When you will release me?

I have suffered on the ship
And risked my life to come
Is this my fate to be in prison
I do not understand why
Judge, oh judge, please give me my freedom
You had saved our lives
We will remember it forever
And we will not run away.

LETTER - To Storefront Orientation Services (SOS) from a Fujianese Women in the BCCW, November 1999: (English translation)

To the Refugee Service Centre (SOS):

We are Chinese women from the Pacific East Coast. We have gone through great difficulties to cross the ocean, with our hope and our dreams to come to Canada. It was the promise of democracy and human rights in this country which persuaded us to board a wrecked ship, risking our lives and facing grave danger. In doing so, we began our life and death struggle. One could only imagine our horrific journey at sea. The ocean waves did not swallow our lives. But here in this civilized country, we are living in such unusual conditions. This is a prison. We long to see the world outside. We dream of being like the people outside - welcoming and celebrating the millennium. We need the care and support of the well-informed people outside. We ask for your help. We are Chinese women who have fled here. We look forward to the day when we can live in freedom. We hope that you can extend your helping hand. Please come to visit and comfort us we, the sisters from China who long for our freedom. (Names withheld for safety reasons.)

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

"… but people are not a flood, borders are not God-given, lives are not dollars, Canada is not the sum of its exclusions."
- Wayde Compton

In the summer of 1999, four ships carrying 599 Fujianese people arrived here. They survived a dangerous journey, during which at least two people died, and hoped for asylum and safety. Instead, the Canadian government put most of them in prison. After numerous deportations, there were still about 11 of these people in Canadian prisons as of April 2001. They have been in jail for over a year and a half for exercising their rights of movement. At one point, an old jail in Prince George was reopened to house them. Currently, the women are being held in the Burnaby Correctional Centre for Women (BCCW), and the men at Surrey Pretrial and Vancouver Pretrial Detention Centres. About 26 people have been granted refugee status. Those who were deported to China have been placed in Chinese prisons and fined.

It is DAARE's position that although "undocumented," these migrants are not "illegal" in light of mobility rights pursuant to Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which recognizes everyone's right to leave any country and Article 14 which recognizes that people have the right to seek asylum. Present immigration laws, regulations and practices criminalize these migrants' freedom of movement.

Given that women are amongst the most vulnerable in the large movement of displaced peoples and as such are particularly deserving of protection, DAARE recommends that the Federal Government undertake the following measures:

a. International Measures

• Ratify the 1990 International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families.
• Use strategies such as international cooperation and foreign policy to find humane ways to deal with mass migration, rather than resorting to short term reactions to perceived, racialized crises which punish migrants.
• Recognize global poverty as an international human rights issue and recognize its responsibility for and participation in man-made economic policies that exacerbate economic disparities both within poorer nations and between wealthy and poor nations.

b. National Measures

• Stop detaining migrants on the basis of country of origin, race, and method of entry (e.g. ship vs. plane) and stop the group-profiling of migrants.
• Incorporate the recommendations made by groups such as the Coalition for a Just Immigration and Refugee Policy and the Canadian Council of Refugees.
• Amend proposed legislation and regulations to fulfill Canada's international human rights obligations under the Refugee Convention, the Convention against Torture, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which the proposed Bill C-11 fails to do.
• Offer a humanitarian option to indentured persons to ensure that victims are not further revictimized by the Canadian state nor returned into the vicious circle of exploitation and violence in their homelands.
• Cease forcible repatriation of displaced persons.
• Allocate funds which would have been used for detention and deportation towards community-based services such as shelters, counselling, language classes, and training.
• Increase Canada's immigration rate to two or three percent of its population. Increased migration through legal channels alleviates the pressure that coerces people into covert channels.
• Eliminate the class bias in the point system and value people's labour skills. For example, value women's "traditional" work in evaluating prospective immigrants.
• Recognize trafficking as a Canadian, not just international, problem. In particular, build support systems for migrant women who are coerced to work underground in Canada to immediately escape horrendous situations of exploitation, abuse and violence.
• Reduce, or at minimum do not increase the discretionary powers of immigration staff.
• Hold the Export Development Corporation accountable for its actions overseas by increasing its transparency through making the Access to Information Act applicable to it.

In its increased emphasis on enforcement, Canada's Immigration legislation overlooks the needs and experiences of vulnerable, displaced people, including asylum seekers, migrants, women and children. "Harsh immigration laws will only make [migrants] more vulnerable to smugglers and employers, raise the costs of smuggling even higher, and force the smuggling syndicates to grow even more brutal and immune to government powers" (Kwong 7).

Wealthy nations like Canada need to take responsibility for their part in creating the conditions which cause widespread migration in places like China, (such as the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River). As the gap between the wealthy and the poor rapidly increases with globalization, many working class people are forced to move in order to survive. They are exploited for their cheap, undervalued labour and skills, while their attempts to access the basic human rights are ignored.

Canada's recently proposed immigration policy's emphasis on enforcing borders and detaining asylum seekers only serves to scapegoat the very people whose underpaid labour actually makes this country run. Bill C-11 is a retrograde act which reduces the rights of immigrants and refugees.

INTRODUCTION

As corporations and capital grow increasingly mobile, we are witnessing rapid social and political changes, including large migrations of people around the world, people trying to survive by following the paths of a cash economy. Their labour makes this economy possible, yet their contributions are usually ignored, undervalued, and even criminalized. How is it possible that our governments grant more freedom to goods and money than to the majority of the world's working people?

In the summer of 1999, four ships carrying 599 Fujianese people arrived on Coast Salish land, commonly called the west coast of Canada. They survived a desperate and dangerous journey, during which at least two people died, and hoped for asylum and safety. Instead, the Canadian government put most of them in prison. After numerous deportations, there are still about 11 of these people in Canadian prisons as of April 2001. They have been in jail for over a year and a half for exercising their rights of movement. At one point, an old jail in Prince George was reopened to house them. Currently, the women are being held in the Burnaby Correctional Centre for Women (BCCW), and the men at Surrey Pretrial and Vancouver Pretrial Detention Centres. About 26 people have been granted refugee status. Those who were deported to China have been placed in Chinese prisons and fined.

These migrants may have been undocumented but they are not "illegal" as the corporate media here suggest. They have mobility rights; Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognizes everyone's right to leave any country. Article 14 recognizes that people have the right to seek asylum. It is not the migrants who "do not belong," but the unjust laws that criminalize their freedom of movement. In considering people's rights, we need to keep in mind not only the civil and political rights which the West tends to privilege, but equally important social and economic rights as well.

As a local response to the global phenomenon of migration, Direct Action Against Refugee Exploitation (formerly DARE, but now DAARE) is a group of women who formed in Vancouver to support the rights of the 90 Fujianese women on the four ships, seven of whom at the time of writing are still being held in the BCCW. Along with groups such as the Vancouver Association of Chinese Canadians, we see the urgent need to speak out for social justice in the face of the Canadian government's harsh response to these people. In DAARE's view, the decision to detain all these people is based on a racialized group profiling practice which violates people's basic rights and ignores Canadian responsibility in the creation of the inequitable global economic and societal conditions which give rise to widespread migration.

DAARE marked International Women's Day 2000 and 2001 by calling for an amnesty. Members and supporters of DAARE have been regularly visiting the women in the BCCW, doing public actions and educational events, and offering assistance as an act of solidarity with the few women who have come out of detention. We have seen first hand the terrible effects of long term incarceration as women become more depressed, fearful, and desperate in jail. As their letters, songs, and words in this report attest, migrant women do not belong in prisons. Nor do they deserve to be subjected to a system which incriminates them.

This report arose out of a need to provoke people to think about the connections between migration and globalization. In light of the Canadian government's plans to implement even more punitive and harsher immigration legislation, we offer information and perspectives which value human life and global solidarity. It is important to continue speaking up about the ways in which global inequities affect us all despite corporate and government attempts to silence popular dissent and intimidate grassroots activists. For instance, when we organized as DARE, we faced the likelihood of state surveillance, and we also received a letter from the American-based Trademark Management, insisting that we cease and desist using the name DARE. Rather than engaging in a battle which would distract us from our goal of working together with migrant women to challenge injustice, we chose to change our acronym to DAARE.

Finally, in discussing migration, we need to be wary of how we can inadvertently reinforce the colonization of First Nations people unless we consciously work against that by actively supporting aboriginal self-determination. For example, some First Nations people have been accused of "smuggling" people across borders - this subjects them to the same process of criminalization which the migrants have experienced, and ignores the sovereign rights of First Nations people in a white settler colony. Indeed, First Nations people have been subjected to violent processes of criminalization for centuries, processes which have formed unjustifiable excuses for stealing First Nations land and resources.

The continued assertions of First Nations self-determination in the face of systemically attempted genocide are an example of courage and human endurance in the face of brutality. We need ways of relating to one another which do not reenact domination, but which work in solidarity with First Nations' struggles for justice. This requires an understanding of the ways in which racism, colonialism, classism, and other tactics through which "dividing and conquering" take place. For all of us who are first, second, third, fourth, fifth generation migrants to this land, our survival and liberation is intimately connected to that of aboriginal people.

WHO IS A MIGRANT?

The lines between "voluntary" and "forced" migration are no longer adequate to explain the complexities of population movements today. Motives for forced displacement include political, economic, social and environmental factors. This spectrum runs from the immediate threats to life, safety and freedom due to war or persecution, to situations where economic conditions make the prospects of survival marginal and non-existent. (Moussa 2000)

Terms like "economic migrant" and "bogus refugee" have been used to discredit migrants such as the Fujianese and to foster hostility against them. This scapegoating process ignores the violence inflicted by debt bondage, as many people are not able to pay for their voyage to Canada, but actually owe money for the passage. Scapegoating migrants ignores the basic respect due all people as enshrined, for example, in the UN Declaration of Human Rights. There can be multiple simultaneous reasons for an individual to migrate - ranging from family reunification to economic pressures to personal survival to fear of government corruption to the desire for religious freedom, to name just a few. The reduction of multiple causes to the economic does not assist one to understand why migration is occurring and likely to increase in the future. Furthermore, as feminists who understand that personal situations have political implications, we recognize that whether or not women declare their struggles in ways which the West have traditionally and narrowly privileged as "political activism," we do, in our daily actions to survive, commit political acts all the time.

The definition of a refugee according to the 1951 Convention on Refugees - based on fear of persecution because of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group - excludes economic and environmental factors which may give rise to displacement. This exclusion is not adequately addressed by Canada's current immigration and refugee system.

In fact, most immigrants to Canada could also be described as economic migrants. Conrad Black is an economic migrant. The privileging of rich migrants over poor ones romanticizes globalization as corporate progress and ignores the immense human suffering it entails for the majority of the world's population as the gap between the wealthy and the poor rapidly increases.

Hundreds of years ago, when migrants came to this aboriginal territory we now call Canada, they came in order to survive - in short, they too were "economic migrants." Canada as a nation was formed as a white settler colony which ignored the First Peoples here. Many of those migrants who came from Europe for the last four hundred years would not qualify to enter Canada today under its current immigration admissions guidelines. Indeed, many Canadians, if they were not already citizens, would not be able to independently immigrate to Canada given its current elitist restrictions. When the front door is too narrow, people are forced to go through the dangerous back door instead. This situation makes increasingly large numbers of people vulnerable to being exploited as migrant labour. Debt bondage is not a choice but a harsh reality for many.

One of the many reasons for migration is the destruction of rural economies in Asia and elsewhere in the world. Millions of people have been displaced by the privatization of their economy, which is separating people from the land as people move from rural areas to urban ones. These waves of internal migration also result in the movement of peoples across national borders in order to survive. Chinese provinces such as Fujian and Guangdong, whose people have a long history of overseas travel, are particularly common sources of migration. While Fujian is generally recognized as one of the wealthier provinces in China, we should also be aware that there are "very large disparities between some pairs of counties in Fujian and a substantial degree of inequality in the GDP per capita across the province as a whole" (Lyons Economic Geography Vol. 1, 94).

As conditions become increasingly chaotic with the rapid growth of privatization and deregulation, people follow the paths of capital in an attempt to survive. Not only are some Chinese government officials reportedly in partnership with smugglers who exist because of demand, but there is a commonly held perception that the overseas Chinese are an asset, decreasing national unemployment in China and increasing national wealth through the sending of remittances. Widespread corruption is often cited as one of the main reasons Chinese decide to leave their homeland: "Everyone has stories of Chinese governmental corruption to tell. Those in small businesses have to bribe officials at all levels to survive, paying off the health department, the license bureau, the tax bureau, and entertaining the police and members of neighborhood committees" (Kwong 65). This situation leaves many people vulnerable to abuse and exploitation.

HISTORY REPEATING ITSELF?

The arrival of the Fujianese people met with a racist media hysteria reminiscent of earlier episodes of Canadian history. Front page newspaper headlines such as "Go Home" increased hostility against them. In Victoria, people were offering to adopt the dog on one of the ships at the same time that they were calling to deport the Chinese. From the corporate media accounts of the situation, one would think that most Canadians did not care about the dangerous voyage these people had endured, a voyage during which two people from the second ship died.

Accusations that people were trying to enter the country "illegally" overlooked how historically, the Chinese, like other people of colour, have had to find ways to compensate for racist and classist biases in Canada's immigration system. On rare occasions, Canada has acknowledged the unjust effects of its immigration laws. For example, from 1960 to 1973, under the Chinese Adjustment Statement Program, Canada granted amnesty to over 12,000 "paper sons," that is, people who had immigrated under names other than their own (Wickberg 216). In one sense, the granting of "legal" status to the "paper sons" who arrived before 1960 was, after the fact, a belated response to Canada's Chinese Exclusion Act which prevented Chinese people from entering this country from 1923 to 1947.

