Translation from Russian original

To the Prime Minister uf Canada

THE OPEN LETTER
Grigory SVIRRKY,
Professor ot literature, writer.
In Canada since 1973.
 
 

"THE BERLIN WALL IN CANADA"...

   So was called a letter-affidavit, containing text of my statement for a conference in Toronto. The conference was organized on October 22, 1997 by the All-American Institute for Human Rights Defense (Washington, D. C.) This statement criticized the Management of Immigration Canada, which is obviously not in accord with any common sense and humor: most undesirable immigrants in its official document were announced... writers.
 

                        ...
   A writer is a creature, certainly, horrible. But a composer appears simply a horror, an invasion of aliens.

   The name of this composer and musician is Lev Uunin. He's 42 years old, he is a polyglot, and is fluent in English, Prench, German, Polish, Byelorussian, and Yiddish. His wife Alla (39) has a technical education. The children - I. and M. - 11 and 12 years old, like their father - are gifted in music. I. plays piano and flute, M. is a young ballerina, once chosen by the Natiunal ballet of Canada for further studies, but... status, status! Of course, she participates in many performances even without the status, and her list of performances is already longer, than that of some adult ballerinas.

   This family does not require any help from the stale. The composer is skilled in many musical specialties. He tutored children; has performed in prestigious clubs, concert halls, and restaurants!.

   Such a self-sufficient family, one should think, would be welcomed in any country... Naturally, except the most racist, xenophobic-anti-Semite.

   And now the family is on the verge of catastrophe: The Immigration Management in Montreal has refused to give them the right to settle... in free Canada. Deportation threatens them.
Why suddenly?!

   Oh, this family, Mister Prime Minister, has an awful past.
 

1. First of all, they ran away from Israel. The Israeli consulate persecutes escapees by all means as fugitive slaves. Then, not only the Israeli consulate, but even the immigration authorities of Canada assume that Israel is a free country, and therefore consider escape from freedom as impossible...

   However, it is really hard to understand why people run away from this "freedom". By number of refugees, Israel, according to official statistics, is on the third - fourth place (depending on the years), annually: directly after the brutal murder regimes of Iran and Somali.

   The nature of human mentality is so, that people willingly believe myths. Myths are much more smoother than the truth. Why listen to the confused words of unfortunate refugees that Israeli nationalists have blocked all venues for Russian Jews except to Israel since the first of October, 1989. What has happened (for many years) is a real deportation of half-million free people to a small East country.

   That, in itself, was a criminal abuse of authority, humiliation over the principles of basic human rights. But today the consequences of that crime are much more painful: nobody tried to foresee the results of this irresponsible operation, which has sharpen up to limits the socio-economic and political situation in the country. One can observe the extreme intolerance of aboriginal Israelis (such as outcomers from the countries of Muslim fundamentalism: Morocco, Algeria. Iraq and etc.) for new arrivants. Upon their arrival in Israel, immigrants from Africa were deprived of privileges. As a rule, they were taken to Negev desert and left there; and only fragmentary army tents were thrown to them. The care of the state for tile new arrivants from Africa ended with this.

   Naturally, former Africans were irritated by rumors that "Russians" are given "everything"... Suppressed hatred towards the authorities has found a convenient outlet: non-sanctioned murders of the immigrants from Russia, non-provoked battering of the "Russian" children in schools, a wave of rapes of new "Russian" immigrants. The last case reported by the world press (a week ago): a policeman (a Moroccan origin) extremely irritated by an Israeli soldier, who loudly spoke with his friends in Russian in a restaurant, stabbed the soldier with a knife and killed him. (Moscow newspaper "Koмepcaнт Daily." ("Commersant Daily") of November 13, this year, and tens of other editions wrote about it).

   In the last years the attitude of the Israeli aborigines to new arrivants has deteriorated alarmingly. The Israeli and American press in Russian has now informed the readers about a pogrom in Jerusalem's religious quarter " Mea Shearim". Angry crowds have beaten "Russians", burned their furniture, broken glasses in their motor vehicles. Only the intervention of the Israeli army stopped murders... One rabbi, associate of the mayor of Jerusalem, has called his co-religionists for this pogrom.

   Why then has the immigration board heard, with a grimace of mistrust, the testimony, that the wife of composer Gunin, ethnically Russian (she's from a mixed family), was persecuted, called " Russian whore ", prostitute. According to supplied documents she was cleaning the subsidiary premises of a shop, where she worked as a cashier. Influenced by spasm of brutaliен aborigines took the mop from her hands and hit her on the head with it, then they severely beat her up half-to-death. She arrived home with injuries and bruisies.

   And the small Gunins' daughters, who in kindergarten were preparing for holiday Sukkot's celebration, learning verses and songs with burning eyes, were separated from all others and locked in a dark closet with "You are not Jews, this holiday is not for you." as only explanation.

   As soon as the composer published articles against narrow-minded small-town nationalism and racism, in defense of human rights, this intellectual man was beaten by everyone: by "kablans" - Israeli sub-contractors, who employed that "Russian" only for the heaviest work, then by police, whose brutality nowadays everyone speaks about (even the members of Israeli Knesset). Gunin even tried to find "truth" (protection) in a police station. But uselessly since the composer, after writing one of his articles was already once "invited" for "discussion" by police. After that discussion his lips were swelled, and the doctor diagnosed a brain concussion...

