A Very Patient Man

By Robert Mangelsdorf

At the back of a dusty church in Mount Pleasant, in a room no larger than a garage, sits a soft-spoken, tired-looking man quietly fixing old radios and cell phones.

His name is Amir Kazemian and he is a fugitive. Though he has committed no crime greater than basic self-preservation, he remains wanted and he remains scared.

At one end of the room, Kazemian has built himself a small altar, cloaked in an embroidered cloth and adorned with crosses and candles. He prays here for an hour every morning that he might be released from the limbo he has found himself in, and this brings him strength.

“God has a place for me,” he smiles, looking away for a moment. “I am not worried.”

His optimism is admirable. He has not left this church in 976 days.

After six years of trying to appeal his rejected refugee claim, Kazemian came to St. Michael’s seeking sanctuary on the day he was to be deported to Iran. He hadn’t even packed a toothbrush.

Kazemian, who spent his 41st birthday here last June, is swaddled in fleece and wearing a toque. The room is cold and drafty, and he warms some tea on a hotplate, his makeshift kitchen.

“I had two choices,” he explains in a cautious, broken English. “I could be at the airport at 10 o’clock or come here [to the church].”

Returning to Iran, he believes, would be a death sentence, so he has chosen life in a self-imposed prison.

It is a situation not entirely unfamiliar to him.

In 1984, when he was 19 years old, Kazemian was thrown in jail for distributing pamphlets on the streets of Tehran critical of the Ayatollah Khomeini’s brutal Islamic fundamentalist regime. After the overthrow of the Shah in 1979, Iran was not a safe place for those who spoke freely. Kazemian’s father was jailed three years earlier after founding the Federal Democratic Opposition Party.

Every day was a living hell for the 16 months Kazemian spent imprisoned. He was beaten constantly, hung upside down, and even sodomized with a Coke bottle. At night he would be woken by gunshots as his fellow prisoners were executed, and would wonder if would be next.

But Kazemian’s release from this living hell brought him no peace. He was made to report to Iranian intelligence authorities every 45 days, their vicious interrogations culminating in a beating so severe it caused his brain to hemorrhage and put him in a coma for nine days. He has no sense of smell as a result.

His father remained in jail for much of the next decade. Kazemian dutifully visited him until one day his father told him to leave Iran, and he did.

Kazemian came to Canada, he says, so he could live like a normal human being. But even that, it seems, is impossible.

He arrived in Toronto in July 1997, and promptly moved west to Vancouver to avoid the bitter cold of Eastern Canada. His mother joined him soon after, while his father and sister fled to the United Kingdom. His aunts and uncles fled to all corners of the world, and he has no family left in Iran.

He sees his mother now every day when she comes to cook for him.

However, it’s been nearly a decade since Kazemian has seen his father. Still in the United Kingdom, he is currently battling cancer and too sick to travel to meet his son. Kazemian, meanwhile, remains trapped.

His eyes swell when asked what it is he wishes he could do if he were free.

“I would be so happy just to see him and hold him in my arms just once before he dies,” he says, his voice falling to a fragile whisper. “I love him very much.”

When Kazemian was a free man, he repaired antique Persian rugs for a living. It was prolonged, patient work, but he loved it and is proud of his accomplishments. He smiles as he shows off photos of his handiwork – beautiful, intricate pieces, some as large as the room he lives in.

Suddenly, he bangs his fist down upon the blonde wooden desk in front of him. “This too I made,” he beams proudly. The desk is sturdy and doesn’t so much as shiver when he hits it. He is almost giggling as he shows off the many features he has designed, including a retractable keyboard shelf.

The room is full of examples of how he spends his time. Computers, cell phones, he has taught himself to repair them all.

“No lessons, no school,” he announces.

But his aptitude for putting things back together betrays the many pieces his life has been shattered into. He takes the anti-depressant Paxil daily to deal with post-traumatic stress disorder from the torture he suffered in prison.

Not long after he arrived in Canada, Kazemian converted to Christianity and found himself both empowered and accepted.

He says what first attracted him to the religion was the peaceful message it brought, a message quite the opposite of what he experienced in Iran. To Kazemian, Islam is a religion of intolerance.

“It is the policy of Islam when you convert from Islam to any other religion that you are not allowed to live,” he says. His eyes narrow as he leans close and whispers, “They are going to kill you.”

His fear is palpable. And warranted.

Abdul Rahman, an Afghan man who converted to Christianity 17 years ago, was facing a death sentence in Afghanistan for renouncing Islam until international outrage over his fate prompted the Italian government to offer him asylum earlier this year.

Kazemian slowly leans back in his chair and looks away. His arms are crossed and his leg begins to tap as the expression on his face curls into a bitter scowl. Suddenly he turns, squinting with disgust.

“They treat animals better here than they treat human beings in my country,” he spits.
He pauses.

“Jesus,” he says calmly, “He never fought, he never raised a sword.” A gentle smile creeps back across his lips. “He was just teaching and preaching about love and peace.”

The conversation demonstrates two of the reasons Kazemian is in such danger should he return to Iran. His conversion to Christianity guarantees him persecution, but his frank and damning criticism or Iran and Islam put a much larger target on his back.

The fate of Canadian journalist Zahra Kazemi, who was brutally raped, tortured and murdered by Iranian officials after she photographed a student protest at a prison in Tehran, remains fresh in Kazemian’s mind, as does the Canadian government’s inability to help her family.

