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Jeremy
Hinzman Leads The Way For U.S War Resistors In Canada

Gerry Condon



Five days a week, Jeremy Hinzman, a native of South Dakota, doggedly rides his bicycle through the snow-laden streets of Toronto (now
thawing). Since receiving his Canadian work permit, he has been employed as a bicycle messenger, a job he had “been wanting to try for
eons.” Jeremy is 26 and in excellent shape. He is a long distance runner and has run a couple of marathons since he arrived in Canada in January 2004. Nonetheless, he admits to being exhausted
when he arrives home from work. “It’s a good thing I started this job at the most difficult time of year,” he says. “It can only
get easier from here.”

This
philosophical attitude and the stamina of a long distance runner
have served Jeremy well ever since August 2, 2002, when, as a soldier
in the U.S. Army, he asked to be classified as a Conscientious Objector and reassigned to a non-combat job.

It
takes a lot of fortitude for a soldier to declare himself a
Conscientious Objector. Although military law makes provisions
for soldiers who decide they are pacifists, many soldiers are not
informed of this option. Pursuing Conscientious Objector status
is frowned upon, especially in a gung-ho unit like Jeremy’s – the 82nd
Airborne. “C.O.” applicants are called coward and traitors. Some have
even been physically and sexually assaulted by fellow
soldiers.

But
Jeremy had the right stuff. He had a profound commitment to
seek spiritual direction in his life. And he had the courage to
follow his conscience, wherever it led him. He had converted to
Catholicism in high school. Even while in Army training, he was
reading about the Buddhist philosophy of living. On Sundays,
Jeremy and his wife attended the Quaker meeting in Fayetteville, North
Carolina, next to Fort Bragg, the “Home of the Airborne.” They
enjoyed the weekly group meditations and were inspired by the pacifist
message of the Quakers. Jeremy, an active duty airborne troop in
a time of war, came to realize that he could not in good conscience
carry a weapon or kill another human being.

Despite
this epiphany, Jeremy did not want to break his contract with
the military. Motivated largely by his desire for higher
education, he had enlisted for a 3-year tour in the Army. Most
Conscientious Objectors seek to be discharged from the military. But
even though he harbored doubts about the wars the U.S. was waging
in Afghanistan and Iraq, Jeremy was nonetheless willing to go to war in
a non-combat capacity. After all, the vast majority of military
occupations do not require one to be personally involved in
killing. He could be a cook, an administrative assistant, a
mechanic, maybe even a medic.

The
Army
would have done itself a big favor if it had acknowledged
Jeremy’s sincerity and granted him duty that he found compatible with
his moral beliefs. But that’s not the way the Army works. On Halloween
2002, Jeremy was informed that the Conscientious Objector
application he had submitted three months earlier had been
“lost.” He was then ordered to ship to Afghanistan. Jeremy
was dismayed but he obeyed. He shipped with his unit to
Afghanistan on December 7, 2002. Before doing so, however, he
resubmitted paperwork asking that he be recognized as a Conscientious
Objector and assigned to appropriate non-combat duties.

Jeremy’s
C.O. “hearing” in
Afghanistan

Six
months later at an isolated U.S. Army base in the middle of hostile
Afghan territory, Private Jeremy Hinzman’s “C.O.” hearing took
place. Military law requires that Conscientious Objector
claimants be given non-combat duty while awaiting a decision on their
claim. For six months Jeremy had been working in the kitchen, 7
days a week, 14 hours a day.

The
C.O.
hearing officer asked Jeremy a frequently used trick question
regarding self-defense. Usually it goes like this: “If your wife
and child were being assaulted by bloodthirsty rapists, would you
defend them?” But Jeremy was asked about the family of fellow
soldiers with whom he ate, slept, worked and played. You can’t
let your buddies down, you know…. “If this base is attacked by
Taliban terrorists, will you or won’t you
pick up a gun to defend your fellow soldiers?” Jeremy said that
he would – that he saw self-defense as very different from planning and
executing aggressive military actions. “Gotcha!” the Army officer
must have thought, pleased that his ploy had worked. “You are not
a Conscientious Objector.”

It
has
been clearly established in Conscientious Objector law that
self-defense is different than war, and that Conscientious Objectors
have as much right to defend themselves as anybody else. Yet U.S.
military officers often use this line of questioning to sabotage the
claims of soldiers seeking this status. Sending a C.O. applicant
to an isolated war zone and asking whether he would defend his buddies
was grossly manipulative and clearly unfair.

