Jessica Chandrashekar spent more than 11 hours in the custody of Indonesian authorities, where she was repeatedly interrogated. The York University PhD student and Tamil community activist was arrested by the Indonesian police and later deported from the country for trying to visit sylum-seekers on a ship from Sri Lanka that was originally bound for Australia.
Jessica Chandrashekar, a York PhD student, recently returned home after being deported from Indonesia during her attempt to aid a ship full of refugees.
Chandrashekar, who arrived in Jakarta on Jan. 21, had an Indonesian tourist visa and was originally sent to Indonesia by the Canadian Humanitarian Appeal for the Relief of Tamils (Canadian HART) in hopes of getting an update
on the situation that the asylum-seekers have found themselves in. She did not have the proper permission to approach the vessel and was held by the government along with two Australians.
According to Chandrashekar, 254 Sri Lankan refugees are aboard the ship. The boat was intercepted by Indonesian authorities en route to Australia. Those aboard refuse to get off the ship because they worry that it will take too many years to be allowed to relocate to Australia.
Australia has washed its hands of the issue and will not accept the ship packed full of asylum-seekers.
“The boat is located off the coast of the Merak Village, so I wanted to go there and see
CFS nationalchairperson Katherine Giroux-Bougard (above) thinks the high debt levels will hurt the economy.
A new study shows that more than half of Canada’s post-secondary students have had to incur some form of debt just to complete their studies.
A study released by Statistics Canada on Jan. 29 shows that more students are relying on government and bank loans to finance their post-secondary educations as tuition fees continue to rise in the majority of provinces.
The study found that 57 percent of Canada’s 2005 graduating class had taken student loans, compared to 49 percent in 1995. In 1995, the average student debt was $15,200; in 2005, that figure rose to $18,800. Today, student debts can range from anywhere between $20,000 and $30,000.
Tuition fees for all programs have gone up nationwide with the exceptions of health, parks, recreation and fitness programs. All other programs have taken Canada’s annual tuition fees from an average of $4,400 in the 2006-2007 school year to $4,917 for the current 2009-2010 school year.
While the Maritime provinces have seen drops in their tuition fees, Ontario has taken the top spot for most expensive, with fees jumping from $5,155 to $5,951 within the
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