Medical student intern found guilty because he survived genocide, how you can help him stay alive

This will definitely be a case study of a broken immigration and justice system in a Western nation. The only positive aspect here is that together, no matter where we live in the world, we still have an option to save this innocent man's life. A sample e-mail you can send to the Canadian Immigration Minister is at the end of this article.

A few weeks ago in Canada, the Federal Court sided with Canadian immigration authorities by ruling that a Rwandan medical student intern was a war criminal simply because he survived the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. A Canadian immigration official had previously ordered Mr. Jean Leonard Teganya to be deported from Canada on the grounds that he had interned in a Rwandan hospital where several patients were massacred by armed militias that invaded that hospital. The immigration official reasoned that since the militias did not kill the medical student intern, this was proof that the intern was a war criminal. The long legal details of the court proceedings can be found on Canada's Federal Court web site. A summary of Mr. Teganya's case can be found in the National Post, a Canadian newspaper.

I have lived through a civil war and witnessed many people who survived only because they received medical attention from the few medical professionals who stayed behind. A lot of the time the medical professionals stayed at the risk of losing their own lives. That is why I personally find it atrocious that some officials would dare brand a medical student intern as a war criminal simply because he survived the massacres in his hospital. This is such an assault on war victims all over the world. When we start telling medical professionals that by virtue of not being killed, we will find them guilty of siding with the murderers, the real murderers have won. Such perverted reasoning blurs the line between murderer and victim; it blurs the line between hostage and hostage-taker. In the process, everyone becomes a murderer. Therefore, the murderer feels like they are normal, that they are not alone, because all normal people are branded as murderers.

As you will find in Mr. Teganya's court proceedings on Canada's Federal Court web site, no one accuses him at all of killing anyone. No one accuses him of ordering that someone be killed. No one accuses him of showing the militias where the victims are hiding. No one accused him that he was in any position of authority to stop the killings. No one accuses him of anything at all that a reasonable person would consider aiding or abetting the murderous militias. The only accusation brought against him was that he did not flee the hospital and he did not die. Never mind that a medical professional that stays behind to continue treating patients who survive should be thanked. Never mind the fact that in his case there was nowhere to flee as the whole country was at war.

Mr. Teganya's case is unique because usually in the case of Rwanda, it is the current dictatorial Rwandan government that works hard to extradite Rwandans and take them back to Rwanda where Human Rights Watch has documented several cases of abuses, imprisonment and mysterious murders of both the existing population and the returnees. However, in Mr. Teganya's case, the Rwandan government has never even accused him of anything and they have never asked for his extradition. It appears to be simply Canada being overzealous in an attempt to make a political point that Canada is no place for war criminals. Too bad they chose an innocent medical student intern to make an example of instead of actually finding real war criminals that may be hiding in Canada.

According to Mr. Teganya, his troubles began in 2001 when one of the immigration board members in charge of his refugee case took the trouble of personally informing him that she would do her best to make sure he does not get refugee status in Canada. Apparently she mentioned to him that once she makes her recommendation to deny him the status, the immigration board would side with her and it would be virtually impossible to overturn that decision. Mr. Teganya asserts that in his conversations with the Rwandan community, he found out that this specific board member had taken a personal interest in Rwandan cases and had made it a habit of making negative recommendations during immigration hearings for Rwandans.

The negative decision by the immigration board in Mr. Teganya's case was overturned after the first judicial review and the case sent back to them. The immigration hearing came back with the same decision the second time. But this time round the Federal Court of Canada has unfortunately sustained this decision.

Mr. Teganya's two young boys are now at risk of becoming orphans if he is forcefully returned to Rwanda where even the Canadian Federal Court agrees in its ruling that "detainees have been abused by security forces; there are arbitrary arrests; the conditions of detention are difficult; and people are held for long periods of time without charge."

You can make a difference by writing an e-mail to the Canadian Immigration Minister now to bring Mr. Teganya's case to his attention before it is too late. Below is a sample e-mail to the minister where you could simply add your address and send it. If many of us express to the Canadian Immigration Minister how unfair this decision is, there is no doubt that the minister will act to save Mr. Teganya's life. For the sake of all medical professionals who stay behind in war situations to treat patients, let us together save Mr. Jean Leonard Teganya's life.

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