Turk, Kurd, intellectual, human rights activist, pacifist and draft dodger; Sukru Basbaydar is all these things. He is also a refugee. Historically, conscientious objection has had a rather delicate place under refugee protection in Canada. Acclaimed international refugee law authority James Hathaway has said about conscientious objectors that they “… are neither refugees per se nor excluded from protection” (CITE). The difficulties are compounded by the sociopolitical nature of military desertion. However, there has been one point of general agreement in Canadian courts, it is that individuals who desert merely out of fear of combat or dislike of the military are not refugees (ZOLF, ATES); there has been preferential treatment…show more content… The court stated that an ordinary law of general application should “… be given a presumption of validity and neutrality” (Para 21) and that the onus was on the applicant to show that the laws…show more content… Ed Corrigan, a specialist in Citizenship and Immigration Law, notes that “… objection to military service has often been seen as little more than an embellishment to weak refugee claims” (CITE); supplementation to an application is more or less what occurred in the case at hand. Mr. Basbaydar fled Turkey in September of 2010, and filed for refugee protection upon arrival to Canada two month later. Mr. Baysbaydar was required to report for military service in February of 2012, a year and a bit after his initial claim. Unless Mr. Basbaydar is a sci-fi character of some sort, it would seem absurd to accept his claim for refugee protection based on conscientious objection without reservations, as there are reasons to believe that his disagreement with military service are unreliable. How could Mr. Basbaydar object to military service before he was enlisted? Here the court was presented with the perfect opportunity to decide on the merits of conscientious objections made after an applicant’s original claim. Should the court allow such an application? Should the onus shift to the applicant to reestablish credibility for a post hoc conscientious objector claim? These questions and others regarding this issue were left unanswered, because the court ignored the glaring dilemma before it and went on to analyze the case in a
