Tag: refugee status

Canadian court: If South African blacks attack you, you must be a ‘white supremacist’

Canada’s Federal Court has rejected a white Afrikaner family’s bid for asylum in the country, claiming that racially skewed crime statistics from South Africa constituted “white-supremacist hate literature”. Judge René LeBlanc of the court said their refugee claim “offered no evidence the state of South Africa is incapable of offering protection for their children from rape or murder”.

Canada also rejected the notion that the South African president and other political figures singing “Kill a Boer, kill a farmer” constituted discrimination or hate speech.

Eric Williams Endre and Sonja Endre, a married couple, along with two of their children and Sonja’s parents, visited Canada in 2016 and after hearing that the country championed human rights, decided to apply for refugee status as they had already been attacked five times by blacks in South Africa. Once in 1995 their car was hijacked at gunpoint, then in 2004 they suffered a home invasion with four blacks assaulting and robbing them. In 2013 their home was burglarized. A year later, in 2014, their car was stolen outside their house and later in the same year three black men tried to steal Sonja’s cell phone while she was working.

While Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has often said in the media that “all refugees are welcome in Canada”, his statement apparently does not apply to white South Africans, specifically Afrikaners. Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board denied the Endres refugee protection, saying “there was no reliable evidence that they were attacked due to their race, and it was more probable they were attacked for economic reasons — to steal their possessions”.

During their appeal to the Federal Court of Canada, the family argued that the IRB failed to adequately consider the children’s circumstances. They said that “their children cannot safely play in parks in South Africa; one was bullied and had been taken out of school; and their mother could not walk with her children without fearing they could be assaulted, raped or killed”.

South Africa has the highest incidence of rape in the world. However, defending the IRB’s decision, government lawyers stated that concerns for the children were based on “patently unreliable racist propaganda”.

A government lawyer said the fear of white children being raped by blacks “was highly offensive as the information the family relied on was white-supremacist hate literature that should be ignored”.

The government also said the Endres’ claim was based on a risk of generalized crime in South Africa, meaning that it could impact almost anyone, not only those who are white or Afrikaners.

According to Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board, refugee status is “not meant to protect people who face problems the general population of a country faces, but only fears of persecution specific to race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion”.

The international refugee system is not meant to offer a safe haven for all suffering people, the IRB’s published guidelines say.

In his judgment dismissing their appeal, René LeBlanc said: “It is also settled law that absent a complete breakdown of state apparatus, it is presumed that a state is capable of protecting its citizens and that this presumption can only be rebutted by the refugee claimant with clear and convincing evidence.”

Until now, very few South African citizens have been accorded refugee status in Canada. So far in 2017, none has been accepted. In 2016 there were 12, in 2015 there were 18, in 2014 there were two and none in 2013.

Canada approves asylum bid after ‘Shoot the Boer’

President Jacob Zuma’s singing of the refrain ”shoot the Boer” at an ANC event was among the reasons for the Canadian Federal Court ruling that a white South African couple could continue with their bid for asylum.

Though Charl and Naira Nel have not directly been victims of crime in this country, they say they fear genocide and rape here.

Aggravating their anxiety was Zuma’s performance of a struggle song two years ago and Julius Malema’s rendition of Dubul’Ibhunu (Shoot the Boer). The song Malema sang was declared hate speech by the Equality Court in 2011. Malema was president of the ANC Youth League at the time.

The Zuma song, at the ANC centenary celebrations in 2012, was Dubula ngembayimbayi(Shoot with a machine gun). The president sang the refrain ”shoot the Boer” several times during his rendition.

The Nels left South Africa in 2010 and applied for refugee status in Canada. They sought the assistance of Russell Kaplan, a South African expatriate lawyer who had helped white Capetonian Brandon Huntley in his fight for asylum.

In June, the federal court upheld the board’s decision to deny Huntley refugee status. He had sought asylum in 2008, claiming that he had been assaulted by black South Africans.

The board granted him refugee status in 2009 but the decision was found to be “unreasonable” on judicial review.

In their application, the Nels said ”crimes against white people frequently involved mutilation and brutality, even when nothing was stolen; they observed that political leaders had sung songs about killing white people even after a South African court had declared the song racist. They submitted expert evidence by a reporter, Adriana Stuijt, and the president of Genocide Watch, Dr Gregory Stanton, indicating these crimes were racially motivated.”

But the board refused the couple’s application, saying that although they expressed fear of persecution because they were white, it found “nothing had happened to them personally” and they were not in need of protection.

The Nels then approached the federal court.

On September 4, Judge John O’Keefe set aside the board’s decision and referred their case to another panel for reconsideration.

It is not known when this will be done.

Judge O’Keefe said: “… the board’s assessment of [ Nel’s] updated narrative is puzzling. In it, [he] said that he had become fearful of returning to South Africa because [Malema] had since sung an anti-apartheid song called Kill the Farmer, Shoot the Boer .

”Even after a South African court ruled that the song was hate speech, Malema continued to sing it and Zuma also sang it at the 100th anniversary of the ANC.

“Genocide Watch also updated the situation to stage six of the eight stages of genocide because of political shifts and warned white Afrikaners to leave South Africa,” the judge said.

”The board dismissed the updated narrative on the basis that these were not significant changes and concluded that it was only done with the intent of amplifying a situation of fear.

“However, it never explained why it felt the singing of this song by political leaders or the Genocide Watch opinion could not have legitimately inspired a further subjective fear of political persecution in the applicants.”

Kaplan told the Canadian Post: ”This is the first time the Federal Court of Canada has awarded a white South African with a favourable decision – a big step.”

From 2006 to June 2014, 151 South Africans applied for asylum. Only 23 applications were accepted.

Source: Timeslive