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Canada closes its doors to Mexican refugees

On 09/11/2009 Leave a Comment


Canada has been a popular destination for Mexicans fleeing their countrys bloody drugs
war. But now, the Canadian government has imposed a new visa requirement to stop the
influx. Harper has said, we dont want any more Mexicans.

http://frankkuin.com/en/2009/11/09/mexican-refugees-canada/
By Frank Kuin in Toronto
Surrounded by a group of Spanish-speaking children in a suburb of Toronto, Pedro Ochoa holds
up a baseball between his index finger, middle finger and thumb. This is how you hold the
ball, says the 50-year-old baseball coach in a field between some dreary residential high-rise
buildings. And you throw it from your shoulder, he explains in Spanish to the boys of
immigrant families.
Ochoa, a Mexican who has fled drug violence in his native country, has found a role as a
baseball trainer for underprivileged Latino boys in Toronto, his Canadian refuge. Two years ago,
the former pro baseball player fled the city of Veracruz, after he received threats from drug
traffickers. His life was in danger following an argument with dealers at the baseball field where
he used to practice, he says. He was beaten up and was threatened with a gun to his head. He
escaped to Canada, the only country where I could go without a visa.
Ochoa is part of a wave of Mexicans who have fled to Canada because of the bloody drugs war
in Mexico. Last year almost 10,000 Mexicans sought political asylum in Canada, a country that
was relatively accessible to them because they could go there without a visa unlike the United
States. All migrants who set foot on Canadian soil are entitled to an asylum procedure. The
number of asylum requests by Mexicans in Canada has tripled since 2005; Mexico has become
the largest source of refugee claimants in the country.

Mexicaanse refugee Pedro Ochoa during a baseball training session in Toronto.


Until recently, that is. Now, the Canadian government has put an end to the influx by imposing a
visa requirement for Mexicans. According to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the measure was
needed because Canadas refugee system is too open. Due to the automatic right to a lengthy
procedure, the system enables bogus refugees to jump the queue of the regular Canadian
immigration stream, Harper believes. We have many legitimate refugee claimants but we are
spending an enormous amount of money on bogus refugee claims in a system that encourages
those claims. And this cant continue this way.
Coach Ochoa is facing deportation. Twice, he failed to convince Canadian immigration judges
that he is eligible for political asylum. He is awaiting a final appeal. I want to obey the law, but
I dont want to go back to Mexico, he says firmly. The situation in Mexico is very difficult;
drug cartels have more power than the government. I fear that the dealers will carry out their
threats.
Mexico, a partner of Canada in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), finds the
visa requirement as humiliating, Mexican Senator Rosario Green Macas said last month in
Toronto. In order to come to Canada, she had to provide proof of home ownership, her last six
bank statements, a letter from her employer, and personal information about family members,
she said indignantly. That has to stop, said Green Macas, a former foreign minister. She

likened the Canadian measure to the wall that the Americans are building on their southern
border to keep illegal immigrants out.
I want to obey the law, but I dont want to go back to Mexico
Still, the visa measure has had the desired result: the number of asylum applications by Mexicans
in Canada has plummeted from 7,000 in the first eight months of this year, to dozens since that
time, says Richard Goldman of the Committee to Aid Refugees in Montreal. He is strongly
opposed to the tactic. It is improper to impose a visa requirement to cut off a flow of people,
many of whom need protection, he says.
According to Goldman, the visa measure ignores the real danger confronted by asylum seekers
from Mexico. The country is plagued by a bloody battle between drug cartels and the army.
Since the end of 2006, over 14,000 people have been killed. Many people who come here from
Mexico are fleeing situations of danger and threat to their lives, says Goldman. The visa
requirement is going to deny many of these people protection in Canada or anywhere else,
because theres no other place they can go.
However, refugees from Mexico have a low rate of acceptance in Canada: only 11 per cent
receive asylum. This has to do with two important criteria: probability of protection by
authorities in the country of origin, and the ability to seek refuge in their own country (internal
flight alternative). Although some observers doubt the ability of Mexico to protect its citizens
against drug violence, Canadian immigration judges generally rule that Mexicans have domestic
protection or flight options.
Mexico is in a state of war
Ochoas asylum request was denied for that reason and there are other poignant examples. This
month, a refugee tribunal rejected an application for asylum from Gustavo Gutirrez Masareno, a
policeman from Ciudad Jurez in Mexico with a reputation as a champion of human rights.
Gutierrez fled with his family to Canada last year because he received death threats after he
criticized alleged human rights violations by the army. Gunmen appeared at his house, and he
received text messages like youre next.
Police protection turned out to be an illusion in Jurez, one of the most violent cities in Mexico
on the border with Texas. Gutierrez had to go into hiding because the state of Chihuahua could
not guarantee his safety. Therefore, the assumptions of the judges are incorrect, argues
Mordechai Wasserman, lawyer for Gutierrez. According to him, they dont see the seriousness of
the situation in Mexico.
Enrique Rivera, a Mexican refugee in Montreal, agrees. Mexico is in a state of war, he says.
Rivera, a political activist from San Lus Potos, has been living in Canada since 2007. He fled
Mexico after he received threats. He considered Canada a country with respect for human rights,
but finds that it is now much more difficult to find a safe haven there. Because Harper has said,
we do not want any more Mexicans.

