Seen in Its True Light: Desertion as a Pure Political Crime
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25071/1920-7336.39614Keywords:
Canada, United States, Iraq War, military resisters, military deserters, political asylum, political crimes, state protection, paragraph 171Abstract
Individuals from democratic states who flee state prosecution and seek refugee status in Canada face significant challenges in obtaining asylum. There is a strong presumption that the legal system of their country of nationality will provide adequate procedural safeguards. This presumption extends to US military deserters who refused to serve in Iraq. The consequence is that numerous claimants have been denied over the past decade.
This article contends that where the feared prosecution relates to a political crime, there should not be a presumption of state protection. Furthermore, the article posits and discusses why desertion should constitute a pure political crime much like treason, sedition, or espionage. Lastly, the article argues, pursuant to United Nations policies, that such deserters should be able to obtain refugee status only where their desertion constitutes a refusal to be associated with military actions that are internationally condemned as contrary to the basic rules of human conduct.
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Copyright (c) 2014 Amar Khoday
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Refuge authors retain the copyright over their work, and license it to the general public under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial License International (CC BY-NC 4.0). This license allows for non-commercial use, reproduction and adaption of the material in any medium or format, with proper attribution. For general information on Creative Commons licences, visit the Creative Commons site. For the CC BY-NC 4.0 license, review the human readable summary.
