Please sign and share: https://www.change.org/p/canadians-are-dying-free-jack-letts-43-canadian-kids-women-men-in-syria 9-year-old Yusuf has spent almost half his life inside a Syrian prison camp whose conditions the UN calls akin to torture. Yusuf urgently requires brain surgery to address life-threatening blood clots and strokes. Canada has long been aware of this crisis but has refused to assist him, his parents, and his younger brother and sister. In fact, Canada is trying to separate Yusuf and his siblings from their mother. All must be brought home to Canada immediately. There are approximately 50 Canadian men, women and kids in similarly dire situations in these prison camps and jails.
On January 20, 2023, the Federal Court of Canada ordered the government to repatriate 4 Canadian men illegally detained for as long as 5 and a half years under conditions akin to torture in northeast Syria. The previous day, it agreed to bring home 19 women and children held under similarly appalling conditions.
Justice Henry Brown of the Federal Court stated in December: “Canadians are dying or at risk of dying every day this matter is adjourned.” Every moment of delay increases the risk for the children, men and women.
This should have occurred no later than February 15, 2023, the second anniversary of the Canadian-led Declaration Against Arbitrary Detention. But instead, the Government of Canada is appealing the decision, choosing to prolong the arbitrary detention under conditions akin to torture of Canadian children, women and men. It is also trying to forcibly separate some Canadian children from non-Canadian mothers (as in Yusuf's case) instead of doing the right thing, keeping families intact, and issuing Temporary Resident Permits to those mothers.
Justice Brown declared in his January 20, 2023 decision that, as soon as reasonably possible, “Canada must make a formal request for their repatriation,” that the detainees “must be provided necessary travel documents,” and Canada be required to “appoint either a delegate or representative to accept their hand over.” He made these findings based on well-settled Supreme Court of Canada jurisprudence and Canada’s international treaty obligations “in the expectation the executive government will act in good faith as its counsel represented to the Court.”
Global Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly can show good faith by not dragging this out for months and months in the same manner her government has looked the other way for years despite being called on to enact repatriation by the world’s leading human rights organizations, the United Nations, Canada's U.S. State Dept. allies, a Parliamentary Committee, the Kurdish authorities who hold the detained Canadians, and tens of thousands of Canadians.
Canada has already repatriated 7 of its female and child citizens from the region. It has the necessary contacts on the ground in northeast Syria. It has the support of the world’s most powerful military, American Forces who remain on the ground. Most importantly, it has the consent and clear request of Kurdish authorities who hold the Canadians.
As Global Affairs Minister, Joly has already made an agreement to repatriate 19 additional women and children originally identified in the lawsuit. Adding the four men in Justice Brown’s order – where as he stated "the legal principles applicable to the Canadian men are the same as those applicable to the Canadian women and children” – should pose no problems.
In addition, Canada must repatriate all the Canadians not identified in the lawsuit (as well as the non-Canadian mothers of Canadian children, since Canada's notorious Policy Framework clearly states Canada will not separate children from parents.)
We are disappointed that the Canadian government has repeatedly used unsubstantiated “national security” concerns to justify its failure to assist these Muslim Canadians in coming home. Justice Brown clearly wrote, “Notably the [government] Respondents do not allege any of the Applicants [detainees] engaged in or assisted in terrorist activities. The Respondents affirmed this position at the hearing.” He also stated there was no evidence before the court that anyone had committed offences contrary to Canadian law.
“The primacy of the right to return to Canada is reinforced in Canadian law,” Brown writes in his decision. “This is also a critical factor in this Judgment. Simply put, there is no known offence in Canada that carries with it exile or banishment as a penal consequence,” yet both by Canadian actions and conscious inaction, exile or banishment were plainly the result for Canadians stuck in northeast Syria. Indeed, Brown carefully cited jurisprudence that Section 6(1) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms – whose 40th anniversary you celebrated last year – “forbids the executive from frustrating the rights of Canadians to enter and return whether by executive actions taken in Canada or abroad.”