S. Africa condemns Canada as "racist" for granting refugee status to white S. African

This is a much bigger story internationally than in Canada so far, but I found a story in the G&M:

Submitted by martin dufresne on September 1, 2009 - 10:52pm.

BBC version: ANC denounces Canada ruling as racist

Submitted by Coyote on September 1, 2009 - 10:54pm.

I hadn't heard of this. This is unbelievable! What's the process here? Can this be appealled in any way?

Submitted by Unionist on September 1, 2009 - 11:06pm.

Good question. I've never heard of an appeal where refugee status is granted. Who would have standing to bring such an appeal... the Minister I guess?

Submitted by Coyote on September 1, 2009 - 11:12pm.

I kinda hope a politician DOESN'T have that right, as a matter of principle. The potential for abuse is scary. But on the face of it this appears outrageous and I hope there's a place for sober second thought; if there isn't, there should be.

Not often on babble we're critisizing the refugee board for letting someone IN!

Submitted by martin dufresne on September 1, 2009 - 11:28pm.

This from the South African IOL Daily News, "ANC slams refugee ruling":

"(...)Home Affairs spokesman Ronnie Mamoepa said it would have been "courteous" for Canadian authorities to get the South African government's side of the story before making its decision on Huntley.

"We should reject these ridiculous allegations that have been levelled against our people and the country," he said.

(...)The official unemployment rate for white South Africans is 4.6 percent, compared to 27.9 percent for blacks, despite the affirmative action drive."

From a previous Daily News article: "SA man gets asylum in Canada for being white [7]", where the anti-affirmative action agenda is blatant:

"(...)Huntley also said he had been able to find employment only because of family connections. He was otherwise prohibited from finding work by the country's affirmative action policies. "Upon his return to South Africa (at the end of 2004), he knew that he could not survive there any more. He was constantly afraid and he knew there was no future from a security (and financial) point of view because of his skin colour", the decision said, noting Huntley's allegations.(...)"

Not unlike our own men's rights whines about women being unfairly hired, is it? Note the gross "dating service" ad about a White male peeved at not managing to interest Black women.

Submitted by Unionist on September 3, 2009 - 10:22pm.

Two developments:

1. The key evidence as to the "persecution" faced by wealthy whites in South Africa came from... the lawyer's sister (!?!?!).

2. The department of Citizenship and Immigration has announced it will appeal - good! I thought this government was immune to international pressure (other than from the U.S. and Israel).

Source.

Submitted by martin dufresne on September 3, 2009 - 11:02pm.

What I find bizarre is that discrimination is allegedly proved by another White's testimony of hard times for Whites, but without any comparison to similar straits for Blacks!

Can someone who knows about this hearing process tell us whether there is usually someone in charge of rebutting such "evidence" of discrimination, or is that simply up to the board in its wisdom?

It seems obvious to me that to accept a claim of discrimination, the board ought to have examined the incidence of assaults against Black South Africans - and especially Black women and poor people -, as compared to the actual instances of assaults against wealthy white men? Even Mr. Huntley's "witness", Russell Kaplan's sister, acknowledges that "her brother brother and her father survived ... because of their wealth, being able to install electronic and guard protection for themselves both inside and outside their home." Blacks without such protections die in disproportionate numbers in SA, and Canada is admitting none of them as refugees despite such blatantly different life conditions. Who next? Any South American tortioner facing a change of regime?

As for the argument that the existence of an affirmative action disposition in South Africa (a country where Black folks' unemployment rate still remains sevenfold that of Whites) is sufficient to establish discrimination and entitlement to be admitted to Canada as a "refugee", it should be ample grounds for kicking the decisionmaker involved, tribunal panel chairman William Davis, out on his elegant white ass.

History repeats itself. Quebec was flooded with right-wing "pieds noirs" angry at African decolonization in the late fifties and early sixties. And it would be interesting to look into how many French, Italian and German well-to-do bourgeois greased their way into Canada when Germany lost WW 2.

Submitted by Unionist on September 3, 2009 - 10:56pm.

Agreed. This decision appears to have been too embarrassing even for the Harper regime - which is saying quite a whole lot!

Submitted by martin dufresne on September 3, 2009 - 11:39pm.

The argument "I was assaulted because of my skin colour" is obviously false if placed in context.

I suggest that Huntley's true, implicit argument - the only one to sit with the facts - is the reverse: "I was assaulted despite my skin colour." He is being given refugee status as redress, on the basis of his racist expectation - now endorsed by the Canadian government - that Whites ought to be immune from violence by "those people" and that it's discrimination if they aren't.

This awful, racist decision destroys not only our international reputation and trade with SA; it endangers all Canadians living or traveling in South Africa.

Submitted by Nick Van der Graaf on September 4, 2009 - 12:35am.

Well, the evidence is clear to anyone who reads a daily newspaper that this claim is spurious. But what is troubling is that members of the tribunal know so little about conditions in South Africa that they BELIEVED that nonsense.

If they know nothing about a fairly well-known country - due to its infamous history - like R.S.A., what other nations, which are generating genuine refugees who fetch up in front of them, do they know dick all about?

The word incompetence looms large in my mind. It's very troubling. Real refugees depend on these people to make decisions which are life and death matters for them.

Submitted by martin dufresne on September 4, 2009 - 1:04am.

...members of the tribunal know so little about conditions in South Africa that they BELIEVED that nonsense

May I suggest that this interpretation of their decision is generous to the point of naïveté...

Submitted by M. Spector on September 8, 2009 - 12:38am.

Geoffrey York wrote:

After overcoming their shock at the Canadian decision to give refugee status to a 31-year-old white man who claimed to be "persecuted" by black criminals, South Africans have quickly recovered their sense of the absurd.

South Africans are among the world's funniest, most irreverent, scathing and acerbic commentators on daily events - equalled perhaps only by the Russians who joked their way through the dying decades of the Soviet Union. And they've switched on their highly tuned sense of the surreal to find some kind of meaning in the Brandon Huntley decision .

Mr. Huntley, as most readers know by now, is the white South African who managed to persuade a Canadian refugee board member to award him refugee status in Canada on the grounds that he would "stand out like a sore thumb" if he was forced to return to his homeland. He claimed that he was "persecuted" by black muggers and robbers who attacked him merely because of his skin colour.

South Africans were outraged at first, but soon they appreciated the ridiculousness of it all. Their reactions now are veering toward the droll and satiric.

One newspaper, the Mail & Guardian, suggested that the Canadian official who made the refugee decision would be a perfect sucker for a Nigerian email scam. The newspaper promised him a $1-million award for his "brave decision" in the Huntley case, and added: "As soon as you send a $50,000 (US) handling fee, the money will be transferred to your account."

The newspaper also praised Mr. Huntley for his "dofness" - a South African term that remains obscure to me, but apparently is the perfect description of Mr. Huntley's attitude towards life. "This is a man who is so damned lazy he couldn't be bothered to report to police the seven vicious attacks on his person," the newspaper said. "Respect."

South African cartoonists have had a field day with Mr. Huntley and the Canadian refugee decision. Lumberjacks and Mounties have figured prominently in their satires of wooly-headed Canadian thinking.

S. Africa condemns Canada as "racist" for granting refugee status to white S. African

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