Pinay in HK who helped Edward Snowden faces deportation

A Filipina and several other refugees who sheltered fugitive whistleblower Edward Snowden in Hong Kong are facing deportation after the city's authorities rejected their bid for protection, their lawyer said Monday.
The impoverished Philippine and Sri Lankan refugees helped the former National Security Agency contractor evade authorities in 2013 by hiding him in their cramped homes after he initiated one of the largest data leaks in US history. 
They have spent years hoping the government would recognize their cases and save them from being sent back to their home countries, where they say they were persecuted. 
However, immigration authorities rejected their protection claims Monday.
"The decisions are completely unreasonable," their lawyer Robert Tibbo told reporters, saying the procedures had been "manifestly unfair" towards his clients. 
Tibbo said their cases had been rejected because their home countries were deemed safe. 
The refugees have said previously they were specifically asked about their links to Snowden by Hong Kong authorities. 
"We now have less than two weeks to submit appeals before the families are deported," said Tibbo alongside the refugees, who were visibly distressed. 
He said there was a risk his clients could be detained and their children placed in government custody.
After leaving his initial Hong Kong hotel bolthole for fear of being discovered, Snowden went underground, fed and looked after by the refugees for around two weeks.
Their stories only emerged late last year.
The group includes a Sri Lankan couple with two young children and a mother from the Philippines and her five-year-old daughter.
The adults say they experienced torture and persecution in their own countries and cannot safely return.
Their lawyers and some city legislators have said two of the Sri Lankan refugees have been targeted by agents from their home country who travelled to Hong Kong. 
Hong Kong is not a signatory to the UN's refugee convention and does not grant asylum.
However, it is bound by the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (UNCAT) and considers claims for protection based on those grounds. 
It also considers claims based on risk of persecution.
After government screening, claimants found to be at risk of persecution are referred to the UN's refugee agency, which can try to resettle them to a safe third country.
But with fewer than one percent of cases successfully substantiated by city authorities, most refugees live in fear of deportation.
Hong Kong's 11,000 marginalised refugees spend years in limbo, hoping the government will eventually support their claims. 
Lawyers for the Snowden refugees separately lodged an asylum petition with the Canadian government in March and called for that process to be expedited Monday.
Human Rights Watch also urged the Canadian government to "intervene swiftly and protect them" following the rejection of their petitions in Hong Kong.
The refugees faced "dire risk if sent back to their countries," said Dinah PoKempner, general counsel at the rights group. —Agence France-Presse

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Russia captures town after 2 years of Ukrainian resistance --- Reuters

Russian forces now control 98.5% of Luhansk, 60% of Donetsk MOSCOW: Russian troops on Wednesday took charge of the eastern Ukrainian town of Vuhledar, a bastion that had resisted intense attacks since Russia launched its full-scale assault in 2022. The advance of Moscow's forces, which control just under a fifth of Ukraine, has underlined Russia's vast superiority in men and materiel as Ukraine pleads for more weapons from the Western allies that have been supporting it. Ukraine's eastern military command said it had ordered a pullback from the hilltop coal mining town to avoid encirclement by Russian troops and "preserve personnel and military equipment". The Russian defense ministry did not mention Vuhledar in its daily battlefield report. Russian Telegram channels, however, published video of troops waving the Russian tricolor flag over shattered buildings. The town, which had a population of over 14,000 before the war, has been devastated, with Soviet-era
Read more

UP Diliman Professors Share Scientists’ Procurement Struggles at Senate Hearing

By Harvey Sapigao Senate hearing of the revised procurement law (Photo credit: Senate of the Philippines) College of Science (CS) Dean Giovanni Tapang held up a little white device as he finished his presentation. “This is a ₱150,000 component,” he described. “Isa lang gumagawa nito sa buong mundo, pero ang hirap pilitin sila na magregister sa PhilGEPS,” he continued, referring to the requirement that foreign companies must first register to the Philippine Government Electronic Procurement System (PhilGEPS) before they can sell products to local scientists. Marine Science Institute (MSI) Deputy Director Dr. Irene Rodriguez explained that the small device is a resin that filters metals in water. “May budget tayo,” she said, “pero ang problema ko ay ‘yung resin na ito.” This and other bottlenecks brought about by the procurement law, or the Government Procurement Reform Act (RA 9184), slow down research and development in the country. UPD leaders were invited to the Senate he
Read more

Vietnam condemns China's 'brutal behavior' in fisher attack ---- Agence France-Presse

HANOI, Vietnam — Vietnam's foreign ministry condemned on Wednesday China's "brutal behavior" during a violent attack on Vietnamese fishers in the disputed South China Sea. The 10 fishermen were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars' worth of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands -- an archipelago in the resource-rich waterway claimed by China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei. Vietnam "resolutely protests the brutal behavior of Chinese law enforcement forces against Vietnamese fishermen and fishing vessels operating in the Hoang Sa archipelago of Vietnam", foreign ministry spokesperson Vietnam Pham Thu Hang said in a statement, using the Vietnamese term for the Paracel Islands. "The above actions of Chinese law enforcement forces seriously violated Vietnam's sovereignty" over the archipelago, the statement said. Four of the Vietnamese crew were taken to hospital on Monday
Read more