In a shocking, illegal move, Global Affairs Canada has issued a new ultimatum to four moms illegally detained in northeast Syrian prison camps: give up your Canadian children, or permanently remain with them in prison camps under conditions akin to torture. With your help sending an email and making a call (details below) we can change that cruel policy, keep these families together, and bring them home to Canada. This is a repeat of the same ultimatum that was thrown down on January 26 after Ottawa agreed to repatriate dozens of women and children – some of them survivors of trafficking – from the notorious prison camps, where conditions are appalling: malnourished children are forced to eat sand and dirt, there is no clean water or nutritious food, there are rarely diapers or sanitary towels, there is no medical care, no education, no privacy, no playground, and children have fallen cesspools of human waste. Wild dogs roam the camps terrorizing people.

For one of the families, separation would prove devastating, especially since one of the Canadian children, Yusuf, 9, is autistic, non-verbal, and completely relies on his mother for everything. Yusuf has spent almost half his life arbitrarily detained.  Like his younger brother and sister, they have known only barbed wire, hunger, disease, and bombardment, and been seared by a desert sun from which there is no escape.  

Yusuf urgently requires brain surgery to address his carotid artery stenosis – which causes life-threatening blood clots and strokes. The Canadian government has long been fully aware of the life-threatening medical challenges facing Yusuf, but has refused to assist him, even though his Kurdish captors have repeatedly offered to release him and his family as long as Canada requests it. Yusuf still wears diapers while limping from a shrapnel wound in his leg. He is malnourished and suffers from serious digestive infections that have seen him suffer diarrhea for almost four years.   His mother struggles to feed him because he has great difficulty consuming most of the little that is available at the camp, so he is continually losing weight.

"You don't have to be a doctor to know that it would be cruel and heartless to separate such young and seriously ill children from their parents. They have shown unyielding fidelity to the care of their kids and have not abandoned them for any cause in the northern Syria area,” says renowned physician Dr. Phil Berger. "What's terrible about this case is the government's failure to act.”

With a repatriation flight from the region imminent, we are calling on Canada to immediately issue Temporary Resident Permits to allow these children's mothers to come to Canada with them. 

Please see below for further details, and thanks for acting to save these families.

Matthew Behrens, Stop Canadian Involvement in Torture

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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, yasir.naqvi@parl.gc.ca, sameer.zuberi@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,  pm@pm.gc.ca,  ps.ministerofpublicsafety-ministredelasecuritepublique.sp@canada.ca , jagmeet.singh@parl.gc.ca, Sean.fraser@parl.gc.ca

Dear Minister Joly,

As Global Affairs Minister, you recently said about Canadian children arbitrarily detained in Northeast Syria: “For me what is really important is that these children come back here.” Yet how can Global Affairs Canada insist on separating these children from their mothers, the only caring, loving, trusted adult in their lives? 

While Russia’s Vladimir Putin was recently and rightfully condemned for forcibly separating Ukrainian children from their moms – a clear violation of the law – how is what you are doing any different? 

It's the second time Global Affairs Canada has issued such a cruel ultimatum, and the fact that you are still trying to impose this impossible choice onto these families is not only illegal, but immoral. You say you care about these children, but how will you explain to them that they will likely never see their mothers again if they "choose" to get on an imminent repatriation flight to Canada as de facto orphans?

We know things are bad in northeast Syria. 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 your delay increases the risk for the children, men and women. 

They are especially bad for a family like Asiya’s, an electrical engineer whose 9-year-old son Yusuf  is autistic, non-verbal, suffers epileptic seizures, and completely relies on his mother for everything. Yusuf  has spent almost half his life arbitrarily detained.  Like his younger brother and sister, they have known only barbed wire, hunger, disease, and bombardment, and been seared by a desert sun from which there is no escape.  

Yusuf urgently requires brain surgery to address his carotid artery stenosis – which causes life-threatening blood clots and strokes. The Canadian government has long been fully aware of the life-threatening medical challenges facing Yusuf, but has refused to assist him, even though his Kurdish captors have repeatedly offered to release him and his family as long as Canada requests it. Yusuf still wears diapers while limping from a shrapnel wound in his leg. He is malnourished and suffers from serious digestive infections that have seen him suffer diarrhea for almost four years.   His mother struggles to feed him because he has great difficulty consuming most of the little that is available at the camp, so he is continually losing weight.

Your proposal to forcibly separate Yusuf from his mom will, according to autism experts, be not only traumatic to the mom, but will also lead to severe mental health and underlying conditions in Yusuf’s future as well.

Yusuf is one of 10 children suffering varying degrees of untreated physical and mental health distress. And now you are trying to separate them from their mothers.

Applications for temporary resident permits that would allow the moms to come to Canada with their kids are in the hands of your colleagues at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC). They must be approved immediately to keep these families together as a unit and allow them to escape the hellish existence that you have forced them to ensure for years, despite the repatriation calls of human rights groups, the United Nations, President Joe Biden, and a Canadian Parliamentary committee.

Your notorious Policy Framework for these cases clearly states you will not separate children from parents. Even by your own restrictive policies, these children have a right to live with their moms. What you are trying to do, in essence, is force them into permanent exile. 

“The primacy of the right to return to Canada is reinforced in Canadian law,” Federal Court Justice Brown wrote on January 20. “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.”

For too long, you have frustrated and denied the rights of these arbitrarily detained families. Work with your IRCC colleagues to ensure the immediate approval of  the  temporary resident permits, issue the travel documents, get these children the urgent medical care they require, and bring them back to Canada with their moms.   
 
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 am shocked that Canada is trying to separate children from their mothers as a condition for repatriation. This is unacceptable especially when there is a simple solution. Your government has the power to approve temporary resident permit applications for these kids' moms so they can all return to Canada together and get the urgent mental and physical health care they require. One judge recently said: “Canadians are dying or at risk of dying every day this matter is adjourned.” I am calling on Ms. Joly to immediately bring everyone home – all Canadians and the non-Canadian mothers of Canadian children. Thank you.