(Ottawa) Ottawa is preventing a pro-democracy activist in Russia from obtaining Canadian citizenship because a Russian court convicted her for her blog in which she opposed Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
Maria Kartasheva is appealing the decision of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, and says she fears being deported to a Russian prison.
Mme Kartasheva left Russia in 2019 due to rising authoritarianism. She now works in the tech sector in Ottawa and co-founded a democracy activist group in Russia.
As first reported by CBC News, Mme Kartasheva, 30, learned through her family that in late 2022 she had been charged by Russian authorities with a “wartime offense” for “deliberately spreading false information » on Russian forces. The charges related to two blog posts written while she lived in Canada.
Mme Kartasheva informed Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada of the charges and uploaded translated court documents last May. A few days later, the ministry sent him an invitation for his citizenship ceremony.
But on June 7, she logged into the ceremony online, alongside her husband. During the pre-interview that takes place before someone is allowed into the virtual ceremony room, one of the standard questions was whether anyone had been criminally charged.
When she explained what had happened, an official removed her from the ceremony, but her husband was allowed to stay and he was granted his Canadian citizenship.
“I was heartbroken. But I was also trying to stay positive, because it was still my husband’s ceremony, so I didn’t want to ruin the day for him,” she said.
Then, in December, the department wrote to him that his conviction in Russia corresponded in Canada to a Criminal Code offense relating to false information.
“It was quite scary, because that’s when I realized there was a risk of deportation, of ending up in a Russian prison,” she said. People who end up there for political reasons often don’t survive. »
Mme Kartasheva submitted an explanation in her filing and is awaiting a response from Ottawa, hoping the ministry will reconsider its decision.
The office of the Minister of Immigration, Marc Miller, did not want to say whether he plans to intervene. In an email, a spokesperson was content with the official formula: “We do not comment on specific cases, for confidentiality reasons.”
Russian judge Elena Lenskaya, who is the subject of sanctions by Canada, “arrested” Mme Kartasheva in absentia, based on blog posts published in Russian in March 2022, where she expressed her horror at the massacre in Bucha, Ukraine. And last November, a Russian court convicted her in absentia.
The Basmanny District Court in Moscow, which Canada also sanctioned, sentenced Ms.me Kartasheva faces an eight-year prison sentence.