https://this.org/2010/09/29/mexican-drug-refugees-canada/
September-October 2010

Canada deports Mexicos drug-war refugees,


with deadly consequences
Augusta DwyerWebsite
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Thousands of Mexicans seek refuge from their countrys


gruesome drug wars, but Canada has slammed the door. For
some, deportation has been a death sentence
Bodies lie in a ditch in rural Mexico, as police look on. Photo by Tomas Bravo/Reuters
The first of Juan Escobedos many trials began in 2007 when his common-law wife, Lisbeth,
then just 31, was diagnosed with cancer. The couple had four children and little money. At the
time, Escobedo (not his real name) drove a bus he rented by the day around the city of Oaxaca
and Lisbeth worked as a cleaner at the Mexican Social Security Institute. As a state employee,
she qualified for free radiation and chemotherapy treatment at a public hospital, but doctors there
held out little hope. It quickly became clear Lisbeth did not have long to live.
Escobedos second trial began in July 2008, when a gang of masked, gun-toting men burst into
his house in the middle of the night. They blindfolded and tied him up along with Lisbeth and
bundled them both into a van. They drove them to the Huayapam reservoir, where Escobedo was
held underwater until he almost drowned, then beaten while Lisbeth was forced to look on. Their
assailants identified themselves as members of Los Zetas, and said they wanted the couple to
work for them. They said, We want a place from which to make sales and you are going to
work for us, you understand? Escobedo recalls. My wife was sick, and even so they made her
sell drugs from our house.
In a region known for corruption, electoral fraud and strong-arm politics, the Escobedos were
just the kind of people the Zetas knew they could control and extortaverage citizens without
resources or connections. They forced me to sell drugs, but others, they were forced to keep an
eye on us, he explains. So anyone who said anything or made an accusation, for sure they
would kill them. The Zetas made copies of the couples identification cards, but that wasnt the
only factor that trapped them. What really stopped the couple from trying to escape, says
Escobedo, was the fact that outside Oaxaca, Lisbeths cancer treatments would no longer be paid
for by the state, and there was no way Juan could afford to pay for them himself.

He describes this period as very painful. Like something you might see in a movie, but I was
living it. I couldnt do anything, and this put me into a kind of shock. I wanted to die. By then,
his wife was in constant pain and unable to sleep, crying and moaning all the time, he recalls.
Every day for four months, dealers and addicts would climb onto his bus and purchase small
bags of cocaine and crack, which he kept in his change box beside the steering wheel. Passengers
and police alike took no notice. At one point, the couple was once again blindfolded and taken to
a house where they joined a circle of people similarly bound. Two men brought in a third and
beheaded him with a machete in front of the groups horrified eyeshis punishment, they were
told, for trying to escape. This was where Escobedo saw the one person he could identify, a
uniformed police commander named Castillo.
In September 2008, Lisbeth died and Escobedo sent his children to stay with relatives. Mourning
and hopeless, he also stopped working. Two weeks later, Castillo came to see him. He said,
Youll keep on working for us because you work for us. I really didnt want to, so he said,
Here its not whether you want to or not, and he pulled out a knife. I didnt know if he wanted
to kill me or what his intentions were, but he stabbed me twice in the leg.
In desperation, Escobedos father called Juans older sister, who lives in Canada, to see if she
could help. She paid for his passport and a plane ticket, and in April 2009, with $5 to his name,
Escobedo landed in Canada and immediately applied for refugee status. With his application to
the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board, Escobedo became one of the unprecedented 9,309
Mexican migrants seeking Canadian refugee status last year.
Though Escobedos status as a refugee applicant allowed him to go on welfare, he found work in
Toronto instead. I am not here to take anything from this country, he says. I am here for the
second chance I wouldnt have otherwise. And because I am more use to my family alive than
dead.
As drug-related violence sweeps across Mexico and the death toll rises, Canada has responded
by shutting out more and more Mexican refugees fleeing the mayhem. In 2006, when 4,955
Mexicans applied, the Immigration and Refugee Board accepted 28 percent of those applications.
That acceptance rate steadily dwindled to just eight percent, and in July 2009, the immigration
ministry placed a visa requirement on all Mexicans travelling to Canada, essentially halting the
flow entirely.
Lawyers and others who work with Mexican refugee claimants readily agree that there are
opportunists using the violence as a pretext to enter Canada for short-term, higher-paid work
than they can get at home. The dilemma they face is not gang-style execution, but a profound
lack of economic opportunities.
You have people in Mexico selling stories, says Francisco Rico-Martinez, who heads the
Faithful Companions of Jesus Refugee Centre and has been helping refugees for more than 20
years. You come and the only detail is to say that you will be killed in Mexico if you go back.
So we have those cases as wellpeople who are desperate for the lack of future and the poverty
in Mexico, and they use any way to get out.

