Open letter

Опубликовано: 22.12.2020

Dear Human Rights Activist,
Today I am appealing to you! For almost five years my husband and I have been in Canada practically in the position of hostages by the Canadian government, in violation of all human rights norms of international and federal law.

Photo copyright: pixabay.com

From the very beginning, our rights to an independent and impartial investigation were violated in court by endless questions about work at the university and deliberately ignoring the most important points in the persecution of us by Russian authorities. The judge’s stubborn unwillingness to understand that Russian citizens had two passports: internal passports, which were confiscated from us in the presence of our lawyer, and external ones, which the Canadian immigration service seized when we applied for political asylum. He refused to accept for consideration three affidavits I received on the evening before the second hearing. After several unsuccessful attempts, the lawyer who defended me in Russia was finally able to send them to me (I showed an envelope signed by the delivery service), sending these affidavits cost her a career and flight from Russia to Ukraine (where she is a single mom now). Her daughter has a certain talent as an artist and my husband and I try to help them financially and morally.

I understand that both of our first lawyers worked unprofessionally, but I know for sure that our testimonies were exhaustive and each was confirmed either by documentary evidence or by witness testimony, except one, with an alleged FSB officer.

Canadian government’s prejudice extends to our children. The eldest daughter, a single mother is already in her fifth year as they do not resolve the issue of citizenship for her and her daughter. And my son, who was left without a home and family, was not given a visa due to “extremely high specialization and knowledge of five languages” when I pleaded with the Canadian government for this and gave the Canadian intelligence representatives the main chapter of my doctoral dissertation containing very valuable and important classified information.

Two years ago, the Canadian government, in violation of Geneva Convention, was going to transfer my husband and me, accompanied by a Canadian border guard, to Russian special services, from which we asked for protection. My husband and I were photographed as criminals and locked in an interrogation room with a mirrored wall. We have never been humiliated like that before, even in Russia. To our request to return our passports and allow us to leave Canada, a threat of detention was received. We were under house arrest for a month (although my husband was allowed to continue working) and I was already thinking about ways to commit suicide. Under pressure from our friends, our new lawyer, the press, and the American scientific community, we were given two years of temporary stay in Canada, which expire on November 14, 2020. Despite the receipt of humanitarian status (which we received exclusively to the professionalism of our new lawyer) and the consent of the Quebec government to accept us, the immigration service artificially delays the process of assigning us a resident status of Canada, motivating that they are still testing my husband and me for criminal prosecution. Traveling abroad, we regularly received a certificate of no criminal record, and with the current electronic system, such a check takes no more than a month.

Our son, who, fortunately, did not end up in Canada and is now a permanent resident of Mexico, has not been able to hug us for five years, I cannot work in my specialty without permanent status, although my doctoral degree is confirmed by the appropriate service in Canada, and we are not sure of our safety.

Thus the Canadian government punished us for resistance to the Russian political system!

I am asking you to protect our human rights and to demand from the government to fulfill their obligations in a timely manner.

Cordially,
Elena Musikhina