The Kingston Whig Standard
March 20, 2002
Cameras clicked, while tape recorders and video cameras rolled, as witnesses to the end of her 16-month self-exile inside Calvary Bible Church recorded the event. Lucy Lu had been granted a reprieve from the deportation order hanging over her head for all those months.
Most Kingstonians are familiar with Lu's case: that she was to be deported back to her native China after having served time in Kingston's Prison for Women for the manslaughter of her husband; her claim that she didn't commit the killing and pleaded incorrectly because of a language barrier; and her rejection of the deportation by seeking sanctuary in Calvary Bible Church, where she is a congregation member.
Her church sanctuary turned into a long ordeal. As Lu gratefully acknowledged yesterday, Kingston and the Islands MP Peter Milliken never gave up pleading the case to grant her freedom with two successive immigration ministers of his own government. Nor did her friends or fellow churchgoers give up.
Still, Lu's freedom remains tenuous. She is allowed to walk freely outside the church for the next three years because Immigration Minister Denis Coderre lifted the Canada-wide warrant for her arrest. He effectively suspended her deportation by granting her a three-year work permit.
The letter from Coderre was described by Milliken as Lu's "passport to leave the church" and "a big step in the right direction."
For Lu and her husband, Darryl Gellner, that freedom is itself a gigantic and liberating step. But it does not help fully explain, or justify, the last 16 months of apparent government inaction on her file.
One can't help but conclude that those 16 months were meant to send a stern message to Lu and others in her situation. If you fight the system, you will pay a price; if others choose to seek refuge in a church, they too will feel the full, immovable force of the immigration system. That makes sense, but only in bureaucratic terms. For once the human force of Lu's case is understood, all government stonewalling crumbles before it.
It's highly unlikely the congregation of Calvary Bible Church would harbour a dangerous criminal, someone unworthy of their concern and kindness.
Suppose Lu had been properly convicted. She went on to serve her time in what was one of Canada's most notorious prisons. She came out to find steady work, support herself financially and join a social network through a church that accepted her, apparently, without misgivings.
There is a belief, both in the federal prison system and in the Christian faith, that people can be saved and rehabilitated--whatever term is preferred--and be integrated back into society. The Canadian justice system tried, convicted, confined and helped rehabilitate this woman. Why, then, would this country then turn its back on her? Just because her file is handed over to another ministry with different rules and values?
The congregation of Calvary Bible Church didn't forsake Lucy Lu. And if the immigration department cannot look upon her case in the same compassionate, human terms, then it fails us all.