The xenophobic attitudes which gave rise to the Chinese Exclusion Act and the head tax occurred within a colonial context which privileged British (im)migrants. Today, colonialism may no longer be as rhetorically attached to the British empire, but its patterns - particularly the globally inequitable distribution of wealth and resources - continue to accelerate through the mechanism of transnational corporations, for example. As Helene Moussa has pointed out, "the interconnections of globalisation with racist and colonialist ideology are only too clear when all evidence shows that globalisation '… legitimise[s] and sustain[s] an international system that tolerates an unbelievable divide not only between the North and the South but also inside them'" (2000). Moreover, according to the United Nations Development Programme, the income gap between people in the world's wealthiest nations and the poorest nations has shifted from 30:1 in 1960 to 60:1 in 1990 and to 74:1 in 1997 (Moussa 2000).

As capital or electronic money crosses borders faster than ever before in what some have called the casino economy (Mander and Goldsmith), change and instability are rapidly increasing for a large proportion of the world's population. The United Nations Research Institute for Social Development points out that:

At an earlier stage in human history, a similar state of flux gave rise to the idea of national citizenship. During the industrial revolution, societies being torn apart by rapidly expanding markets and the disintegration of traditional institutions searched for new bases of solidarity. The modern form of identity and mutual support that developed out of such struggles, and that has served them well, is the concept of the citizen.

Citizenship has three central propositions: equality in individual and human rights; free and universal political participation; and state responsibility to ensure adequate standards of human welfare. The time has come to extend these principles internationally: to focus attention explicitly on global citizenship.

This does not mean striking out in a new direction, but rather pursuing more deliberately a process that is already under way. (p.19)

People are justifiably anxious about their well-being in the face of growing transnational corporate power; however, "protecting" national borders through enforcement and detention of displaced people is a form of reactive, violent, and often racist nationalism which scapegoats the vulnerable without truly addressing the root causes of instability and migration. In short, reactive nationalism is ineffective in safeguarding people's survival and well-being.

In asserting solidarity with those who are most immediately displaced and impoverished by globalization, what strategies might we develop to work towards our common survival? Imagining a global citizenship which safeguards rights for everyone on earth might be one way towards closing the huge gap between what the UN Declaration of Human Rights sets out and people's actual lived experiences. However, given how citizenship historically developed for privileged white male property owners, an uncritical acceptance of citizenship poses serious problems if it assumes that equality exists and ignores enormous and growing socio-economic injustices. In order to avoid being co-opted by Western references to "democracy" and "citizenship" which exclude the majority of the world's working classes, one needs to carefully define these terms in ways which recognize class struggle and anti-imperialist struggles against "racialized, gendered, local, national and global capitalism" (Bannerji 53). Moreover, if nations have traded away the rights of common individual citizens to corporations, then the complicity of the nation must be challenged. When profit-focused multinational corporations become known as "global citizens," how does governmental protection of them (witness the heavy police presence at the FTAA protests in Quebec, April 2001) betray the majority of human citizens who may be more concerned about long term well-being, health and environment than about profit?

In this context, regardless of what nation they happen to be in, global citizens, who are not private corporations but common people labouring to survive, are entitled to the rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, including Article 25 which states that, "everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control." Although this right exists on paper, the inequitable distribution of resources under a historical system of imperialism or its contemporary name, "globalization," makes it an empty right for millions of people on this planet. Only with a wider understanding of current global socio-economic inequities, can one imagine workable possibilities for self-determination and human action in the face of corporate homogenization. Substantive freedom requires equitable economic relations, that is, fairly shared wealth.

WOMEN IN THE PICTURE

Historically, Chinese migration to Canada was overwhelmingly male-dominated. Chinese people were charged a head tax which meant that men were more likely to come here than women because of the expense involved. (Note: Today, the situation in terms of the head tax has actually gotten worse, not better, in that it is applied to ALL immigrants, not just Chinese ones. Now euphemistically called the "Right of Landing Fee" (ROLF), this $975 head tax increases the barriers for people coming from countries whose currencies may be "weaker" than Canada's.) While the ratio of Chinese men to Chinese women in Canada has evened out to about 1:1 today, in 1921, for instance, it was 15 men to 1 woman. Of the 599 Fujianese people who arrived on the four ships in 1999, 90 were women. While women and children make up 80% of the world's refugees, and women are estimated to make up 65% of the world's migrants, in this group women are less likely than men to travel such a long distance by such dangerous means.

In a random sample of 15 out of the 90 Fujianese women, education levels tended to be low, ranging from no formal schooling (two women) to the completion of grade 9 (one woman). As a number of women have pointed out, there is no free public education in China. If parents cannot afford to send a child to school, then that child does not receive an education.

Many of the 15 woman came from rural areas, and most of them (11) applied for refugee status based on social group. One woman indicated that she had been sold to her husband. Six women have received refugee status because of sur place reasons, family planning, religious persecution, and what is called compelling reasons.

Despite the disadvantage of limited access to formal education, these women are resourceful and creative people. Their skills include sewing (which they do in prison), parenting, cooking, cleaning, singing, caring for and counselling one another in the hostile environment of the prison, and much more. They are not just victims of a globally inequitable system, but courageous people with abilities which are not being valued by Canada. Many scholars have pointed out how women and women's work are generally undervalued. Marilyn Waring, for example, has described in detail:

… how the international economic system constructs reality in a way that excludes the bulk of women's work - reproduction (in all its forms), raising children, domestic work, and subsistence production. Cooking, according to economists, is "active labor" when cooked food is sold and "economically inactive labor" when it is not. Housework is "productive" when performed by a paid domestic servant and "nonproductive" when no payment is involved. (If Women Counted, 30-31)

Women's contributions are massively under-represented in policy decisions around the world. This manifests itself in the shaping of everything from economic policies to immigration policies. Work which has traditionally been considered "female" tends to be underpaid, and as such, assigned little or no value in Canada's point system for assessing potential immigrants. Hence, men and women who can mainly offer sweat labour in areas like the food service industry and the garment industry, but who do not have much economic or cultural capital, are not able to accumulate the points needed to enter Canada as independent immigrants. In short, gender and class biases operate through the mechanism of the Canadian point system.

As long as Canada primarily accepts wealthy economic migrants but not poor ones, we perpetuate an unjust system of discrimination based on income. By assigning more value to capital assets than labour resources, the immigration system ignores the contributions that working class people make to society. The government should eliminate the class bias in the point system and value the wide variety of labour skills people have to offer. Women's so-called "traditional" work - domestic care, child-raising, housekeeping, sewing, care-taking - should be recognized as valuable skills. There certainly continues to be a great need for this kind of work; however, this is not valued by our legislation and regulations, which force women's work into "temporary" worker programs like the foreign domestic worker program. This work is important, and needs to be recognized by granting the people who do this work the legal status that enables them to do their work without being exploited by employers who prey on fears of deportation.

Most of the Fujianese women have expressed fear of deportation, given that they also face imprisonment and possibly worse in China. After being deported, they still face the same economic, social and political pressures which forced them to leave in the first place, and indeed those pressures are intensified by government fines as well. To date, Canada's refugee hearing process has been disappointingly inadequate in determining a way to value and protect women and children at risk, a number of whom were probably destined to become indentured labour, given the large debts they owe for their voyage. In the rush to protect Canadian borders, the government has not taken into adequate account the need to protect people's lives. The argument has been made that imprisonment supposedly "protects" them; however, this ignores how imprisonment actually punishes and revictimizes them again. (Note: In an Australian context, Ghassan Hage has called this mistreatment of migrants "ethnic caging," referring to the widespread media coverage of them handcuffed and behind wire fences. One Chinese woman who was deported from Australia to China was forcibly aborted upon her return to China, when she was 8 months pregnant.)

As Amnesty International's reports on the detainment of women in China point out, beatings, torture and even deaths have commonly occurred in Chinese prisons. No one should be deported without a serious risk assessment of current conditions.

Many of the women detained in Canada have suffered immense violence through forced sterilizations, debt bondage, the one-child policy, religious persecution, displacement, poverty, and more. They are not merely victims of an unfair social environment, but also immensely brave people trying their best to survive against all odds. Women in all cultures have the right to autonomy over their own bodies. Rather than condoning state invasion of women's bodies by deporting women back to the conditions some of them are fleeing, how could Canada respect women's rights to live safely and to determine their own lives?

In terms of addressing women's situations generally, there is also lot we can learn from work which has already been done by groups like the Philippine Women Centre. They recognize, for example, that foreign domestic workers, often from the Philippines and the Caribbean, and other women exploited in the labour market are "victims of violence from a socio-economic perspective" in Cecilia Diocson's words. Chronic poverty requires a structural solution (Diocson 40). Some actions proposed by the Association of Filipino Women workers in Toronto include debt relief, promoting the development of labour markets, generating employment in less industrialized countries (Whores, Maids and Wives 56), revising the point system to value women's labour, and granting temporary workers full landed immigrant status.

WOMEN'S NARRATIVES

As women advocating for our imprisoned Chinese sisters, it has been challenging to negotiate, on the one hand, the need to use our access and physical freedom to speak to whoever might listen, including our local communities, the corporate media and the government, and on the other hand, the need to somehow facilitate opportunities for the women themselves to speak out about what is happening to them. Although some aspects get lost in the translation from Chinese to English, the Fujianese women are the most powerful advocates for themselves. In speaking out, they risk intimidation from government agencies and others. These women's examples of endurance, and courage in the face of adversity are what have sustained DAARE's existence to date.

Below is a translated interview with two Fujianese women who were imprisoned in the Burnaby Correctional Centre for Women. This interview occurred in November 1999 when they were more than a week into their hunger strike. At that time there were almost fifty women on hunger strike. They wanted to be released. They wanted to stay in Canada. They wanted to be treated fairly. Canada does not usually imprison refugee applicants for such long periods of time. There had been no trial, yet these women had somehow been judged and incarcerated because of hostile political pressure.

This hunger strike ended without the women being released or granted landed status. The women eventually went on another hunger strike almost a year later, which also did not result in release or landing. The statement from the women's second hunger strike follows this interview.

What is the reason for your hunger strike?

We are on hunger strike because we want the thousands of citizens outside to know that we, Chinese women, are imprisoned here.

We have really suffered. At court … in our lives … it's so sad. It is not easy for us to come here. We really only want to stay here as refugees. We hope that Canada will become our second home. We hope that Canada accepts us.

We want to stay and work hard. We don't want to be a financial burden to Canadians.

What do you like about Canada?

Canada is a very beautiful country where people believe in human rights and democracy. It is a civilized, peaceful, safe country.

Do you know what crime you have committed?

We have not broken the law. We came to Canada to look for freedom, is this against the law? We came to Canada just to look for a little freedom.

Why are you afraid to be deported to China?

We would be imprisoned and sentenced.

What do you want to say to Canadians?

We want Canadians to know that we are locked up here. We hope that they have some sympathy and accept us. We want to belong here. We beg Canada, the Immigration officials, and the thousands of people out there to help us. We want to be released and to be with Canadians.

Hunger Strike Declaration , October 2, 2000. (translated)

We are the women from Fujian province who came to Canada to seek refuge. In China, we were persecuted under the one-child policy. Since the day we arrived in Canada, we have been locked up in prison. It has already been one year and two months, and we don't know how much longer we will be kept in jail. Therefore, all of the women incarcerated at the Prince George Regional Correctional Centre have decided to start a hunger strike today, in order to protest our continued imprisonment.

We hope that our hunger strike will raise Canadian people's awareness of how it feels to lose one's freedom. In prison, we cannot see the blue sky, cannot breathe fresh air, cannot eat food that fits our diets, cannot freely communicate with the outside world, and we are subjected to unreasonable punishment. We often get sick. Some women have become seriously ill, and our illnesses seem to be getting worse. A few days ago, one woman fainted and hit her head. Her head was cut and she had to get stitches. Actually, many of us experience dizziness and are afraid of fainting. Painkillers have become a routine part of our diet. This reflects how imprisonment is damaging our health.

This long imprisonment is tormenting us mentally and psychologically. We often burst out into hysterical laughter or tears. We are on the verge of mental breakdown. We are being treated like criminals and inferiors.

Meanwhile, we are afraid of being sent back to China as we know we will be imprisoned and subjected to torture and fines. We are caught between imprisonment imposed by the Canadian government and persecution from the Chinese government. Either way, we feel miserable and hopeless.

We call on Canadian people to open your sympathetic hearts and offer a warm hand to rescue us from this suffering. We believe that if you were in our shoes you would not think that seeking asylum and freedom was a crime. Canada has a reputation for upholding human rights. However, we would like to ask if 14 months of imprisonment is upholding human rights? Should a refugee applicant not have human rights? Should seeking refuge make us lose our human rights? Should you allow your government to conduct these activities that violate human rights? Like you, we are women who love culture and freedom. We can contribute to Canadian society. We hope that you will accept our desire to live among you in safety and in freedom.

All we have is our lives to risk for freedom. We request that the Canadian government release us from jail as soon as possible. We hope that you will understand and accept us.

We want freedom!

(A statement from the Chinese women who are incarcerated in the Prince George Regional Correctional Centre.)