   Israel is a free country. It is possible (theoretically) to leave her. You must only bring two dozen permits (visas for exit): from the army, from Immigration bank "Ydud", from building bank and other organizations, which can give out these papers, or can not to give out; at last, from police, which does not give any documents to plaintiffs, whatever you do...

   One day Ana ran to a few embassies, with the vain hope to take her husband and small girls out from Israel immediately.

   But only the support of Amnesty International to Gunins made their departure from Israel possible...

   And here they are in blessed Canada.

2. And here something even more awful was found out, - the composer and musician Lev GUNIN not only "escaped" with his family from a very free country, he furthermore has an independent and obstinate personality. And even here he has not changed...
 

   He was exasperated and demoralized by how unlawfully the trial of Gunins' case in the refugee court was managed. I have listened to all cassettes with records of refugee hearings. Each of them lasted from four to five hours.
During that huge amount of time Canadian judges spoke out only three - four phrases, transferring the whole initiative to an immigration offficer whose name is Judith Malka. With passion and anger Malka (her Jewish family name means "queen") repeated all "proofs" of Israeli government about "fugitives and traitors" (Exactly by that name former Prime Minister of Israel Mr. Shamir, ardent Zionist called all Jews, who did not desire to live in Israel).

   But the composer Gunin is not a Zionist, though he has nothing against Zionism. 
He merely wants that his wife not be called "Russian prostitute", and not be beaten up.

   He does not understand in general, why an immigration officer whose name is Judith Malka, cries hysterically: how could this Gunin call himself and his family, which were not allowed to get out of Israel, "Russian slaves"?!. Slaves driven to the Middle East.

   Certainly, it was absolutely necessary for a tired out person to quit Israel immediately. But not alone! It was necessary to grasp from humanitarian reasons the prime minister Netanyahu, whom the iron Madeline from USA State Department puns to one side, the opponents of the peace agreements Sharon with Shamir - in an opposite, and the right psychopaths threaten to shoot him immediately as lzhak Rabin, if he will listen to the Americans. That's who is a true "prisoner of Zion"! He's only not beaten by police yet as Lev Gunin was.

   Oh, the exhausted, tormented composer was not up to these thoughts in the court. He multiplied, and multiplied the facts of inter-ethnical hostility and the brutality of Israeli police, what is today not only denounced by the Israeli press publications, but even discussed by the deputies of Knesset...

   Listening to the tapes, I expected that Lev Gunin would soon lead Immigration's Malka to a heart attack. Finally, as the matter of fact, she really broke up, and, almost loosing her conscience, has cried out, that Gunin has submitted the request for the status of the refugee just for having an opportunity to discredit and slander the state of Israel!

   Naturally, after that cry Gunin and his family were not recognized as refugees. 
It was told about the reasons of that refusal directly, in the official document.

I "... There are not enough proofs that "Russian" origins, mixed marriages are
persecuted because of nationality, religion, [...] or because they express antifascist views".
 

2 ''... Because the state of Israel has brought "Russians" on her own expense, they in general have no rights to ask for the status of the refugees in Canada...."
And etc...
 

   In Montreal, in the Rene Levesque Street, 200, where there the Council on refugee cases (Immigration and Refugee Board), is situated, there is the archive for documents that officially confirm inter-ethnic hostility in Israel, attacks on children from CIS countries, and systematic rapes of the women from Russia. 
Also are carefully kept UN documents, which testify about the same. The same has been published nowadays by various newspapers of the World.

   But why the judges had to look to the truth into eyes? Eyes will ache! The Jewish Congress of Canada does not want to hear that in their beloved Israel somebody was deadly beaten, somebody was pogromed and persecuted... From ages the Erets Israel for them - their "pink dream", their "birthday of heart". How could it happen that inside the "pink dream" anybody is beaten? But if even really beaten, probably, he must be beaten!..

   Thousands of Russian, Byelorussian and Ukrainian Jews, running from Israel, are rejected, with an active assistance of the Jewish Congress, from Canada, thousands of families are broken, children become orphans, many are lost. But the idea that the members of the Jewish Congress of Canada are accessories to a historical crime against the Jews of CIS, - this idea has not yet struck them...

           Dear PRIME MINISTER, Mister Jean CHRETIEN!

   I wrote five documentary novels and stories about Israel, including the trilogy "Branch of Palestine", translated in all European languages. In my life I saw enough of such noisy Judith Malkas, hired or voluntary Israeli super-patriots, so enough that it would be enough for ten lives.

   I am convinced, that you have judges with the sense of humor and understanding, who would not allow to transform the Canadian court into a battlefield for intolerant towards dissidents and broken apart Israeli society.

   But now the speech goes not only about re-consideration of this obvious case, but simply about the rescue of the Gunin family. I talked to these people, saw their eyes.
Lev Gunin and his wife Alla are exhausted, nervous people, they are on the verge of suicide. Four years they are carefully pushed towards this edge. The persecution of intelligentsia does not cease...
 

   Young talented professionals are extremely important to Canada. Please, give Lev Gunin, a talented composer and musician, an opportunity to work quietly - in glory to his family and this remarkable country - Canada

        Grigory SVIRSKY 

             12/26/1998
 

       TORONTO