Nader is a 46 year old Iranian refugee who has been detained and
imprisoned by Canadian Border Services Agency since 2005. Nader has spent
over SIX years behind bars, without any substantive charges, under the
jurisdiction of the Immigration Act.

His length of detention is unprecedented in Canada and Nader has now been
on a six-week hunger strike to protest his ongoing, essentially indefinite
detention.

On Thursday December 15th, Nader appeared via teleconference for a
detention review at the Immigration and Refugee Board Offices. A decision
on the review has been reserved and further legal submissions were made
amidst a room of supporters.

NOII will have further updates early next week but we wanted to keep
everyone updated about this critical situation here in Vancouver, Unceded
Coast Salish Territories which the Canadian authorities have kept from
public view. In the context of increasing detentions and deportations
facilitating prison expansion and a government that insists on treating
racialized migrants as expendable commodities, we re-affirm dignity and
self-determination in the movement for migrant justice.


BACKGROUND:

http://noii-van.resist.ca/?p=4579

Hunger striking refugee detained for SIX years

Nader is a 46 year old Iranian refugee who has been detained and
imprisoned by Canadian Border Services Agency since 2005. Nader has spent
over six years behind bars, without any substantive charges, under the
jurisdiction of the Immigration Act.

His length of detention is unprecedented in Canada.

Nader arrived to Canada from Iran with his wife and young son in 1997 as
political refugees. At the time they made a claim based on her persecution
in Iran as a dissident. The family’s claim was initially rejected by the
Immigration and Refugee Board in 2000 and shortly after Nader and his wife
separated. His (now ex) wife and son subsequently were granted legal
status but Nader was ordered removed from Canada.

The unjust and cruel rationale provided for his ongoing detention by the
Immigration and Refugee Board is simply the fact that he refuses to sign
documents for his own deportation to Iran. Canadian Border Services have
argued for ongoing (essentially infinite) detention because Nader is
deemed to be “non cooperative in signing documents”. They want him to sign
a document which states he is returning ‘voluntarily’, absolving Canada of
its complicity in his involuntary removal and using detention to pressure
him to lie about his own deportation!

For six years Nader has been incarcerated at Fraser Regional Correctional
Centre, a maximum security provincial facility. This facility is mandated
for short-term offenders whose sentence does not exceed two years. Short
term facilities such as FRCC lack the infrastructure and resources to
house and accommodate long-term inmates. Nader has reported that he has
been subjected to a poor diet and lack of quality health care at FRCC.
Without internet and law library materials (which are available at other
federal facilities), he has been unable to defend and advocate for
himself.

Nader continues to face risk in Iran – a similar risk to what his (now ex)
wife and son were granted asylum for in Canada. Nader has never even had a
refugee claim heard on the basis of his own experience in Iran and fear of
persecution if deported back to Iran. Nader has recently filed a Pre
Removal Risk Assessment and will be pursuing other legal avenues given the
trauma he has suffered in Iran and now in Canada.

According to Nader, “The length of my detention has not been predicated on
any evidence that I am a ‘threat to national security’ or that my release
poses any ‘risk to the public safety’. Yet I have endured the
psychological trauma of confinement and the emotional suffering and
anxiety of being separated from my son (who has since been granted asylum
in Canada).”


For more information please email noii-van@resist.ca or call 778 552 2099
http://noii-van.resist.ca



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No One is Illegal-Vancouver Coast Salish Territories is a grassroots
anti-colonial migrant justice group with leadership from members of
migrant and/or racialized backgrounds. We strive and struggle for the
right to remain, the freedom to move, and the right to return. As a
movement for self-determination that challenges the ideology of
immigration controls, we take action to combat racial profiling, detention
and deportation, the national security apparatus, law enforcement
brutality, and exploitative working conditions of migrants. The ongoing
apartheid reality instituted through reserves and sweatshops is one that
must be fundamentally uprooted and transformed. We envision a humanity
where everyone has the right to sustenance and the ability to provide it,
where we are free of oppression, misery, and exploitation, and are able to
live meaningfully in relationship to one another and in reverence for
Mother Earth that sustains us.