They don’t tell her much. They are petrified their families will be brutally punished if word of their successful escape gets back to Pyongyang. Very few speak any English. But snatches of their stories slip out: how they ate tree bark to survive, how their parents were killed, how their siblings starved, how harrowing their journey to Canada was.
Recently, Hoffman helped 30 newly arrived young people from North Korea prepare for a group wedding. Some confided they were wracked with guilt about the loved ones they left behind. Some showed her scars and misshapen limbs. All of them said: “We have come from hell and now we are in heaven.”
Her heart went out to these secretive, terrified newcomers. But the outgoing pensioner is not all tenderness and mercy. She is a Christian soldier. And her mission is to protect Toronto’s tiny North Korean community from Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney.
The battle began this spring, when the first of the North Korean refugee claimants her church had taken under its wing appeared before the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB). Minseo Kim, a single mother with an 18-month-old daughter, told her story to Joel Bousfield, an experienced IRB adjudicator. To her relief, he believed her. He found her account plausible, her testimony straightforward and her fear of persecution to be well-founded. On April 30, he granted Kim and little Sangah convention refugee status.
The Korean community was jubilant. But exultation quickly turned to despair. Seven days after the decision, Kim received a 99-page document from the Immigration Appeal Division, notifying her that her case was being appealed by the minister of immigration. Bewildered, she asked her church friends what it meant. When they explained, the bottom fell out of her world.
The refugee committee swung into action, consulting lawyers, finding credible witnesses and appealing to every United Church in the presbytery for help. Hoffman lit out on a public awareness drive. The Star was one of her first stops. “This woman has been officially recognized as a refugee,” she emphasized. “She and her daughter can finally relax in a land of freedom where they need not be afraid.
“Is that too much to expect?” she asked. “Our minister of citizenship and immigration obviously thinks so. How petty he makes our society appear. How pathetic that we would slam the door in their faces.”
Her voice was well modulated, but forceful. It had also an undertone of anxiety. She fears Kenney will get the precedent he wants and use it “to kick out all the North Korean refugees.”
That’s not the point at all, the minister insists. Anyone born on the Korean Peninsula is entitled to citizenship in South Korea. That means Kim can be safely deported.
Technically, he is correct. South Korea does have a law granting automatic citizenship to North Korean defectors. But it does not recognize all North Korean fugitives as legitimate refugees. Nor is Seoul under any obligation to provide settlement assistance — temporary accommodation, medical services and education for their children — to North Korean asylum seekers deported by other nations.
Weighing the risks and probabilities, Bousfield chose to err on the side of compassion. Kenney chose to send a message to other North Koreans seeking sanctuary.
Clearly, Kim and her allies are outmatched. A Minister of the Crown has access to taxpayers’ dollars, government and private lawyers, Canadian and South Korean diplomats and a ready supply of expert witnesses. All Hoffman’s crusaders have is the power of conscience.
Original Article
Source: thestar.com
Author: Carol Goar
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