Elizabeth May joins appeal to aid Russian scientist
Professor fears arrest, death over data on industries creating environmental risks
Federal Green Party Leader Elizabeth May has joined the campaign on behalf of a Russian scientist living in Gatineau who says she will be persecuted or killed if sent back home.
May appealed to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to offer asylum to Elena Musikhina. The Canadian government has the power to allow her to stay on humanitarian grounds, May said at a news conference Wednesday.
David Kilgour, a former MP and cabinet minister with a long history as a human-rights activist, also spoke on Musikhina’s behalf, saying he’s convinced she will be in “enormous danger” in Russia. “She can’t go back,” he said in an interview.
Musikhina’s claim for refugee status was turned down in 2016, and an appeal also failed.
She says she is in danger back home because she has sensitive information about chemical and biological weapons factories and other industries that are creating environmental risks in Siberia, where she was a professor at Irkutsk State Technical University.
Musikhina was part of an environmental assessment team. She said they uncovered damaging information about health risks to the people of Siberia that the Russian government does not want publicized. She advised the governor of Irkutsk that it was dangerous to have so many factories in one region, some of which were in seismic zones, according to her refugee claim. “Very influential people who had financial gain in the weapons industry offered me money to shut up, but I refused.”
Musikhina says 23 people who had information about environmental risks have died under suspicious circumstances in Russia. That includes the governor of Irkutsk, reportedly killed in a helicopter crash with eight others while bear hunting. Russian officials offered a “ridiculous” theory that the crash was caused when the bear, being dragged in a net below the helicopter, woke up and grabbed a tree, she said.
Another helicopter exploded while carrying colleagues conducting environmental assessments, killing 11 people, she said.
Musikhina said she left Russia because she feared being arrested. She had been forced to resign from her teaching job and documents she needed to travel within Russia had been taken away, she said.
She and her husband still had passports, though, and went to Poland, where their son was enrolled in a language school. They spent several weeks there before arriving in Canada on a tourist visa in 2015. Her daughter lives in Gatineau.
Musikhina said if she goes back home, she’s convinced she’ll be the victim of an “accident” or jailed. “I am guaranteed imprisonment, but most likely an accident, as has happened to several of my colleagues.”
Her claim for refugee status was turned down in 2016. The tribunal said the couple “did not provide credible testimony and did not establish their allegations on the balance of probabilities.” It also noted the couple was allowed to leave Russia, which “diminishes their credibility on regards to whether the authorities were seeking them.”
Musikhina is waiting to find out if the Federal Court of Canada will grant leave to review her case. If that is turned down, she could be deported within days, said May.