The Most Haunting Photograph from Bangladesh

Many powerful photographs have been made in the aftermath of the devastating collapse of a garment factory on the outskirts of Dhaka, Bangladesh. But one photo, by Bangladeshi photographer Taslima Akhter, has emerged as the most heart wrenching, capturing an entire country’s grief in a single image.

Shahidul Alam, Bangladeshi photographer, writer and founder of Pathshala, the South Asian Institute of Photography, said of the photo: “This image, while deeply disturbing, is also hauntingly beautiful. An embrace in death, its tenderness rises above the rubble to touch us where we are most vulnerable. By making it personal, it refuses to let go. This is a photograph that will torment us in our dreams. Quietly it tells us. Never again.”

Akhter writes for LightBox about the photograph, which appears in this week’s TIME International alongside an essay by David Von Drehle.

I have been asked many questions about the photograph of the couple embracing in the aftermath of the collapse. I have tried desperately, but have yet to find any clues about them. I don’t know who they are or what their relationship is with each other.

I spent the entire day the building collapsed on the scene, watching as injured garment workers were being rescued from the rubble. I remember the frightened eyes of relatives — I was exhausted both mentally and physically. Around 2 a.m., I found a couple embracing each other in the rubble. The lower parts of their bodies were buried under the concrete. The blood from the eyes of the man ran like a tear. When I saw the couple, I couldn’t believe it. I felt like I knew them — they felt very close to me. I looked at who they were in their last moments as they stood together and tried to save each other — to save their beloved lives.

Every time I look back to this photo, I feel uncomfortable — it haunts me. It’s as if they are saying to me, we are not a number — not only cheap labor and cheap lives. We are human beings like you. Our life is precious like yours, and our dreams are precious too.

They are witnesses in this cruel history of workers being killed. The death toll is now more than 750. What a harsh situation we are in, where human beings are treated only as numbers.

This photo is haunting me all the time. If the people responsible don’t receive the highest level of punishment, we will see this type of tragedy again. There will be no relief from these horrific feelings. I’ve felt a tremendous pressure and pain over the past two weeks surrounded by dead bodies. As a witness to this cruelty, I feel the urge to share this pain with everyone. That’s why I want this photo to be seen.

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Taslima Akhter is a Bangladeshi photographer and activist.

 

At least three dead, 130 injured after bombs explode at Boston Marathon

By Holly Bailey, Yahoo! News

At least 130 people are injured and three dead after two bombs exploded near the finish line of the Boston Marathon Monday afternoon. The injuries include dismemberment, witnesses said, and local hospitals say they are treating shrapnel wounds, open fractures and limb injuries. An eight-year-old boy is one of the three known dead, multiple news outlets reported, and several of the injured are also children.

At a Monday night press conference, Gov. Deval Patrick urged Bostonians to be vigilant on their morning commute Tuesday, and to report any suspicious packages to the police. The FBI has officially taken over the investigation, and is treating it as a potential terrorist attack.

Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis stressed that the police had no suspect in custody yet. “I’m not prepared to say we are at ease at this time,” Davis said, when asked if the area was safe. Authorities found and dismantled five more more explosive devices in the area, according to The Wall Street Journal.

“This cowardly act will not be taken in stride,” Davis said. “We will turn over every rock to find out who is responsible.”

Davis said Boston police were not aware of any specific threat to the marathon before it began. Police said they had no one in custody and no suspects, but the Boston Globe reported that a “person of interest” who was injured in the blast was being questioned at Brigham and Woman’s Hospital Monday night.

 

Malala Yousafzai to have surgery to repair skull

• Caroline Davies and agencies
• guardian.co.uk,

Malala Yousafzai, the 15-year-old girl shot in the head by a Taliban gunman on her school bus in Pakistan, is to undergo surgery for what doctors hope will be the last time.

The teenager, who was shot in October after advocating girls’ education, will return to the Birmingham hospital where she underwent emergency surgery last year after being transferred from Pakistan.

