Praise for
OUR FRIENDLY LOCAL TERRORIST
To label anyone a terrorist is fraught with emotion and politics; all the more since September 11th. And far too often the label is misplaced and unfounded. Mary Jo Leddys important book powerfully reminds us that the mistakes, secrecy, and lack of accountability for calling anyone a terrorist can be a devastating source of injustice.
ALEX NEVE, Secretary General, Amnesty International Canada (English branch)
In this honest, important book, Mary Jo Leddy reminds us that injustice thrives when citizens do not use their voices. Individuals can make a difference. Even in Canada justice is not the result of an easy, natural process. It is up to all Canadians who love their country to change the status quo for the better. Every Canadian should read this book.
MARINA NEMAT, author of Prisoner of Tehran
Our Friendly Local Terrorist is a work of deep and searching compassion. It is proof once again that the pen is far mightier than the sword and that truths will wend their way to us no matter how dense and oppressive the systems that cage and deny them.
JOY KOGAWA, author of Obasan
A chilling story that shakes your faith in our vaunted Canadian immigration system. Secret hearings, spying, betrayal, no accountability are features we associate with desperate dictatorships elsewhere, not our own government here in Canada.
It is no wonder Canadas stature in the human rights world has sunk to its lowest level ever. This is a national disgrace.
HELGA STEPHENSON, human rights activist
MARY JO LEDDY
OUR FRIENDLY LOCAL
TERRORIST
BETWEEN THE LINES
TORONTO
Our Friendly Local Terrorist
2010 Mary Jo Leddy
First published in 2010 by
Between the Lines
401 Richmond Street West,
Studio 277 Toronto,
Ontario M5V 3A8
1-800-718-7201
www.btlbooks.com
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be photocopied, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of Between the Lines, or (for photocopying in Canada only) Access Copyright, 1 Yonge Street, Suite 1900, Toronto, Ontario, M5E 1E5.
Every reasonable effort has been made to identify copyright holders. Between the Lines would be pleased to have any errors or omissions brought to its attention.
Cataloguing data available from Library and Archives Canada
ISBN 978-1-926662-23-7 (epub)
ISBN 978-1-926662-24-4 (PDF)
ISBN 978-1-897071-60-1 (print)
Cover and text design: Gordon Robertson
Cover images: Security camera by Gautier Willaume/iStockphoto;
people by Giorgio Fochesato/iStockphoto; Suleyman Goven by Mary Jo Leddy
Between the Lines gratefully acknowledges assistance for its publishing activities from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishers Tax Credit program and through the Ontario Book Initiative, and the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund.
In memory of
Seyit Riza
and the 70,000 victims
of the Dersim massacre 193738
Seyit Riza, the leader of the Dersim region,was a relative of Suleyman Goven.
The official history of Turkey long claimed thatthe government had taken necessary measuresto quell the rebellion of Kurdish terrorists.More recently a few government officialsacknowledged the massacre of Dersim.
He was left alone.
And he struggled
all night, until the break of day.
When the faceless one saw
that winning was not possible,
he was wounded and left limping.
The nameless one said
Let me go
but he said
I will not let you go
until you bless me.
an adaptation of GENESIS 32:2427
CONTENTS
7 The Break of Day
Appendix A
Manufacturing Terrorists,by Sharryn J. Aiken
Appendix B
Excerpt from theSIRCReport into the Complaint of Suleyman Goven,by the Hon. Bob Rae
A T LEAST AN OCEAN of difference separates the Prairie town of my childhood from the rugged mountains of eastern Turkey where Suleyman Goven grew up.
And a vast indifference.
It is not only a difference of perspective, although it is that too. Even the most scenic mountains overwhelm me after a while. They loom in my mind. As Suleyman Goven has loomed and lingered in my mind for almost two decades.
I am more comfortable with a long and liquid horizon, with the colour of lilacs and lilies blooming in the sky at night. Out there, in Saskatchewan, you can see the disappearing point and who is coming down the road.
I have never seen the mountains of eastern Turkey or the Kurdish area of Dersim, the place of massacre where suffering riffles along cold streams. But I have seen the face of Suleyman Goven, the landscape of a particular historyrugged, stubborn in its refusal to submit to the fog of secrecy and silence.
I grew up with stories of how the very earth could blow away in the wind. In spite of this, and perhaps because of it, we Prairie people became stubborn in another way, taking our bearings from the clear and consequential sky.
The Saskatoon of the 1950s where I grew up was a small town divided by the South Saskatchewan River. It was, according to anyone I knew, a very friendly place. We had a friendly local newspaper, friendly local police, and friendly local store. During the long summer days our parents would shoo us out in the morning and we would run around the neighbourhood and even beyond, certain of our safety.
Wherever the word terrorism was invented, it was not in Saskatoon, at least not as I remember it. My childhood was a time of innocence, or so I thought until I met Suleyman Goven. He had a childhood too; and he could sometimes become quite childlike again. But innocence? No, it seems that was never given to him. After I met him I began to see scars running long and deep through my own country, and I would see my Prairie river in a different light.
Suleyman Goven, like the mountains of his homeland, is both a fact and a revelationabout him and about the rest of us.
He was tagged as a terrorist.
He was accused of being one of them.
How on earth did this happen? This book is a response to that question. It is a response more than an answer because the truth is so much stranger.
This is the story of Suleyman Goven as I have gathered it up in the course of years of casual conversations, in focused interviews, and through his own diary, which he began to write as he left Turkey and began the long journey towards Canada. It has also, at least partly, become my own story.
This is not a book that I wanted to write. A sleuth might be attracted by the sad mystery that lies at the core of this story. A writer of thrillers might be intrigued by the cosmic dimensions of the struggle that surfaced at times. As a trained academic, I find very little in this material that challenges me intellectually. Nevertheless, it leaves me feeling undone as a human being. Truth can be the stranger who makes it difficult to go home.
This is a book I have been afraid to write. I put it aside for years, preferring to leave what happened to the courts and the political process. There are still moments when I doubt that the pen is mightier than the sword of secrecy. I have a box full of letters to politicians, Immigration officials, and prime ministers detailing reasons as to why Suleyman Goven needed and deserved justice.
