It’s 2013 and Pakistan is experiencing a downpour of unusually heavy rain. Pooling first in the streets and moving quickly into people’s homes, streams of water flow, gather, and expand into what will become a deadly flood.
Zain Haq is 12 years old and living in Karachi, Pakistan’s capital city, where the poorest neighbourhoods become submerged and the power won’t turn back on for days.
Across the country and in neighbouring Afghanistan over 200 people die during this flooding. Tens of thousands of homes are destroyed. In the global media almost no one draws a connection between the floods and climate change.
Fast forward to 2019. Zain has immigrated to Canada and begun his undergraduate studies at Simon Fraser University.
As he packs his course load with history classes, Zain learns about an event organized by a local chapter of Extinction Rebellion, the global UK-headquartered environmental movement based on a theory of change rooted in nonviolent civil disobedience.
As Zain attends the event, a day-long occupation of the Burrard Street Bridge, something awakens in him and he begins meeting regularly with the Vancouver chapter of Extinction Rebellion, doing what he can to help mobilize the local community to take action and demand the government react appropriately to the climate crisis.
Because of his student visa, he has no intention of getting arrested.
Like Zain, when I discovered Extinction Rebellion, I had no intention of getting arrested. While I believed in their guiding theory of change (borrowed from Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict by Maria J. Stephan and Erica Chenoweth), I was in Los Angeles and didn’t think getting arrested as a visiting Canadian would be a wise choice.
Once I was back in Canada, after a year and a half of considering the value of getting arrested as a political statement, I made the choice to put my body on the line.
Zain never got to make that choice.
Two weeks after an action—blockading a railway used for construction of the TMX pipeline—that he helped organize, a CN Rail officer found and arrested Zain while he was standing in solidarity with an Indigenous-led protest on the other side of the city.
A retroactive arrest is not common practice for someone who’s attended one or two blockades. It’s a common practice for individuals perceived as a threat to oil and gas industries i.e. prominent leaders in the climate movement and Indigenous land and water defenders.
Normally at blockades it’s police protocol to give protestors ample time to avoid arrest.
When I got arrested, even after I’d sat on the highway and refused to get up, an officer politely gave me another chance to leave.
There are certain motions we’re supposed to go through with civil disobedience.
After Canadian law enforcement made the choice for him, Zain threw caution to the wind.
Over the course of a year and a half, Zain would be arrested 10+ times for putting his body in the way of resource extraction and business as usual, including that early spring day in 2021 on the Burrard Street Bridge with me.
Because of this, Canadian Border Services are now attempting to remove him from the country.
Zain’s commitment to sounding the alarm and speaking the truth is commendable. Canada should be listening to and learning from Zain, not attempting to remove him from the country.
It’s true that Zain has received pushback from climate activists in the NGO space for trying to move too fast with his advocacy, but how would you behave if 20 million of your compatriots were displaced as a result of a catastrophic weather event?
That’s how many people were displaced in the latest catastrophic Pakistan floods in 2022, which Zain learned about while in prison. These events should be wake-up calls for us here in Canada.
As Zain explains for the National Observer,
An event at the scale of the one in Pakistan can quite easily occur in North America, significantly greater than [the 2021] flooding in B.C. Interior. When that happens, we are looking at entire major cities like Vancouver having to evacuate within days.
He goes on to explain how these events aren’t catastrophic for the displacement alone, but also for the loss of crops and the possible collapse of food security:
While in jail, I learned that 90 per cent of the crops were lost and that Pakistan would face massive food shortages. I was forced to connect the dots between the suppression of climate activists in Canada and the dire consequences of climate change in the Global South.
Millions of peasants in Pakistan will seek refuge in cities because there is no fresh water for farming. When they get to the city, fights will break out over bags of rations among the displaced. Poverty will explode. Agricultural production will collapse. Anger and tension will be unprecedented in the country’s history.
Social collapse from the food chaining breaking due to climate events is a real threat. We need to be planning and preparing as much as possible in order to mitigate the damage. That’s one of the many reasons why we need leaders like Zain in this country.
It would be wrong for Canada to deport Zain. We must stand up and say so—
Please sign the petition to keep Zain in Canada and share it with your friends and on social media: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/stop-the-removal-of-zain-haq
For Canadian citizens, you can write your MP advocating to keep Zain in the country: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SuKdqiLPWcqj11TR1bzvLHxyxpqWRlk3vOYjhBMY17U/edit
Join the online letter writing event on November 12th at 4PM PST
Learn more about Zain and his advocacy:
https://www.stopzainsdeportation.ca/
CBC News: On the Line (article)
The Nation: He Devoted His Life to the Climate Movement. Now It Could Get Him Deported (article)
National Observer: Save Old Growth organizer turns himself in to Canada Border Services Agency (article)
Arrest Stories: Pre-Prison Interview with Zain Haq (podcast)
Arrest Stories: Zain in Jail — Leg Shackles and Prison Mice (podcast)