Jeremy
saw the writing on the wall. The negative recommendation
of the hearing officer deterred him from further pursuing his C.O.
claim. Instead he obeyed orders to resume guard duty. Today
he wishes he had done otherwise. “My only regret is that I didn’t
just take off my uniform and refuse all orders.”

Jeremy’s
tour of duty in Afghanistan ended in July 16, 2003. He
and his 82nd Airborne unit returned to Fort Bragg. Shortly
afterwards, he discovered that his initial C.O. application remained in
his Army personnel file, and had not been “lost” at all. The Army
had lied to him before sending him to a war zone.

Moral
Dilemma: Iraq or Canada?

Jeremy’s
doubts about the morality of the war in Iraq were fueled by
reports from the grisly battlefield. He heard that thousands of
civilians – men, women and children – had died in the fighting. His
concerns came to a head in December 2003 when the 82nd Airborne was
ordered to Iraq. They were to leave right after the Christmas
holidays.

A
momentous moral decision faced Jeremy and his wife, Nga, a
Vietnamese-American social worker whose family was resettled in South
Dakota after the U.S. military withdrawal from Vietnam. Jeremy
and Nga decided to head for Canada, where, in the 1960’s and 70’s, tens
of thousands of U.S. draft resisters and deserters had found a welcome
alternative to going to Vietnam or going to jail. In the first
week of January 2004, they packed their 1-year-old son, Liam, and a few
belongings into their compact car and headed north.

But
Canadian immigration rules had tightened greatly since the Vietnam
War. It was no longer possible to come to Canada as a visitor and
apply for “landed immigrant status.” And it was no longer
possible to show up at the Canadian border with a job offer and be
immigrated within the hour. Canadian law now requires would-be
immigrants to apply from outside Canada, to have needed job skills
and/or a substantial bank account, and to wait up to two years or more
for a decision. Clearly, this is not an option for a soldier on
the run.

Jeremy
is first U.S. war
resister to seek refugee status in Canada

So
Jeremy
Hinzman became the first U.S. war resister ever to apply for
political refugee status in Canada. Nobody from the U.S. has ever
been granted refugee status in Canada, a close ally of the U.S. and its
largest trading partner. Nonetheless, other GI’s morally opposed
to the U.S. war in Iraq are following Jeremy’s lead.

Two
months later, in March 2004, Brandon Hughey, 18, an Army tank
driver from west Texas, arrived in Toronto. In May 2004, David
Sanders, 19, a U.S. Navy cryptologist from Arizona, surfaced in
Canada. Dan Felushko, a U.S. Marine with dual U.S.-Canadian
citizenship, simply moved home to Toronto with his Canadian wife. Media
reports of their presence in Canada and growing disenchantment
with the U.S. war in Iraq are leading other GI’s to follow suit.

Recent
arrivals to Canada include U.S. Army Specialist Clifford
Cornell, 24, from Arkansas, and U.S. Army Specialist Darrell Anderson,
22, from Kentucky. Anderson, who already fought in the Iraq war,
was injured and awarded a Purple Heart. But he did not want to
return to Iraq where he might kill innocent civilians for “oil and
money.” Another veteran of the U.S. war in Iraq, U.S. Army
Specialist Joshua
Key of Oklahoma, recently arrived in Toronto with his wife and four
children, ages 8 months to 7 years. A large color photo of the
entire family graced the front page of the Toronto Star newspaper on
the same day that Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin was meeting
President Bush at his Texas ranch. Dozens of AWOL GI’s are rumored to
be laying low in several Canadian cities, even as some of their fellow
soldiers are going to jail rather than to Iraq (see www.SoldierSayNo.org). According to
the Pentagon, 6,000 U.S. soldiers are currently listed as “deserters,”
having been AWOL for at least 30 days.

Jeremy
Hinzman and all of these young war resisters are being
represented by Jeffry House, a prominent Toronto lawyer who himself
came to Canada to avoid the Vietnam draft. Well over 50,000 young
Americans did the same. 30,000 of them are now Canadian citizens,
some of them quite prominent, with 10,000 estimated to be in the
greater Toronto area. GI’s and family members interested in the
“Canada option” frequently
contact Jeffry House by email at jeffryhouse@hotmail.com, or at his
Toronto office number, 416-926-9402 x152. He advises them that if
they come to Canada and apply for refugee status, either internally or
at the border, they will automatically receive the protections of
Canadian refugee law until their claim can be heard, which could take
up to a year.