Translated Excerpts from Letters by the Fujianese Women
(Identifying information such as names have been removed)

1. February 29, 2000

To everybody who is working on behalf of the refugees:

Hello, I am a migrant from Fujian Province. I thank all of you for your help and support in fighting for our freedom. This [Canada] is a country that values human rights. In order to come here, I risked my youth and my life by going through 60 days of hunger and danger on the sea. Every day was a battle against death. After all the hardships on the sea, we were abandoned by the Korean crew members on a deserted island. When we thought we were on the verge of death, we were rescued by the Canadian authorities.

However, after arriving to this land of freedom and democracy, I was treated unfairly. I was stripped of my rights and was locked up in the prison. Now, without freedom, my life is meaningless. As time goes by, I have become anxious, nervous, numb and my memory is fading. I am afraid that I will eventually go insane. I don't want to become a useless human being. I have goals to fulfill; I have dreams to realize. I strive for freedom. I know that a lot of people from the first boat received assistance from you and are now on bail. But some of them disappointed you by running away. You may have lost faith in us. But I ensure you that I genuinely want to stay in Canada. Canada is a prosperous country. I am longing for a life outside the prison bars. I hope you can help me. I am still young. I don't want to waste my youth inside a prison. I hope I can wait for my hearings outside this place. I assure you that I won't disappoint you. Have confidence in me! Help me! Life is precious, but freedom is even more valuable. Please help!

2. March 20, 2000

This never-ending imprisonment is driving me close to an emotional break-down. I hope … you can come and see us soon. We all miss you.

On the evening of March 8th, we saw the broadcast showing you and other social activists speaking out on our behalf during the Women's Day activities and demonstrations, giving us encouragement and emotional support. I don't have words to express my gratitude for everything you have done for us. I can only say thank you.

I am just 19 years old and now I am going through this kind of punishment. This is a dark shadow that I find difficult to bear.

3. March 5, 2000

I am already in my thirties this year. In China, I've never seen what a prison was like. I never thought that I would risk my life to come to Canada to end up in a prison and for an indefinite term. Canada is a country that speaks of human rights and protection for women and children. I never thought it would mean this kind of "protection." We have been locked up in prison cells for almost 8 months now. As the days turn close to a year, it is becoming terribly painful. We think of our children, our family, our homes. China's enforced birth control policies have persecuted us to a point where we no longer have homes we can return to. We have been separated from our husbands and children. We have enough sufferings and we never thought that what awaits us here in Canada is more of this kind of suffering and oppression. Being imprisoned in this way where we don't know when we can be released will surely drive us to mental breakdowns.

During the recent fortnight, a woman [name deleted] who came with me on the boat, went mad from being in prison. But the guards said that she was faking the madness. The first time she lost her mind, not only did the guards not take care of her, they even barked at her to shut up and then they had her locked into a room. When we went to comfort her , the guards told us that whoever gets close to her will also be locked up. After a few days of this, [she] had another attack. This time she was seriously ill, coughing up quite a bit of blood. The guards took her, in handcuffs and leg shackles, to see a doctor. She couldn't even walk. She had trouble just standing or trying to sit up. Her eyes were glazed. She could not eat. Anybody looking at her would realize she was ill. She had always been an optimist and suddenly she has become this wooden block. The doctor still insisted that she was not ill and did not give her any medication, only doling out some sleeping pills. We were all extremely worried and got [Mei - not her real name] to take some food to [her] to eat. When the guards saw this, they locked up [Mei] too. Each time [she] was ill, she had to go downstairs in handcuffs and leg shackles. On the morning of March 4th, [her] spirits seemed a bit better. The guards ordered her to go to the bathroom and said that if she did not go to the bathroom she would be locked up. She was so frightened that she hurried to go to the bathroom. The guards even had three of their staff watch her go to the bathroom as if they were watching a monkey-act. Every time [she] felt ill she would plead with the guards that she did not want to go to the bathroom … that she wanted to rest, but the guards would ignore her and have her locked up . Under such conditions of incarceration, we will all end up like [her].

We are grateful to the Canadian government for saving our lives. We plead with the Canadian government to release us to freedom! We are willing to put up a bond for our freedom. We Chinese people are very hardworking. We will not become a burden to the country of Canada. We Chinese women have a keen sense of integrity. We would not bring harm to the country of Canada. We will use our hands to work hard, to repay the government of Canada for saving our lives.

4. June 9, 2000

Hello to you all. We have already received the letter(s) you've sent us. Thank you so much for your emotional support …

It's only after losing our freedom that we realize how precious freedom really is. Every day, I think how small we humans are, under the control and manipulation of others. There is no difference between the way we are treated and the way convicted criminals are treated. Where is the talk of human rights? Where is the talk of enlightened government? We have been treated unjustly. There is no equality.

We will forever remember that we have had friends like you in Canada who stood by us in our struggle for freedom with such warmth and support.

5. February 13, 2000

It is Elder Sister's good fortune to meet up with so many kind people in a foreign country. I know that even if I said ten thousand words of thank you, I could not repay the kindness you have shown my sister. Writing this, I am starting to cry, like the way Elder Sister cries. But these are not the tears of pain and worry she cries in prison but my tears of being moved by your good heartedness. Do you understand?

I remember growing up, we were many sisters so our parents were under heavy pressure just to eke out a living. This aged them prematurely. I remember as young children, whenever we ate lunch, we would never know whether there would be supper later. Elder Sister was the oldest child so she had to take care of the household. Because of this, she did not get much schooling. She had the hardest life of us all. You asked me what kind of hard work did Elder Sister have to do. I remember even when she was so small that she weighed only several jin she had to do manual labour, hauling goods which weighed over a hundred jin just to earn a few fast dollars so her younger brothers and sisters could have a supper meal. Did you know this? I think Elder Sister probably has not told any of you about this.

6. April, 2000

I have been in prison for more than eight months now. This long period of incarceration has been horrible for my physical and emotional health. I cannot remain locked up like this. I hope the Canadian government will treat a helpless girl like me with the guarantees of human rights, democracy and freedom with which it is known by as a nation.

I was persecuted and forced to flee my homeland. I came to Canada as a refugee, hoping to find protection in this country. I never thought that I would be treated this way. I hope the citizens of this society will extend a warm hand to me, to help me. I am not a criminal. I long for freedom. Is it wrong for me to search for freedom?

The Canadian government represents a country which believes in human rights, democracy and freedoms. I hope that the Canadian government will see us with a sense of compassion and give back to me my liberty. We are all diligent workers. We are willing to work hard to repay this country. I will do my utmost to contribute to the country of Canada.

7. September 11, 2000 (From Prince George Regional Correctional Centre.)

To Direct Action Against Refugee Exploitation, respectfully:

Hello. I don't know if you will receive this letter but I still want to continue writing it. There is so much I want to tell you but as soon as I pick up my pen, all the painful events re-appear and blur my eyes again with tears. …

We have been taken away from the women's prison in Burnaby for almost a month now. How we long to be back in Vancouver! That is where we found a thread of hope with your support and encouragement. That is where you brought us some happiness and smiles. I will treasure these good memories within me forever. We are constantly thinking of our families and friends. How I wish I could spend the "Autumn Family Reunion Festival" with all of you!

8. December 13, 2000

Hello. I will be going back to China [soon]. This is my last letter to you all. By the time you receive this letter, I will be inside a prison in China. I want to thank all of you wholeheartedly for encouraging and supporting me for these sixteen months. Words cannot express my gratitude. …

Random Profiles

Each woman has her own life history and circumstances, and rather than generalizing about them as a group, what follows are some excerpts from their individual stories (names have been changed for safety and privacy reasons):

Mei:

One day in May 1999, someone asked me, "Do you want to go overseas?" I had thought about those two words "go overseas" before, yet I could have never imagined how miserable the journey would be in order to fulfill this dream. On the next day, I left with someone I didn't know and travelled to Fujian City. Without knowing what was in store for me, I got into a bus. That night, I saw dozens of people come aboard. I moved to the last row and took a seat there. I then fell asleep. The car circled around the hill for a while and I lost sight of the direction where we were going. I began to miss home. I have children back home and I wonder how they are doing. I got confused after a while and was overwhelmed by this fear of being eaten by wild animals. I was afraid to think anymore. By now, we had been up on the hill for over four hours. I was hungry and I was also thinking about the $200 US I had on me - the only possession I had to secure my journey out of China. I don't want to tell you how much suffering I have been through, or to convince you that one has no choice but to leave China. Of course, I thought Canada was a much better place. If I were going to be returned to China, I would come back to Canada again. One has to take risk, not to the extreme though, as each of us only has one life. Life is not to be taken lightly. …

At first, we had to board this small boat. It was quite a distance between the small boat and the bigger ship. Before we boarded the small boat, someone cried out loud, "Run! Run Fast!" We started running. That was my last chance to run away from the boat. I now regret that I didn't turn around. I continued to run. … I finally boarded a small boat that was only 5 metres long and 2 metres wide. While the boat traveled towards the bigger ship, I had this ominous feeling. …

We switched from the small boat to a bigger boat in very poor condition. I was one of the last groups who were sent to this boat. It was packed with people. Some were even huddling inside big plastic buckets. I found a place in there to sleep. It was located in the lower deck of the boat. It was pitch dark. I found a blanket, which was made of the same material they used to make bags to hold rice. It gave me rash and discomfort. My skin was sensitive to that type of material. What I saw was terrible. At the corner of the ship was a hole used as toilet. I already noticed the flies on that very first day. I was worried that our journey would be over if we got caught. We hadn't even achieved anything yet! There was toilet paper, but no water inside the boat. On that first day, no one was given food to eat. I did not bring anything with me. And I didn't even have any extra clothing. The ship was shaking from one side to another and I was afraid it would tip over sooner or later. The weather was hot and humid. I sweated all over my body. Yet, I didn't have any other clothes to change to. I always had headaches from traveling on boats. Time flew by so quickly. I did not manage to pick up a pen and record my 38 days journey until today! I spent the summer of 1999 in fear. …

Among 17 of us, 4 were female. No one could sleep in that trembling noise on this unsteady boat. … The boat was no bigger than a needle in the ocean. … I became close to a girl who slept beside me. We supported each other even when we were afraid. This girl told me once that she didn't want to go overseas. Her mother told her that the journey would be smooth and easy. … I believed her and sympathized with her. Why did her mother force her onto this ship even when the girl didn't want to? How about me? I asked myself. What was I seeking? Life is like drifting aimlessly in a big ocean. But since we had already started this journey, we should all support each other. I don't know what tomorrow will have in store for me.

Ming:

I am 24 years old. I've had eight years of schooling. I am single. My parents are farmers. I have two brothers, and a sister. I have not paid a deposit to the snakehead. The cost of the voyage is $30,000 American after arrival. I knew the destination was Canada. Life on the boat was very dangerous. Approximately one week after we left the shore, the boat leaked and the operator thought about signaling SOS but didn't. The boat was repaired with concrete. All the men helped drain the water out of the boat. The compass was broken. We heard that the people operating the boat didn't even have a map. The boat almost capsized twice.

We were all seasick. Each slim bed was shared by two people. Some lay on the floor. There was water on the floor when it was windy, but some people slept anyway. We had one meal each day, consisting of steamed rice with Sichuan pickles, nothing else. One bottle of water for seven days. The snakehead didn't tell us what life was going to be like on the boat. I only heard that the boat would be very big and we would have everything on the boat - that each person would have her own room. And that we didn't need to bring anything.

On the boat I did not know there was such a thing as refugee status. Friends told me about it later. On July 28, 1999 I heard about the boat, and left on July 29 without telling my father. Only my mother knew.

When we arrived in Canada, seven people were body searched. One woman threw 50 cents renminbi into the water, and the RCMP saw this. They asked us who did it. We said we didn't know. The last seven people to get off the boat were put in handcuffs and shackles. At the shore the officers asked us questions. Before we got into the vehicle, we were put in handcuffs and shackles. After we arrived at a gym, we were subjected to a body search, took showers, and had medical exams.

Before we were asked questions, they told us who they were: Immigration. However, we didn't really know what Immigration was. There is no such department in the Chinese government. We did not know the purpose of the questions. We were very afraid at the time. Afraid of the Canadian police.

The second day, we were issued an exclusion order. The English interpreter read it aloud, and there was no written Chinese. Then we were allowed to see a lawyer. The lawyer asked me if I had made a refugee application. I asked "what is a refugee?" The lawyer explained and asked me five questions. I said I did not know. The lawyer said it was not right for Immigration to ask us questions. Right now, I still do not feel clear about the refugee process. I do not really understand it. Before we were transferred, they did not inform us until the last minute. We were moved four times-from the gym to the BCCW, from the BCCW to Prince George, from Prince George back to the BCCW. We changed rooms a few times [within the BCCW].

While in jail, I have been locked up a few times. Put in my room. I never knew the reasons why. I did not experience segregation [solitary confinement elsewhere] but I saw 6 to 7 people who did experience solitary confinement. One woman was locked up for over a month for crying, and another one locked up for stirring up trouble.

There were a few who had a riot in Prince George and broke the TV, the thermos, the table. The reason was because they were in a bad mood. They wanted to talk to each other and were not allowed. They burst into tears and were not allowed to cry. Then they were very angry and started to break things. That happened in April 2000. Another person was asked to bring a chair somewhere, but put it in the wrong place and was placed in solitary confinement for one day. There were over 20 women in Prince George. Over 10 of us were in one room. Over half of us have experienced solitary confinement. I myself didn't.