Rico-Martinez estimates that roughly 60 percent of Mexicans claiming asylum here fit that
profile, while 40 percent are at genuine risk of violence or murder. Yet Citizenship, Immigration
and Multiculturalism Minister Jason Kenney routinely refers to all Mexican asylum claims as
bogus, fostering a climate of skepticism even toward legitimate claimants who can document
the persecution and death threats they have experienced. In these cases, says lawyer Mordechai
Wasserman, the IRB skips any consideration of credibility whatsoever. They jump to state
protection. They say that Mexico is a democracy, that theres a presumption of state protection.
For the IRB, Mexico is a sunny travel destination, a functioning democracy where citizens have
ample recourse within its domestic laws to deal with serious crime. When Wasserman points to
the murders of police, soldiers, and members of the judiciary as evidence of the lack of state
protection, the IRB says that evidence simply indicates that the police were killed in the line of
duty and the government is making an effort to root out corruption. The absurdity of that rosy
view drives Wasserman crazy. I just want to tear my hair out, he says.
Wasserman isnt alone in his frustration. Aviva Basman, a lawyer at Torontos Refugee Law
Office, describes her Mexican clients as some of my most traumatized and most compelling
cases. Many are battered women, whose husbands have backchannel connections to Mexicos
public security apparatus that allow them to repeatedly track down and attack them. I feel like
Im banging my head against a wall, she says, because you go in and make what you think are
very strong legal arguments based on facts as they now are in Mexico, that is so dire, and then
you get a kind of boilerplate answer back.
Among the most prominent cases of those refused is that of Wassermans client Gustavo
Gutierrez. A detective commander with the Ciudad Jurez police force investigating the murders
of more than 200 young women, Gutierrez fled to Canada after 36 of his colleagues were killed
and he himself began receiving death threats from traffickers.
Another is Toluca lawyer Alfonso Vega, who was represented by Andrew Brouwer of the
Refugee Lawyers Association of Ontario. Thanks to two legal cases Vega was pursuing against
their members, he ran afoul of the shadowy yet powerful Atlacomulco Group. Wasserman had a
client who was actually told by an employee of the Public Prosecutors Office that he would be
killed if he did not leave the country. His claim was also denied by the IRB.
However, one of the most gruesome consequences of an IRB decision affected a Mexican
woman identified only as Nuemi.
She came to Canada with two daughters in 2004, after she and her family received death threats
from the Familia Michoacana cartel. The familys claim was rejected, but the women stayed in
Canada fighting deportation orders until, in August 2008, the elder daughter returned home to
visit her dying grandmother.
Detected by La Familia and raped, Nuemis daughter flew back to Canadawhich promptly
deported her back to Mexico in December. Nuemi and her younger daughter were deported the
following February, and all three women went into hiding at the home of an elderly friend. Only
weeks later, then seven months pregnant as a result of the rape, Nuemis elder daughter was

