Month: July 2021

Canada’s decision to reopen its borders to international visitors is encouraging tourism operators in tiny Prince Edward Island, who are hoping the Asian visitors who have become a mainstay of the province’s economy will soon be back.
Best known in Asia as the setting for the “Anne of Green Gables” novels, this province in Atlantic Canada has long been a magnet for visitors — especially from Japan and more recently China — who come to visit the house where the century-old children’s stories are set.A Charlottetown street is of interest to a couple looking at the crowded bar patios. (Jay Heisler/VOA)But travel restrictions imposed by the federal government last year in response to the coronavirus pandemic brought all of that screeching to a halt, reducing overall visits to the island by 70% compared with pre-pandemic levels, according to provincial officials.Prospects brightened this month when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that fully vaccinated Americans would be able to enter Canada for nonessential travel beginning on August 9, and that visitors from other countries would be admitted as of September 7.The downtown Charlottetown waterfront on a normal Sunday. (Jay Heisler/VOA)That is good news to George Campbell, who operates a museum in the real-life house where author L.M. Montgomery set the early 20th-century stories that have more recently been made into a movie and a Netflix series. Fans of “Green Gables” from China are an important part of his clientele.
“We are eager to have Chinese tourists visit our province and my museum,” Campbell told VOA ahead of a reporter’s visit to the white clapboard house with its iconic green gables. “It is wonderful that they will travel so far to come and visit.”An authentic Chinese hotpot at Noodle House in Charlottetown. (Jay Heisler/VOA)
While it was Green Gables that put Prince Edward Island on the map for many Asians, enterprising islanders have been quick to offer the visitors other ways to spend their money.
According to the federally funded Canadian Broadcasting Corp., bus tours have been established that cater to Chinese tourists, and golf courses have begun offering Motion Pay, a payment system favored by many Chinese.
Wang Shoutao, a spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Ottawa, told VOA that visitors from his country have been attracted to other parts of Canada as well.
“In recent years, tourism exchanges between China and Canada have been developing, and Canada has become a very important destination for Chinese tourists,” he said without addressing recent friction between the two countries over the detention of two Canadian citizens in China.Latin American soft drinks in a corner store that caters to migrant labor flown in to work the fields during the pandemic. (Jay Heisler/VOA)
A formal statement provided by Wang said, “Friendship between the peoples holds the key to sound state-to-state relations, and heart-to-heart communication contributes to deeper friendship.”
For Prince Edward Island, the personal connections forged by tourism have led to more permanent links. Until it was supplanted by India in 2017, China had been the largest source of new immigrants settling in the province for a decade.The National Post newspaper reports that 2,400 Chinese newcomers arrived in 2006-09, making a visible impact in a province of 160,000 people whose main industries are tourism, potato farming and fishing.
The province, located at the mouth of the St. Lawrence River, is also looking for new business opportunities with China, according to Peter McKenna, a professor at the University of Prince Edward Island (UPEI).
“I would say that the province is interested in examining possibilities and the potential for greater linkages with China,” McKenna told VOA. “One of those areas would be in the fishing or the seafood sector. I think there are opportunities there for companies in PEI and Atlantic Canada in general to develop a market in China.”Locals enjoy the view along the Charlottetown waterfront. (Jay Heisler/VOA)Jeffrey Collins, another UPEI professor who works on trade policy for the provincial government, agreed that trade with China is important to the island but said it is still far overshadowed by the exchange of goods and services with the United States.
“PEI’s export growth to China, as impressive as it has been in recent years, is very much based on a handful of products, chiefly lobster,” he said. While that trade remains “robust despite larger geopolitical tensions,” he noted, “key limitations are in transportation access and need to develop deep business cultural ties with Chinese buyers/consumers.”
While the Asian influx has been a boost to the island’s economy, not everyone in the province’s tightly knit community has been happy to see the growing numbers of what are often described by longtime Atlantic Canadians as the “come-from-away.”“If anyone in PEI tells you that there is no racism, they’re lying or not aware of what’s going around,” said Satyajit Sen, a policy adviser at the Federation of Prince Edward Island Municipalities. “It exists and you can sense it, especially during the COVID times.”
 Popular PEI musical group Vishten plays with family as an afterparty to the Route 11 music festival in PEI, which has largely been spared by the pandemic. (Jay Heisler/VOA)Sen, who spoke to VOA in a Vietnamese-run coffee shop, said the island’s enviable standard of living, which he also enjoys, cuts both ways when it comes to the small-town mindset.
