VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) - Hundreds of people are expected to come out in Vancouver this afternoon for a rally to support the rights of Sri Lankan refugees who arrived last week aboard the MV Sun Sea.
Vancouver was just one of the cities joining country wide rallies this weekend. Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, and Victoria were also part of the action.
"No One Is Illegal", an immigrant and refugee rights group, is behind the rallies. Harsha Walia helped organize the event and says Canadians are being mislead about the migrants. "I think its been incredibly irresponsible of the Canadian government to speculate on the Tamil refugees. There has been a lot of stereotyping of them as terrorist, as queue jumpers, as criminals, when in fact none of those are rooted in the law or fact"
Detention hearings are being held for the migrants, all of whom are currently in custody. The Canada Border Services Agency processed 492 migrants, 380 of them men, 63 women and 49 minors. The RCMP will now have to check the identities of the nearly 500 people who were on board the ship.
The rights group says Tamil refugees should not be kept in detention and must be released immediately.
For more details on the protest, take a look here.