Rain:

I am 25 years old. I have had 10 years of education. My parents are farmers. I did not pay the snakeheads any money before coming to Canada, but would have to pay $30,000 American afterwards. My father arranged it. Two days before I left, he told me about it and I decided to go. I felt both happy and sad. I had asked before. My father's opinion was that it was better to come to Canada. At home, there was no freedom of religion and we always had to sneak around [to observe our spiritual beliefs]. I didn't want to stay home as I felt too dependent on my parents, so I decided to come. I knew the destination was Canada. I did NOT know what the living conditions on the boat would be like. On the boat I was seasick. Two people shared one bed.

There was a storm for about 10 days. The bed was soaked in water and we put three pieces of wood on the bottom bed. Eight people took turns sleeping on one piece every time. This lasted for 10 to 20 days.

Lee:

I worked in a garment factory in China. It was not a stable job. Three years ago, my village's farm land was confiscated by the government to build an airport on it. The farm land was totally destroyed. We were supposed to be compensated by the government but by the time the payment came down all the levels of government and reached us, it was not very much money. And our livelihoods were gone.

PRISONS: AN UNDESIRABLE GROWTH INDUSTRY

I never thought that I would risk my life to come to Canada to end up in a prison and for an indefinite term. Canada is a country that speaks of human rights and protection for women and children. I never thought it would mean this kind of "protection." (From a letter by a Fujianese woman incarcerated in Burnaby.)

After arriving to this land of freedom and democracy, I was treated unfairly. I was stripped of my rights and was locked up in the prison. Now, without freedom, my life is meaningless. As time goes by, I have become anxious, nervous, numb and my memory is fading. I am afraid that I will eventually go insane. (From a letter by a Fujianese woman incarcerated in Prince George.)

I am longing for a life outside the prison bars. I hope you can help me. I am still young. I don't want to waste my youth inside a prison. (From a letter by a Fujianese woman incarcerated in Burnaby.)

When Gabriela Rodriguez Pizarro, the United Nations' Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, visited Canada in September 2000, she had the opportunity to talk with a number of migrants, including a Chinese woman who had been detained at Prince George after arriving in Canada by ship. The following excerpt from Pizarro's report describes this woman's experiences in jail:

She said that in November 1999 one of the female penitentiary guards had come to the cell she shared with other women and, through an interpreter, told them they had to change cells immediately. She said she asked the guard if she could move first herself and bring her belongings later. The interpreter told her that if she did not comply quickly, the guard would handcuff her and would take her by force. The woman said that the guard left and returned a short while later with another three guards, who seized her by each leg and by the waist, pulled her out of bed and threw her out of the cell. The woman said that she hit her foot against the iron door and her head against the wall. Feeling the blow she began to cry, because she could not move. She said they seized her again with the help of a male police officer to take her to the new cell. When she woke up the next day, she could not move, and so they took her to the infirmary and from there to the hospital, according to her, handcuffed at all times. When she returned from the hospital, she says she had to spend 3 days in a wheelchair and 15 days walking on crutches. Apparently, one night one of her cell companions was very upset and struck her bed hard. One of the women guards came over and aggressed them verbally. She began to sob, whereupon the guard came back and threatened her again. The woman interviewed said that at that moment, feeling so miserable, she threw herself to the ground and decided to commit suicide. She began to beat her head on the ground until the guards came back and seized her again, handcuffed her and took her, she said, to another part of the penitentiary where there were only Western women. When she arrived in the new section, she said they locked her up in solitary confinement, where she remained alone for 25 days. (paragraph 56)

Under the rhetorical guise of "protecting" migrants, the Canadian government's decision to imprison them effectively re-victimizes people, such as the woman described above, by putting them into a penal system without trial.

Canada's response to the marine arrivals - forcible repatriation and continuous detention which is now at the 18 month point - served to criminalize refuge seekers in a racialized manner. While the largest number of "illegals" in Canada are visa over-stayers from the United States and Britain, they have not been targeted by Citizenship and Immigration Canada for enforcement the way the Fujianese people have been.

Advocates have raised concerns with regards to the imprisonment of the Fujianese refuge seekers. These concerns have included suicide attempts, the separation of family members, hunger strikes, lack of Mandarin speaking staff, inappropriate treatment including handcuffs and leg shackles, punitive isolation, and lack of access to information resources. In our opinion, Citizenship and Immigration Canada's position to imprison Chinese asylum seekers and other displaced people is an abuse of human rights - in particular, a violation of people's right to liberty of person which also endangers the right to freedom of expression.

Of the three grounds for detention set out in the Immigration Act - danger to public safety, flight risk, and lack of identification - flight risk has been used for the Fujianese as a group. It is particularly objectionable in that it is based on suspicion rather than proof. That people can thus be imprisoned based on a specious, stereotypical group profiling document and without a trial is disturbingly reminiscent of a military regime.

There are many reasons why asylum seekers do not belong in prisons:

A. Unnecessary use of state force

In addition to the example of prison guard force and punitive solitary confinement which began this section, the general use of force against peaceful and unarmed people is unacceptable. At Esquimalt for example, there were reports of intimidation - people being taken out in the middle of the night and forced to kneel while dogs and armed guards walked around them. (Note: Lawyer Peter Golden gave a talk in Vancouver on October 25, 1999, about concerns reported to him by Fujianese asylum seekers.)

Imprisonment can damage women's well-being, as one woman described in a letter: "During the recent fortnight, a woman [name deleted] who came with me on the boat, went mad from being in prison. But the guards said that she was faking the madness. The first time she lost her mind, not only did the guards not take care of her, they even barked at her to shut up and then they had her locked into a room."

In another instance, a member of DAARE received an anonymous letter, dated Dec. 2, 1999, which reads as follows:

"There has been a disturbing event that has taken place at the Prince George Correctional Centre regarding five Chinese women. They were badly beaten. Due to the nature of the particular event and of the circumstances that surround it, it was decided that this information should be sent to you anonymously. Thank you for your precious time."

This letter was faxed to an inspector with the provincial government's Office of Investigations, Inspection, and Standards in December. We received a response dated in February 2000, but mailed to us in May 2000, immediately after a large deportation. The response included the following statement: "This was a very unfortunate incident that should not have happened. After reviewing the reports and discussing the issue with Corrections Branch management, I conclude that management has taken action to prevent recurrence of the incident." This response is unable to address the point that these people should not have been incarcerated in the first place, and one may also be generally skeptical about the prevention of violence in a system which fundamentally violates the right to liberty.

On May 10, 2000, dozens of people were snatched out of bed in Prince George and forced to go back to China under armed guard. Four women were also sent back from BCCW; one of them had signed papers agreeing to go, but the other three were not given adequate notice or opportunity to consult counsel or advocates prior to deportation. Indeed, there was confusion and ignorance; women did not know whether they were being moved to Prince George or being deported. People should have the right to be notified in writing that they are being deported, and to have an opportunity to consult and advise legal counsel and/or advocates.

On July 27, 2000, another 90 people were forcibly repatriated. After these two mass deportations, a series of smaller ones have also occurred. In short, the violence continues.

B. Cumulative Communication Barriers

Imprisonment restricts the migrants' ability to communicate with the outside world, with lawyers, advocates, community support. Imprisonment slows down their ability to get the supporting documentation they need to win their refugee cases. This problem is exacerbated by the inadequate numbers of Chinese speaking staff or interpreters at most prison facilities.

People have a right to counsel; Immigration officials should not be going into the prison to speak to the women and instructing them to sign travel documents unless their counsel is available to advise them. Yet this has reportedly occurred on several occasions.

C. Imprisonment damages people emotionally, mentally and physically

There were over 20 women in Prince George. Over 10 of us were in one room. Over half of us have experienced solitary confinement. (From a statement by an incarcerated Fujianese woman.)

Since advocates requested an investigation into prison conditions in November 1999, there have been at least three more known suicide attempts. The suicide attempt on May 8, 2000, resulted in a woman being transferred to a hospital in Prince George after the sheet with which she had tried to hang herself fell down.

The long term effects of detention include sleeplessness, weight loss, headaches, body tension, lack of concentration, forgetfulness, agitation, ongoing fear and anxiety. In one woman's words, "Being imprisoned in this way where we don't know when we can be released will surely drive us to mental breakdowns."

The cumulative effect of long term isolation and despondency led to hunger strikes in November 1999 and 2000. Despite Corrections representatives' attempts to blame the hunger strike on "enforcers" or whatever, there has been no evidence that the strike was caused by anything except the frustration and despair of the women.

People who migrate to survive often endure incredibly dangerous journeys. Not everyone survives the voyage. Those who do, face further traumatization in prison. There is growing evidence that detention "adds to the effect of previous trauma in creating risk of posttraumatic stress disorder" (Silove et al. 604).

Detention harms refugee applicants, who need safe housing, not imprisonment. The handcuffs and shackles, the isolation, the routine monitoring and inspections, the locking up, all the "regular" parts of the prison procedures, are inappropriate and unethical. Moreover, imprisonment potentially jeopardizes their chances of staying in Canada because of the barriers it may add to communicating with the outside world. Prisons are not safe places. Community alternatives exist and should be accessed instead of punitive ones.

Refugee applicants do not belong in correctional facilities. The correctional system was never intended to detain asylum seekers and should not be used for this purpose. DAARE has called for an independent investigation, including a wide range of NGO representation, to examine and address Immigration's policy of detaining asylum seekers. Let us not wait for the next suicide attempt, but let us take action to prevent tragedies waiting to happen.

More generally, overuse of imprisonment threatens to feed the prison industrial complex which we see rapidly expanding in North America, especially in the United States. Prisons should not be a "job creation" project for guards, nor should prisoners be a source of cheap, captive labour to exploit.
See: www.prisonactivist.org/crisis/evans-goldberg.html

As prison abolitionists like Angela Davis have pointed out, because of systemic racism and classism, people who end up in prison tend to be poor and from communities of colour:

As capital moves with ease across national borders, legitimized by recent trade agreements such as NAFTA and GATT, corporations are allowed to close shop in the United States and transfer manufacturing operations to nations providing cheap labor pools. In fleeing organized labor in the US to avoid paying higher wages and benefits, they leave entire communities in shambles, consigning huge numbers of people to joblessness, leaving them prey to the drug trade, destroying the economic base of these communities, thus affecting the education system, social welfare - and turning the people who live in those communities into perfect candidates for prison. …

Ironically, prisons themselves are becoming a source of cheap labor that attracts corporate capitalism - as yet on a relatively small scale - in a way that parallels the attraction unorganized labor in Third World countries exerts. (p.67)

While the growth of the prison industrial complex in the United States may be on a larger scale than in Canada, it is nonetheless an alarming trend which threatens to grow in Canada as well. We would do well to remember that the over-representation of First Nations people and people of colour in Canadian prisons, including refuge seekers, arises from racial and class biases in the legal system.

MEDIA LITERACY

As Pauline Hwang has pointed out in her analysis of the mainstream media's approach to the Fujianese migrants:

Drawing mainly from law enforcement and other national interest perspectives, the migrants were prematurely judged to be opportunistic "bogus refugees." The contexts of economic polarization, political and gender oppression, and globalization were virtually excluded from the media arguments. The immigration and refugee processes were at times inaccurately misrepresented [by the mainstream media]. Dissenting views were expressed mostly by guest columnists, which carries less weight than "official" news reporting and editorials.

The print media thus played a large role in delineating public debate - not only by its argumentation, but by choosing which issues were put on the table and which were simply neglected. Patterns such as criminalization, dehumanization and "other"ization echoed the history of Chinese representation in Canadian media. A disturbing tone of xenophobia emerged in some of the coverage. (p.23)

While alternative newspapers such as Kinesis and Latin American Connexions did provide another perspective on the migrants' situation, their circulation tended to be smaller and less likely to reach government policy makers.

When there was sympathetic coverage of the women's stories in corporate newspapers, it was buried in the back. In the Vancouver Province on September 26, 1999, on page A39, for example, was a relatively neutral, perhaps even sympathetic, story entitled "Across an ocean of pain" about the grinding poverty of the family of one woman back in China. This was the same newspaper which ran the headline "Go Home" on its front page.

The catch-22 of trying to address the corporate media is striking. There is on one hand an urgent need to inform the public about the migrants' situations in order to counter the ongoing dehumanization and criminalization of them. However, the mainstream media, while reaching large numbers of people, is extremely limited in its analysis and indeed often terrible in the damage it creates through selective information, ignorance, and misrepresentation.

A common assumption made about the Fujianese women who arrived was that they would end up exploited either as sex trade workers or in the garment industry. The media rarely considered them as mothers, wives, daughters, sisters trying to reunite with family members, or as courageous women trying to independently survive. Unfortunately, the spectre of trafficking was used to further objectify them or stereotype them.

As "Canada's Paper for the EU Conference on Trafficking in Women for Sexual Exploitation" points out, "it is often difficult to distinguish 'trafficking in women' from related issues such as illegal migration, exploitation and prostitution" (p.2). Trafficking has been defined in the U.S. in the proposed International Trafficking of Women and Children Victim Protection Act of 1999, as follows: "the term trafficking means the use of deception, coercion, debt bondage, the threat of force, or the abuse of authority to recruit, transport within or across borders, purchase, sell, transfer, receive, or harbor a person for the purpose of placing or holding such a person, whether for pay or not, in involuntary servitude, or slavery or slavery-like conditions, or in forced, bonded, or coerced labor."

While some women were clearly in fear because of the debts they owed, others had family members willing and able to assist them. While they may be victims of governments and economies that work against them and subject to debt bondage as trafficked people, the Fujianese are also people actively fighting for their own freedom and rights.

