9-06-07, 9:21 am

Since George Bush's announcement that troop numbers in Iraq would increase, the trickle of American war resisters seeking sanctuary in Canada has become a steady stream. Starting in about April, calls from the few large receiving centres (Vancouver and Toronto) became more frequent and urgent.

The Toronto chapter of War Resisters Campaign, while supporting the national office, many resisters and their families, facilitating and leading political lobbying and preparing for a Supreme Court application and hearing, have decided they can house and support no more resisters at this time. By May, an urgent plea for smaller centres to ready their communities to receive new refugee claimants was made, and by early July War Resister Support Campaign chapters in Ottawa, Kingston, Hamilton and London accepted their first Resisters and within weeks were full-up.

If we are to take our roles seriously as anti-war activists, we cannot make any of these Resisters choose between homelessness and public apathy in Canada, or zealous prosecution or involuntary service in the commission of war crimes in Iraq, possibly resulting in their own death. We must accept and support these people.

Like many other regional centres, our organization in Sudbury has, for more than two years, organized speaking engagements, tours, film nights, and petitioned and lobbied our politicians. Since we will very likely soon have our first resident resister, we are experiencing a great deal of collective anxiety. How will we pay for this? What if the resister becomes desperately lonely or is a veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder? Can we find sufficient and ongoing housing, a lawyer, and mental and physical health services?

In Sudbury our response was to have a recently arrived resister, Steve Yoczik, come from Toronto to speak to interested locals and our group about his decision to come to Canada, and to answer to our many logistical concerns. Lee Zaslofsky (national coordinator of the War Resister's Support Campaign) came as well.

Steve Yoczik is a candid, smart, funny guy. Listening to him brought back childhood memories for me of a fictional M.A.S.H. character, Corporal Klinger. While in training he discovered that he had been recruited for an already moribund military job and was destined for general infantry deployment in Iraq (and further that the military was continuing to deceitfully recruit and train for this occupation with intentions of deploying every trainee in the same fashion). Steve waged a concerted bid to be kicked out of the army. Over a period of months, he deliberately failed between 50 and 100 physical tests. When it became obvious that the officers would not file three consecutive failing reports so as to have his status reviewed, Steve started to fail to appear for the tests and was flippant, if not outright insubordinate, if these absences brought any reproach. Steve figures he was gone for a while before anyone realized that he was AWOL. He found out about the War Resisters Support Campaign in Canada through a friend - a model soldier and US patriot who disagreed so strongly with the war in Iraq that he fled to Canada rather than participate in it. With only one passed physical between him and Iraq, Steve had to make the same choice.

The War Resisters Support Campaign is easier to find than it was two or three years ago. As well, the recruitment requirements in the US have led to a host of unacceptable practices becoming the order of the day. Many of the latest Resisters to arrive are those who have been involuntarily 'called back' to serve in Iraq after prolonged periods in civilian life, the so-called 'back door draft'. Documented dishonesty around recruitment efforts in schools, and about the consequences of rethinking deferred enlistment agreements, have spawned campaigns to keep the military out of many U.S. high schools. The American public is disenchanted with the 'war on terror', and supporting War Resisters has become a known and valuable anti-war political movement. And with the U.S. economy poised for a downturn, many more young Americans are at risk of being hoodwinked through the 'poverty draft' and deceitful recruitment practices.

Here in Canada, many of the first resisters to come across the border are now at a point in the Immigration and Refugee hearing processes where they are at risk of being deported before Jeremy Hinzman and Brandon Hughey can take their case to court, raising the crucial question: can 'mere' foot soldiers can use the illegal status of the war to underpin their refugee claims?

Meanwhile the Campaign continues to lobby for the political solution: these War Resisters must be given sanctuary under a separate immigration category, much like the US war resisters of the Vietnam era received under the Trudeau government.

In Sudbury we are now fielding a serious inquiry every week from War Resisters. These are people 'checking into' Toronto and then moving to their host city within hours or days. They are calling from Germany (military hospital) and bases all over the continental U.S., and they are coming. In Toronto the serious inquiries are about three a week; arrivals, both anticipated and unanticipated, are becoming more and more frequent.

For more information about the War Resisters Support Campaign or to offer assistance of any sort, please go to http://www.resisters.ca/.

From People's Voice

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