A white man from South Africa has been given refugee status in Canada after claiming persecution, his lawyer said, angering many in his home country, where race remains a highly sensitive issue.
A Canadian immigration board panel issued its ruling late last week in the case involving Brandon Carl Huntley, lawyer Russell Kaplan said.
Kaplan said on Tuesday this was likely the first time a white South African had been granted refugee status in Canada, claiming persecution from black South Africans.
The Immigration and Refugee Board refused to comment on the case or to release the decision. Board spokesman Stephane Malepart said he was barred from commenting on any individual case by privacy provisions.
Malepart said the board is an independent tribunal that operates at arm’s length from the Canadian government.
Huntley argued that whites are targeted by black criminals in South Africa and that the government does nothing to protect them.
He said he had been attacked seven times during attempted robberies and muggings.
Kaplan, a South African native who moved to Canada 20 years, said tribunal panel chair William Davis ruled that Huntley would stand out like a “sore thumb” because of his color in any part of South Africa and that Kaplan’s fears of persecution were justified based on the evidence he submitted.
In his its written decision, Davis said “I find that the claimant was a victim because of his race (white South African) rather than a victim of criminality.”
It also said that Huntley “has presented clear and convincing proof of the state’s inability or unwillingness to protect him.”
The news of the Canadian panel’s ruling made headlines and was a topic for call-in radio programs in South Africa on Tuesday.
Ronnie Mamoepa, spokesman for South Africa’s immigration ministry, said Huntley’s “claims were aimed at tarnishing the good name of black and white South Africans ... and were racially motivated.”
He also said that “it would have been courteous for the Canadian government to allow the South African government to respond to these claims.”
The governing African National Congress (ANC) said the government was working hard to curb crime.
ANC spokesman Brian Sokutu said: “We find the claim by Huntley to have been attacked seven times by Africans due his skin color without any police intervention sensational and alarming.”
“Canada’s reasoning for granting Huntley a refugee status can only serve to perpetuate racism,” he said.
In an editorial on Tuesday, the Johannesburg daily the Times said: “News that Canada has granted a white South African refugee status because his life is in danger at the hands of his black countrymen is shocking and saddening. It says more about Canadian perceptions than South African reality.”
But AfriForum, a white lobby, has asked Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, the South African immigration minister, to look into the cause of white emigration and to take seriously the claim by Huntley’s lawyer that he “presented a clear and convincing proof of the state’s inability or unwillingness to protect him.”
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
RSS