She is to have a custom-made titanium plate fitted to her skull and a cochlear implant to help her recover hearing in her left ear.

She is expected to be out of hospital within “two to three days” of surgery, said Dr Dave Rosser, medical director at the University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust. Once it was over she would finally be able to concentrate fully on her rehabilitation, he said.

She has already undergone surgery since her discharge from the Birmingham hospital at the start of the year to repair a facial nerve severed in the gun attack.

“Malala does have a weakness in her face so the left side of her face droops, but there is a good chance she will completely recover within 18 months,” said Rosser.

He praised her “great sense of humour”.

Malala is now likely to secure permanent residence in the UK after her father was granted a job with the Pakistani consulate in Birmingham.

Rosser described her as a “remarkable young woman” who had made great progress in her recovery.

She was fully aware of the threats the Taliban had made against her life, but said she would continue to champion the cause of women’s rights, he said.

“She’s not naive at all about what happened to her and the situation in terms of her high profile. She’s incredibly determined to continue to speak for her cause,” he said.

The schoolgirl has become a globally recognised symbol of girls’ education and other women’s rights in the face of Taliban oppression, and there have been calls for her to be nominated for a Nobel peace prize. She first came to public attention in 2009 when she wrote an anonymous diary for BBC Urdu about life under the Taliban in her home town of Mingora in the Swat valley, north-west Pakistan.

Doctors in Birmingham have previously described how the bullet hit her left brow but travelled along the side of her head and into her shoulder rather than penetrating her skull.

Both surgical procedures are expected to be carried out within the next 10 days, and will take about 90 minutes each. It could take “between 15 and 18 months” for any hearing to recover in her left ear but in time she is expected to regain normal levels of hearing, said Rosser.

Stefan Edmondson, principal maxillofacial prosthetist, said the titanium plate would be fitted over a hole in her skull that had been left by the bullet.

It was also revealed that the portion of missing skull had been implanted in Malala’s abdomen – where it remains – in case it was needed to repair her skull at a later date. But surgeons have now decided instead to fit the metal plate.

Rosser credited the surgeons who operated on Malala in Pakistan soon after she was shot for saving her life.

 

 

Ex-diplomat loses last-minute bid to avoid deportation to Yemen

By Hugh Adami, Ottawa Citizen

OTTAWA — Abdul-wahab Zabeba is on his way back to the Islamic state of Yemen, where he faces the possibility of persecution or even death for converting to Christianity three years ago.

An eleventh-hour appeal to the Federal Court to grant him stay of removal was dismissed Friday afternoon as Zabeba, 55, and his son, Mahir, 20, waited anxiously at the Ottawa airport for word that they might avoid deportation, at least for the time being.

His lawyer, Karima Karmali, who took over his case last week, applied for a temporary stay of removal so the matter could be reviewed. The application was based on new evidence showing Zabeba would be in extreme danger in Yemen after word of the former diplomat’s conversion spread through the country. A translated Toronto newspaper report about Zabeba’s case appeared on various Yemeni online news sites in recent months.

Father and son were scheduled to fly from Ottawa to Montreal Friday night, and then board a plane for Qatar. They were to arrive in Yemen Sunday.

Though Mahir remains a Muslim and isn’t thought to be in any danger, Zabeba fears he could be killed as soon as their plane touches down in Sanaa, the capital. Apostasy is considered a crime in Yemen, punishable by death, though immigration officials believe the country no longer practises that law.

Noomane Raboudi, a University of Ottawa professor and Middle East expert, told the Citizen last week that Zabeba would likely be killed for converting “to the religion of the enemy.”

Rev. Fred Demaray, the Baptist pastor who baptized Zabeba in February 2010, has written Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney. He wants Canada to make sure that Yemeni authorities monitor Zabeba’s safety.