kidnapped. Police found her body in June; not only had she been beaten and shot in the back of
the head, but the baby she had been carrying had been removed by Caesarean section. The
elderly man sheltering them was also killed. His family, not surprisingly, told them to leave.
After receiving various desperate email messages from Nuemi, Rico-Martinez and Basman
succeeded in bringing her and her surviving daughter back to Canada on temporary residence
permits. Adding insult to injury, the condition of Nuemis return was that she reimburse
Citizenship and Immigration Canada for their original deportation costs including those of her
murdered daughter.
While Nuemis assertion that she and her family lived in fear of their livesand that Mexican
authorities were incapable of protecting themwas tragically and graphically proven by her
daughters grisly death, the IRB continues to rely on the Internal Flight Alternative. It suggests
that applicants move elsewhere within their own country, such as Mexico City, where, in the
words of one ruling, I am convinced that state protection would be reasonably forthcoming.
For lawyers defending what they feel are clearly meritorious refugee claims, their clients risk
becoming victims of the Mexican governments stated intentionbut demonstrated inabilityto
protect its own citizens.
Theres this belief, says Basman, that its okay as long as the government is trying to
protecteven if it cant.
It is early summer and Mexico City bathes in the sweltering heat of a dry season stubbornly
refusing to give way to the rains. Even as the number of deaths from the governments struggle
against organized crime reaches past 23,000, even as one of the nations most powerful men
(former presidential candidate Diego Fernndez de Cevallos) is himself kidnapped, life goes on
in the vast metropolis and in towns and cities across the country. In Oaxaca, an international aid
and human rights caravan is attacked and two activists killed, but no police investigation will
take place and everyone accepts this. It is as if an alternate reality, a webbing of uncontrollable
criminality, lurks below the surface of daily life. Its a reality to which Mexicans, appalled as
they may be, are becoming accustomed.
Its not like youre fearful just walking down the street, says John Mill Ackerman, professor at
the Institute of Legal Research at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, but if youre
targeted by a drug cartel, theres really nothing you can do. And this, he adds, is an inheritance
of the authoritarian system of government. This has been the big problem of the democratic
transition of the last 10 years. We are still working with the same state apparatus, the same
institutions. The changing colours of the party has led to different groups or mafias coming in or
out of government but not to a real conquest of formal institutions over informal institutions.
Mexicans who, like Juan Escobedo, have for one reason or another fallen afoul of what
Ackerman calls powerful informal actors should be seeking protection from the federal
attorney general, or PGR. Its Ministerio Publico, or Public Prosecutors Office, has the job of not
only investigating crimes, but deciding which cases will be prosecuted. The Ministerio Publico
is in total control of every part of criminal proceedings, says Ackerman.

While the 2000 ousting of the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party from government
may have cracked open the political system, the judiciary remains mired in a culture of
favouritism, secrecy, and corruption.
Judges rarely question or even see defendants during trial. There are no juries, no oral arguments,
and no public access to evidence until the trial is over. Evidence gathered under torture is
admissible, and most suspects are found guilty without scientific proof like fingerprints or DNA.
In this system, prosecutors have unusually broad powers, deciding if a suspect is guilty before
their day in court and using their own police force to gather evidence to support those decisions.
For Jos Rosario of the non-governmental Miguel Agustin Pro Jurez Human Rights Centre, the
probability of such a system offering protection is almost zero. There are many inequalities in
Mexican society, he says, and those same inequalities reproduce themselves in the justice
system. Whats more, Mexican law severely limits the effectiveness, and so the likelihood, of
people from one state accusing anyone of so-called common crimes like extortion, threats,
kidnapping, or even murder in another. To seek justice, victims must stay within the jurisdiction
where the crime has occurred, putting themselves in even greater danger. And, says Ackerman,
thats not going to happen because the person knows the Ministerio Publico itself is, if not
totally corrupt, that at least a criminal gang will have eyes and ears there. Theyre going to see
who is actually charging them. So theres a very strong disincentive to even accuse these
people. The entire apparatus allows organized crime to flourish. Most Mexicans, says
Edgardo Buscaglia, a law professor at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico and an
expert on organized crime, consider the judicial system corrupt at all levels. By being conceived
as corrupt by society, people do not report crimes, do not collaborate with the authorities and
therefore any effort of the state is hampered.
Originally trained by the Mexican army in the 1990s as an elite crime-fighting squad, a
Mexican version of the Green Berets, the Zetas were soon co-opted by Osiel Crdenas, leader of
the Gulf Cartel. When Crdenas was captured, they slowly became more and more independent
in many of their operations, says Buscaglia, at first with kidnappings, later extortions. And at
some point they acquired so much economic power that they were able to divorce themselves
from the Gulf Cartel.
By now, he says, they are much more than a drug-trafficking gang. They are a transnational
organized crime group involved in 17 types of crimes, and present in 23 countries around the
world. Branching out into weapons and human trafficking, along with contract killings,
protection rackets, and the kind of small yet profitable business of forcing non-members to retail
drugs, they have made fortunes out of this huge diversification, he says.
Their financial clout and violent methods have allowed the Zetas to infiltrate police and judicial
systems in several states, including Chiapas and Oaxaca. Infiltrating the federal government has
been more of a challenge for them, says Buscaglia, but thats only because their main rival, the
Sinaloa Cartel, has had a long-term monopoly on the capture of federal authorities at the highest
level.

