Deport All Ex-KGB Veterans From Canada, UCCLA Demands

Ottawa - Canada should immediately denaturalize and deport any resident who was once a member of any Soviet secret police organization, the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association (UCCLA) said Nov. 14.

Responding to an article in the Nov. 12 Vancouver Province
(www.canada.com/story.html?id=dc14dabd-680c-4878-a133-0cf3997abddf), the UCCLA is calling on federal Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan to immediately send any former Soviet secret police veterans found in Canada back to their home states.

“Canada should not be a haven for former members of any communist state’s secret police forces, regardless of whatever duties they may claim they performed,” said the UCCLA’s chairman, Dr. Lubomyr Luciuk.  “Simple membership in the NKVD, SMERSH or KGB should be sufficient grounds for excluding such a person from Canada, whether they made application for admission as an immigrant or refugee.”

Residents of Canada who served in the NKVD, SMERSH and KGB enabled the Soviet regime to indulge in the mass imprisonment, murder and enslavement of millions of innocent men, women and children. These secret police forces spied upon, exiled, tortured, murdered and oppressed their fellow citizens, not only in times of war but also during times of peace. Any person who was a member of these formations, or affiliated ones, simply by assisting in their functioning, made it possible for such war crimes and crimes against humanity to be perpetrated.

Regardless of an individual’s ethnic, religious or racial heritage or the period or place during which they served or what they claim to have done, they should not be in Canada, nor should they be allowed to establish roots here, individually or as members of a family.

“Anyone who served in such a secret police body would have known of its actions, past and present, and should not have allowed himself/herself to be used for the criminal purposes carried out by an authoritarian state,” said Dr. Luciuk.

The UCCLA has called upon the government to take immediate steps to deport any veterans of the NKVD, SMERSH and KGB who are in Canada and to make it clear to Canada’s immigration officials that such persons should always be excluded from admission into Canada, with no right of appeal. The UCCLA also invites the relevant authorities to investigate who the immigration consultants or lawyers were who allegedly advised ex-KGB veterans that former membership in such an organization would not affect their chances of entry into Canada.

For more information, please contact the UCCLA at media@uccla.ca
For an interview with Dr. Luciuk, please email luciuk@uccla.ca or 613-546-8364