Rwanda man loses last chance to stay

Liliane Habakwizera says Canada has issued her father a death sentence.“My father is going to his death,” said Habakwizera, 36, Tuesday afternoon shortly after she received word her family patriarch’s last chance to stay in Canada was denied by a Federal Court judge.

In a last-ditch effort to keep him in the country, Jean Berchmans Habinshuti’s lawyer, Lisa Winter-Card, argued in Federal Court Monday for a stay of a deportation order to keep the refugee claimant from being deported to his native Rwanda by Thursday.

Federal Court Judge Michael L. Phelan dismissed the request for a stay Tuesday.

Habinshuti arrived in Canada via Buffalo in July 2011 and was reunited with his wife, Amelberga, daughters Liliane and Nancy and son Clement.

Amelberga and Liliane have been in Canada since being granted refugee status in 2001. Nancy and Clement were sponsored into the country by their mother, by then a Canadian citizen, in 2009.

Habinshuti, 59, has been denied refugee status because Canadian immigration law forbids anyone from entering the country who was a senior official in the Rwandan government from 1990 to 1994, the period leading up to and during the genocide of Tutsis by Hutu extremists.

Habinshuti was private secretary to the prime minister, but argued it was not a position vested with political or decision-making power. Fearing for their lives, he and his family said they fled the capital Kigali at the height of the genocide and hid in the countryside.

A Canadian Immigration Division hearing in 2011 determined Habinshuti was not a senior government official in the buildup to the genocide. That ruling, however, was appealed by the minister of public safety and emergency preparedness.

In September 2013, the Immigration Division ruling was set aside by the Immigration Appeal Division and Habinshuti was ordered deported. An appeal to the Federal Court was rejected.

His last chance was a stay of deportation, which was argued Monday by Winter-Card in Federal Court in Toronto. The judge issued his judgment Tuesday — motion denied.

“Basically, he’s supposed to get on a plane Thursday at 11:20 and go back to Rwanda,” Winter-Card said Tuesday.

“It’s really unfortunate, because he didn’t do anything wrong. We’re sending back a guy who nobody alleges did anything wrong. They’re just saying he was a senior official — a secretary was a senior official of the Rwandan government. And on that specious basis, we’re not giving him protection.”

In a story published in The Standard last week, Habinshuti and his family said they feared for his life should he be forced to return to Rwanda, because reports of his immigration proceedings in Canada have been picked up by media in the African country and echo the Immigration Appeal Division’s conclusion he may have played a part in the genocide.

“It’s hard, we never expected this to happen,” Liliane said in a telephone interview Tuesday afternoon. “We are not doing well at all.

“Because my father is going to his death — that’s what will happen. That’s what Canada did to us. I can’t even think clearly right now.”

Winter-Card said in an e-mail late Tuesday Habinshuti has been arrested pending deportation.

”They couldn’t even let him spend the last couple of days with his family,” Winter-Card said.

The St Catherine standards 

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