For example, a number of women have spoken to the media, at great personal risk to themselves. One woman who was willing to speak to the media was not allowed to do so at her detention review. However, the media attended and observed her detention review, and one reporter wrote an article claiming that the woman's relative, who was trying to help her get out of jail, was misrepresenting herself as an acupressurist when she was actually working at a massage parlour. There were a number of misunderstandings about the difference between a "massage parlour" and an "exclusive club," an "acupressurist" and a "masseuse," that might have come from language barriers, cultural differences, or inadequate research, but in the context of the article, mainly served to discredit the female relative, who was described as "lithe" woman who turned heads as she walked in the room.

The sexualization of this woman served to invoke the historical stereotype of the Asian prostitute. Particularly given the shadow of trafficking which lurks around this whole issue, the association of these migrant women with what many people consider to be undesirable jobs - sex trade, sweatshops and garment workers, and generally unvalued types of labour - also works against them as they attempt to seek refuge in Canada.

Organizations such as the Vancouver Association of Chinese Canadians (VACC) and DAARE have issued many press releases refuting the narrow dehumanizing representations of migrant people, offering perspectives one is unlikely to be able to find in the corporate media (see Appendix 2).

AT THE "MERCY" OF CANADA'S REFUGEE DETERMINATION SYSTEM

The detained Fujianese people basically undergo two legal processes - one is the refugee hearing which determines their status in Canada, and the second are regular detention hearings. Theoretically, the Canadian government cannot keep people in jail indefinitely. When you are arbitrarily incarcerated, you are entitled to a detention hearing. Unfortunately, if you do not understand the system you are in, and do not have a good lawyer, then the detention hearing can become a meaningless exercise as it has for many of the Fujianese people. If you cannot afford a lawyer, you can apply for Legal Aid, but if your application is rejected, or if you do not even know how to apply for Legal Aid given that you know nothing about Canada's systems, then you are clearly at a disadvantage in the bureaucracy if you go through it without skilled counsel.

Following is a general description of the refugee application process which draws on advocates' experiences observing the system as well as on talks by immigration lawyers like Zool Suleman.

Anyone who comes to Canada and wants to make a refugee claim is allowed to do so. You can do so inland or at a port of entry, and when you do so, you are generally interviewed by an immigration officer. This is a right that refugee claimants fought for and won.

However, under a Supreme Court of Canada ruling, refugee claimants do not have a right to counsel at port of entry interviews because they are theoretically not detained. However, if you go through Immigration at the airport or at a land border, you encounter uniformed people who have the power to arrest you and to make you feel like you are detained. Nonetheless, you do not have the right to counsel at ports of entry when you are interviewed by Immigration staff who are looking to see what your grounds are for fearing persecution.

If you are determined ineligible to make a refugee claim, it is very probable that you will be detained and deported. If you are determined eligible to make a refugee claim, you are issued a form which allows you to stay in Canada while you make your claim. The notes taken at the port of entry are sent to a senior Immigration officer, and can be used against you if your case is referred to the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) for a refugee hearing.

Immigrants and refugees are two different groups of people. Many immigrants enter Canada under the point system (note: see the next section) or through family sponsorship, and refugees undergo a hearing in the IRB's Convention Refugee Determination Division (CRDD). The IRB is supposed to be at arms-length from Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC), and it has three divisions - the CRDD which makes decisions on refugee claims, the Adjudication Division which makes decisions about detention, and the Immigration Appeals Division. CIC, which is headed by the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, is responsible for a variety of things from issuing work permits and emergency medical coverage to deportations.

The Removals Unit of CIC has vehicles and enforcement officers at its disposal, and their police tactics are likely on the increase given Bill C-11's proposals. Whether the Removals Unit tends to target people of colour more than people of European descent requires more scrutiny; anecdotal evidence would suggest that racial biases likely occur. As well, according to an article in the Globe and Mail on April 12, 2001, from 1991 to 1999, 78 percent of the 1924 stowaways discovered arriving in Canada were Romanian nationals. Compare the media coverage of Chinese people who have arrived in Canada by container with that of Romanian nationals; why is there so more hostile coverage of Chinese migrants even though their numbers have been less?

Whatever your background, filing a refugee claim can be described as a paper nightmare. From the moment your refugee claim is referred [to the CRDD,] you have 28 days in which to fill out a 13 page Personal Information Form (PIF) which asks you for a detailed life history, where you have lived, who you have known, who your relatives are, where they are, how did you get here, what is the basis of your claim, how educated are you, how much work have you done, and so on. They want to know everything. You have to identify the salient legal issues that you intend to raise sometime in the future.

This right to 28 days to prepare becomes meaningless if you don't have good legal counsel, if you don't have good interpreters, and unless you are still able to communicate what happened to you. Many individuals who have been persecuted may not have the capacity within a four-week period to recount this coherently in order to win their refugee hearing.

Refugee hearings are becoming more reduced. It's now highly unusual to have a two-day hearing; it's somewhat uncommon to have a one day hearing. More and more, hearings have been stripped down to a half day. In the push to eliminate the backlog, the danger is that inadequate attention will be given to making a decision which determines your life.

At the refugee hearing, you are entitled to one or two board members who act as judges. There is one refugee hearings officer employed by Citizenship and Immigration Canada, the lawyer or counsel for the refugee claimant, an interpreter, and perhaps a Minister's representative. The process is a private one, and no media are allowed. At the hearing, you go through the written evidence which is submitted ahead of time - such as identity documents, country condition reports, human rights reports, any medical examinations, psychiatric examinations, psychological examinations, and so on. Vancouver's acceptance rate is less than 50%. Whichever way the decision goes, you are handed back to the Immigration Department.

If you are accepted as a refugee, then you can make an application for permanent status in Canada as a refugee. If you are not accepted, you can appeal to the Federal Court of Canada but this must be done within three weeks of receiving your decision. Currently, only 10 to 20 percent of cases get heard. Even if you get to argue your case before the Federal Court of Canada, you can only present the evidence that was already used in the IRB hearing and argue that an error was made. You cannot introduce new evidence. Even if the lawyer at your refugee hearing did a terrible job, you are stuck with the written record nonetheless.

If you are not granted leave by the Federal Court, or the Federal Court does not find in your favour, you do not have many options. You can try to do what is referred to as a humanitarian and compassionate (H&C) application. There is also what is referred to as a PDRCC (post-determination refugee claimants in Canada), which assesses the risk to your life if you are deported. The PDRCC must be filed within three weeks of receiving your negative refugee decision regardless of whether you need a translator to understand it. Acceptance rates for PDRCCs are extremely low - less than 5 percent.

If you are not accepted as a refugee, the process makes you feel less secure the longer you stay here because it is trying to ready you to leave this country. The removals department can deport you with or without notice. You are removable unless you are undergoing a federal court appeal, waiting for a PDRCC decision, or for some reason manage to get a stay of removal which is not easy. You live in fear of deportation.

Let us now consider the experiences of the Fujianese people upon entering this system. First, the Immigration Department designated the Canadian Forces Base at Esquimalt as a port of entry even though it is not one. This allowed them to process people as if they were coming in at an airport and meant they were denied the right to counsel at the entry interviews.

Questions of legal counsel and interpretation at the entry interviews are important because the notes taken at these interviews have been highly adverse to the interests of the asylum seekers. They came off a dangerous voyage by ship, they were held behind barb wire by people with guns, they were treated in a very criminalized way, and in the context of these traumatizing experiences, they may have said a variety of things which could easily be misunderstood or misrepresented. These adverse statements were used against the refugee claimants in their hearings, often without questioning the people who elicited these statements about how the statements were taken, and without questioning whether these people were biased against them.

The questionable process at the hastily designated port of entry also resulted in a large number of exclusion orders (wherein people were not allowed to make refugee claims), which were later overturned in court. This further slowed down the process for some refugee claimants who were imprisoned long periods through no fault of their own.

While the IRB suggested that it was desirable to have quick hearings because people were in prison, this did not address the point that they should not have been in imprisoned in the first place. If people were not detained, there would have been no reason to accelerate the hearings. As it was, the hearings took place in a hostile politically charged environment which placed undue pressure on both IRB decision makers and the Fujianese people themselves. Moreover, some people from the first ship, who were not detained, were also pushed into the accelerated hearings.

What is the criteria for expediting the Fujianese cases? Is it that these individuals came on a boat? Other refugee claimants have come on boats yet their cases have not been expedited. Is it that these people are smuggled into Canada? Many refugees are smuggled into Canada because they have no choice when fleeing dangerous conditions, yet their cases are not expedited. So why the expedition in this case? It would seem that the determinative criteria is combination of all of those issues - that these are Chinese people who have come by boats on a relatively large scale. In short, a crisis has been manufactured, and a crisis justifies the lessening of our rights.

This has happened historically. You need to create the perception of a crisis to strip away legal rights. The media has been complicit in this and while the Minister of Immigration at least spoke about upholding the due process of law, there need to be many more voices speaking out in favour of refugee rights and immigrant rights. The silence or even hostility of many so called leaders of visible minorities/ethnic communities has been disappointing, and speaks to conflicting class interests within these communities. The test of a society is in its treatment of its most vulnerable members. From the bottom up, Canada is not such a great place.

It has been said that a nation is an imagined community. Yet it can be argued that the violence of these exclusionary bureaucracies demonstrate this community's racist, classist structure. The community we wish to belong to is the community that actually gives people a fair right to hearings, that embraces refugees, and addresses First Nations' peoples sovereignty, and this is our continuing challenge.

CANADA'S POINT SYSTEM

In the era of neo-liberalization and globalization, more people from the developing world are being displaced and forced to move to improve their economic situations due to worsening work conditions and unstable local economies. The concept of "economic migrants" is gaining currency in the First World as European, Australian, American and Canadian governments discuss closing borders to such "economic migrants" and quibble about the distinctions between "refugees" and "economic migrants." People have been slipping in through the borders into the First World for years to work as underground sweatshop labour and in ignoring this, First World governments can keep internal labour costs down, thereby undermining the rights of their own unionized workers. One might argue that there is something hypocritical about the sudden interest to tighten borders against such people when governments realize that there is a third party which stands to profit from the movement of people, those termed human smugglers.

Just how much do governments profit from "legal" immigration? Canadians are informed through the media that these Fujianese boat migrants pay up to $30,000 for their passage to Canada or New York. More modulated stories explain that this sum is not paid up front but that a down payment of $2,000 or more (it ranges from individual to individual) is paid and that the rest will be paid off later. Canadians unsympathetic to the plight of these people then justify their feelings with the simple rationale that these migrants are indeed not indigent and had no need to sneak into the country. Yet most Canadians are not aware about the class and gender biases within the immigration system that would keep this group of people out of Canada.

Below is an example of how an average Fujianese boat migrant would do on the point system if she were to apply to enter Canada as an independent migrant.

Immigrants (not refugees) who want to come to Canada can apply under several classes: family, business or as independents. According to the guide, "A business migrant is an individual who enters Canada as an investor, entrepreneur or self-employed person. Family class immigrants are sponsored to come to Canada by a relative such as a parent, fiancé(e) or spouse." Under the independent class, applicants are judged on a point system. You need a minimum of 60 points before you should even bother to apply. These points are awarded for age, education, occupation, ETF, arranged employment, work experience, language ability in English and French, demographics, and if you have any close relatives in Canada. On top of that, you should have approximately $10,000 for settlement funds. The guide further explains that if you score below 60 points, "your application may not merit further consideration." In short, the point system sets up systemic barriers that serve to keep out working class women applicants from the South.

The points in brackets are the maximum you can get in each category:

Age: (10)
Education: (16)
Occupation: (you need at least 1 point or arranged employment out of 10)
Education/Training Factor (ETF): (18)
Arranged Employment: (10)
Work Experience: (8)
Language ability in English and French: (15)
Demographic: (8)
Close relative in Canada: (5)

• X is a 25-year old woman from the suburbs of Fuzhou city.
  She gets 10 points for being in the 21-44 yrs. range.
• She has completed secondary school but in a program that doesn't lead to entrance to university, or does not include trade or occupational certification.
  5 points.
• Before making the voyage to Canada, she worked in a garment factory for 3 years.
  She could technically qualify as a seamstress and get 1 point for occupation, 2 for ETF and 2 points for work experience.
• She has no arranged employment with any Canadian company willing to hire her. Even if a Canadian employer is interested in giving her the job, they have to prove to Human Resources Canada through a complicated and rather expensive process that no other Canadian is qualified for this particular job.
  0 points.
• She is fluent in Mandarin and the Fuzhou dialect but her English is limited to a few greetings. She can't write in English either and has no knowledge of French at all.
  0 points for language ability.
• She wants to live in Vancouver, British Columbia.
  She is automatically allocated 8 points for demographics by Canada Immigration.
• She has no relatives at all in Canada.
  0 points.

Her total points: 28

Obviously she doesn't qualify to even apply as an independent migrant to Canada even if she has the $500 application fee plus if she is accepted, the $975 landing fee. Again, this does not include other costs such as medical examinations, certified translation of documents, postage, fees for getting a police certificate of good conduct from the local authorities, and a bank statement showing she has a readily liquidated sum of $10,000 (all in Canadian funds).

Problems with the point system

The point system is classist: Apart from being able to show that you have at least $12,000, the allocation of points towards the Education/Training Factor (ETF) prove that Canadian immigration seeks highly educated and highly trained professionals. This devalues the skills and experiences that working class applicants from economically disadvantaged countries have.

The point system is sexist: The General Occupations List mostly privileges jobs for men. Many of these are in mechanical, technical, engineering, and computer industries. There are no points given at all for traditionally female occupations such as caregivers, nurses, teachers and unpaid work that homemakers do. Hairdressers, shoemakers, barbers, sign-painters, tailors, dressmakers could get a maximum of 3 points for the occupation and ETF. There are no points for farmers and other supposedly low-skilled jobs. The list of occupations makes it difficult for many women to come as independent immigrants.

