Thursday, May 11

ROD MICKLEBURGH
British Columbia Bureau; Wtih a report from Daniel Leblanc in Ottawa
Thursday, May 11, 2000

Vancouver -- Ninety Chinese migrants were bundled onto a plane and deported back to China yesterday, their dreams of reaping the riches of North America's fabled Gold Mountain dashed.

The mass deportation, conducted under heavy secrecy and security that included a police riot squad, was the largest by Canadian immigration officials in recent memory.

The migrants were among 590 passengers on four rusting vessels that were intercepted off the West Coast last summer before their human cargo could be smuggled into Canada.

The migrants' refugee claims subsequently failed, and most saw no more of the country than the inside of a jail cell.

As they learned their fate, which came without advance notice, some wept. Others chanted "Go China, Go China," according to immigration officials, in apparent acceptance that their long ordeal in Canada was at an end.

Television pictures showed at least one woman resisting and struggling with unidentified individuals trying to force her on to a bus.
Those deported are 75 men, 11 women and four juveniles, one an eight-year-old girl taken from her temporary foster parents before school.

Some appeared to be wearing hand restraints as they arrived in buses to board a large chartered Airbus for their long flight home. The plane took off from the Abbotsford, B.C., airport shortly after 2 p.m.

"These are people who did not want to return, [but they] have completed their refugee process and we're moving them home," said Murray Wilkinson, acting manger of the Vancouver enforcement office of Citizenship and Immigration Canada. "They're going to China."

Organizations sympathetic to the migrants' plight were angered by the deportation.

"These people have suffered. They have been incarcerated all this time [eight months] and now they are forcibly repatriated without the dignity of advance notice," said Victor Wong of the Vancouver Association of Chinese Canadians.

"These people are not dangerous. They are not criminals. And yet there were dozens of armed guards used in this exercise. We are shocked at the strong-arm actions of the Canadian government."

Members of another group, Direct Action Against Refugee Exploitation, picketed outside the Abbotsford airport shortly before the migrants left.

"We want to make sure none of them are maltreated," said spokesperson Nandita Sharma.

Immigration authorities had tried to keep the operation under wraps.

At a jail in Prince George, 800 kilometres north of Vancouver, where they had been in custody, 69 migrants were roused out of bed without warning and put on buses about 1 a.m. for the long drive to the airport. There was no public announcement.

Reporters discovered what was happening only when they noticed a large number of police officers at the Abbotsford airport as they showed up to cover an unrelated fatal helicopter crash there.

More than a dozen members of the Abbotsford police force, plus dogs, were on hand, including its black-garbed emergency-response team.

Mr. Wilkinson defended the secrecy and heavy police presence.

"We didn't want anyone put at risk. We had to be concerned for the safety and well being of our officers," he said. "We also could not let any of these people escape."

Another 23 boat people were deported earlier but they had not tried to stay in Canada. This group is the first to be sent back against its will.

The migrants had been under an expulsion order for some time, but China did not provide proper travel documents for them until Saturday.

It is believed that China's sudden decision to complete the paperwork is connected to Immigration Minister Elinor Caplan's recent trip to China and Fujian province where the migrants are from.

Only 11 boat people succeeded in winning refugee status in Canada. Another 79 have disappeared, probably smuggled into the United States where they are working to pay off their huge debts to their smugglers, known as snakeheads. The remainder are in custody, pressing appeals of their cases or waiting to be deported.

Human-smuggling charges have been laid against 17 crew members.

Mr. Wilkinson could shed little light on what fate the migrants face in China. He said some may be fined for leaving the country without a proper exit visa, but Canada does not have the resources to monitor what happens to them.

Migrants deported from Australia and the United States have not suffered, Mr. Wilkinson said. "Canada is not in a position to intervene in the internal workings of another country, but I believe they will be treated with dignity and respect."

Mr. Wilkinson said the deportations send a strong message to the snakeheads who charge up to $60,000 for passage on a boat headed to North America, known as Gold Mountain among Chinese hoping to make their fortune here. The huge sum is usually a debt illegal migrants have to pay off once they find work, if their precarious voyage is successful.

"We certainly hope this is the first step in sending a warning to the smugglers that Canada should not be a destination of choice," Mr. Wilkinson said.

"If there are more [boat people], we are most likely going to detain them and then they are going to be sent home, whether they want to go or not.

"That puts a big dent in snakehead pockets. They are not going to make money out of this."

In Ottawa, Ms. Caplan said authorities are attempting to repatriate Chinese citizens to China as soon as possible.

"I'm talking hours, days and weeks, as opposed to months and years."

Meanwhile, prison officials have confirmed that a Chinese woman incarcerated in Prince George tried to commit suicide on Monday.

She was sent to hospital but has since recovered, said provincial corrections spokesman Sheldon Green.

He declined to give further details.

The woman was not among those scheduled to be deported yesterday.

Mr. Wilkinson estimated that it has cost Canada about $30-million so far to detain and process the Chinese boat people.