Yazan has made it safely to Canada! His refusal to be forcibly conscripted into an atrocities-tainted Syrian army marked then 17-year-old Yazan for jail, torture or death. With most of his family in Canada, he needed an urgent Early Admission Temporary Resident Permit to escape a regime condemned by Canada for its “brutal and shocking attacks on its own people.”

He was forced into hiding all on his own, always trying to stay one step ahead of authorities searching to punish him for his refusal to kill and torture on behalf of the Assad dictatorship. The Rural Refugee Rights Network submitted his urgent application and has been advocating for Yazan. After 21 months (so much for Early Admission), he finally arrived in Toronto!

While we are overjoyed that Yazan can live his life without such unendurable fear, he will forever carry the trauma that he was forced to endure by a Canadian government that has yet to recognize the value of lives that are not white and European.

Welcome Yazan, may the embraces of your family be the warmest and sweetest. And may we all continue to push for the systemic change so desperately needed in the refugee and immigration bureaucracy.

You can support the work of the Rural Refuee Rights Network with an etransfer to tasc@web.ca or cheques made out to Homes not Bombs and mailed to 2583 Carling Ave., Unit M052, Ottawa, ON K2B 7H7