The point system is Eurocentric: While the Canadian government touts itself as multicultural and respectful of each immigrant group's need to preserve their distinct cultures, it is in reality, bicultural and assimilatory as it only recognizes English and French under "language ability."

The point system does not reflect the reality of the job sector in Canada: For example, in British Columbia, there has been a nursing shortage yet "Nurse" is not on the general occupations list. Instead, Filipino trained nurses come to Canada under the oppressive 2 -year Live-in Caregiver Program which forces them instead to work as nannies and homecare support workers with sub-minimal wages while paying taxes and high immigration fees to the Canadian government.

The overview from the Immigration Canada guide for Independent Applicants reads: "Canada welcomes individuals seeking new opportunities and challenges. Immigration has given Canada greater strength through the attraction of diversely talented people. Canada selects these individuals for their potential to establish successfully and their ability to contribute to Canada's social and economic well-being." Yet historically, it has been immigrants ("economic migrants" actually) who contribute to the country's social and economic well-being by working in low-skilled and low-paying sectors that Canadians themselves are reluctant to accept. Immediately apparent to visitors at any Canadian or American airports is the visual fact that it is immigrants who are janitors, baggage handlers and cleaning crews. One wonders if these people came in as refugees, or as immigrants under the family class or were professionals in their home country but cannot obtain jobs in their professions in Canada for one reason or another. Given the current trend of subcontracting and reducing full-time jobs into part-time and contract McJobs, unionizing both locally and internationally is urgently needed if wealth is to be more fairly distributed than it is currently.

CANADIAN RESPONSE ABILITIES

As Sunera Thobani has phrased it, "What makes it alright for us to buy a t-shirt on the streets of Vancouver for $3, which was made in China, then stand up all outraged as Canadian citizens when the woman who made that t-shirt tries to come here and live with us on a basis of equality?"

In 1999, Canada did not even fulfill the quotas it set for immigration, yet it imprisoned and later deported most of the Fujianese people who were seeking refuge here. Canada's economy needs immigrant labour. There have been a number of studies which have shown that over their lifetimes, immigrants contribute a lot financially and otherwise to Canada. However, when migrant people are only granted temporary status, their labour is generally made even cheaper and more easily exploited. Displaced people are not a "drain" on the economy; over their lifetimes, individual refugees contribute greatly to Canada's public purse through taxes and other means. In the long term, asylum seekers and migrants are a benefit to Canada. The contributions of asylum seekers and migrants need to be recognized. Canadian lifestyles are built on the blood, sweat and tears of these labourers.

The Canadian government has played a role in creating the conditions which displace people and force them to migrate within their countries and across borders. In sponsoring efforts to privatize economies and undertake environmentally devastating projects such as the Three Gorges Dam in China, Canada has played a significant role in the creation of an unemployed "floating population" in China which is estimated to reach 200 million people this year. Punitive tactics will not stop the movement of people, who migrate to survive. According to Peter Kwong, "The well-publicized Chinese government's market reforms have practically eliminated all labor laws, labour benefits and protections. In the "free enterprise zones" workers live virtually on the factory floor, laboring fourteen hours a day for a mere two dollars - that is, about 20 cents an hour" (p.136).

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has pointed out that there are at least 18 million people working in 124 export zones in China. A living wage in China is estimated to be 87 cents per hour. Canadians benefit from these conditions of cheap labour, yet when the producers of these goods come to our shores, we hypocritically disavow any relation with them. Responsibility in this context need not refer so much to some stern sense of duty, obligation or altruism as to a full "response" - intellectual, emotional, physical, and spiritual - that such a situation provokes in relations between those who "benefit" - materially at least - from such a system and those who do not.

When Team Canada went to China in 1998, Canada's Export Development Corporation (EDC) signed a credit agreement to extend $288 million to the Bank of China to facilitate "financing the sales of Canadian capital equipment and services to Chinese buyers in a variety of sectors." Funded with one billion dollars of Canadian taxpayers' money and about 16 billion in credit, the EDC is a Crown corporation which bears scrutiny for the many environmentally devastating projects it has funded overseas. While information about the EDC is difficult to get because it is exempt from the Access to Information, Probe International has pointed out that the EDC is responsible for bankrolling the sale of a Canadian supercomputer used to forcibly resettle the 1.3 million people displaced from the Yangtze valley by the Three Gorges Dam project (a project from which even the World Bank has withdrawn). Although Canadians may not know much about the EDC, it is also responsible for funding a Canadian-owned gold mine in Guyana which erupted and spewed 3.2 billion litres of cyanide and heavy metal-laced effluent into the Omai River, destroying Guyana's fishing industry. Through the EDC, Canadian taxpayers unwittingly "perpetuate repressive regimes such as those of Ceaucescu in Romania, Mobutu in Zaire, and the junta in Argentina; we added to our national debt; and we perverted Canadian foreign policy" (www.probeinternational.org/).

In short, the Canadian government and Canadian corporations have played a role in displacing people in China. BC Hydro International, a subsidiary of BC Hydro, belongs to the consortium of five companies - Canadian International Project Managers Yangtze Joint Venture (CYJV) - which, with $14 million in funding from CIDA (Canadian International Development Agency) gave the green light to the Three Gorges Dam project after a three year feasibility study (www.probeinternational.org/probeint/threegorges/who.html#acres).

Teshmont Consultants Ltd., a Winnipeg based company, signed a contract with China Three Gorges Power Corporation "to provide the engineering consulting service and the engineering and procurement of high voltage electrical equipment on the left bank of the power plant, including transformers and GIS equipment" (Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Press Release, November 20, 1998, Number 265).

Many critics have pointed out that this huge dam project will be unable to deliver the energy it promises, will devastate and flood a huge area of currently populated and historically significant land, and could endanger the lives of millions more in case of earthquake, as it is being built on fault lines.

Although people in the Yangtze area had initially been told they would be resettled nearby, many are finding that they will be moved to other provinces in China. According to the Changjiang Water Resources Commission, 55,000 people will be moved out of the Three Gorges area in 2001 to 11 different provinces. So far, people have been moved to rural areas in Anhui, Fujian, Guangdong, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangsu, Jiangxi, Shandong, Shanghai, Sichuan, and Zhejiang (Probe International Website).

About 5500 people were moved to Fujian in 2000, and thousands more will be moved there in 2001.

Probe International, together with citizens' groups and rural communities across Asia, has also been urging the Manila-based Asian Development Bank to stop financing environmentally damaging development projects and hydro dams that flood people off their land, create poverty, and destroy people's resources and livelihoods. The Canadian government is the seventh largest shareholder in ADB, and as such, it should take its share of responsibility for the damages inflicted on individuals and communities by ADB-financed schemes. For example, in 1998, the ADB loaned $50 million to the state-owned Fujian Pacific Electric Company for the Meizhou Wan Coal-Fired Power Plant in Fujian province, China. While the ADB rationale for funding this project is that it will alleviate chronic power shortages in Fujian and over-dependence on unreliable hydro dams, this ignores the pollution and environmental costs of this project. Probe International has pointed out that, in provinces such as Fujian, Henan, and Sichuan, combined cycle plants could reduce reliance on drought-prone hydro dams. Combined cycle gas turbines fueled by natural gas, which are already replacing coal and nuclear power plants in parts of Britain and North America, could provide power with lower capital costs and greater reliability than dams like the Three Gorges and with far fewer emissions than conventional coal plants such as the Meizhou Power Plant.

Given Canada's role overseas, Canadians should respond to the urgent situations which cause people to move - not only on the grounds upon which Convention refugees were defined in 1949 (race, religion, nationality, social group, political opinion) which continue to be valid - but also to strengthen Canada's refugee determination system to include a contemporary understanding that all people have basic economic and environmental survival rights. Some migrants have lives which fit into the narrow definition of a UN Convention refugee and some may not. Those who do not fit this definition have nonetheless urgent needs which deserve attention. The United Nations is moving to recognize this through its recent declaration of International Migrants' Day.

Ignoring the plight of millions of displaced people only serves to worsen the situation. It is irresponsible of Canada to turn a blind eye to its own collusion with transnational corporations in creating these global conditions which cause displacement. As people's basic survival rights are being violated by the destruction of their local economies, they are much more likely to be abused, and thus much more likely to flee unbearable conditions.

If you create a system that allows people to work and contribute fully to society, then that's what will happen. If you create a punitive system that leaves people scared of deportation and vulnerable to exploitation, then you structurally limit their contributions to society.

POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS

International Measures

• Canada has international responsibilities, as we have ratified the following conventions:

  The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

  The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

  The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).

  The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).

  The Slavery Convention (1926).

  The Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery (1956).

• Canada is also a signatory of the UN Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women.
  
• Canada should ratify the 1990 International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families.
  
• Canada should use strategies such as international cooperation and foreign policy to find humane ways to deal with mass migration, rather than resorting to short term reactions to perceived, racialized crises which punish migrants.
  
• Canada needs to find a way to address people who suffer because of manmade, economic policies. Poverty is a human rights issue.

• Canada should make the Export Development Corporation accountable for its actions overseas by increasing its transparency through making the Access to Information Act applicable to it.
• Canada's recently proposed immigration policy gives lip service to the contribution that immigrants make towards the Canadian economy, but its emphasis on enforcing borders and detaining asylum seekers only serves to scapegoat the very people whose underpaid labour actually makes this country run. Bill C-11 is a retrograde act which reduces the rights of immigrants and refugees. It has been proposed that Immigration staff be given much wider discretionary powers, and without monitoring mechanisms, this power can easily be abused.
• In its increased emphasis on enforcement, Canada's Immigration legislation overlooks the needs and experiences of vulnerable, displaced people, including asylum seekers, migrants, women and children. "Harsh immigration laws will only make [migrants] more vulnerable to smugglers and employers, raise the costs of smuggling even higher, and force the smuggling syndicates to grow even more brutal and immune to government powers" (Kwong 7).
• The proposed legislation's recommendation of automatically detaining people who are suspected of being trafficked ignores how imprisonment further inflicts state violence against people for exercising their mobility rights. People come for many valid reasons, and to detain them is to send a message that they are presumed guilty of some kind of crime, when actually, people have the right to seek asylum. The move to penalize anyone who assists people to move for humanitarian reasons only serves to hurt people who are fleeing persecution. Imprisonment is an expensive practice which wastes people's lives and which should not become routine.
• Refugee applicants and migrants do not belong in prisons and are not usually put in prison in Canada. The move to increase detention and deportation is a threat to the "democracy" in which we supposedly live. The grounds for detention should be further limited, not expanded.
• As the Canadian Council of Refugees has pointed out, Bill C-11 does not fulfill Canada's international human rights obligations under the Refugee Convention, the Convention against Torture, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
• Bill C-11 proposes a flawed refugee determination system which harms refugees and insults the concept of fair due process. Moreover, the broadening of inadmissibility provisions is an elitist and anti-democratic move.
• The Canadian government should incorporate the recommendations made by groups such as the Coalition for a Just Immigration and Refugee Policy and the Canadian Council of Refugees.
• As well, there are a number of things that can be done to give migrant women a fair chance at survival:

  Offer a humanitarian option to indentured persons to ensure that victims are not further revictimized by the Canadian state nor returned into the vicious cycle of exploitation and violence in their homelands. Having landed status gives people a fighting chance to survive. Criminalizing them only makes the situation worse and increases the pressure to push them underground. Assigning people "temporary status" makes them fearful of deportation and thus vulnerable to being abused and exploited by employers. When Canada defines people as "temporary workers," it creates the conditions under which people become vulnerable to being abused and exploited by employers and others. Permanent status safeguards basic human rights.

  Cease forcible repatriation of displaced persons.

  Allocate funds which would have been used for detention and deportation towards community-based services such as shelters, counselling, language classes, and training.

  Increase Canada's immigration rate to two or three percent of its population. Increased migration through legal channels alleviates the pressure that coerces people into covert channels.

  Eliminate the class bias in the point system and value the wide variety of labour skills people have to offer. For example, value women's "traditional" work in evaluating prospective immigrants.

  Trafficking needs to be recognized as a Canadian problem. In 1997, Jyoti Sanghera was told by the Vancouver police that there are about 40 bawdy houses which function as massage parlours with 20 to 30 women working in each of them. "The women are all Asian, most have had their passports taken away, they are in the country illegally, they are made to provide sexual services and there is absolutely nothing in place to take care of them in case of violence or abuse." She was told that these women often work under conditions of debt bondage, and have a debt of $30,000 to $40,000 which they have to pay to the brokers who brought them over. If there are 40 massage parlours with an average of 20 women in each, you get an idea of the number of women working under mostly invisible and often coercive situations in Vancouver alone. However, the solution is not to criminalize and thus re-victimize trafficked women, but to build support systems for them to immediately escape these horrendous situations.

Any long term solution comes from working together, not from scapegoating the poor. There is no justice as long as wealthy nations deny their responsibility to the people whose undervalued labour and resources enabled that wealth in the first place. The struggle against contemporary forms of imperialism takes many shapes.

Wealthy nations like Canada need to take responsibility for their part in creating the conditions which cause widespread migration in places like China. As the gap between the wealthy and the poor rapidly increases with globalization, many working class people are forced to move in order to survive. People take huge risks in order to survive against all odds, for the systems against them in both the North and the South, the East and the West, work to exploit their cheap, undervalued labour and skills and to silence their attempts to access the basic rights due every person on this earth. It is hypocritical for Canada to support trade liberalization and projects which displace millions of people (such as the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River), and then to incarcerate people who come to our shores, having left their homelands because of economic, environmental, and social devastation.

