Review of 'Between States'

I went to see Darren Ell’s photographic exhibition, "Between States", after weeks of procrastination. It consists mainly of photographic portraits of people who are, as the title suggests, caught in a sort of stateless limbo here in Canada. In some cases, this limbo is endured as imprisonment. Both Hassan Alurei and Mahmoud Jaballah, detained on secret evidence supposedly linking them to terrorist organisations, are shown in their orange prison jump suits, clutching black wires in their hands, against a white wall. Mohamed Harkat, now out of prison on strict bail conditions, is in civilian clothes and under a tree, yet he is clutching the same black wire.

Another form of imprisonment is sanctuary, although this is willingly endured by some as an alternative to deportation. Sanctuary is when refugees facing imminent deportation are sheltered by a church congregation, in the hope that the government will not send police into the church to arrest them. A moving depiction of this form of imprisonment is to be found in the photograph of Alvaro, Marcela and Miresa Vega, a Colombian family that lived in St. Andrew’s Norwood United Church for 567 days, until they were allowed to stay on compassionate grounds. I saw this family at a special service a couple of years ago, when they had already endured almost a year and a half of not being able to leave the church. Ell’s photograph shows them looking out from a window onto the rooftop aside the church- their only view of the outside world.

Another Colombian is also another one of those being threatened with deportation on the basis of secret evidence. Ampero Torres, whose ex-husband and brother are members of the rebel army FARC, is accused of links to this group, now classified as a "terrorist organisation" by the Canadian government. The fact that the UN High Commission for Refugees found that her life had been in danger in Columbia hasn’t prevented our government from trying to send her back there.

Another refugee in sanctuary in a Montreal church is Abelkader ("Kader") Belouni, a blind diabetic who sought sanctuary in St. Gabriel’s Church in Pointe-St-Charles last January 1. Seeing him in the large photograph on the wall in front of me reminded me of seeing him at the press conference held in early January to announce that he was doing this. I’ve missed all the events held there since. I really must make a point of going to one soon.

The caption mentioned that currently, ten people are in sanctuary in Canada.

The other component of the exhibition was to be found via a pair of headphones, where I heard bits of the testimonies of the refugees portrayed. One voice would be followed by another, followed by another, and so on, then we’d come back to the first one….it was put together in such a way that, after a while, you could hear an overall story being told.

Because they are "between states", it is easy for the authorities to subject refugees to treatment that would be considered scandalous when applied to a citizen. Yet refugees do not inherently pose more of a security risk than do citizens. There is no logic to the laws treating them so differently, except that they can. But if national security requires that secret evidence should be enough to tar refugees as terrorists, then it must also require that it be enough tar citizens as such too. Does it? Should we have to give up our freedoms in order to preserve them? No? Then let us respect the rights of refugees too.