Young War Resisters face uncertain future

July 25, 2012 | Young Voices
Emily Loewen | Young Voices Co-Editor
Toronto, ON

Growing up in a pro-military culture like Mesquite, Texas, meant that Kimberly Rivera never thought she would leave the army. “I was pro-war, pro-life, pro-death penalty,” said the 30-year-old.

“I thought it would be like a good thing as far as I will be serving my country, I’ll be, you know, doing the patriotic American thing.”

But after spending three months in Iraq she worried about the effect of the war on soldiers. “I was kind of getting to where I didn’t want to have people around me; I didn’t want to lose any friends so I didn’t want to make friends,” she said. She also saw the negative effects that home raids and searches had on the Iraqi people.

When she returned home on a priority leave in early 2007, she only planned to be gone two weeks, but after talking it over with her husband she decided to leave the military and drove with her family to Canada.

Rivera is one several young war resisters now living in Toronto. While the number of resisters coming to Canada has declined since the implementation of new passport rules in 2009, those who made it here before the change face an uncertain future. They live here, work here, find relationships and have children, but their fate still lies in the hands of the government and the courts.

Rivera has received two deportation notices so far. Both were successfully fought by her lawyer, but she still leaves many of her belongings in boxes in case her family of six is asked to leave.

The War Resisters Support Campaign estimates that several hundred US resisters live in Canada right now, with a concentration in Toronto. The campaign has worked with approximately fifty of them to try and gain entrance to Canada—none have been accepted yet said campaign volunteer Christine Beckermann in a phone interview.

Because of the decline in arrivals, media attention around the issue has decreased in recent years, but Operational Bulletin 202, issued in 2010, is still a main advocacy concern for the campaign.

The bulletin states that because military desertion is an offence under the National Defence Act in Canada, war resisters may be ineligible to stay. Their cases are now referred to a central Case Review Division which gives direction to decision makers, Citizenship and Immigration media relations staff Remi Lariviere wrote in an email.

But the support campaign believes the bulletin causes unfair political interference in refugee applications. “This isn’t a normal thing, this type of decision is supposed to be made at the discretion of the immigration officers,” Beckermann said, “we’re really focusing on that and trying to have that operational bulletin rescinded.”

It seems unusual to have US citizens applying for refugee status, but a United Nations handbook states that soldiers may qualify as refugees if they don’t participate in a war because of political beliefs or because the international community does not support it.

Furthermore, many war resisters could face a jail sentence if they return to the United states.

Potential prison time is a reality for Christian Kjar, another resister living in Toronto. He joined the military right before his 19th birthday because he believed it could help make the world better.

“At that time I was really idealistic,” he said. “I really had almost a naive sense that I just wanted to help people as much as I could.”

But after 10 months of working as a military police officer and reading about how the war affected people in Iraq, he decided he didn’t want to participate anymore.

Though he didn’t apply for conscientious objector status, he believes strongly in his non-religious stance. “I don’t feel like I need to be religious to be an objector to war; I don’t need to have any type of views other than that of compassion for people who suffer because of violence,” he said.

Though many of the resisters don’t have a religious background, says Paul Heidebrecht from the MCC Ottawa office, their cases have implications for pacifists like Mennonites. “The treatment of US war resisters in particular has ramifications for how freedom of conscience is understood for all those who would refuse to serve in the military,” he said.

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