Jeannine is a strong woman. I know this because she doesn’t let the nightmare that is her life shine through. She prefers to talk politics and laugh; people around her don’t suspect a thing!
Over the years, it still happened to him to throw me snatches of his miseries. These bits and pieces are like pieces of a puzzle that eventually take shape over time. A scenario worthy of a fictional drama that she prefers to trivialize… as if to feel her torment less.
Jeannine fled the war from Rwanda with her two children to Cameroon, then to Canada. Her husband stayed behind at the first stopover, imprisoned!
Refugee life
First there was the 10 years she spent in stand-by as a refugee. It was his anecdotes that made me understand what refugee status really is.
When you are a refugee, she said to me, with each knock on the door, you imagine that it is the police who come to take you to the airport to deport you. She had a suitcase always ready in her room. Her dread was to be evicted without her children. She had plans B for all kinds of situations. She confessed to me that she even thought about giving her children up for adoption to save them… and many other scenarios that accompanied her nightmares and furnished her insomnia!
His only identity card was a “blue” document. His Star of David; she was so ashamed of it. The document stated that she has no status in Canada and is in the process of being deported. Status that closed many doors for his children’s competitions, for good jobs …
The experienced accountant who studied in Belgium with an internship at HEC in Montreal found herself working in factories and picking vegetables in the fields to survive.
She had to learn to fight as a refugee to have her children accepted for school, because after the age of 16, school is no longer compulsory. She remembers a sit-in in front of the Immigration Department on rue Saint-Antoine, in Old Montreal… She claimed by shouting the study permit for her son. She was ready to go to jail for that… “I don’t want my son to become a bandit anyway,” she told the attendants, before snatching the precious document so that her son could go to school and not. miss a day!
As Jeannine always likes to end her anecdotes with laughter, she confessed to me that the day she and her children obtained permanent residence, they first believed that there was a mistake, then they ran to big strides!
The go-getter has succeeded perfectly in her bet: her 28-year-old daughter is now a resident doctor, her son is a manager in a large Quebec company. Jeannine is an analyst at Telefilm Canada.
Her husband
Legalizing her status wasn’t Jeannine’s only challenge, however. She drags with her another ball, much heavier still, since her 23 years of immigration …
In Rwanda, her husband, Jérôme Clément Bicamumpaka, a member of the opposition, was foreign minister in the interim government following the Arusha accords, which aimed to end the Rwandan civil war.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY NADIA ZOUAOUI
Jérôme Clément Bicamumpaka and Jeannine Hakizimana, in Arusha, Tanzania, in 2019
Because he was in government, Jérôme was arrested in Cameroon by the International Criminal Court. He spent 12 years in preventive detention awaiting trial. In 2011, Jérôme was cleared of the 30 charges against him. It has been proven that he was outside the country when the facts of which he was accused unfolded. He was at the United Nations, in France and in Belgium, to seek international aid in order to stop this war which had turned into genocide.
Twelve years of ordeal for her family, of indescribable moral torture for Jeannine and her children. Twelve years of life without the father who will see his children grow up through videos… Twelve years in which Jeannine has stepped up her efforts with her Quebec lawyers who have succeeded in clearing her husband and who will become her Quebec family. As shown in this video where she spends her first Christmas with her lawyer, Francine Veilleux.
Once Jerome was acquitted, Jeannine and her children believed that they were at the end of their ordeal. Yet the United Nations has put Jerome and the others acquitted of the International Criminal Court in a secure residence in Arusha, Tanzania, while waiting to find them host countries.
Men recognized as innocent, supposed to be free, but who have no legal protection, no identity document, nor any right, even that to work, to have a telephone number or even to speak to journalists.
Instead of Jerome’s acquittal being a release, he has become a real mess of international justice. Jeannine donned her Don Quixote uniform to fight against the tongue-in-cheek windmills of the United Nations and Canadian politics. And it’s been 10 years that it lasts!
The nightmare doesn’t end there
The United Nations have decided to move these men to Niger… until December 22. They will then have to leave. The United Nations then releases itself from all responsibility: we lodge you for a year and then you make your life in the poorest and most dangerous country in Africa!
Jérôme has cancer and needs treatment that he cannot receive in Niger. From December 22, he will be illegal and may be imprisoned or deported to Rwanda, where he fears for his life!
Jeannine’s health is not at the top either. After 23 years of struggle, that is understandable. During our last conversation, she told me that she has kidney failure and is due for a transplant soon. For now, she prefers to ignore the matter, because even Jeannine’s defective kidneys can wait!
Today she wants to talk to journalists and make her story public. She’s even ready to write a letter to Santa Claus. If ever Prime Minister Justin Trudeau disguises himself as Santa Claus this year, he will find Jeannine’s letter… he is now the only one who can make a political decision!