On Tuesday, May 3, or whenever you get this, please take two minutes to make a call and send an email (samples below) in support of freeing and bringing home arbitrarily detained Canadian Muslim Jack Letts and four dozen other Canadian Muslim men, women, and children. All of them are illegally held without charge in northeastern Syrian prisons and camps. A March, 2022 United Nations report described their conditions as meeting the “threshold for torture, cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment under international law.”
May 3, 2022 marks 5 years – 1,827 days – of indefinite detention without charge for Jack, aged 26.
BACKGROUND
In late January, the International Committee of the Red Cross declared: “States must repatriate their own citizens. Not just children. Children, women and men.” At the same time, Abdulkarim Omar, foreign office co-chair of the Kurdish administration that holds the detainees, reiterated what the Kurds have been saying for years: “Every country should take its citizens back.” On January 31, 2022, the US State Department called on its partners to “urgently repatriate their nationals and other detainees remaining in northeast Syria.”
Other efforts to support repatriation include a chain fast which you can join (http://homesnotbombs.blogspot.com/2022/04/mothers-day-to-fathers-day-chain-fast.html) and signing and sharing this petition: https://www.change.org/p/what-if-he-were-your-son-sign-to-free-jack-letts-and-43-canadian-kids-women-and-men-in-ne-syria
Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the United Nations, and even a House of Commons committee have called for repatriation of all detainees: 8 men, 13 women, 23 children. But a Canadian government long complicit in the torture of its Muslim citizens held abroad has refused to lift a finger to help, even as far smaller and less resourced countries from Kazakhstan to Bosnia and Herzegovina have had no trouble bringing their nationals home. Ottawa’s only response has been to create a bureaucratic “framework” marinated with insufferable bafflegab that makes it impossible for anyone to come home.
WHO IS DETAINED?
All of the Canadians who went to Syria have been unjustly tarred with the same “national security” brush. None have been given a chance to defend themselves against these false accusations. As is happening with Canadians flocking to resist the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a small number of young Canadians travelled to Syria during the Assad regime’s war against the Syrian people. Some went to fight; some, like Jack Letts, went for humanitarian reasons to help people suffering as a result of the civil war; and some went on a ‘grand adventure’ or to escape racism and Islamophobia at home. Most believed they were going to help build a non-violent, utopian, Muslim society – a dream that proved both false and lethal for many. Many, like Jack Letts, opposed ISIS in the streets and were prosecuted for opposing them – a fact the Western media refuses to acknowledge.
Canada must stop relying on the media-generated, Islamophobic myths about Jack Letts and the other detainees as an excuse to perpetuate their misery (see a detailed analysis of Jack’s case at http://homesnotbombs.blogspot.com/2022/03/canada-must-stop-monstering-jack-letts.html
Compare the way in which Canadian officials mistreat this group of emaciated, tortured souls with the Two Michaels, Canadians who were also arbitrarily detained, but in China. Despite being charged with serious (though clearly bogus) offences, the Two Michaels enjoyed (as they should have) a presumption of innocence in the eyes of Ottawa and the media. But when it comes to Canadian Muslims detained abroad under conditions of torture, Canada has always assumed guilt and been a complicit partner in criminalizing and torturing them. Two judicial inquiries and numerous Federal and Supreme Court decisions have found Canada complicit in the torture of Canadian Muslims abroad.
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SAMPLE EMAIL (be sure to include the CC-ed MPs and add your own MP if they are not already listed below!)
(Feel free to personalize with your own statement imagining what it would be like to know your loved ones are condemned to these brutal camps and prisons and the Canadian government is refusing to lift a finger for them. Use a creative subject line as well that does not make your email look like it is computer-generated!)
To: Melanie.Joly@parl.gc.ca, Melanie.Joly@international.gc.ca
CC: pam.damoff@parl.gc.ca, rob.oliphant@parl.gc.ca, marco.mendicino@parl.gc.ca, michael.chong@parl.gc.ca, sven.spengemann@parl.gc.ca, Marty.Morantz@parl.gc.ca, Stephane.Bergeron@parl.gc.ca, Rachel.Bendayan@parl.gc.ca, Hedy.Fry@parl.gc.ca, tasc@web.ca, Heather.McPherson@parl.gc.ca, alistair.macgregor@parl.gc.ca , Randeep.Sarai@parl.gc.ca, Chandra.Arya@parl.gc.ca, Peter.Schiefke@parl.gc.ca, Kamal.Khera@parl.gc.ca, Salma.Zahid@parl.gc.ca, Iqra.khalid@parl.gc.ca, Joel.Lightbound@parl.gc.ca, Ruby.Sahota@parl.gc.ca, Majid.Jowhari@parl.gc.ca, Elizabeth.May@parl.gc.ca, pm@pm.gc.ca, Marco.Mendicino@parl.gc.ca, ps.ministerofpublicsafety-ministredelasecuritepublique.sp@canada.ca
Dear Minister Joly,
I am writing today in support of the call to repatriate four dozen Canadian Muslim men, women, and children from NE Syrian detention centres and prisons known as “Guantanamo on the Euphrates.”