PEOPLE'S MOVEMENTS

The current global economy values the freedom of goods and money more than it values the freedom of people. We need to re-examine our priorities and put people's lives first. As thinkers like Marx made clear, "the social and economic means of human liberation are within our grasp. Nevertheless, we continue to live out relations of dominance and scarcity. There is the possibility of overturning that order of things." (Haraway 23)

Women are amongst the most vulnerable in the large movement of displaced peoples, and as people in the north, we need to act in solidarity with people in the south for our collective survival. While DAARE has focused its limited resources on working with the Fujianese women, we are also working towards a broader analysis, and as Nandita Sharma has suggested, need to consider how this work could be a necessary step towards building a movement for the rights of all undocumented people.

In our work, it has been a challenge to develop a feminist praxis, to combine action with theoretical perspectives. This report speaks to the many levels on which it is possible to analyze a particular situation - one needs to simultaneously consider the example of the Fujianese women in terms of legal systems, a growing prison industrial complex, a hostile and exclusionary immigration and refugee policy, an inadequate legal aid structure (because of which DAARE has filed a human rights complaint), media misrepresentation and criminalization, Canada's irresponsible international economic policies, and its history as a white settler colony exploiting the resources of First Nations people and cheap labour and resources overseas. In what Agnes Huang has termed "an all systems failure," it is dangerously easy to allow all these systems to obscure the lives of the women who are victimized by them. Yet, this would do these women a huge disservice. In their testimony and endurance, our Fujianese sisters are individually and collectively an inspiration and a reminder of an international struggle for peaceful and safe lives, for a world which values people more than money.

So many protests, rallies, letters, press conferences, meetings, prison visits, human rights complaints, and detention hearings after their arrival, we continue to be struck by the need for creative interventions to educate people on a wide front of issues. One such example is the Rice Girls, a women's popular theatre group in Vancouver which has produced many skits, including one relating the immense obstacles asylum seekers encounter when they enter the bureaucratic nightmare of applying for refugee status (see Appendix C). With humour, flair and serious thought, they have raised the concerns of this report in a wide variety of community performances.

Direct Action Against Refugee Exploitation's own activities as a community group have been threatened by an enforcer of corporatization called Trademark Management, acting on behalf of another organization called D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education), which threatened legal action against us for using the word DARE (see letter in Appendix A).

While this threat was clearly an infringement of our rights to freedom of speech, we decided to concentrate our attention on the work we had organized to do, rather than get caught up in a lengthy legal battle for which we had no funds. We decided in short to use our full name more often, and to use the acronym DAARE instead of DARE. However, we do want people to note our example, only one of many examples of corporate intimidation and censorship, shows how it is crucial for people to actively respond and participate in the shaping of our communities, rather than to allow corporations to pacify and silence us.

The few Fujianese women who have become part of our local community because they have been able to stay in Canada continue to face immense obstacles and hardship. Life in Canada (or the United States) is not easy - long exhausting hours in garment factories or restaurants, language barriers, being treated like second-class citizens in everyday life are just a few of the bitter challenges they experience. A friendly ear, small acts of sisterly concern, loud public demonstrations, potluck meetings, and research reports, are no substitute for the socio-economic conditions of equality which should be shared by all. Yet it is in these small seeds of reaching out to one another that hope tenaciously grows.

POEM - ILLEGALESE: FLOODGATE DUB

for the Chinese maroons, British Columbia, 1999-2000

if you arrive in the belly of a rusting imagination, there are grounds
to outlaw you. but Canada is a remix B-side chorus in the globalization
loop: a sampled track of "back home"-desiring, "old days"-admiring,
democracy-dreaming, racism-reaping homesickness that even medicare
can't cure. there is no "fresh off the boat" or the plane or the hope
of consistency in foreign and foreigner policy or obduracy of floodgate
metaphors and death sentence deportations. the backbeat back-bone
of the chorus that screeches "back home!" is the drum and bass treble
track alliteration of Koma-Koma-Komagatamaru. and the stowaway
that the border refused will be the head stone of the corner.
when the destination is a nation that prides itself and peace-keeping
but is still sleeping on the justice and compassion
implicit in that

back home
back home
back home,

when jurisdiction cuts the earth to the bone,
the proper diction is the unspoken issue, and the flesh
of the people's colour in the boats in the hull in the belly of a dream
without papers or definition, in quotations, "refugee," a penstroke
from relief. languishing in the languaged exile of illegalese.

and if it was heroic for runaway slaves to seep into Canada,
why is it villifiable for Chinese migrants to hide in the belly of a dream
now? and when you want to draw the line or put your foot down
or formulate enough is enough is enough is enough
what colour is enough? what language does it speak?
and isn't that the real issue written between the bordered lines,
the bartered lives in the semantic peanut and shell game?

in barricaded comfort, behind arm chair palisades,
wielding remote control diplomacy like a wand,
we cultivate our cathode curtain without détente.
with children lullabyed by Filipino nannies, industry is carving
up the melon of our lotused coast. and "floodgates"

they say
have said
and ever shall say

but people are not a flood, borders are not God-given,
lives are not dollars, Canada is not the sum of its exclusions.

- Wayde Compton

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Websites

• Affiliation of Multicultural Societies and Service Agencies of British Columbia (AMSSA)

• Asian Migrant Centre.

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• Canadian Council for Refugees.

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• Probe International.

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• Vancouver Association of Chinese Canadians.

APPENDIX A: LETTER SENT FROM TRADEMARK MANAGEMENT TO DAARE

Trademark Management
3527 Mount Diablo Boulevard, Suite 322
Lafayette, California 94549

Dear Sir/Madam:

Trademark Management has been retained to represent D.A.R.E. America in its trademark enforcement efforts.

D.A.R.E. America is the owner of various trademarks and service marks in connection with the merchandising, licensing, protection and enforcement of its name, image, likeness and other proprietary rights (Marks). D.A.R.E. America owns all rights, title and interest in and to the respective Marks. As the exclusive owner of the Trademarks and the rights associated with them, D.A.R.E. America is the only entity which can authorize use of the Trademarks. NO ONE IS ALLOWED TO USE D.A.R.E. AMERICA'S MARKS WITHOUT THE EXPRESS WRITTEN CONSENT OF D.A.R.E. AMERICA.

Notwithstanding this, it has come to our attention that your business is using the Marks of D.A.R.E. America in violation of federal law. The unauthorized use of the D.A.R.E. Marks constitutes trademark and copyright infringement and unfair competition in that the public will erroneously believe that your business is sponsored by, authorized by and/or affiliated with D.A.R.E. America. In addition, your unauthorized use of the Marks without approval will dilute their distinctiveness by trading upon the goodwill and reputation that the public associates with D.A.R.E. America and its Marks. It also interferes with the merchandising and licensing of the Marks.

YOU ARE HEREBY DEMANDED to immediately cease and desist from the usage of the Marks of D.A.R.E. America. We further demand that you advise us in writing of your compliance with the foregoing within 5 days of receipt of this letter.

If you fully cooperate with us by ceasing to use the D.A.R.E. Marks, we will work with you. However, if we do not receive a comprehensive response to this letter, in writing, including assurances that you have ceased to infringe on the Marks, D.A.R.E. America will be forced to take a strong course of action. Your continued misappropriation of the Marks may result in D.A.R.E. America pursuing all action necessary, including legal action seeking an injunction and the recovery of damages, expenses and attorney's fees and costs.

Your immediate attention to this matter is appreciated.

Very truly yours,

Lisa A. Uriguen

APPENDIX B: SAMPLE DAARE PRESS RELEASES (OR: WHAT GETS EXCLUDED FROM THE CORPORATE MEDIA)

MORE DEPORTATIONS OF FUJIANESE PEOPLE SCHEDULED

Vancouver, October 11, 2000

DAARE (Direct action Against Refugee Exploitation) has learned that 21 more Chinese people are scheduled to be deported this Friday (October 13, 2000) - 19 men and 2 women who came to Canada by ship last year. This continues Immigration Canada's pattern of quietly deporting small groups of Chinese refugee claimants (on September 14, 22, and 29).

Currently, nine women in the Prince George Regional Correctional Centre have been on hunger strike since October 2. Two of these women are scheduled to be deported on October 13, 2000. There are reportedly also two women who continue to hunger strike in the Burnaby Correctional Centre for Women.

The women are on hunger strike to protest their ongoing imprisonment. They are refugee claimants who have been in jail for over 14 months. They want to be released. Their hunger strike statement declares that they wish to live safely and freely in Canada, and to contribute to Canadian society.

The women say the long imprisonment has taken a serious toll on their mental and physical well-being. They say they are trapped between incarceration in Canada and persecution in China.

DAARE says that the Canadian government has put the lives of those deported back to China further at risk. Upon return to China, they face extremely harsh conditions of imprisonment and heavy fines.

DAARE is further concerned with a growing trend in Canada and other Western countries of criminalizing asylum seekers. In the case of the Fujianese migrants who came to Canada by ship last summer and fall, DAARE continues to argue that continued incarceration has negatively impacted on their ability to make claims for refuge. Their treatment by Canadian immigration officials has been marked by racial group profiling to justify continued detention, lack of adequate legal counsel, an accelerated refugee process, enormous bond requirements to secure release from detention, and inadequate medical, interpretation and advocacy support. In short, the process and public misperception has been stacked against them.

Finally, DAARE is concerned that some Canadian government officials try to discredit and shut down advocates' attempts to support the human rights of the migrants, instead of trying to find ways to respect the migrants' rights to freedom of movement and speech.

-30-

FUJIANESE PEOPLE IN THE GLOBAL ECONOMY

Vancouver, February 7, 2001

The 600 Fujianese people who came to Canada by ship in 1999 came for a variety of reasons. Some of them sought religious freedom. Some experienced gender persecution through the one child policy. Many were also displaced by the privatization of their economy. 24 of these people were granted refugee status. How many more would have been granted status if they had not experienced discriminatory treatment here in Canada?

As China has embarked on an increasingly capitalist path, it is estimated that there are now about 100 million people in China who are called the "floating population," people who have become migrants in order to survive in an increasingly unstable and insecure world.

In the so-called global economy, which some have called the casino economy, we are seeing the rich get richer and the poor get poorer faster than ever before. According to the United Nations Development Programme, the income gap between people in the world's wealthiest nations and the poorest nations has shifted from 30:1 in 1960 to 60:1 in 1990. It jumped to 74:1 in 1997. In this context, migration across borders is a political act, for it is a rejection of the impoverishment and exploitation that global corporatism inflicts on large populations around the world. Human bodies are saying NO to the international division of labour that is colonialism's legacy.

As Jean Chretien and his "Team Canada" go to China, they send a strong message that they support the privatization and corporatization of China's economy, the very process which is displacing millions of Chinese people. Yet when some of those people had the courage and the desperation to come to Canada, Jean Chretien's government put them in prison. It is hypocritical to first support trade liberalization and to then detain those people who are immediately affected by it. How is it that Canada can grant more freedom to goods and money than to living people?

Today, approximately 40 Fujianese asylum seekers still remain in prison in Canada. They have been imprisoned for about 18 months now. Tomorrow, one day before Jean Chretien and Team Canada fly to China to find more ways for "Canadians" and Chinese elites to make money on the backs of the people, the environment and the social structures in China, 5 Fujianese people will be deported. They face fines and at least three months imprisonment in China.

Direct Action Against Refugee Exploitation rejects the corporate agenda that has no ethical conscience or sense of responsibility towards the new disadvantaged, dislocated class of people it has structurally created both in Canada and in China. We urge the government to stop being hijacked by the corporate agenda, and to put people's well being first. We stand in solidarity with our sisters from the south.

In light of how the Fujianese asylum seekers have been treated, including lengthy incarceration in Canada, we urge the government to recognize the damage this has done to these people's lives.

We call for an immediate halt to deportations and for each person to be landed. Minister Caplan has the power to stop deportations and land people. We urge her to use her power responsibly for the well-being of the few who are left in Canada.

APPENDIX C: THE 2000 REFUGEE OLYMPICS

SETTING
Canada Square Gardens, 300 West Georgia Street, Vancouver, BC

CAST
Two commentators for CBC-TV:
Don Cheery: [Dressed in garish suit and tie.]
Ron McNice: [Dressed in regular suit and tie.]

Canadian Olympic Committee: officials of Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) and the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB)
Official #1:
Official #2:
Official #3:
Official # 4:
[Dressed in black clothes, with Canadian flags on the front and back of their shirts.]

Team China
Huang Mei Ling: [Dressed in running gear.]
Elinor Caplan: [Dressed in conservative/dowdy clothes.]

The Rice Girls is a women's popular theatre group based in Vancouver. The information in this play comes from the ongoing work of the women of Direct Action Against Refugee Exploitation and their allies in the legal and activist communities, and from the experiences of the Fujianese women themselves. Direct Action Against Refugee Exploitation is an ad hoc group which came together in September 1999 to provide advocacy and support to the women from China who had arrived in Canada by ship.

SCENE 1: Let the games begin

Don and Ron are sitting on stools behind a desk; they are positioned centrestage right, angled facing stage left and downstage. Don sits on the stool further downstage; Ron sits on the other stool. They are wearing headsets. They begin humming the ABC Olympic theme.

