Mother’s Day, 2022
Dear Prime Minister Trudeau,
I am writing to request a meeting with you concerning the life-threatening situation of my son, Jack Letts, a Canadian citizen, who has been arbitrarily detained by the Kurdish authorities in NE Syria for the past five years. It was the fifth anniversary of his detention five days ago, on May 3, 2022. I have not seen Jack for eight years.
To mark those five years, I will be outside your office in Ottawa for five hours on Thursday, May 19, hoping to meet with you and Prime Ministerial staff to discuss how we can free not only my son but also 43 other arbitrarily detained Canadian women, men and children. As has been made abundantly clear, Canada holds the keys to their freedom, yet refuses to unlock their cages. I would like to speak with you directly about how your government can stand up for and repatriate these 44 citizens.
For five years, Jack has endured conditions which the United Nations have described as meeting the “threshold for torture, cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment under international law.” He has been held in a severely overcrowded cell, with little food or water, often in long periods of solitary confinement, with no access to the outside world or legal assistance. He has been charged with no crime. The only contact he has had with us, his parents, in five years is a handful of Red Cross letters, which are censored of any information his detainers do not wish publicised. We know that his physical and mental health have been severely damaged, and that medical attention in captivity is extremely poor or non-existent.
Five years ago, the Canadian government assured me that it was ‘doing everything it could to secure the release of [my] son.’ However, since then, Global Affairs Canada has provided a number of spurious excuses as to why they are unable to act. It is inconceivable to me, and to the family members of 43 other Canadians, including 23 child captives, why the Canadian government is unable to secure the release of its citizens from its allies, the Kurdish authorities. On numerous occasions over the past 5 years, these Kurdish authorities have declared that all they need for the repatriation of Canadian citizens is a simple request from their government.
Their call for repatriation has been echoed by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, The International Committee of the Red Cross, the United Nations, the US State Department, Save the Children and, in a rare show of cross-party unanimity, a Canadian Parliamentary Committee.
Countries from Kazakhstan, Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina to the Netherlands, Albania, France, the USA, the UK, Germany, Iraq and Russia have repatriated their citizens from these camps.
So why not Canada?
In March 2020, at the height of the covid pandemic, then Foreign Minister, Francois-Philippe Champagne claimed that his department had achieved the ‘largest repatriation effort in Canada's history in peacetime’. Forty thousand Canadians, who had been stranded abroad by the pandemic, were returned from 100 countries on 356 flights. In contrast, Jack and the other 43 Canadians - a total of 13 women, 23 children and 8 men - have been completely abandoned by their government in conditions described by Human Rights Watch as “filthy and often inhuman and life-threatening.”. Moreover, they have been given no indication as to how long this disgraceful situation will continue.
Your government recently celebrated the second anniversary of the Declaration Against Arbitrary Detention, but neglected to act on the fact that it is actively complicit in the arbitrary detention of 44 of its citizens. Your government also announced the imminent appointment of a special representative on combating Islamophobia, but said nothing about the fact that those detained in NE Syria are all Muslims. Would that account for the very different treatment they have received in contrast to your vocal advocacy for the two Michaels while they were arbitrarily detained in China?
“There’s a really clear and compelling positive obligation on Canada to prevent serious harm to its nationals, which it is in a position to prevent,” UN Special Rapporteur Fionnuala D. Ní Aoláin told MPs last year, adding that it was lack of political will, and not diminished capacity, preventing Canadians’ return. She pointed to Kazakhstan, among many much smaller and less-resourced nations, that have been able to do bring home their citizens with ease, noting: “There are a lot of countries doing it and doing it well. There isn’t a deficit of examples out there.”
I am not asking too much to demand that we meet to discuss how your government can immediately make the repatriation of Jack and all Canadian detainees – women, children and men alike – an urgent, high-level priority. In fact, all I am doing is what you urged us to do some three months after Global Affairs Canada learned that my son Jack had been tortured. In October, 2017, you clearly stated: “I hope people remember to demand of governments, this one and all future governments, that nobody ever has their fundamental rights violated either through inaction or deliberate action by Canadian governments. Nobody ever deserves to be tortured. And when a Canadian government is either complicit in that or was not active enough in preventing it, there needs to be a responsibility taken.”
Does my son have to be brought back to Canada in a body bag before the Canadian government takes responsibility and recognizes that his life is in imminent danger? Jack’s life – and the lives of the other detainees – is worth so much more than the scant attention that’s been paid to him so far.
I, and all the other family members who have suffered for many years now, call upon the government of Canada to uphold its commitments under domestic and international law, as well as the principles of morality and common decency, to immediately take charge of this situation and repatriate their citizens without further delay. The lives of 44 Canadians are dependent on it, and so is the faith of all citizens in the state of democracy in this country.
Yours sincerely,
Sally Lane
Mother of Jack Letts
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