Can’t think of a straighforward way to check this, so here goes; has anyone ever received political asylum from the Land of the Free? If so, where, when, and what were the circumstances and the basis for the claim?
Bob Avakian of the RCP was supposedly living in political exile in France in the 1970s. I don’t know where he is now. I doubt it was officially “political asylum.” If you’ve got to go into “exile,” I guess France would be a good place to choose…
Wow, six minutes for my first response! At least this gives me something to go on…but what’s the RCP?
I should have looked in Google first! The FSM website says “In 1981 Avakian was forced into exile in France because of his revolutionary activities. There he demanded, but was denied, status as a political refugee. He continues to lead the RCP from exile today.”
IMHO it was a publicity stunt. Maybe there were some actual asylum seekers during the McCarthy era?
Our posts crossed! RCP is “Revolutionary Communist Party” of the USA. FSM is “Free Speech Movement.”
Doing a Google search on ‘Keith Henson’ should turn up a bazillion links to this fellow, who is attempting to claim assylum in Canada from the US.
He was convicted of “interfering with a religion,” the charges were brought by the Scientologist.
A quote from http://www.operatingthetan.com/ :
After the trial, he fled because he believed he would not be safe in prison, and to draw attention to the fact that (I believe) he got railroaded.
askol
So that explains the signs I used to see in L.A. that said, “Free Bob Avakian and the Mao Conspirators”
Oh, and just so all of you don’t imediately dismiss Mr. Henson as a whacko-nutjob, here is an Electronic Frontier Fondation press release in support of Mr. Henson:
http://www.eff.org/Legal/Cases/Scientology_cases/20010622_eff_henson_pr.html
Even if you do not support the EFF, they are still not a crackpot organization.
askol
Ex-pats Charlie Chaplin (tax problems and Communist-hunting) and Roman Polanski (sex with underage girls) come to mind, offhand. I know Paul Robeson fled to Europe for awhile, but I don’t know how voluntary his exile was.
Chaplin and Polanski weren’t U.S.-born citizens, but had resided here for decades when they took a powder.
How about Edward Lee Howard, the CIA agent who spied for Moscow, and then fled to Russia?
I don’t think he ever got it through officially but I believe Lee Oswald tried to claim political oppression when he went to live in the USSR. If I recall, though, the USSR admitted him not as a political refugee but for some other more mundane reason. Someone feel free to correct me if I’ve got this wrong.
Wasn’t Eldridge Cleaver granted political asylum by Algeria and Cuba during the late sixties?
What about the Lockerbie bombers? Didn’t Libya give them political asylum from prosecution by the USA?
William Kuntsler sought political asylum in the USSR for Leonard Peltier per this site
http://www.frontpagemag.com/het/2000/billingsley03-10-00.htm
Don’t know the Chaplin story, but Roman Polanski’s story definitely doesn’t meet the definition of political asylum. Asylum is granted in the U.S. (and the criteria are similar, if not word-for-word the same, in other countries that are also signatories to the various Geneva Conventions that form the body of international law on the subject) on the basis of a legally verified claim to persecution based on one’s race, religion, nationality, ethnic group, or membership in a particular social group (the last is still in the process of being defined by case law, as the Immigration & Nationality Act doesn’t really define it explicitly).
And oh, BTW I’m not a lawyer, but have spent a number of years dealing in various professional capacities with INS, particularly on refugee issues for part of it. Statutory rape not only won’t qualify you for asylum, it (in the U.S. anyway) is quite likely to prohibit you from qualifying for it.
Not to be flip, but I was specifically curious about whether anyone had been granted asylum based on persecution by the U.S. government. Don’t know the Paul Robeson story, but that sounds more likely.
I don’t believe Paul Robeson asked for political asylum. The US government cancelled his passport in 1950, so he had to stay in the US. In 1958, Robeson’s passport was restored and then he moved to London, presumably voluntarily. And he soon moved back to the US for health reasons as he was beset by both physical and mental illness.
One example of an American citizen who tried to claim political asylum in a foreign country is John Nash, as in A Beautiful Mind. During one of his more paranoid phases, he fled to Geneva and tried to renounce his US citizenship. The consulate refused. He then turned to the UN High Commision for Refugees, who apparently argued that he didn’t meet the requirements of being a political refugee and refered him to the Swiss police. To them he claimed asylum on the grounds that he was a consciencious objector and liable to the draft. They decided this was unwarrented, on the grounds that he was too old to be drafted, and eventually had him ejected from the country as an undesirable alien.
More generally, I’d expect there to be rarish cases from the 60s where people did manage to claim asylum on these grounds (liability to the draft) in Europe, but I don’t have cites.
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Loyalists to the British Crown during the Revolutionary War found political asylum in the Canadian provinces.
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Runaway slaves before and during the Civil War found political asylum in the Canadian provinces.
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Draft dodgers during the Vietnam War found political asylum in Canada.
As I recall, for the longest time, France refused to extradite one Ira Einhorn, an American who’d fled to France after being charged with murder. France didn’t want to extradite him because he could have faced the death penalty in the United States. :rolleyes:
Ranchoth
::Lumbers off muttering, not quite sanely, about “ungrateful holier-than-thou’s” who’d be “speaking German if it wasn’t for us.”::
Here is an interesting article on some who are living in political asylum in Cuba:
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/cuba/sfl-hbauza26may26.column?coll=sfla-news-cuba
Another name to be added is Assata Shakur who is in Cuba:
http://afrocubaweb.com/assata.htm
http://www.iacenter.org/ashak.htm
xicanorex