“But
coming to Canada is a serious decision,” says House. “People
must be prepared for an extended period of uncertainty.” Before
making that decision, they should seek advice in the U.S. GI’s
who want out of the military have a number of options about which the
military command prefers they remain ignorant. The GI Rights
Hotline in the U.S., at 1-800-394-9544, is providing valuable
counseling to thousands of soldiers and their families. Jeffry
House believes that AWOL soldiers already in Canada but “under the
radar screen” would be well advised to seek legal representation and
apply for refugee status.

Canada’s
Refugee Board Rules
Against Jeremy Hinzman

Jeffry
House is convinced that Jeremy Hinzman has a strong
case for refugee status and should eventually be granted it. He
cites the Geneva Conventions on War and the Nuremberg Principles, which
maintain that it is a soldier’s obligation to disobey illegal orders or
to participate in war crimes. The U.S. war on Iraq, being neither
defensive nor approved by the U.N, is illegal. Therefore, orders
to fight in Iraq are illegal. Soldiers who refuse these illegal
orders are obeying international law and U.S. law too, since the U.S.
Congress has ratified these international laws and treaties.

House
also provided Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board with reams
of documentation confirming that the U.S. military has engaged in a
widespread pattern of systematic war crimes in Iraq. “If Jeremy
Hinzman had gone to Iraq, he would likely have been put in a position
of committing or supporting the commission of war crimes.”

After
several delays, Jeremy Hinzman’s hearing before the Immigration
and Refugee Board took place in early December 2004. It went on
for three full days and was attended by reporters from around the
world. Ominously, the Canadian government intervened in the
hearing, arguing that the issue of the legality of the U.S. war should
have no bearing on the Refugee Board’s decision. Brian Goodman,
the hearing officer, took his cue from the government and allowed no
arguments on the legality of the war.

The
Immigration and Refugee Board did hear much testimony, however, on
U.S. war crimes in Iraq. Former U.S. Marine Staff Sergeant Jimmy
Massey gave dramatic firsthand accounts of the reckless killing of
civilians in Iraq. His testimony received worldwide
coverage. So did the sobering words of his wife, Jackie Massey,
about the Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD) that her husband
brought home from Iraq. “He has terrible nightmares every night,”
she said. “I can look at him in the morning and know what kind of
day we are going to have.”

But
on
March 24 of this year, Goodman ruled against Jeremy Hinzman,
asserting that he does not fit the definition of a refugee facing
persecution for his beliefs. “This is a big mistake,” says Jeffry
House. “There is no way that the legality of the war is not
relevant. In fact, it is the central, key factor to be
considered.” He cites the UN Handbook on Refugees, which
specifically states that soldiers who refuse to participate in wars
that are widely condemned by the international community should be
considered as refugees.

House
and
Hinzman are now appealing this decision to Canada’s federal
courts. “If the Court will give us a hearing,” says House, “it will
likely rule in Jeremy’s favor.” Several more months will pass
before the Court will decide to hear the appeal. A legal decision
on the appeal might come by the end of the year.





Did a soldier from Saddam’s army pave the way for U.S. war resisters?

There
are some
fascinating
precedents in Jeremy Hinzman’s favor. Soldiers from the armies of both
Iraq and Iran have been granted
refugee status in Canada. One, a Yemeni citizen serving in the
Iraqi Army, had refused to participate in Saddam Hussein’s invasion of
Kuwait. The Iranian soldier had refused to be a party to chemical
warfare. Significantly, both men were at first denied refugee
status by the Immigration and Refugee Board, only to have the decisions
reversed in federal court.





Will Canada’s “broken” refugee system accommodate U.S. war resisters?

Canadians
of all political persuasions are concerned about the huge
backlog of political refugee claimants from around the world, many of
whom are thought to be economic refugees. They worry about
arbitrary decisions by the political appointees on the Immigration and
Refugee Board. Many consider the refugee system to be “broken,”
and debate rages in the Canadian media about how best to fix it.
Understandably, some Canadians don’t believe it will help matters to
add U.S. military deserters into the refugee mix. But most
Canadians do not want to send these young soldiers-of-conscience to
prison in the U.S. That is not the Canadian way.

Canadians
support war resisters

In
the meantime, Jeremy Hinzman and his fellow war resisters are
receiving widespread support from Canadians, most of whom strongly
oppose the U.S. war in Iraq. The Canadian government spurned
George Bush’s call to become part of the “coalition of the willing,”
and send its troops to Iraq. Canada did, however, send soldiers
to Afghanistan, and recently announced they will double the current
level to 11,000 “peacekeepers.”

