RSS FeedThis is a Warning
According to our Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon’s interpretation of the law, your passport picture must be “identical” to what you “claim to be”.
http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/671732
Otherwise, Canadian consular officials may declare you to be an impostor, and you could be stuck abroad or maybe even jailed there.
There is of course a chance our government will let you take a DNA test, but be prepared to hire lawyers before you leave Canada.
What is this, people?
Kenyan court gives reprieve in the passport case
Nairobi court grants woman time for DNA test
Lips and law
Woman’s lips trapped her in Kenya
Abdelrazik reveals details
Canada ‘indifferent’ to Sudan’s threat to kill Abdelrazik, files show
More on the passport case
Woman hopes DNA unlocks Kenya trap
Justice still denied
Ottawa urged to rescue Kenya detainee
Toronto woman marooned in Kenya seeks court injunction to restore passport
Incredible
Canadian citizen? Be afraid.
Ottawa denies woman in Kenya is Canadian citizen
We wrote about Ms. Haji stuck in Kenya since May 17. Kenyan authorities alleged she wasn’t Ms. Haji at all. Saying she was someone else using Ms. Haji’s Canadian passport, they put her in jail.
Released on bail, she called her family in Toronto. She also produced “all her other photo ID, plus credit and bank cards as well as a Humber River Regional Hospital user card.”
Her MP Joe Volpe vouched for her. Her ex-husband, her son, her neighbours vouched for her too.
But last week, the Canadian government said she was not Ms. Haji. According to the Toronto Star, the woman’s demand to have her fingerprints verified has so far been ignored.
Despite media attention, growing discontent in the Toronto’s Somali community, and at least an appearance that the woman has a strong case, the government has not explained its decision.
If the government were to reject plausible claims of Canadian citizenship made abroad without giving reasons, what would be the value of s. 6(1) of the Charter for all of us?
(post sponsored by advicescene.com)
Another Black Canadian stuck abroad
The Toronto Star reports Suaad Mohamud Haji, a woman from Toronto, cannot leave Kenya where she was visiting her sick mother. Kenyan officials allege she does not look like her Canadian passport photo. The photo is more than four years old. Her son, ex-husband, and a neighbour, all in Toronto, spoke with her on the phone and recognized her voice.
Ms. Haji was detained on May 17 when she tried to board her flight back home. She is out on bail now with the next court hearing due on July 21. According to Ms. Haji, she tried to get Canadian consular officials’ help: ”I phone them three times again today and nobody calls me back.” Foreign Affairs in Ottawa said that they are “working with Kenyan authorities to verify the identity of the individual.”
What exactly they are doing and why it has taken almost six weeks, the Foreign Affairs spokesman did not say, according to the Star.
I don’t know what to say to Ms. Haji, stuck in Kenya.
Happy Canada Day?
(post sponsored by advicescene.com)