There are 982 pockets in Mexico, where the authorities and organized crime are one force,
Buscaglia adds, and thats the essence of a failed state. Mexico is facing limited symptoms of a
failed stateand its expanding.
Although President Felipe Caldern has continually proclaimed his desire to vanquish organized
crime, dispatching the army throughout the country to do so, he seems unwilling to overhaul its
dysfunctional justice system. That system, says Buscaglia, is quite cosy for the political and
business elite.
Mexicos congress did pass new acts designed to reform the justice system in 2008. With reform,
says Buscaglia, the capacity of organized crime to capture the judiciary would be limited. But
the president has done nothing to actually implement those changes. For Buscaglia, judicial
reform is a joketwo years have gone by and nothing substantive has been done.
The big opportunity of democratic transition, says Ackerman, the possibility of reforming our
institutions, of bringing democracy into the state itself? Caldern just hasnt done it.
The third trial of Juan Escobedo is still under way. The ruling that will, in one way or
another, change his life is yet to come. An April 2010 hearing was interrupted, as the IRB
grappled with the fact that he took part in criminal activity, even if it was against his will.
Another hearing in June was postponed. He remains convinced that if he does return to Mexico,
the Zetas will somehow find him and subject him to the same gruesome death they have
historically inflicted on so many others. You dont ask how they can find you, he explains.
They have all your documents and thats why they go and look for you.
For her part, Basman is convinced that the IRB will carry on making negative rulings against
Mexican claimants. Because of the sheer number of claimants, theres a fear, she said, that if
you give positive decisions, youre just encouraging more to come. If you recognize Mexico as a
refugee-producing country, then more are going to come and theyre just going to be
overwhelmed at the board.
Yet in Mexico, said Buscaglia, this nightmare will never cease until the violence and the
suffering of average Mexicans reaches the political and business elitewhen their families, their
persons, and their net worth is actually hampered by organized crime, and the monster they
created starts to eat them.

https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2010/05/23/former_murder_city_cop_seeking_safehaven_in_
canada.html

Former Murder City cop seeking safehaven in Canada

A former police officer, who refused bribes from drug cartels in Juarez, Mexico, was denied
asylum in Canada

By Brendan KennedyStaff Reporter


Sun., May 23, 2010
Its almost impossible to be a good cop in Ciudad Jurez, Mexico, which in two years has
become one of the most dangerous cities in the world.
The cartels that terrorize the city and kill with impunity take a with-us or against-us approach to
police officers.
If you dont take the bribe, if you cant be extorted, then you are on the wrong side.
Gustavo Gutierrez wanted to be a clean cop, like his father. He rose quickly in Mexicos police
ranks. Admired for his hard work and commitment, he was soon leading a special task force
investigating a rising number of homicides against women.
It wasnt long before Gutierrez became the poster boy for the governments anti-corruption
campaign literally. His face was plastered on 10-metre tall billboards across the city as the
face of a new kind of cop in Mexico one that couldnt be bought.
Thats when my problems started, he says.
Soon after the billboards went up and he gained more public attention for a series of high-profile
arrests, the offers of money came. He refused.

Shortly after he and his family were threatened by armed men.


