Afghan family given chance to stay in Canada over fears of conscription and extortion in Russia

A family from Afghanistan that fled Russia after their eldest son got a draft notice in 2023 has won another chance at staying in Canada in part because some of their five sons could get pulled into the war on Ukraine or one of the belligerent bear’s future fights. Canada’s Refugee Appeal Division (RAD) found that if Alireza and Shafiq Saberi and four of their children were sent back to Russia, two of their sons, ages 17 and 13, would likely be conscripted during the conflict and suffer discrimination in the military. The division determined that the two teenagers were refugees, but rejected appeals for refugee protection for the parents and their two youngest children, finding it “difficult to imagine” the two boys, now 10 and three, would suffer the same fate. It determined the father was too old for conscription and Russia isn’t drafting women. However, a Federal Court judge has overturned that conclusion. Justice Angus Grant, in a recent decision out of Toronto, noted that the RAD should have considered the possible future treatment of Ali Yaser, the couple’s 10-year-old son, if he were drafted. Grant noted concerns both that the boy could be treated poorly in the Russian military on account of being a minority and that he risks conscription in the future. “It was important to assess Ali Yaser’s future conscription into the military, not only in the context of the current war, but also in the context of a regime that has almost perpetually been engaged in conflicts around the world and that, by its own admission, has imperial and territorial ambitions beyond those it is currently pursuing in its war of aggression against Ukraine,” wrote Grant. With his ruling, the judge granted the two youngest members of the Saberi family and their parents an application for judicial review of the refugee decision. But fears of future conscription wasn’t the pivotal reason for his decision — ethnicity was. “The RAD unreasonably failed to assess the applicants’ forward-facing risk of persecution in Russia on account of their ethnicity as non-Slavs and their immigration status,” Grant said. The RAD will now reconsider the family’s case. The family members are Shia Muslims of Hazara ethnicity, an Afghan ethnic group. They fled the Taliban in 2018 and 2019, moving to Russia, where the father, Alireza, had a work permit, and ran a business importing and reselling goods from China. The family later obtained Russian citizenship. “While in Russia, Alireza was extorted by the police as a result of his non-Slavic ethnicity and immigration status, being required to pay bribes to the Russian authorities in order to be allowed to work. He was additionally called a ‘blackhead,’ a racial slur for non-Slavic individuals,” Grant noted. The children, save Yousef, a boy now three, who was too young to attend school, “were similarly discriminated against and bullied at school for being non-Slavic and were treated as ‘second class citizens,’” Grant wrote. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, its troubles with manpower for the ongoing war have captured attention around the world. The judge noted that men between the ages of 18 and 30 are subject to one year of forced conscription. “Although President (Vladimir) Putin initially promised that no conscripts would be used in the conflict, this has proven untrue,” Grant wrote. The Saberi family’s eldest son Mohammad Komail, who is now 22, “received a military summons in 2023, which prompted the Saberi family to flee Russia,” Grant said. As they fled through other countries, including the United States, Mohammad Komail was detained. He remains in immigration detention in the U.S. Upon arriving in Canada, the family claimed they were refugees. Canada’s Refugee Protection Division (RPD) rejected them, finding they could safely return to Russia. “The RPD accepted that the applicants had experienced discriminatory treatment in Russia, but concluded that this did not amount to persecution,” Grant said. It also found “that the prospect of compulsory military service in Russia did not amount to persecution. It found the applicants’ claim that Alireza and his sons are at risk of being conscripted and sent to fight in Ukraine speculative.” The family appealed to the RAD, which found their sons Mohammad, 18, and Nasir, 14, qualified for refugee status as they were currently — or soon to be — eligible for conscription and risked being sent to fight in Ukraine. The appeals of Alireza, Shafiqa, Ali, and Yousef were rejected. According to Grant, the “central issue” to be determined in this matter is whether the decision to refuse the parents and their two youngest boys was reasonable. “The RAD accepted that the applicants experienced extortion demands from Russian police, which they had to pay in order to work. The RAD accepted that the applicants were singled out for these extortion payments because of their ethnic and national background,” said the judge. “In those circumstances, it was incumbent on the RAD to explain why this mistreatment at the hands of Russian state agents did not constitute persecution. The only explanation that the RAD provided was that the applicants’ physical or moral integrity were not threatened, but it is unclear to me how this conclusion is compatible with the acknowledgment that the harm feared by the applicants is extortion by state officials. Extortion and bribery are crimes that, by definition, involve some combination of threats, force, and coercion.”

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