Join us for a solidarity gathering to support the Guinean community, who since 2016 has been organizing together to fight deportations from Canada.
Saturday, March 30th at 1pm
Jean Talon metro, Montreal
https://www.facebook.com/events/2310535595889483/
#MontrealaveclesGuineens
Canada is moving to deport Guinean asylum seekers at this time, when instead the government of Canada should recognize the deteriorating human rights situation in Guinea and reinstate a moratorium on deportations. Also Canada’s Liberal government must immediately grant status to Guinean refugees currently in Canada.
Canada’s has extensive economic relationships with Guinea, particularly acute in Quebec through corporations with extensive mining operations in the country, under the banner of both Rio Tinto Aluminium and Semafo Inc, as well as SNC-Lavalin’s oil refinery investments in Guinea, there is a long standing neo-colonial economic relationship between Quebec and Guinea.
It is in this context that Canada and Quebec must support Guinean refugees.
Human Rights Watch writes, the “rule of law institutions remained weak and abuses against journalists trended up.” Particularly on Mining HRW writes, “Although Guinea’s bauxite boom provides much-needed tax revenue for the government, thousands of jobs, and profits to mining companies and their shareholders, it has profound human rights consequences for the rural communities that live closest to mining operations. Mining companies take advantage of the ambiguous protection for rural land rights in Guinean law to expropriate ancestral farmlands without adequate compensation or for financial payments that cannot replace the benefits communities derived from land.”