Uyghurs held at Guantanamo seeking to come live in Canada

Uyghurs held at Guantanamo seeking to come live in Canada

KATE HAMMER

From Tuesday's Globe and Mail

February 2, 2009 at 10:21 PM EST

With the pending shutdown of the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, six detainees have applied for resettlement in Canada, including three Uyghurs who have been cleared of all charges.

Their lawyers hope that a changed political landscape will help them, and a Toronto-based refugee organization that is sponsoring one of them says the step could earn Canada the favour of U.S. President Barack Obama.

The Uyghurs are a Muslim minority group in northwestern China. Beijing has used the war on terrorism as leverage in its continuing crackdown on the Uyghurs, some of whom have fought fiercely for independence from China.

The three men, all in their 30s, were detained in Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2001 and 2002. One, Anwar Hassan, applied for sponsored resettlement last fall, and the two others applied last week. Mr. Hassan is being sponsored by the Don Valley Refugee Resettlement Organization, a group of eight Toronto churches, and the other two men are being sponsored by the Archdiocese of Montreal.


Mr. Hassan's Washington-based lawyer, George Clarke, said his client's application will be a litmus test of whether Canada might open its doors to all 17 Uyghur detainees with no place to go with the closing of the U.S. detention centre, one of Mr. Obama's first moves after his inauguration last month.

“Canada, from a perspective of human rights, is a sort of leader,” he said. “They certainly are also a close contact to the United States, they have a strong economy, they have a good Uyghur population, so it's kind of all the pieces put together in one place.”

Seema Saifee, a New York-based lawyer for the other two men, said taking in the Uyghurs, who are ideal candidates for refugee status, would allow Canada to lend a helping hand to the Obama administration. “Immediately after they were brought to Guantanamo, the U.S. military told our clients they were mistakenly picked up, were innocent, and would soon be released. The government has conceded that they are non-combatant civilians, and has declared them free to leave Guantanamo. The sole reason they remain in Guantanamo is because they have nowhere to go.”

Canada has come close to taking in the Guantanamo Uyghurs in the past, but Ottawa pulled back at the last minute – in large part, an investigation by The Globe and Mail found, because of fears of what would happen to Huseyin Celil, a Canadian citizen in a Chinese prison who is also a member of China's Uyghur minority.

An opportunity will be missed "if Canada doesn't act this time," said Mehmet Tohti, a member of the Uyghur Canadian Association, part of the group sponsoring Mr. Hassan.

The only Canadian in the Guantanamo Bay prison is Omar Khadr, who is accused of killing a U.S. medic in Afghanistan. Ottawa has been under pressure to bring him back to Canada.

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