2006/04/19

Huseyin Celil's fingerprints matched


April 17, 2006
We have communicated with Mrs. Celil in Tashkent. She is on her way to Toronto, most probably will arrive on April 21. She could not get sufficient assistance from Canadian officials in Tashkent and she has indicated that Canadian diplomats change so often, neither she nor Consular affairs staff becomes familiar with each other or the case.We sincerely thank Amnesty International's kind efforts for the case. AI Canada brought the issue in front of the Minister of Foreign Affairs as well as other pertinent officials and institutions.We have received telephone calls from supporters from many locations across Canada. Despite the divergent locations we have received telephone calls, they most often converge on an issue as to whether there are levels of Canadian Citizenship -depending on race, ethnicity, place of birth or naturalized/citizen by birth. As advocates of the case, we thought it may be prudent to raise this question on our website. Because we do not really know if there are tiers of citizenship and different denotations. We have conducted a research on the citizenship issue on the Parliament website. It may help you better understand the concept. There are different accounts for the concept. The discussants could not deny existence of different tiers of citizenship. Mr. Lorne Waldman, an expert lawyer on immigration and citizenship has stated"I just want to say that the major concern I have about the legislation in general is what I see as a significant erosion in the rights of certain categories of citizens. We're going to create in Canada two classes of citizens: those who acquire citizenship by birth, either because they are born in Canada or they are born of Canadian parents, in which case they are immune from the revocation proceedings, and those who are naturalized."
April 19, 2006
We communicated with Mrs. Celil in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. She stated that the fingerprints were matched with Kyrgyzstan and China. Further to that, she was informed that both China and Kyrgyzstan have requested Mr. Huseyin Celil be extradited to them. As we know, Uzbekistan requested an Interpol clearance on Huseyin Celil and China and Kyrgyzstan responded positively to the request.She said she was given some of the personal items such as her purse, credit cards and ID's for the children. The Consular staff in Tashkent helped her to get them back.
RFA Correspondent Kamil Tursun conveyed Rabeeya Kadeer's speech to us. She urged the Government of the United States to act immediately to save Huseyin Celil and other human rights activists. She also reiterated that China pressures even most democratic western societies to hand over political dissidents to China as in the case of Ismail Samad and possible Huseyin Celil. She emphasized that despite UNHCR's clear-cut guidelines and regulations, Uzbekistan does not follows the rules and bows to Chinese pressures. This also indicates that it is time to globally caution Uzbekistan for their non-UN-compliant activities and possible referral to UN Security Council where China also holds a permanent seat.
Morteza Jafarpour, SISO's Executive Director, emphasized their commitment to refugee and immigration issues as well as human rights activism. Therefore, he stated that they will help Mrs. Celil as much as possible such as translation services and transportation in Hamilton-Burlington area. He also stated that they are in close contact with Chris MacLeod.