Despite demands for an open trial of the two intelligence agents charged with her death, and for her remains to returned to her son in Canada, Iran offered only a cursory acknowledgement of the Canadian government’s concerns. The two agents were promptly acquitted and Kazemi was buried in Iran.

“What did the government do? Nothing. They just talk, talk, talk, talk,” Kazemian laments. “There was no solution. And her son still carries the pain of his lost mother.

“When they send you back, maybe you have a chance for the first day, maybe the second, but on the third day, they’re going to get you. And the [Canadian] government can’t trace the person when they send them back. They are powerless.”

His frustration with the Canadian government is understandable.

In Nov. 1998 Kazemian lost his bid for refugee status. In the Immigration and Refugee Board’s decision, Kazemian’s demeanor was characterized as argumentative, boastful, tense and flamboyant. Kazemian, having been in Canada for barely a year, remembers feeling confused and humiliated at the hearing. At one point he became upset because he thought the judge was laughing at him.

Frances McQueen, coordinator for the Vancouver Association for Survivors of Torture, has spent decades dealing with people who have suffered fates similar to Kazemian’s. She first met him eight years ago when he came to VAST for counselling and isn’t surprised by what happened at the hearing.

“It’s very common with people who are traumatized, that they can’t consistently tell their story,” she says. “Often, when refugees go into a hearing, they may not be believed because thay are unable to tell their story in a way that can be understood. They go to a place without words and it’s very, very painful to that call up and remember.”

At his mother’s hearing two years later, Kazemian apologized to the court and testified on her behalf. Her refugee claim was granted because of the torture her family had endured in Iran, which Kazemian’s testimony was vital in proving. Yet Kazemian himself remained unable to appeal his own case.

To McQueen, it illustrates a major problem with Canada’s immigration laws. While appeals are permitted based on the technicalities of a case, there is no way to appeal a refugee board decision based on the merits of a case.

“There are no safeguards in place,” she says. “Humans make mistakes, and sometimes judges make mistakes, yet there is no appeal based on merit. So if there is a mistake, it can be a death sentence for these people.”

There is no doubt in her mind that Kazemian would be in danger should he be returned to Iran.
McQueen recalls the case of a man she met some years ago. His refugee claim was denied and so he had come to VAST five days before his deportation to Iran for help. He had cigarette burns all over his body.

“You can’t mistake that,” she says. “It’s a very specific thing. Cigarette burns are cigarette burns.”

But despite obvious signs of torture, his claim was denied and he was unable to appeal.
It was too late for him.

He was sent back to Iran, and it was a year before she heard from him again. He called her from an Iranian prison, desperately begging for any kind of help.

He had been picked up as soon as he got off the plane and held in the airport for a week before being released. His freedom was short-lived, however. Iranian authorities again imprisoned him, this time for months. He called McQueen for help, crying and pleading for it, but there was nothing she could do. Calling her, she told him, would only endanger his life further, as the authorities were surely monitoring the prison phones.

She has never heard from him since.

Kazemian knows all too well what will happen to him if he is to be returned, and he is prepared to do the unthinkable if that happens.

“I will kill myself,” he states matter-of-factly. The statement hangs in the air and a dark silence descends. He says he would rather die on his own terms then let the Iranian authorities torture and kill him.

“God will understand.”

As Kazemian’s deportation date loomed, VAST contacted St. Michael’s Church in an effort to secure him sanctuary and very well save his life.

Archbishop Andrew Hutchison, head of the Anglican Church of Canada, agreed to take up Kazemian’s cause.

“It’s our conviction that of the many requests we have for sanctuary, this one does have merit, and we believe its worthy of review on that basis,” he explains.

Kazemian calls the congregation at St. Michael’s who took him in his “guardian angels.”
“We pray together every Sunday and I love them very much,” he says, closing his eyes. “They saved my life.”

McQueen agrees whole-heartedly.

“The church has been absolutely fantastic,” she says. “They are an amazing group of people. How they’ve rallied around Amir and supported him I find is very consistent with thir faith. There’s a lot of love and warmth and a real sense of community.”

Christian Churches have offered sanctuary to the innocentfor millennia, as Exodus 21:13-14 designates the altar of god as a place for the innocent to flee, and the situation is becoming a common one in Canada. Asylum seekers are often faced with a life-and-death decision after being denied by Canada’s increasingly stringent refugee process, and have nowhere else to turn.

There have been 36 cases of sanctuary in Cnada between 1983 and 2003, the majority of which have been refugee claimants. There are eight churches currently providing sanctuary across Canada.

Despite this, Hutchison says the Canadian government has no hard and fast policy on respecting the sanctity of the church. While no efforts have been made to arrest Kazemian, others in his situation have not been so lucky. In 2005, police dragged Algerian asylum seeker Mohamed Cherfi from a church in Quebec City.

Hutchison is part of a small group of people who are currently lobbying the government on Kazemian’s behalf. He is hesitant to speak on the issue because he believes the group is very close to a solution and doesn’t want to jeopardize hat.

Hutchison visited Kazemian last year and said his feelings about him were instantly confirmed.
“He is a very patient man.”

And so Kazemian waits. He waits for the day his appeal is granted, or the day the police finally burst through the door and come to take him away. But he is patient and he is hopeful that God will find a place for him, here in Canada.

“I love this country very much,” he says. “And I would be proud to be a Canadian.”