Zabeba also believes he is in trouble with his country for leaving his diplomatic post at the Yemeni Embassy in Washington, D.C., in 2008, to come to Canada. He sought refugee status for political persecution shortly after arriving at the Detroit-Windsor border crossing. That was denied by the Immigration and Refugee Board on Sept. 1., 2009. The board did not believe he was in any danger.

Zabeba began attending services at First Baptist Church at Somerset and Elgin streets around the same time, and was baptized about five months later. In the summer of 2010, he was given a pre-removal risk assessment to determine if he faced any dangers in Yemen.

The risk assessment officer did not believe Zabeba faced any serious trouble either, despite his recent conversion.

The Federal Court eventually ordered another assessment, but Zabeba was rejected again. The Federal Court also allowed Zabeba to apply for judicial review, but his application was turned down last summer.

Zabeba and his son slept at First Baptist Church Thursday night.

 

20 children among dead in Connecticut school shooting

By cbc.ca

A heavily-armed man opened fire inside a Connecticut elementary school Friday leaving 27 dead — including 20 children — and forcing students to cower in classrooms and then flee with the help of teachers and police.

The death toll at the school — 26 plus the gunman — in Newtown was confirmed during an update from police Friday afternoon.

Lt. Paul Vance said 18 children were pronounced dead at the school as well as six adults and the shooter. Two other children were transported to hospital but were pronounced dead. One person was also injured.

Vance said another adult was found dead at a “secondary crime scene” in Newtown, which police discovered while investigating the gunman.

He said the shooting took place in two nearby classrooms at Sandy Hook Elementary School, which has students in kindergarten to Grade 4, in the community of 27,000 located 95 kilometers northeast of New York City.

Vance said it would take time to positively identify the victims, which could happen tomorrow.

The shooting was the nation’s second-deadliest school shooting, exceeded only by the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007, which left 32 people and the gunman dead.

Speaking at a press conference Friday afternoon, Connecticut Gov. Dan Malloy said that it is a terrible day for the community.

“Evil visited this community today, and it’s too early to speak of recovery” he told reporters. “But Connecticut, we’re all in this together.”

Although police have not yet officially identified the shooter, The Associated Press, quoting an unidentified law enforcement official, said it was 20-year-old Adam Lanza and reported that his mother was a teacher at the school.

Lanza’s older brother, 24-year-old Ryan, of Hoboken, N.J., was being questioned by police, the official said. Earlier, a law enforcement official mistakenly identified Ryan as the shooter.

Ryan Lanza is not under arrest and has been “extremely co-operative,” an official told The Associated Press. He added that Lanza is not believed to have any connection to the killings.

The gunman drove to the school in his mother’s car, a second official said. Three guns were found — a Glock and a Sig Sauer, both pistols, inside the school, and a .223-calibre rifle in the back of a car.

A visibly emotional President Barack Obama said the United States had endured “too many of these tragedies.”

“The majority of those who died were children — beautiful, little kids between the ages of five and 10 years old,” Obama said.

“These neighbourhoods are our neighbourhoods, and these children are our children, and we’re going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics,” Obama said during a press conference Friday afternoon.

Parents flooded to Sandy Hook Elementary School looking for their children in the wake of the shooting. Students were told by police to close their eyes as they were led from the building.

A photo taken by the Newtown Bee newspaper showed a group of young students — some crying, others looking visibly frightened — being escorted by adults through a parking lot in a line, hands on each other’s shoulders.

A law enforcement official briefed on the shooting said the gunman died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound and that one of the victims was the man’s mother, a teacher. The official wasn’t authorized to speak about the investigation.

‘Everyone was just traumatized’

Robert Licata said his six-year-old son was in class when the gunman burst in and shot the teacher.

“That’s when my son grabbed a bunch of his friends and ran out the door,” he said. “He was very brave. He waited for his friends.”

He said the shooter didn’t say a word.

Stephen Delgiadice said his eight-year-old daughter heard two big bangs and teachers told her to get in a corner. His daughter was fine.

“It’s alarming, especially in Newtown, Conn., which we always thought was the safest place in America,” he said.

