Iranian Refugee fainted on Arrival
Iranian refugee who lived in Moscow airport now in Vancouver
Fainted on arrival in Canada
Doug Ward, CanWest News Service
VANCOUVER — An Iranian family’s two-year flight to freedom, which included a Kafkaesque 10-month enforced sojourn in the transit lounge of Moscow’s international airport, ended happily yet dramatically Thursday in Vancouver.
Zahra Kamalfar, accompanied by her two children, was detained for an hour at Vancouver International Airport upon arrival for allegedly smoking on a plane.
Then, after an emotional reunion with her brother and meeting with supporters and reporters, a sobbing Kamalfar fainted and rested briefly on the floor of the Vancouver International Airport, overwhelmed by emotion and exhaustion.
View Larger ImageZahra Kamalfar is comforted after she fainted after arriving at Vancouver International airport on Thursday.
CanWest News Service
Speaking to reporters, Kamalfar thanked the United Nations for giving her refugee status, the Canadian government for accepting her and her brother Nader Kamalfar, who lives in Vancouver, for helping her gain entry into Canada.
“We had too much hard life,” said Kamalfar, speaking in fractured English.
“Thirteen months in just one room and 10 months or more in transit. But first we have God and after that... we are strong. I am Iranian woman. Iranian woman.”
Kamalfar begged off further questions from reporters, saying “I am very tired.” Seconds later she fainted and, after a few minutes rest, was escorted to a taxi and her new life in Vancouver.
Late Thursday night the RCMP said in a press release that it is uncertain whether there is enough evidence to support the smoking on the plane allegations “against the 46-year-old who was the subject of the complaint.”
Kamalfar and her 17-year-old daughter Ana, and her son Davood, 12, had been living in the transit of the Sheremetyevo International Airport since last May, said Kamalfar’s Canadian lawyer Negar Azmudeh.
Kamalfar’s limbo life at the Moscow airport, where she depended on the goodwill of strangers and food from Aeroflot, was reminiscent of Tom Hank’s character in the 2004 movie, The Terminal.
Kamalfar’s ordeal began almost three years ago when she and her husband participated in a demonstration in Tehran in July 2004 against the Islamic government and for human rights, said Azmudeh.
They were both arrested and put in jail. While in jail Kamalfar was lashed. She was given a two-day pass to visit her family in April of 2005 .
Upon her return home, Kamalfar was told that her husband had been executed. Kamalfar then fled Iran with her two children. She went overland to Turkey and then flew into Russia and caught a flight to Germany with Canada her ultimate destination.
But the Kamalfar family was intercepted by German authorities in Frankfurt and sent back to Russia, where she remained until gaining refugee status in Canada.
The United Nations High Commission for Refugees UN Refugee Agency interviewed her initially in Moscow but denied her refugee status. Kamalfar and her kids were put under house arrest in a Moscow hotel room for about a year. Then last May they brought her into the transit lounge, where she remained until days ago.
In November Russian authorities ordered her deported but she slashed her wrists and her daughter swallowed some cleaning substance in a successful attempt to delay the deportation process.
The European Commission ordered a halt to the deportation process until she could interviewed again by the UN Refugee Agency and this time she was deemed to be a convention refugee, said Azmudeh.
Kamalfar intends to live in Vancouver, already home to about 30,000 Iranians, and to place her two children in school here, said family friends.