Canada is an international embarrassment, as noted by the United Nations, for its failure to do what so many other countries have been willing and able to do: bring their nationals home.
Countries from Kazakhstan, Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina to the Netherlands, Albania, France, the USA, Germany, Iraq and Russia have repatriated their citizens from these camps.
So why not Canada?
Recently, Canada celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. While it’s an important document, it is too often applied unevenly in this country depending on one’s heritage or religious belief. In this instance, four dozen Muslims missed yet another Ramadan with their loved ones here because you are refusing to honour and uphold their Section 6 Charter right to return home.
As you know, some four dozen Canadians remain arbitrarily detained largely because Global Affairs Canada has refused to take the necessary steps to bring them home. How can the government of Canada, which played a lead role in drafting and signing a global pact on ending arbitrary detention, refuse to take immediate action to end the arbitrary detention of Canadian men, women and children enduring conditions that the United Nations has described as meeting the “threshold for torture, cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment under international law.”
Even worse, why is Canada actively fighting a legal challenge in court and trying to prevent these families from seeking an order to have Global Affairs Canada do its job and bring their loved ones home?
A group of retired diplomats wrote in the January 31, 2022 edition of the Hill-Times that the Canadian “government’s reasons for not helping are specious and are meant to disguise its complete unwillingness to help this specific group of Canadians.”
It is beyond unacceptable that your government claims it is unable to assist these arbitrarily detained Canadian citizens when so many governments have been able to repatriate their own citizens with ease. In fact, you are constantly putting up roadblocks that interfere with their Charter-guaranteed right to return to Canada.
If you are unsure what to do, perhaps pick up the phone and call the ambassadors of Kazakhstan or Albania or France for pointers on how to repatriate citizens. Better yet, simply respond to the repeated requests of Kurdish authorities to come and claim your citizens. They are, after all, Canada’s ally!
On February 22, 2022, Human Rights Watch declared the following: “Canada has an obligation under international law to take necessary and reasonable steps to assist nationals abroad facing serious abuses including risks to life, torture, and inhuman and degrading treatment. International law also grants everyone the right to return to their country of nationality, without their government throwing up direct or indirect barriers.”
I agree with the International Committee of the Red Cross, which in January 2022 clearly called on Canada and other nations to do the right thing: “States must repatriate their own citizens. Not just children. Children, women and men.”
I am calling on you to take immediate action to save the at-risk lives of these Canadian citizens. Prime Minister Trudeau campaigned on a platform that declared, “A Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian.” These arbitrarily detained Canadians are no less deserving of human rights than anyone else. Your government said it stood with the two Michaels when they were detained in China. It’s time, now, to stand with the Canadians who, like Jack Letts, remain imprisoned without charge under appalling conditions akin to torture.
I expect better of the Canadian government when it comes to respecting the rights of Canadians detained abroad, and demand that you end this nightmare immediately.
Name
Town/City
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SAMPLE Call (feel free to use your own wording)
Mélanie Joly
613-992-0983 (Ottawa office)
514-383-3709 (Montreal office)
You may or may not get an answering machine (if you do, please leave a message).
Hi, my name is XXXXXXXX and I'm calling from XXXXXXX. I find it unbelievable and cruel that the Canadian government has done nothing to free and bring home 44 of its Muslim citizens, including Jack Letts. The United Nations describes their conditions as akin to torture. The detainees’ captors, human rights groups, the United Nations, a Parliamentary committee, the US State Department, and the Red Cross have all called for their repatriation. Dozens of countries that recognize it is wrong to perpetuate the arbitrary detention of their citizens have intervened to bring them home with no problems whatsoever. I expect Canada to do the same. There are at least 8 Canadian men, 15 women, and 23 children held in Northeast Syria. I am calling on Minister Joly to stop putting barriers in their way and assist them in coming home immediately. Thank you.