Danbury Hospital was the only hospital to take in victims from the shootings, admitting three patients. Doctors said at a news conference they cleared four trauma rooms to treat shooting victims.

Mergim Bajraliu, 17, heard the gunshots echo from his home and raced to check on his nine-year-old sister at the school. He said his sister, who was fine, heard a scream come over the intercom at one point. He said teachers were shaking and crying as they came out of the building.

“Everyone was just traumatized,” he said.

‘There’s no words’

Richard Wilford’s seven-year-old son, Richie, is in the second grade at the school. His son told him that he heard a noise that “sounded like what he described as cans falling.”

The boy told him a teacher went out to check on the noise, came back in, locked the door and had the kids huddle up in the corner until police arrived.

“There’s no words,” Wilford said. “It’s sheer terror, a sense of imminent danger, to get to your child and be there to protect him.”

Melissa Makris, 43, said her 10-year-old son, Philip, was in the school gym.

“He said he heard a lot of loud noises and then screaming. Then the gym teachers immediately gathered the children in a corner and kept them safe in a corner,” Makris said.

The fourth-grader told his mother that the students stayed huddled until police came in the gym. He also told her that he saw what looked like a body under a blanket as he fled the school.

“He said the policeman came in and helped them get out of the building and told them to run,” Makris said. “And they ran to the firehouse.”

On Friday afternoon, family members were led away from the firehouse, some of them weeping. One man, wearing only a T-shirt without a jacket, put his arms around a woman as they walked down the middle of the street, oblivious to everything around them.

Another woman with tears rolling down her face walked by carrying a car seat with a young infant inside and a bag that appeared to have toys and stuffed animals.

 

Scientists discover the source of water on Moon

Scientists have discovered that the most likely source of water on Moon is the constant stream of charged particles from the Sun known as the solar wind.

The findings by researchers from the University of Michigan imply that ice inside permanently shadowed polar craters on the Moon, sometimes called cold traps, could contain hydrogen atoms ultimately derived from the solar wind.

Theoretical models of lunar water stability dating to the late 1970s suggest that hydrogen ions (protons) from the solar wind can combine with oxygen on the Moon’s surface to form water and related compounds called hydroxyls, which consist of one atom of hydrogen and one of oxygen and are known as OH.

Researchers present infrared spectroscopy and mass spectrometry analyses of Apollo samples that reveal the presence of significant amounts of hydroxyl inside glasses formed in the lunar regolith by micrometeorite impacts.

“We found that the ‘water’ component, the hydroxyl, in the lunar regolith is mostly from solar wind implantation of protons, which locally combined with oxygen to form hydroxyls that moved into the interior of glasses by impact melting,” said Youxue Zhang, Professor of Geological Sciences.

“Our work shows that the ‘water’ component, the hydroxyl, is widespread in lunar materials, although not in the form of ice or liquid water that can easily be used in a future manned lunar base,” Zhang said in a statement.

“This also means that water likely exists on Mercury and on asteroids such as Vesta or Eros further within our solar system,” Yang Liu of U-T, the first author of the paper said.

“These planetary bodies have very different environments, but all have the potential to produce water,” she said.

Over the last five years, spacecraft observations and new lab measurements of Apollo lunar samples have overturned the long-held belief that the moon is bone-dry.

In 2009, NASA’s Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing satellite slammed into a permanently shadowed lunar crater and ejected a plume of material that was surprisingly rich in water ice.

Water and related compounds have also been detected in the lunar regolith, the layer of fine powder and rock fragments that coats the lunar surface.

However, the origin of lunar surface water has remained unclear.

The study findings are published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

 

 

 

Motion to study when life begins defeated in Parliament

A motion to study the Criminal Code’s definition of when human life begins was defeated in the House of Commons Wednesday night.

Members of Parliament voted 203 to 91 against Motion 312, sponsored by Conservative MP Stephen Woodworth.

