In the waning moments of Toronto's 24 Hours Against Torture vigil, a telling incident occurred when an angry constituent went into the office of Deportation Minister Joe Volpe and demanded to know what was going on. This individual had just read one of our flyers, detailing the cases of the Secret Trial Five, all of whom are at risk of torture or death if deported to Syria, Egypt, Algeria and Morocco. The flyer included quotations from documents released by the immigration and border services agencies which came to the conclusion that, despite the likelihood of such cruel and unusual treatment, the men should be deported anyway. The response to his concerns, this individual said, was rather blunt. "They're making that up," he was reportedly told by office staff in reference to the group that had spent the previous 23 hours camped outside the office. Perhaps the alleged comment was the result of a staff that has no clue what takes place in the Canadian deportation bureaucracy, which annually deports more than 10,000 people to an uncertain fate, and which plans to mark World Refugee Day, June 20, with a deportation of Nepalese refugee Subas B.K. to torture in Nepal. Perhaps they were unaware that the United Nations Committee on Torture had just called on Canada a few weeks ago to join the ranks of civilized nations and respect the absolute prohibition on deportation to torture.

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