(Ottawa) Ottawa is blocking a pro-democracy activist in Russia from receiving Canadian citizenship because a Russian court convicted her over her blog opposing Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.
Posted at 5:43 p.m
Dylan Robertson The Canadian Press
Maria Kartasheva is appealing Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada's decision, saying she fears deportation to a Russian prison.
Ms Kartasheva left Russia in 2019 due to rising authoritarianism. She now works in the technology sector in Ottawa and co-founded a democracy activist group in Russia.
As first reported by CBC News, Ms. Kartasheva, 30, learned through her family that she had been charged by Russian authorities in late 2022 with a “wartime crime” for “intentionally spreading false information” about Russian forces. The charges related to two blog posts she wrote while in Canada.
Ms. Kartasheva informed Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada of the allegations and uploaded translated court documents last May. A few days later, the ministry sent him an invitation to his naturalization ceremony.
But on June 7, she and her husband logged into the ceremony online. During the preliminary interview, which takes place before anyone is allowed into the virtual ceremony space, one of the standard questions was whether anyone has been criminally charged.
When she explained what had happened, an official excluded her from the ceremony, but her husband was allowed to stay and was granted Canadian citizenship.
“My heart was broken. But I also tried to stay positive because it was still my husband's ceremony and I didn't want to ruin his day,” she said.
Then, in December, the ministry wrote to him that his conviction in Russia amounted to a misrepresentation offense in Canada.
“It was pretty scary because that's when I realized there was a risk of deportation and a risk of ending up in a Russian prison,” she said. People who end up there for political reasons often do not survive. »
Ms. Kartasheva has made a statement in her filing and is awaiting a response from Ottawa, hoping the ministry will reconsider its decision.
Immigration Minister Marc Miller's office declined to say whether he planned to intervene. In an email, a spokesman was satisfied with the official formula: “For reasons of confidentiality, we do not comment on specific cases.”
Russian judge Elena Lenskaya, against whom Canada has imposed sanctions, “arrested” Ms. Kartasheva in absentia based on blog posts published in Russian in March 2022 in which she expressed her horror at the Boutcha massacre in Ukraine. And last November, a Russian court convicted her in absentia.
The Basmanny District Court in Moscow, which was also sanctioned by Canada, sentenced Ms. Kartasheva to eight years in prison.