You Can't Check Out

National Post:

In Lamine Yansané's hometown of Boké in Guinea, his father is a revered imam who sometimes leads Friday prayers. But after Mr. Yansané married a Catholic woman and abandoned Islam for Christianity, his father disowned him, and Friday prayers have featured a call for his death, the Federal Court heard yesterday.

Read the rest to see how his refugee claim is proceeding.

Classical Liberal asks in the comments:

"Isaac, does your case set some sort of precedent?"

I think I am the first blogger + ex-Muslim to become a refugee and then a permanent resident in Canada. Though, I don't know if I'm just the first ex-Muslim to become a refugee in Canada.

During my hearing in front of the Immigration and Refugee Board, there were five people in the room: the judge, an immigration officer with her assistant, my lawyer and myself. I fully realized later that the immigration officer was there as a "prosecutor". She questioned me about every minute detail in my application.

Where are my parents from; where are they now; how many siblings I have; when was the last time I was in Pakistan; why don't I just call myself a secular Muslim, go back to Pakistan and stop bothering with this nonsense (I paraphrase) and so on.

She was looking for any sort of crack in my history and subtly minimizing the danger I'd be in if I went back to Pakistan. I've been learning English since grade one, so I had little trouble understanding and answering every single question she asked; sometimes passionately so. I survived three hours of legal verbal assault. I appeared to be credible.

It is likely that someone with poor English skills or uncomfortable body language would appear to be not-so-credible. This is what I think happened to poor Lamine.

Comments

[Classical Liberal]

Isaac, does your case set some sort of precedent?