The private member’s motion would have set up a committee to study how the Criminal Code defines when life begins. The provision, in the homicide section of the code, says a child becomes a human being when it has fully left its mother’s body.

Although Prime Minister Stephen Harper had opposed the motion, some members of his cabinet voted in favour. Those included Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, Status of Women Minister Rona Ambrose, Government House Leader Peter Van Loan and International Co-Operation Minister Julian Fantino.

Liberal MPs John McKay, Lawrence MacAulay, Kevin Lamoureux and Jim Karygiannis also supported the motion.

Critics said the motion was an excuse to re-open the debate on abortion in Canada and set limits on the procedure. Woodworth had said he hoped having a debate would convince Canadians to oppose abortion.

Woodworth said last week that he didn’t expect the motion to pass. The Conservatives, NDP and Liberals treating it as a free vote, meaning MPs were not told how to vote on the motion.

The NDP accused the government of using a private member’s motion to push an agenda they’re afraid to tackle more officially.

 

Most Canadian 50-somethings plan to work in retirement to offset low savings: poll

By Hugh McKenna

TORONTO – A new survey of Canadians in their 50s found that 53 per cent of those polled said they plan to continue working after retiring in their 60s, in many cases to supplement their income.

The national online survey, conducted last month for CIBC (TSX:CM.TO – News) by Leger Marketing, found that Quebec respondents were least likely to say they’ll work after retirement, at 47 per cent.

Manitoba and Saskatchewan respondents were the most likely to say they planned to work after retirement, at 59 per cent.

Atlantic Canada (54 per cent), Ontario (55 per cent), Alberta (57 per cent) and British Columbia (49 per cent) were closer to the national average of 53 per cent.

Meanwhile, about 29 per cent of those surveyed said they were not sure if they would work after retirement, while 14 per cent said they would definitely not work post retirement.

According to the survey, almost half of today’s 50-59 year olds polled have less than $100,000 saved for retirement and many planned to use employment income in retirement to make up for lack of savings.

“The retirement landscape is shifting as baby boomers reach traditional retirement age with a smaller nest egg than they expected to have,” said Christina Kramer, executive vice-president, retail distribution and channel strategy at CIBC.

“Many Canadians are now planning to draw on multiple sources of income including employment to fund their retirement, and that makes getting advice about how to manage your income, savings, and investments even more important.”

Overall, the survey found that of those who plan to keep on working, 37 per cent said they would do so part time.

And only one third of those who plan to work post retirement said they would do so just for the money.

Two-thirds — or 67 per cent — saw working either as a way to either stay socially active or that they just found work enjoyable and wanted to stay involved in the workforce in some capacity.

The average age at which the respondents plan to retire varied by region, with those in Atlantic Canada, Quebec and Manitoba and Saskatchewan looking to retire earliest at age 62. Ontarians were next at 63 and followed by those in Alberta and British Columbia at age 64.

CIBC says results are based on a poll conducted online by Leger Marketing via the LegerWeb panel that it says comprises more than 400,000 households. It said the poll used a sample of 805 respondents aged 50 to 59 and was conducted between July 5 and July 8.

The polling industry’s professional body, the Marketing Research and Intelligence Association, says online surveys cannot be assigned a margin of error because they do not randomly sample the population.

 

Chinese citizens pressure P.E.I. for refunds after immigration rejected

By Michael Tutton, The Canadian Press

Chinese citizens who gave money to Prince Edward Island’s troubled immigration nominee program say they’re angry they haven’t been refunded, two years after Ottawa rejected their visa applications.

Qiu Chuanbo, 47, said in an interview that he is owed close to $91,000 after giving money to the program, which was intended to attract immigrants who would invest in companies in the province.

He said the delay in getting his money back is a severe financial blow, making it difficult for him to fund his children’s university education in China.

“After going through this, I became very angry,” he said in Mandarin from his home in Dalian, China.

“The government is too slow, too unreasonable. I think my money should have been refunded long ago.”

