April 12, 2024 -- Fourteen months after two mothers arbitrarily detained in Northeast Syrian prison camps applied for urgent Temporary Resident Permits that would allow them to come to Canada with their detained Canadian children, Canada has said they are not welcome.
“We are extremely disappointed that Canada refuses to honour the integrity of these family units, and continues to insist on a policy of forced child separation, which in practice means the children could come here, go into foster care, become separated from their siblings, and likely never again see the only adult who has cared for them since birth,” says one of the lawyers for the mothers, Asiya Hirji. “Telling mothers arbitrarily detained for five years that the price of freedom for your children is for you to remain forever jailed 9,000 kilometres away from them is cruel, inhumane, and not at all in keeping with Canada’s domestic and international human rights obligations towards women, children, and the right to family.”
Hirji will be filing for a judicial review of the negative decisions, which came on the heels of the March 19 Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic’s damning indictment of the international failure to repatriate some 30,000 detained children, Punishing the Innocent: Ending Violations against Children in Northeast Syrian Arab Republic (https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies/hrcouncil/coisyria/policypapersieges29aywar/2024-03-18-punishing-innocent.pdf). That report found: "The failure to provide even basic medical care, water or food to interned women and children also constitutes a violation of the prohibition of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, which may amount to a war crime,” adding, "Releasing, repatriating and reintegrating children into their home communities, with their mothers, is long overdue.”
The rejection of the permits also goes against the clearly enunciated policies of major Canadian allies. On March 15 the governments of France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States released a joint statement (https://www.state.gov/joint-statement-on-the-occasion-of-the-13th-anniversary-of-the-syrian-uprising/) calling on "the international community to rally around the remaining tasks to ensure durable solutions” for the detainees held in prisons and detention camps in Northeast Syria. The U.S. has repeatedly called on its partners to engage in repatriation, with President Joe Biden offering resources to assist in the return of foreign nationals detained in Northeast Syria.
There are currently 9 Canadian men, 3 women and 13 Canadian children who are still detained in Northeast Syria; 26 have been returned in seven separate instances. The detained women are non-Canadian mothers of Canadian children who have all applied for temporary resident permits.
“Once again, Canada has failed its ‘never again’ promise with respect to forced separation of children from their families,” says Matthew Behrens of Stop Canadian Involvement in Torture, which leads a campaign for repatriation. “We have a shameful legacy of that in this land. We also have a shameful ongoing legacy of racism and Islamophobia, and the rejection of these women with secret, unsourced allegations that may well emanate from torture is clearly illegal and morally reprehensible. Canadian officials have never interviewed these women, and instead rely on the standard demonization we have seen over the past quarter century of racial and religious profiling in which exaggerated, unfounded claims have contributed to illegal detention and torture. If there is evidence of wrongdoing, you don’t compound that by keeping these traumatized women and children in jail forever. Bring them here, along with the remaining detained men, and allow them an opportunity to answer their secret accusers. The notion that they might pose a threat after all they have been though is ridiculous.”
Notably, the adult Canadian women who have returned to Canada have been subjected to peace bonds and, in one case, criminal charges. “Despite all the fear-mongering before their return, the sky has not fallen in, those mothers and children are receiving counseling and health care and education, and the only ones upset about this are the so-called security agencies whose dire but ultimately false allegations have once again proven to be baseless,” Behrens continued.
“Canada has made an international commitment to end arbitrary detention, yet how can it trumpet that principle on the international stage when immigration decisions like this are perpetuating that very injustice?” Hirji asks. “In addition, Canadian officials know that one of the children, age 7, faces going blind unless he can get emergency eye surgery. Another child was recently bitten by one of the wild dogs that terrorize the prison camp, and another kid recently broke his hand and had to wait five days in excruciating pain before he was able to get any medical attention. How can Canada look the other way in the face of that reality?”
In a statement released through communication with Hirji, one of the mothers said: “I feel very sad and broken hearted. We had so much hope that the Canadian government would approve our file after sitting on it for 15 months but unfortunately, they are harsh and heartless to me and my children. We have lived for years in a detention camp under pieces of cloth, suffering from cold, hunger, poverty, poor medical care. Our kids’ small bodies cannot take any more smoke coming from the oil fields that affects their lungs, their hearts, their bodies, their bones. I haven’t lost hope, because I trust in the kindness and justice of the Canadian people themselves.”
A reconsideration appeal in the cases of four detained Canadian men was submitted to the Supreme Court of Canada on March 15. The Court has yet to decide whether it will reconsider its November 2023 refusal to hear that case.
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