Ron: Good afternoon folks, and welcome to CBC-TV's coverage of the 2000 Refugee Olympics-the games where refugees are pitted against the elements - bureaucracy, public intolerance, arrogance, racism, classism, xenophobia, brute force and pure stupidity. Here, they will be judged on whether they're fit to be awarded the medal of asylum or not. I'm Ron McNice, sitting here today with the coach, Don Cheery.

Don: Hi Ron. It's an exciting day. We're coming to you live from Canada Square Gardens at 300 West Georgia St in downtown Vancouver, right across from the CBC plaza.

Ron: Which is, of course, on the territories of the Coast Salish Peoples - the territories of the Burrard, Musqueam and Squamish Nations.

Don: That's right. We shouldn't forget whose land we're on, even though some officials at the Canada Square Gardens want us to.

Ron: And it's these officials who set the quotas for the medals of asylum, deciding who's awarded refuge in Canada.

Don: And what is the quota for this year Ron?

Ron: 25,000, Don. But we know Canada has trouble meeting those targets, and it's not because there's a lack of people seeking refuge.

Don: That's right. Only point 3% of refugee competitors worldwide have been let into Canada.

Ron: Perhaps these games will shed light on this puzzling fact.

CUE: Don and Ron hum the ABC Olympic theme.

Ron: All right, all right. The time has come. Let the games begin.

SCENE 2: The entrance of the Canadian Olympic Committee

The four officials with the Canadian Olympic Committee enter from stage left, waving their hands in the air and walking in a circle on stage. Ron and Don hum "O Canada."

Ron: Leading the way today is the group that brought together these 2000 Refugee Games: the Canadian Olympic Committee.

Don: The Committee is made up of officials from Citizenship and Immigration Canada and the Immigration and Refugee Board.

Ron: They deal with everyone, Don: temporary workers, refugees, citizens (like you and me), visitors and immigrants. They have their hands full … no wonder they're making up the rules as they go along.

Don: And it's this Olympic Committee that's bringing in a new Immigration Act.

Ron: Which, if passed, will make it tougher for competitors in future Refugee Olympics held in Canada.

Don: That'd be a darn shame.

Ron: Indeed.

CUE: The four officials form a line, facing downstage.

SCENE 3: The arrival of Team China

CUE: Huang Mei Ling begins rowing on to the stage.

Ron: Here comes Team China … arriving by boat.

Don: And what a rusty vessel it is.

Ron: Sources say there are over 200 people on board who have been crammed down below for 38 days, with no fresh water, no light, no sanitation and no fresh air.

Don: Well Ron, it would hardly be a refugee race if the competitors weren't arriving in a desperate state.

Ron: And they sure are in a desperate state. Just look at those waves thrashing that boat around.

Don: Terrible, terrible … but not everybody had trouble landing on these shores. Take George Vancouver for instance. He didn't have a rusty boat, nor did he have immigration officials to deal with.

Ron: Ironic isn't it, since it was colonizers like him who came up with the system which led to the creation of the nation and the borders we abhor today.

Don: And with their might they decided who would get in and who had to get out.

CUE: officials form a circle and join hands.

Don: Speaking of which. … Do you remember the Komagata Maru?

Ron: The Komagata who?

Don: Let me tell you. 1914, a boat arrives from India carrying 376 Sikh and Muslim men from the Punjab. The Canadian government won't let the ship dock because they made a stop along the way. That was against the immigration law of the day. The Komagata Maru is sent back to India. Many die aboard and dozens more are killed by British colonizers.

Ron: Don't forget the St. Louis in 1939 that carried Jewish people escaping the Nazis. They weren't allowed to land in Canada and were sent back to concentration camps in Germany. Another proud moment in Canada's heritage.

CUE: Mei Ling tries to enter the circle. The four officials block her.

Don: That's not that different from what's happening today. Look at team China.

Ron: They sure are having difficulty landing.

Don: Everybody seems against them: the media, the government, the public, all think they're doing something illegal.

Ron: That's hogwash. It's not illegal to land. In fact, there's no other way for people from China to seek refugee in Canada. Did you know, Don, Canada doesn't have refugee processing offices in China?

Don: No wonder they're coming by boat.

CUE: Mei Ling gets into the circle.

Don: Hey, it looks like Team China has finally got in.

CUE: The four officials huddle close to Mei Ling.

Ron: Seems there's some confusion about the identity of Team China. Who's their captain? Do we have her name?

Don: I think I'll go investigate.

CUE: Walks over to the circle.

Don: I'm down here with Team China talking with …

CUE: Officials try to block the interview.

Mei Ling: … Huang Mei Ling.

Don: The media say you're an "illegal" migrant. Immigration says you don't have identity papers. Can you prove who you are?

Mei Ling: Yes, I'm from the Fujian province. I've come to seek asylum in Canada. I had to leave China quickly. I couldn't get my papers from the government.

Don: From the government! Certainly, you have your birth certificate, passport, driver's license on you?

Mei Ling: It's not easy getting documents from the government. And because of China's one child policy, many girls were never registered by their parents. We're not officially recognized.

Don: Well folks, there you have it.

CUE: Don walks back to his stool. The four officials turn around, their backs facing Mei Ling. They lock hands.

Ron: Looks like they're taking her to the training camp.

Don: … with bars and barbed wire? That doesn't look like a training camp; that looks like the Burnaby Correctional Centre for Women.

Ron: This is unusual, Don. … Hey, this just came in. … Huang Mei Ling will be kept in prison until her qualifying round, where she'll have to prove to officials that she exists.

Don: But I saw her exist. I know she exists.

Ron: But immigration doesn't.

CUE: The four officials break the circle and line up facing the audience and upstage from Mei Ling. They busily shuffle paper and answer phones.

SCENE 4: Qualifying time trials

Ron: Looks like the Olympic Committee is getting set up.

CUE: Mei Ling begins stretching.

Don: And Mei Ling is just about ready to start her qualifying race.

Ron: On your mark, get set, go.

CUE: Mei Ling runs back and forth between officials, trying to get papers, get papers signed, etc.

Don: There's a lot of muscle that goes into proving one's identity.

Ron: Look at her go, she calling home to China to get her documents sent over.

Don: And she's gotta be quick 'cause it's costing her lots of money.

Ron: Now, she trying to get someone to translate all those …

Don: … forms, forms forms. Look at her go.

Ron: More red tape. She gotta talk to …

Don: lawyers

Ron: advocates

Don: interpreters

Ron: … and get past those prison guards.

Don: Wow, she's a trooper.

CUE: Mei Ling turns to the audience and holds up her hands (her papers.)

Don: And yes. Mei Ling's got her papers.

CUE: The officials encircle Mei Ling. They join their hands.

Ron: Hang on, hang on. What's going on down there?

Don: It looks like …

Ron: Detention.

CUE: The four officials turn their backs on Mei Ling. They join hands.

SCENE 5: Detention review hurdles

Don: I don't understand, Ron. It doesn't seem right to detain competitors in the Refugee Olympics?

Ron: I know, it doesn't sound right, Don, but the Canadian Olympic Committee can make that decision.

Don: Can't lawyers appeal to get them out?

CUE: The four officials move their arms and laugh.

Ron: Legal Aid only funds lawyers for the first detention review. Mei Ling's got to go through det reviews every 30 days. That means she's pretty much on her own.

Don: Whoa, whoa. Are you telling me that even though she doesn't speak English, doesn't know the legal system, has limited access to information, is stuck behind bars, she's supposed to represent herself? That hardly seems fair.

CUE: The four officials stop the movements/laughter and break out into hurdles positions. Mei Ling moves to stage right and starts stretching.

Ron: That's the system, Don. But Mei Ling's a fighter and you can see she's getting on to her next event: the detention review hurdles.

Don: What's involved in this event.

Ron: In order for Mei Ling to be released from detention, she's gotta convince immigration she is who she is, that she's not a threat to society, and that she's not a flight risk.

Don: Well, I'm rooting for her. On your mark, get set, go.

CUE: Official #1 drops down to form a hurdle.

Ron: … Okay, first up is the identity hurdle; and yes..it's official, Mei Ling does exist.

CUE: Officials #2 & #3 join hands to form a hoop.

Ron: And the second hurdle … is she a danger to society? No she's getting through. She's not a threat to society …

CUE: Official #4 spreads her legs slightly.

Ron: She's approaching the final hurdle … is she a flight risk? Will she make it? Will she make it?

Don: Oh no, Mei Ling didn't make it.

CUE: The first three official form a partial circle, leaving an opening towards stage left. Official #4 picks Mei Ling up, pulls Mei Ling's hands together behind her back, and pushes her back inside the circle. Official #4 then closes the circle around Mei Ling.

Don: Holy crap, Ron. What just happened there?

Ron: Mei Ling failed her detention review. Immigration says she's a flight risk.

Don: Flight risk? I know Mei Ling is quick with her feet, but that's no good reason to keep her in detention.

CUE: The four officials turn their backs on Mei Ling and lock hands.

Ron: But that's their justification for holding her.

Don: But in prison? Prisons are horrific.

Ron: I know, Don. Some refugee competitors have been thrown into segregation just for trying to tell their stories, and some have even attempted suicide.

Don: Damnit Ron, that breaks my heart.

CUE: The four officials break from the circle and start moving around the stage (bumper cars). Mei Ling bumps into them. Official #1 pushes her hands out when Mei Ling approaches. Official #2 covers her ears. Official #3 covers her eyes. Official #4 covers her mouth.

SCENE 6: CRDD hearing

Ron: Hang on, Don, Mei Ling's trying to tell her story.

Don: Doesn't look like these officials are listening to her. What could she be saying?

Ron: Well Don, even though Canada doesn't recognize that China's one child policy persecutes women … we've heard the stories: forced sterilization, IUDs left in for years. I heard one woman was forced to have an abortion when she was 8 months pregnant.

Don: That's appalling.

Ron: Yes, but the rules say these women have to have some concrete proof of this "alleged" persecution. … The Canadian Olympic Committee won't award these women a medal if they can't prove their stories.

Don: Prove their stories … do they expect people to videotape themselves getting tortured?

Ron: Just about. And what makes it worse is Canada has such of narrow definition of persecution. Like poverty, for example, isn't recognized as a form of persecution.

CUE: The four officials start closing in on Mei Ling.

Don: Well, you know what that's about Ron. Canada is complicit in creating poverty in many other countries.

Ron: That's right. Canada supports free trade policies which destroy people's ability to sustain themselves. Then it targets people fleeing their countries trying to survive. Shouldn't we just get rid of the policies that cause poverty in the first place?

Don: Got a point, Ron. You got a point.

CUE: Officials huddle around Mei Ling.

Don: Hey, what's going on?

Ron: Looks like the Canadian Olympic Committee has reserved judgment.

Don: In plain English, please!

Ron: It means they're not buying Mei Ling's story. They'll check it out and give their decision at a later date. It could be one week, one month or longer before they accept her as a refugee … or not.

CUE: The officials step back away from Mei Ling, still holding hands.

SCENE 7: Failed claim, on to the appeals

Ron: Looks like the adjudicators have come up with their decision.

Don: Oh no, it looks like Huang Mei Ling has …

All Four Officials: Failed.

CUE: Mei Ling falls to the ground.

CUE: The four official break the circle and move to four corners away from Mei Ling.

Don: This is awful. Why don't they believe her?

Ron: Well, the process is very subjective.

Don: Can't she appeal? Mei Ling … she's tried so hard. Isn't there anything that can be done?

CUE: Mei Ling slowly lifts her head up, looking at the audience.

Ron: If she can show there's been an error in law, she can appeal the decision to the federal court …

CUE: Mei Ling slowly lifts herself up, and starts moving towards each official.

Don: And that looks like what she's doing.

Ron: And she's off. She's trying to get a PDRCC - that's a risk assessment, but she's got to get it in within 21 days …

Don: Wait, looks like she's also trying to get accepted on humanitarian and compassionate grounds. … She needs $500 to do this folks.

Ron: She needs a lawyer. … She's going after one. Close, but no cigar. … Too much money.

Don: Now she's trying for an advocate …

Ron: Won't anyone get behind her.

Don: It's been a pretty tough race, will she make it?

Ron: Even if Mei Ling gets her PDRCC or H&C applications in, the Canadian Olympic Committee can still deport her before any decisions are made.

Don: That's not fair.

CUE: The four officials start closing in on Mei Ling.

Ron: That's the system, my friend. That's "due process."

Don: Hurry, Mei Ling. They're closing in on you. Time is running out.

CUE: The four officials close right in on Mei Ling. Mei Ling is out of breath.

SCENE 8: In search of freedom

Ron: Wow, this has been some race folks. Huang Mei Ling has been put through a test of endurance. She's shown so much courage, pure willpower, and a lot of heart.

Don: Is there no hope that Mei Ling will be awarded a medal and be granted asylum? Can't anybody help her?

Ron: Elinor Caplan, the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration. She has the power. She can grant Mei Ling and her teammates status to stay in Canada.

Don: Oh look. Here she comes.

CUE: The four officials form a line close behind Mei Ling. Elinor Caplan enters stage left, and stops. She walks past the first two officials and nods; they nod and smile back. She passes Mei Ling and looks towards the audience. She walks past the last two officials and nods; they nod and smile back. She walks off the stage, stage right.

Ron: There will be no medal for Mei Ling today. All that's left for her is …

All Four Officials: … Deportation.

CUE: The officials push Mei Ling downstage, out into the audience. Don and Ron take off their headsets, stand up and turn around, backs facing the audience. The four officials turn around, backs facing the audience.

Mei Ling: to the audience. I'm not illegal. I'm a human being.