The provincial government won’t comment on his or other specific cases, but says there is a trust fund to refund some of each applicant’s money.

But Qiu, the owner of a small interior decoration firm, said the lack of responses he has received from provincial officials and immigration consultants in Canada has made him distrustful of Canadian officials.

He said relatives and friends of rejected applicants are planning to travel from Toronto to stage a protest in Charlottetown later this month to urge the province to return their money.

Qiu said he provided $152,500 in the summer of 2008 to one of the provincially chosen, private intermediary firms that was to invest his cash in a P.E.I. business. He said he expected he would receive shares in a P.E.I. firm and be allowed to immigrate to Canada.

Instead, Qiu said he received a federal rejection letter in January 2010 that said his documentation wasn’t acceptable.

He said he’s awaiting $90,975 of his funds, the amount he calculates he’s owed since the province returned two deposits he gave them and a Chinese immigration consultant repaid him some fees.

“I think the way that Canada does things is cumbersome, demanding whatever they like,” he said. “They seem not to care about … Chinese immigrants.”

Andy Hu, a Toronto resident, said his older brother was accepted in 2008 under P.E.I.’s nominee program after being interviewed in Hong Kong, but was rejected by Ottawa in April 2010.

Hu said of the $150,000 his brother gave to the program, only a $45,000 deposit was returned.

The 47-year-old Toronto resident declined to give his brother’s full name, saying he was ashamed because he hasn’t yet told all of his family members that a portion of his life savings hasn’t been refunded.

In a letter forwarded to The Canadian Press, Andy Hu’s brother said the wait has meant he and other applicants have missed out on investing during China’s economic boom. He also said he was facing difficulties paying his daughter’s university fees.

“Many of these applicants have already prepared to immigrate to Canada after paying $150,000 and being nominated by the P.E.I. government,” he says in the letter.

“They closed down their businesses in China, sold most of their properties, and sent children to International Baccalaureate courses.”

Jamie Aiken, the province’s director of immigration, said rejected applicants may eventually gain access to a $9 million trust fund that can provide about $55,000 per person. Aiken said the fund will cover 164 rejected applicants, but the province must first ensure it has money for them before starting payouts.

“We want to make sure there is sufficient coverage (in the fund),” Aiken said in an interview.

He said the trust fund won’t be available until Ottawa has completed processing some backlogged files of the 2,627 applicants whose cash the province accepted between 2007 and the fall of 2008.

Aiken said he is aware of about 50 applicants that Ottawa has rejected so far.

A spokeswoman for federal Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said the department warned P.E.I. in 2008 that there would be lengthy delays for the unusually large number of applicants.

“P.E.I’s mismanagement of the provincial nominee program affected the integrity of Canada’s immigration system,” said Alexis Pavlich.

“But hopefully it hasn’t caused irreparable damage to Canada’s reputation overseas for prospective immigrants.”

She said the backlog was a result of P.E.I.’s push of 2,200 applications in 2008, which swamped three Immigration offices.

Qiu and Hu say they should receive the balance of their investment aside from the $55,000 from the trust fund.

But Aiken said any refunds above that amount depends on private agreements set up between the intermediaries and each immigrant.

“Due to privacy laws and legislation, I can’t make comments about particular agreements between a company and a partner,” he said.

Charlottetown lawyer Kenneth Clark, an intermediary with the firm Island Business Initiatives Inc., declined an interview request.

But in an email he said the company has abided by the terms of its agreements with its immigration applicants.

“IBI is in compliance with the terms of its contracts with all immigrant partners it assisted and the polices of the P.E.I. provincial nominee program.”

The provincial nominee program was set up by a federal-provincial agreement in 2002.

Money from immigrants was sent to government-appointed intermediaries in Canada — usually lawyers or accountants — who took a list of approved immigrants from the province and then matched them to P.E.I. businesses.

Some of that money was sent back to immigration consultants in China who helped the applicants and another portion of the funds went to the province for various fees.