Gutierrez, who saw 36 of his colleagues police officers and justice officials working for the
states attorney assassinated by the drug gangs, fled Jurez for Mexicali, about a 16-hour
drive away. He stayed there for six months but said he never felt safe.
Gutierrez then fled to Canada on Nov. 11, 2008. He has been living in Toronto ever since.
I had a good life house, car, relatives close by, he says. I lost all of that. Im glad Im alive,
but its hard to start again.
He applied for asylum in Canada, but was denied last September. The Federal Court granted a
judicial review of his case, so he will receive a second hearing with the Immigration and Refugee
Board sometime this year.
Dubbed Mexicos murder city ever since two powerful drug cartels began a deadly war over
the citys lucrative cocaine corridor to the U.S. and Canada, Jurez, a city of 1.3 million, has had
more than 5,100 homicides since 2008.
At the same time, Canada is denying more and more refugee and asylum claims from the
country. Canadas acceptance rate for refugee claims from Mexico has dropped to 8 per cent,
from 28 per cent in 2006.
Most, like Gutierrez, are denied because Mexico is a democracy and is able to keep its citizens
safe.
There is a presumption that, except in situations where the state is in complete breakdown, the
state is capable of protecting its citizens, wrote Louise Paquette-Neville, the IRB member who
denied Gutierrezs claim.
The Star published a three-part series over the weekend about the escalating violence in Juarez
and how the Canadian government has largely shut the door to Mexican refugee claims since
2006.
Gutierrezs Canadian lawyer, Mordechai Wasserman, who specializes in immigration law, says
the IRBs decision and the governments overall policy towards claims from Mexico is
extremely removed from reality.
(Canadas) current policy is absurd because the board members refuse to look at how conditions
actually are in Mexico.
The country may have police protection and anti-corruption programs on paper, but the reality of
ordinary people living there is very different, he said.
Gutierrez says if his application is denied a second time by the IRB he will try seeking asylum in
another country. Going home to Mexico is not an option.

Ill be killed.

Mordechai Wasserman
Called to the bar: 1993 (ON)
510-920 Yonge St.
Toronto, Ontario M4W 3C7
Phone: 416-926-8882
Fax: 416-513-1919
Email: mwasserman@immigrationlawoffice.ca
http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=345652&CategoryId=14091
Canada Denies Asylum to Cop from Violent Mexican Border City
TORONTO The asylum request filed by a police officer who solved several killings of women
in the Mexican border city of Juarez has been rejected by Canadas Immigration and Refugee
Board, Canadian media reported Wednesday.
Gustavo Gutierrez Masareno requested asylum on the basis that his life was in danger and
Mexican authorities could not ensure his safety, The Globe and Mail newspaper said.
The 38-year-old Gutierrez Masareno, who had become the face of a new generation of law
enforcement officers in the violent border city, clashed with the Mexican army after reporting
human rights abuses by soldiers.
Gutierrez Masareno began receiving death threats a short time later.
Board members tend to reject Mexican claims because of purported efforts by the Mexican
authorities to provide protection, Gutierrez Masarenos attorney, Mordechai Wasserman, told
the newspaper.
The officer says the Chihuahua state Attorney Generals Office advised him to go into hiding
because it could not protect him.
Gutierrez Masareno decided to flee with his family to Canada after gunmen showed up at his
house and asked his wife about the couples children.
I was lucky, Gutierrez Masareno told The Globe and Mail. Some of my friends, they dont
receive any warning.
Canadas Immigration and Refugee Board ruled that Mexico was not dangerous enough to force
Gutierrez Masareno to have to leave the country.
They (the board) ignore the fact that violence and corruption are out of control in the country,

and that despite the good intentions of the Mexican federal government, the police are either
unable or unwilling to provide protection. In my opinion, theyve lost sight of the primary
purpose of the refugee convention, which is to provide real protection to people in danger,
Wasserman said.
Gutierrez Masareno is appealing the boards decision.
Ciudad Juarez, located across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas, first gained notoriety in the
early 1990s when young women began to disappear in the area.
So far this year, Juarez, considered Mexicos most dangerous city and the scene of frequent
shootouts between rival drug traffickers, has registered more than 1,600 murders.
More than 500 women have been killed in Ciudad Juarez since 1993, with the majority of the
cases going unsolved.
In most of the slayings, the victims were young women from poor families who came to the
border city from all over Mexico to work in the many assembly plants, known as maquiladoras,
built there to take advantage of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Investigators have not determined who is behind the killings, although there has been speculation
that serial killers, organized crime, people traffickers, drug smugglers and child pornographers,
among others, may be involved.
The wave of killings of women and girls has sparked international outrage. EFE
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/canada-rejects-mexican-police-officers-claim-forasylum/article4215087/

Canada rejects Mexican police officer's claim


for asylum
Michael Valpy
Published Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2009 12:00AM EDT
Gustavo Gutierrez Masareno was the model Mexican law-enforcement officer.
His portrait was displayed on billboards in Ciudad Juarez as the new face of authority:
trustworthy, respectful of human rights.

