This historical novel reveals in vivid detail the controversies surrounding the 2009 and 2010 arrival of two rickety boats on our west coast, bearing more than 550 desperate Sri Lankan asylum seekers, almost all from the Tamil north. This is a largely forgotten event in our recent history which is a bit of an embarrassment to our collective psyche and self image.
Unnumbered but titled chapters relate the horrors of the long Sri Lankan civil war (an oxymoron, if there ever was one) with the southern, largely Buddhist Sinhalese finally defeating the northern, largely Hindu, Tamils. There are enough atrocities grimly detailed here to make most citizens of both factions seem guilty of some war crime. But is an auto mechanic who is coerced and threatened into attaching bombs under vehicles that he is repairing a terrorist if he sees no reasonable alternative to survive? And more to the point, is he likely to be a threat to public safety if he is allowed to stay in Canada?
The detention of the new arrivals in prisons for extended periods is reminiscent of our earlier shameful detention of Japanese residents and citizens during WW11, and this story features the daughter of a now demented Japanese interment survivor who is appointed as an admissibility hearing adjudicator by a Public Safety minister who is very biased against any immigrants or refugees. The needless complexities of the assessment system set up to decide the fate of asylum seekers is amply explored. There must be a better way than having repeated overlapping hearings to determine admissibility, release from interment, deportation, and refugee status claims.
The writing is littered with Hindu and Tamil terms and names that I found hard to understand and remember, let alone try to pronounce. (Maybe I should download the audiobook.) There are no quotation marks even for obvious quotes, making it a bit difficult to follow conversations and keep the characters straight. A map of Sri Lanka with the sites of actions discussed would have been helpful for those readers like me who are geographically challenged. The story ends abruptly with little resolution of the complex moral questions raised along the way. A five page Discussion guide at the end is not very helpful.
Refugees everywhere and immigrants to Canada will love this story, and it provides a sober reminder of the unjustified biases of the Canadian public and of those in charge of immigration in our recent past. It is very relevant to current debates about immigration here, but more particularly in the United States. Let’s not make the same mistakes over and over. But there are no easy answers either.
This book was not a fun read, but I recommend it to anyone with a particular interest in global affairs and the controversies around immigration anywhere.
The Passionate Reader 