Ottawa shut down the program in 2008 after it tried to get P.E.I. to change it to conform with federal regulations for provincial nominee programs.

Since then, P.E.I. has introduced a new nominee program that complies with revamped federal regulation.

 

Jun Lin’s slaying shatters mother’s view of Canada

 

The grieving mother of Chinese university student Jun Lin says her son viewed Canada as a place that was welcoming and safe for immigrants, but his brutal killing and dismemberment have left her with a starkly different view of the country.

“We still believe that most people here are very kind, but this heinous crime happened in Canada. It’s made me reconsider what kind of place this is,” Jun Lin’s mother, Zhigui Du, told the CBC’s Mark Kelley.

Lin’s parents have been treated with “kindness” by the federal government, she said, and people here have shown the couple sympathy and support since they arrived in Montreal following their son’s grisly slaying in late May.

But his death, the brutal nature of which garnered headlines around the world, has shattered the idealistic view of Canada that Du’s 33-year-old son had impressed on her.

Before moving to Montreal from Beijing to study in a computer engineering program at Concordia University, Lin had done extensive research online about Canada.

His mother said he came away with the impression that it was “a peaceful place with great respect for multiculturalism,” and that there was no reason to worry about his safety.

Luka Rocco Magnotta, a small-time adult-film actor originally from the Toronto area who had cultivated a strange assortment of personae online, has pleaded not guilty in the case. He has been charged with five criminal offences including first-degree murder, harassing politicians and posting obscene material to the web.

Today, she says, when she walks down the street sometimes she feels like “everyone looks like Magnotta. I live with so much fear.”

Magnotta, 29, was arrested in Berlin on June 4 following an international manhunt, and was extradited to Canada on board a military aircraft two weeks later. He made a brief court appearance in Montreal on June 21 where he requested a trial by judge and jury.

Lin’s parents flew to Montreal last month to collect their son’s remains and mourn his death, holding a private memorial service that drew between 50 and 100 friends and family.

In an emotional two-hour-long interview, the couple spoke of their struggle to come to terms with Jun Lin’s killing and their anxiety over the court case, which is still months away. Pretrial motions will begin in March 2013.

Asked whether the Canadian legal system will be able to deliver justice in his son’s death, Jun Lin’s father, Diran Lin, said, replied, “I hope so … I can only wish for it.”

Jun Lin was born in the city of Wuhan, in central China. His mother said the family lived in a remote area, “poor with material things, but we were a happy family.”

To get around, the three of them would pile on a single bicycle, Jun Lin on the front, Du on the back, his father in the middle pedalling them along “bumpy village roads.”

Going to Canada was Lin’s dream, his mother said, but after arriving in Montreal he stayed in touch with his family almost every day.

They lost contact with him on the evening of May 24, and his mother then got a phone call from one of her son’s classmates in Montreal saying that his friends also had not heard from him.

“When I heard that, my heart almost stopped beating,” Du said. “I couldn’t breathe.”

She eventually learned of Jun Lin’s death from a TV news report, and said she fainted.

Jun Lin’s death has put a strain on the couple, and the suggestion that his slaying has allegedly been posted online has only heightened their anguish.

“What a disaster and huge pain for our family,” Du said, sobbing.

“The most unbearable pain for me is that the video got posted on the internet. People watched it over and over. It’s like my son is being murdered again and again.”

Diran Lin said he doesn’t believe his son had a relationship with Magnotta, although his apartment was the site of Jun Lin’s murder.

“I’m confident to assure you on that,” he said, adding that testimony at trial may clarify whether the two men knew one another.

While they wait for the trial to begin, Jun Lin’s parents are also trying to decide where to lay their son’s remains to rest.

They had planned to have the burial in Montreal because, his mother said, he loved it so much there.

But the couple is facing mounting pressure from family to lay his remains to rest in the country where he was born and raised.

“We Chinese have an old saying: ‘Fallen leaves must go back to the root of the tree,’” Du said. “We’re caught in the middle and really don’t know what to do.”