“It could be a sense of insularity, a sense of island-ness, which is largely a positive, but which can also be a negative if people come from away, which is not a good term to be honest with you.”Anxiety about outsiders has been heightened during the pandemic, which has infected relatively few people here. Sen said this has led to people vandalizing cars with license plates from outside Prince Edward Island.
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Alan Reyes Picado fled Nicaragua by bus in the middle of the night, haunted by memories of government officials harassing him, throwing him in jail and then leaving him half naked in a dumpster.After crossing the Mexican-U.S. border in February and being detained for two months, the 20-year-old immigrant lives in San Francisco and hopes to receive a work permit soon.”I lived in fear and decided to seek help in this country,” said Reyes Picado, who left his partner and an 8-month-old baby in his home country.Reyes Picado is one of the thousands of Nicaraguans the U.S. government has encountered at the border in recent months. Customs and Border Protection data shows a big jump in arrivals from the Central American country, which is the focus of international criticism over arbitrary arrests and the restriction of fundamental rights.U.S. authorities stopped Nicaraguans 7,425 times in June compared to 534 times in January. So far in the fiscal year that began Oct. 1, U.S. officials have stopped Nicaraguans more than 19,300 times at the southern border. That’s the highest number of encounters registered in recent years, surpassing record figures from fiscal year 2019, when authorities stopped Nicaraguans more than 13,000 times.At that moment, Nicaragua was immersed in a political crisis after the government announced a plan to cut social security benefits. Widespread protests caused the government to back down, but demonstrations grew into a movement demanding that President Daniel Ortega step down after more than a decade in power. At least 328 people died during repression of the demonstrations, said the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.Now, Ortega is seeking a fourth consecutive term as president in elections in November and has been systematically clearing his path of potential challengers through arrests for alleged crimes against the state.According to the rights commission, more than 20 people have been detained, including presidential candidates Cristina Chamorro, Arturo Cruz, Félix Maradiaga, Juan Sebastián Chamorro, Miguel Mora, Medardo Mairena and Noel Vidaurre.Ortega’s government did not respond to requests for comment from The Associated Press.Hundreds of thousands of migrants from other countries have also arrived at the U.S. border this year, as the new administration of President Joe Biden has eased some restrictions on immigration imposed under former President Donald Trump.Other nationalities have also shown large increases, including Ecuadorians and Venezuelans. In June, more than one of four people stopped by CBP were from countries other than Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.Nicaraguans have usually been a small number of the Central Americans trying to migrate to the U.S. However, Nicaragua’s government migration offices are now full of people trying to obtain passports, a scenario that also occurred during the 2018 crisis.Managua’s Roman Catholic Archdiocese has noticed the exodus.”It is with sadness that we see again the migration of Nicaraguans, mostly young people fleeing because of political persecution”, the Archdiocese said recently.Reyes Picado, the 20-year-old who recently fled Nicaragua, participated in the 2018 protests with his brother. Recently, he said in a telephone interview, local officials in Tipitapa, a city in western Nicaragua, would show up at the family’s truck depot asking to use the six trucks the family had. He said the government wanted the trucks to move its supporters around.Reyes Picado’s family said no to the request and that’s how their problems started, he said.”They would look for me at home; we couldn’t live in peace,” he said. “They would threaten us because we did not want to join them; they told us they would kill us, they would kidnap us.”White House officials did not respond to a request for comment by The Associated Press regarding the increase in arrivals of Nicaraguans. U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Western Hemisphere Subcommittee, told the AP that the arrests of political rivals in Nicaragua and violence against the opposition “must be stopped”.”These actions are destabilizing Nicaragua and forcing Nicaraguans who are fearful for their lives to flee their country,” he said.Anita Wells, an activist who helps fellow Nicaraguans on their way to the U.S. and recent arrivals, said she is “overwhelmed” with work.”We have tons of people, of young men, in detention centers. Some are hurt, some are former political prisoners, and still, some of them are not allowed in (the U.S.),” she said from her home in Virginia.Wells is one of the founders of Abuelas Unidas por Nicaragua (Grandmothers United for Nicaragua), a group that raises and sends money to Nicaraguans in need. She is also one of the founders of the Nicaraguan American Human Rights Alliance, which has increasing work because it assists with asylum applications and tries to avoid the expulsion of Nicaraguans at the border.Like Reyes Picado, José Olivera also fled Nicaragua, leaving behind a wife and two children.A sales executive in an appliances company based in the north of Nicaragua, Olivera took buses and walked towards the U.S. border in May after being fired for not accepting an ID card indicating support for the official political party, the Frente Sandinista.Government officials would knock on his door insisting he accept the card, and soon the threats