Breaking News! Will Jolly Old Saint Nick Wind Up in the Slammer for Upholding Human Rights Laws and Treaties that Canada is Violating?
OTTAWA – An article in the modest North Pole Elf Daily has touched off a diplomatic storm which could see Santa Claus in handcuffs by the end of the Yuletide Season.
In his annual State of the Holiday press conference held on December 23, Claus addressed an issue that had been troubling him for quite some time – the indefinite arbitrary detention of thousands of men, women and children in Northeast Syria, all of them held under conditions the UN calls akin to torture.
“I was shocked to see that countries like Canada, which has 50 of its citizens held in these horrible camps and prisons, is trying to prevent their return home,” Claus said, wiping away a tear from his normally jolly face. “I am planning to pick them up on my way back home, since Rudolph knows the area well, and with an empty sleigh and a good tail wind, we’ll have plenty of room for everyone, including the 23 children, 19 women and 8 men.”
Claus noted that dozens of countries have repatriated thousands of their citizens from the region, but that Canada has played an illegal and immoral role in blocking efforts to bring home its own citizens.
Red Flags Raised in Ottawa
According to reliable sources, the article set off red flags in an otherwise storm-deserted downtown Ottawa, where Dept. Of Justice (DOJ) lawyers from the firm of Scrooge and Marley – currently in court trying to keep those 50 Canadians in conditions of torture indefinitely, even if it means them dying – began preparations to seek a Federal Court injunction to prevent Claus from rescuing the Canadians that Ottawa should have brought home years ago.
“Are there no prisons, are there no workhouses for these Canadians?” the DOJ brief begins.
Santa, meantime is red-faced with anger.
“I understand Canada was within a week of bringing these Canadians home in 2018, but then everything stopped,” Claus said. “There’s kids there eating sand because there is no nutritious food. These are massive open air prisons, and the men are held in unbelievably cramped conditions in prisons. Hundreds have died or been killed over the past several years. It breaks my normally happy heart.”
Canada Prevents Return of Boy Needing Brain Surgery
Claus spoke specifically of one 9 year old Canadian boy, Youssef, who requires immediate, life-saving brain surgery. “How can anyone be so hard of heart that they would want to prevent this Canadian child from receiving health care like this?” an exasperated Claus asked. “Not only that. Ottawa has told his mother that she cannot accompany her children back to Canada. Such family separation is cruel.”
Sarah Christine Claus, a distant relative of the jolly fellow who takes care of an elderly reindeer, Eric, who can no longer make the annual journey, has been pushing Saint Nick to take up this issue for years. “These detainees have all been tarred with one brush when for many of them, it was a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time,” she explained. “Some of them were humanitarian workers, some of them were scholars studying the region. Some were trafficked there by Canada’s own spy agency, CSIS. They are held without charge, in violation of all international legal standards, and the only legally compliant solution here is to have everyone returned home.”
Meanwhile, sources said that the phone lines have lit up between Ottawa and Florida, where vacationing DOJ lawyer Scam Turdley – who’s built a career on trying to keep Canadian Muslims detained abroad under conditions of torture – is urging that all powers be used to prevent Santa from completing his humanitarian mission. She has wired Global Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly, herself busy preparing for the self-congratulatory third anniversary of the Canadian-led Coalition to End Arbitrary Detention, demanding that the Minister take all measures necessary to keep the Canadians in arbitrary detention.
CSIS Believes Santa a Security Threat
Documents filed with the Court by Turdley and fellow lawyer Hal Robbers-Son include a security assessment which she hopes will be used to prevent Claus from returning through Canadian airspace to drop off the detainees.
According to the highly classified document from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), “The Service has reasonable grounds to believe that [name blacked out, but clearly a reference to Claus] is a member of an inadmissible class of persons to Canada based on a variety of associations, travel patterns, and other indicators which constitute a threat to the security of Canada.”
Among those highly suspect findings, CSIS notes, is Santa’s long beard (“worn in the traditional Muslim fashion that could inspire some radicalized youth to follow bearded individuals such as Osama bin Laden”), his visitation to countries throughout the Middle East and refusal to demonize anyone (“a disturbing inclination towards supporting the human rights of Palestinians,”), his large donations of gifts (“he may be transporting illicit materials that could place him on the United Nations 1267 list, thereby barring him from traveling with goods that could fall into the wrong hands”), past associations (“[subject] did attend at Robben Island prison compound and provide material aid to Nelson Mandela and other members of African National Congress, which Service maintains was, is, or could be a terrorist organization”), has signed petitions urging the release of immigration detainees (including children detained in refugee jails across Canada) and in support of environmental protections (“Service notes subject supports same causes as eco-terrorists trying to block oil sands development”), and his failure to carry a passport.
“Service also notes that Mr. Claus uses several aliases possibly as a means of avoiding detection, including Jolly St. Nick, Kris Kringle, and, in a special code with woman alleged to be Mrs. Claus, ‘tubby old sock,’ origin for which is still a mystery to Service but further investigation will reveal.” Claus also appears to be under surveillance for carrying of “suspicious” sacks, studious avoidance of customs, and his “religious head gear,” the last of particular concern to Quebec security services attempting to enforce their so-called Charter of Values and Bill 21.
It also appears that CSIS also notes with grave concern that at least two of Santa’s reindeer (Prancer and Vixen) have been reading the Koran and allegedly discussed conversion to Islam.
Hoping for Christmas Miracle
Turdley – a heartless “law is the law” persecutor known as “Alabama Scam” by her law-school classmates, who noted she was the only one to sign up in Moot Court to prosecute the Rosa Parks case – issued a brief statement declaring that she is more than prepared to use the Anti-Terrorism Act against Claus because, “after all, these detainees are in fact Muslims, and sure, we may have a decades-long record of wrongfully detaining and torturing Muslims, but the law is the law, even if we have to bend and break it through the lens of racial and religious profiling every once in a while.” Turdley did not elaborate on which law she is relying to prevent repatriation and to charge Claus, though when a reporter asked why she is denying the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to these Canadians, she choked on her martini olive and hung up the phone.
Meanwhile, Sarah Christine Claus has it on good authority that Eric the Reindeer has some magic dust that may well be employed by an angel named Clarence to take Turdley and her kind on a midnight journey to meet the ghosts of complicity in torture past. It may well be that Turdley could find her heart by daybreak and, in an epiphany marked by the joy of feeling love and solidarity, drop her Federal Court actions and sign up for the welcoming party for the detained Canadians.
Santa Claus, meanwhile, has waved off the NORAD escort – Claus does not believe in the militarization of children – and will do his best to bring home the Canadians on his journey back to the North Pole.
A support committee has been formed by Homes not Bombs to defend Claus and any detainees charged upon their return to Canada.