Prominent
Canadians and sympathetic organizations have formed the War
Resister Support Campaign, and thousands of Canadians have signed their
online petition (see www.resisters.ca). The petition
calls on the Canadian government
to provide a sanctuary for U.S. war resisters, whether or not they are
granted political refugee status.

Influential
Toronto
Star
columnist Thomas Walkom recently opined that
Canada should make a special provision for U.S. war resisters to become
Canadian immigrants. “We do it for nannies,” he says. Childcare workers
are welcomed into the Canadian workforce and given
three years to show they are self-supporting and staying out of
trouble. Then they are allowed to immigrate.

“Couldn’t
we do as much for those who don’t want to kill,” says Lee
Zaslofsky of the War Resister Support Campaign. Zaslofsky, who
describes himself as a “proud Canadian,” is a former U.S. soldier who
refused to fight in Vietnam. Remembering those days, he declares,
“It's time for the Canadian government to renew[former Canadian
Prime Minister] Pierre Trudeau's pledge to make Canada a "refuge from
militarism."

U.S.
- Canadian Tensions Complicate War Resister Decision

Whether
and how Canada will once again become a “refuge from
militarism” is viewed in the context of many U.S.-Canadian
tensions. Canadians are upset over the U.S. ban on the
importation of Canadian softwood lumber and beef. The Bush
administration has expressed concern over Prime Minister Paul Martin’s
proposals to legalize gay marriage and decriminalize marijuana. U.S.
war resisters in Canada are already enjoying the free, universal
healthcare that is anathema to Washington.

With
a
possible national election looming as early as June, Prime
Minister Paul Martin’s minority Liberal government recently decided not
to participate in George Bush’s “missile defense shield.” This was a
popular decision in Canada, but it angered the White House, which had
been pushing hard for Canadian political endorsement of its plans to
militarize space. Some Canadian officials worry that giving a
green light to U.S. war resisters may further antagonize the “elephant”
next door.

A
victory
for Jeremy would certainly be an important precedent — the
first time a U.S. war resister, or anyone from the U.S., for that
matter, would be granted refugee status in Canada. Even so, the
refugee claims of other U.S. soldiers will continue to be heard on a
case-by-case basis. If U.S. soldiers keep coming, however, the
Canadian government may find it expedient to look for a collective
solution, as they have previously done with other groups of
refugees. The Canadian government could follow Sweden’s example,
which granted Vietnam-era deserters humanitarian asylum based on
“special circumstances.” There is also a precedent for allowing
failed refugee claimants to immigrate to Canada for “humanitarian and
compassionate reasons” once they have established themselves in Canada.





Jeremy and the War Resisters: Still in Canada

Jeremy
Hinzman is spending another day pushing the pedals of his
bicycle through the busy streets of Toronto. When he comes home
to Nga and Liam, he is too tired to worry about his situation. He
has given scores of interviews to U.S., Canadian and international
media, but he tries not to get caught up in all the fuss. On
Sundays, he and his family attend the Toronto Quaker Meeting. Jeremy
and Nga frequently socialize with their many friends. It
seems as if they have lived in Toronto forever. Liam is working
his way through the “terrible two’s,” and hoping for another ride on
the back of Jeremy’s bike.

“We’ve
got a life here,” says Jeremy, without any second thoughts, “and
a good one too.” Because he had the courage to follow his
conscience, Jeremy and his family have found a new home in
Canada. Whether it will be a temporary home or a permanent one
may not be known for months, even years. But his Canadian
supporters are upbeat and optimistic. “We have a
long way to go,” says Lee Zaslofsky. “But we're confident that
Canada will not become an enforcement arm of the Pentagon. These war
resisters will be staying in Canada as long as they wish.”

The
War
Resister Support Campaign believes the Refugee Board decision
was just the first step in a long struggle. It’s a good thing
Jeremy is a long distance runner. He is likely to win in the
end. Some would argue he already has.

__________________

Gerry Condon deserted from the U.S. Army
in 1969 after refusing to fight in Vietnam. He lived for 3 years
in Sweden and 3 years in Canada, before returning to the U.S. in 1975
as part of the campaign for amnesty for all war resisters. Although an
Army court martial had sentenced him to 10 years in prison,
he never spent a day in jail. He now serves as director of
Project Safe Haven, and can be reached at projectsafehaven@hotmail.com or through the website, www.SoldierSayNo.org.

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