started, he said.”I never accepted the offer of being one of their supporters,” said the 38-year-old from his small apartment in Miami. “Honestly I’m scared, they would have killed me.”He fled to Honduras and then Guatemala by bus. Afterwards he walked, following train tracks until blisters hurt his feet. In Mexico, he said he was kidnapped by drug traffickers. Relatives put together $6,500 and Olivera was released three days after, he said.He crossed the border in June and told Customs and Border Protection officials he wanted to ask for asylum. After being in a detention center for two days, he was released with an ankle bracelet.The number of Nicaraguans entering the U.S. legally also is increasing: It went from 3,692 in January to 7,375 in June, according to CBP data. Immigration attorneys and activists say that many of those Nicaraguans decide later whether to ask for asylum in the U.S. or return home before their visa expires.Nicaraguan asylum-seekers seem to fare well in U.S. immigration courts compared to people from neighboring countries. The grant rate for Nicaraguan asylum-seekers was 36% in the 12-month period that ended Sept. 30, compared to 26% for all nationalities, 17% for El Salvadorans, 13% for Guatemalans, 12% for Mexicans and 11% for Hondurans, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.Reyes Picado dreams of being among these lucky ones.His brother, who also participated in the student protests and was kidnapped by paramilitary groups in the 2018 upheaval, won asylum in the U.S.For Reyes Picado, life in Nicaragua meant moving in with his aunt to avoid putting his immediate family in danger.In December 2020, a paramilitary group, their faces covered in black ski masks, took Reyes Picado and handed him over to police. He was detained for three days, he said. He then was handcuffed, sprayed with gas in the eyes and left half naked in a dumpster in a rural area.”I feel better now because I know I can be safe,” he said. “I miss my family but I know they will be here with me one day.”
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Weeks after the discovery of more than 1,000 probable unmarked graves at now-closed schools for indigenous people, leaders of Canada’s First Nations are torn over whether to press for further forensic investigation and the repatriation of remains, or to let the sites be preserved undisturbed.Indigenous communities have had two months to absorb the shock since the discovery of what appear to be hundreds of unmarked student graves near the former Kamloops Indian Residential School was announced in May.   Scientists used ground penetrating radar to explore the site on the Tk’emlups te Secwépemc First Nation’s traditional territory in the western province of British Columbia, where the closed school building still sits. They found 200 anomalies that remain “targets of interest” and probable burials under a present day apple orchard. Using similar detection methods, hundreds of other probable unmarked graves of students have since been found on property of other closed residential schools across Canada, bringing the total to about 1,300.   Indigenous residential schools were paid by the Canadian government and run by various Christian churches starting in 1828. The last one closed in 1996. For most of their existence, Native children were taken by force from their families and placed into these institutions to be assimilated into Western culture. Reports abound that sexual, physical and verbal abuse were common.A suspected grave site cannot be confirmed until it is excavated, and some First Nation leaders are demanding a thorough investigation of the sites and an effort to repatriate the remains.FILE – Tk’emlups te Secwepemc Chief Rosanne Casimir speaks ahead of the release of findings on 215 unmarked graves discovered at Kamloops Indian Residential School in Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada, July 15, 2021.Tk’emlups te Secwépemc Chief Rosanne Casimir is calling the site in Kamloops a crime scene and says what happens next has to be done carefully and in consultation with the community and survivors.”We do know that our membership has been grappling with the information that has been shared. And we do know that every step that we do take moving forward, we’re going to be having the community consultation with our membership,” she said during a press conference in Kamloops. But many of the survivors, like Evelyn Camille, want the sites to be left undisturbed.”Yes, they may have to be some studies to be done,” she said at the same press conference. “What good are those studies going to do for us, for an individual, for me? It’s good to tell me that yes, they were murdered. Is that going to make me feel better? I don’t think so.  Those remains should be left undisturbed.”  FILE – Residential school survivor Evelyn Camille speaks at a presentation of the findings on 215 unmarked graves discovered at Kamloops Indian Residential School in Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada, July 15, 2021.Other Canadians are telling pollsters they are shocked by the revelations and want to see something done to acknowledge the mistreatment of indigenous children. A survey by Toronto-based Ipsos Public Affairs found that 77 percent of the public thinks there should be a national day of remembrance for the victims.”It’s about people who were truly victims, in this instance, and Canadians do have a lot of sympathy for what happened here,” Ipsos Public Affairs CEO Darrell Bricker told VOA. “They’re feeling badly about it, they want to see something done about it.”     The Kamloops Indian Residential School was one of the largest of the 139 that existed across Canada.It is expected that many more potential unmarked graves around other schools are yet to be discovered.  
 
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