MONTREAL—Despite sub-freezing temperatures and freezing rain, some 18 people, in their majority Punjabi-speaking refugees from India, held a campout and rotating hunger strike December 7-10 in front of the downtown office of the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) of Canada. The main purpose of the action, organized to coincide with International Human Rights Day, was to expose the unjust practices of the IRB and to protest the potential deportation of hundreds of refugee claimants in the coming months. Sanjiv Kumar, president of the Human Rights Action Committee, explained that IRB commissioners “reject 80 percent of refugee claims on flimsy grounds. They don’t read the supporting documents we send them…. They are biased and incompetent.” In a symbolic gesture, refugees and their supporters set fire to documents and refused to attend scheduled hearings.

—SYLVIE CHARBIN  
 
 
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