By Iain Marlow
The Nepalese police knocked on Shree Kumar Rai’s door at 4 a.m. He woke up, answered the door, and was promptly told he must accompany the officers to the local police station in Dharan, a city in southeastern Nepal.
Once there, police accused the former teacher and member of a political party of smuggling weapons illegally into Nepal.
“I was shocked,” Rai says, recalling the 1995 incident. “They put me in jail and they beat me. They kicked me, they hit me, they used batons.”
Rai, 44, is now in sanctuary with the First Unitarian Congregation on Cleary Avenue, where he has sought haven from a deportation order by Canadian immigration officials since Feb. 27. Although harbouring a refugee is illegal in Canada, sanctuary has historically been respected by Canadian governments.
“Where dignity and worth are in trouble, we ought to step in and at least speak up. But in other instances, where we can actually do something, we really have to do it or we’re not living up to our own principles,” says Rev. Brian Kopke, whose congregation has granted sanctuary once before.
Kopke’s congregation voted unanimously to accept Rai into sanctuary a few days before he was due to be deported. Before that, Rai worked as a sushi chef in Montreal.
Since 2000, Rai’s application to stay in Canada has been denied several times – once on grounds that he was a member of a political party that supported an insurrection, and once that there was insufficient evidence that his life would be endangered if he returned to Nepal.
But Rai, who arrived at Kopke’s church on Feb. 27, instead of at the airport for his deportation, insists he would be arrested as soon as he landed in Nepal, and then tortured – or killed.
His arrest and beating in 1995 was not Rai’s first bout with government-inflicted violence. Two years earlier, Rai had been jailed and tortured after a political rally. While in detention, police beat one of Rai’s friends to death.
His family bribed the police both times for Rai’s freedom. The second time, police threatened Rai with death if he continued his political activities.
In 1995, the United People’s Front, the party to which Rai belonged, offered support to violent Maoist rebels. Rai openly denounced the decision and fled to Kathmandu when several of his friends were arrested.
In his absence, police arrested Rai’s elderly father and tortured him. His father later died at home of the injuries, Rai says.
Joan Auden, head of the sanctuary committee which accepted Rai, says a church only grants sanctuary when all avenues have been exhausted, since it is a heavy burden on any church. But Rai was at “the very, very end,” of the process, she says.
Auden, a social worker, assessed Rai in June 2005.
“He had almost all the signs of post-traumatic stress disorder,” she says.
Auden also saw Rai in November 2006 after the government rejected two appeals which claimed Rai would face torture or death upon return to Nepal.
“I was absolutely shocked when I saw him again. He had aged about 10 years. He could hardly speak to me. He had gone downhill so much,” she says.
Rai and the congregation are now waiting on the United Nations Committee Against Torture, a division of the UN Office of the High Commissioner on Refugees. The committee has accepted Rai’s appeal and will rule on the risk of torture should he be forced to return.
“Their process is very, very slow,” says Michael Cassidy, former Ontario NDP leader and member of the congregation. “That group was not prepared to ask Canada to allow Mr. Rai to stay.”
At a recent Sunday service, two petitions to local MPs Paul Dewar and John Baird advocating on Rai’s behalf received about 65 signatures. About 25 children in Sunday school signed a petition to Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
“He’s a hard worker. He’s the type of person that Canadians should want to come into Canada,” says Kopke, about Rai. “Why not allow these principled people to come in, rather than send them back to what would be torture? I don’t think that’s what Canadians want. I think Canadians would like to see a refugee system that really works.”
The man granted sanctuary a year earlier, Bangladeshi Samsu Mia, was able to leave the church in December 2004 and stay in Canada. He is a staple at Sunday services still and bakes samosas for the parishioners.