He had been honoured by the state governor of Chihuahua for solving cold-case murders of
women and girls in a region notorious throughout the world for its feminicidios - more than 400
femicides in the past 10 years alone linked to sex crimes.
He could boast that everyone in the female-homicide unit of the state police that he commanded
was incorruptible.
Yet none of those testaments to his uprightness was enough to make Canada's Immigration and
Refugee Board believe him when he said in his claim for asylum that his life was at risk and
Mexican authorities could not guarantee his safety.
The board ruled that Mexico wasn't dangerous enough for Mr. Gutierrez to have to leave.
Mr. Gutierrez, 38, fled Juarez after he confronted the army on civil-rights abuses and began
receiving death threats. The Chihuahua Attorney-General's office advised him to go into hiding
because it couldn't protect him, he said.
He said he came to Canada with his family after men with guns appeared outside his home, one
of them pointedly asking his wife about the couple's children.
Mr. Gutierrez is one of several Mexicans in Toronto and elsewhere in Canada who say they have
received death threats from either drug cartels or the army or police, and whose refugee claims
have been rejected. Like Mr. Gutierrez, they are appealing the IRB decisions.
"Board members tend to reject Mexican claims because of purported efforts by the Mexican
authorities to provide protection," said Mordechai Wasserman, Mr. Gutierrez's lawyer.
"They ignore the fact that violence and corruption are out of control in the country, and that
despite the good intentions of the Mexican federal government, the police are either unable or
unwilling to provide protection. In my opinion, they've lost sight of the primary purpose of the
refugee convention, which is to provide real protection to people in danger."
Mexico has been described as a country on the cusp of being a failed state, with pandemic police
corruption, increasing allegations of human-rights abuses by the army and open warfare between
the drug cartels and state and federal governments.
In 2008, more than 1,300 people - including 40 police officers - were murdered in the drug
battles in Ciudad Juarez, a city of 1.3 million that sits on the drug-trade route into neighbouring
El Paso, Texas, and is Mexico's most violent city. Its police chief, Roberto Orduna Cruz,
resigned after posters warned that a police officer would be killed every 48 hours unless the chief
stepped down. A hit list of names was left at a monument in the city for police officers killed in
the line of duty.
"I was lucky," Mr. Gutierrez said in an interview yesterday. "Some of my friends, they don't
receive any warning."

Although he is careful to say the death threats he received could have come from one of several
sources, his troubles began after Mexican President Felipe Calderon ordered thousands of
soldiers into Juarez - the city now looks like it's under military occupation - to confront the drug
gangs and root out police corruption.
Almost immediately the army was accused of human-rights abuses.
In April, 2008, Mr. Gutierrez advised female police officers who were stripped in front of troops
and others who were beaten by soldiers on how to lay formal civil-rights complaints. He acted to
protect police officers he knew were clean from being detained by the military.
"If I'd let them take those guys to Mexico City," he said, "everything I'd worked for would have
fallen to the floor."
In May, soldiers began stopping his police vehicle and searching it. They would check whether
the revolver and machine gun he carried matched the licences he had for them. Or they'd stop his
car 150 metres from his office and demand to know who he was speaking to on the phone.
Then he received a text message sent to his private cellphone that told him he was sticking his
nose in the wrong places and to be careful. A second text message arrived a day or so later telling
him not to be so cocky. "You're close to being a statistic," it said. The third message said simply:
"You're next."
After consultation with the state Attorney-General's officials, Mr. Gutierrez spent that night in
his office protected by four trusted police colleagues. Then in the morning they took him to the
airport and he flew into hiding.
Lawyer Gustavo de la Rosa Hickerson, in charge of the Juarez office of the Chiahuahua State
Human Rights Commission since April, 2008, repeatedly has spoken out on the increasing
number of complaints made against the army of human rights violations, including torture and
extrajudicial executions.
According to Amnesty International, Mr. de la Rosa was ordered by his superiors a few days ago
to stop receiving public complaints about the military.
http://www.marketwired.com/press-release/decorated-mexican-law-enforcement-officer-gustavogutierrez-masareno-1064607.htm

