The federal government plans to kick Suwalee Iamkhong out of the country a week from today. But the former exotic dancer, who has advanced AIDS, hopes a federal judge will look compassionately on her legal Catch-22.
Iamkhong was convicted in 2007 of infecting her former husband with HIV and her appeal is scheduled to be heard March 24. If the Ontario Court of Appeal agrees to reduce her two-year sentence by just one day, she'll have a shot at overturning her deportation order.
Afraid she won't get special AIDS medication in Thailand, Iamkhong believes it could be a matter of life or death.
"What about me? I worry about my life every day," Percy Whiteman, 33, her former husband, told the Star. "I was a clean human being looking forward to my life and my marriage and now 75 per cent of it is gone," he said. "I was hoping for some closure."
At a detention review hearing yesterday at the Vanier Centre for Women in Milton, an Immigration and Refugee Board adjudicator refused to release Iamkhong, 39, from custody. She received parole last December, but is being held on an immigration warrant.
While the adjudicator rejected arguments from federal lawyers that Iamkhong is a public safety threat, he also concluded she was a flight risk because the people willing to post about $17,000 in bonds to ensure she'd show up for deportation didn't know her well enough, said her lawyer, Elizabeth Long. They included Noulmook Sutdhibhasilp, executive director of Asian Community AIDS Services on Isabella St., with whom Iamkhong, a native of Thailand, planned to reside.
The federal government also announced yesterday it has set Feb. 27 as the date for Iamkhong's removal. She will now ask the Canadian Border Services Agency to defer the order pending resolution of her various court cases. If it refuses, Iamkhong will appeal to a Federal Court judge, said Long, "on humanitarian and compassionate grounds."
In addition to her criminal appeal, Iamkhong is being sued civilly by Whiteman, whom she met while working as a stripper at the Zanzibar tavern. Whiteman is also suing the federal government for allowing her into the country in 1995.
TheStar.com | GTA | Ex-stripper with AIDS denied release