Asylum sought for Snowden saviours
Ottawa petitioned to help families who sheltered ‘most wanted man’
After Edward Snowden left his job at the National Security Agency in Hawaii in the spring of 2013, flew to Hong Kong, and shocked the world with his revelations, he needed a place to hide.
Snowden had become “the world’s most wanted man” by revealing to journalists the extent of the surveillance tactics of the NSA. For four weeks that summer, three different families who had each come to Hong Kong seeking asylum, took turns sheltering Snowden in their extremely humble homes.
They did so at the request of Snowden’s Hong Kong-based Canadian lawyer, Robert Tibbo, who had helped each of them in their time of need.
Now three Montreal lawyers have joined forces with Tibbo to try to persuade the Canadian government to welcome those three families to Canada, because their situations in Hong Kong are precarious.
Francis Tourigny, Michael Simkin and Marc-André Séguin have formed a not-for-profit called For The Refugees to support the families materially since they have no means to support themselves in Hong Kong, and to try to bring them to Canada.
The lawyers say they filed refugee claims for the seven people with Canadian immigration authorities in late January. But they say conditions have worsened for the families as their identities have become public, so they are now calling on Canadian immigration minister Ahmed Hussen to use his discretionary powers to expedite those claims.
“Over the course of the past few weeks, we felt compelled to take an additional step forward, so we formally petitioned the Canadian government to take these clients as refugees,” Montreal-based immigration lawyer Marc-André Séguin said in a news release published on the new organization’s website, Fortherefugees.com.
The refugees include Ajith Pushpakumara, a former soldier from Sri Lanka, Vanessa Mae Rodel, a domestic worker from the Philippines and her four-year-old daughter Keana, Nadeeka Dilrukshi Nonis, a refugee from Sri Lanka and her husband Supun Thilina Kellapatha and their two young children, Sethumdi and Dinath. The lawyers believe the seven people, including the three young children who are stateless, have very strong cases and that they meet every criteria to be accepted as refugees into Canada.
“These are people who fled persecution, who today in Hong Kong have no future as a result of the very nature of the system applicable to asylum-seekers, and who are being actively sought after by authorities from their home countries,” he added. The For The Refugees website quotes Snowden, who is now in Russia where he has been granted asylum until 2020, as saying the refugee families who helped him “risked everything to do what is right.”
The organization has so far raised $100,000 in donations for the refugees.