October 23, 2009 11:09 ET

Decorated Mexican Law Enforcement


Officer Gustavo Gutierrez Masareno
on stage at Why Everything Must Change conference

Attention: Assignment Editor, City Editor, News Editor, World News Editor,
Government/Political Affairs Editor UPDATE / MEDIA ADVISORY / TORONTO, ON / -(Marketwire - Oct. 23, 2009) - JUST ADDED TO THE PROGRAM - Gustavo Gutierrez
Masareno, the highly decorated Mexican law enforcement officer in the middle of a life and
death refugee battle here in Canada. He fled to Canada from Mexico, when the Chihuahua
government told him it couldn't guarantee his safety after he spoke out against human rights
abuses by the army. Canada's Immigration and Refugee Board has denied his claim.
Gustavo Gutierrez Masareno will be interviewed live, on stage, Saturday October 24, between
1pm and 2pm
Paul Young, controversial New York Times bestselling author of "The Shack", will headline the
second annual Why Everything Must Change event (WEMC) on October 23-24 at The Meeting
House in Oakville. The conference will feature a number of prominent speakers from the
academic, faith, and international development practice communities, and aims to inspire
attendees through a number of dynamic keynote addresses, breakout sessions and networking
opportunities.
The event is produced by SoChange Inc., an organization working with the non-governmental
community to raise awareness and support for social justice causes.
When:
Friday, October 23 (7:00PM-10:30PM)
Saturday, October 24 (8:30AM-5:00PM)
Where:
The Meeting House - 2700 Bristol Circle, Oakville, Ontario, L6H 6E1
Who:
Participants include, but are not limited to:
- Paul Young, New York Times-bestselling author of The Shack
- Greg Boyd, author, The Myth of a Christian Nation and Letters from a Skeptic
- Julia Moulden, social entrepreneur and author, We Are the New Radicals
- Ian Smillie, author, Freedom From Want and consultant on the major motion picture Blood
Diamond
- Fatmire Feka, Nobel Peace Prize nominee and founder, Kids Club for Peace
- Robin Wiszowaty, author of My Masai Life, Me2We
Ticket costs:
- Weekend pass
Advance rate: $99.00
Door rate: $115.00
- Friday only (evening): $45.00
- Saturday only (all day): $89.00
- Student and group rates are available

What:
"Why Everything Must Change" is a 1.5-day event designed to create dialogue and stimulate a
deeper understanding of what it means to be locally and globally engaged. Conference topics
include global poverty, social change, human rights and advocacy, reconciliation in the Middle
East, First Nations, HIV/AIDS and theological foundations for social justice.
About Paul Young:
Paul Young is the author of "The Shack", a fictional book of conversations between a father
whose child has been murdered and God. Young wrote it as an answer to the question "where is
God during the darkest moments?"
Born in Canada, he and his missionary parents spent his early years in the highlands of the
Netherlands New Guinea (West Papua). There, they lived among a tribal people, the Dani, who
were a tribal people still technologically living in the Stone Age. Adopted as one of their own, he
learned to speak their language. He returned to Canada, working in a variety of jobs, including
lifeguard, disc jockey and oil field worker, later completing his undergraduate degree in Religion
(summa cum laude) from Portland Oregon's Warner Pacific College.
About SoChange:
SoChange provides opportunities for capacity building and shared change around the world. As
an organization dedicated to advocacy, SoChange brokers relationships with charitable
organizations, service clubs and individual donors, plan fundraising events, writes and consults
on project proposals and raise awareness for the Non-Governmental community. The
organization exists to advocate, educate and stimulate active dialogue and tangible social change.
SoChange envisions a world where extreme poverty is eliminated, human rights are respected,
and the impact of HIV/AIDS is significantly reduced. Working locally and acting globally,
SoChange is about influencing leaders and individuals here and abroad. Please visit us online at:
www.sochange.ca
/For further information: or to arrange an interview:
Victoria Ford
VMF Ink
Cell: 905 975 2871
Email: vmf.ink@gmail.com
David Peck
SoChange Inc.
Cell: 416.877.3570
Fax: 416.849.0266
Email: david@sochange.ca
Web: www.sochange.ca
/ IN: INTERNATIONAL, JUSTICE, POLITICS, RELIGION, OTHER

Contact Information

David Peck, SoChange Inc.


Primary Phone: 416-877-3570
E-mail: david@sochange.ca

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