Please sign and share: https://www.change.org/p/i-forgot-what-the-sun-looks-like-free-jack-letts-and-all-canadian-detainees-in-ne-syria Canada's Guantanamo Bay – where Muslims are off-shored beyond reach of law & rights, respect & dignity – is in NE Syria. 44 Canadians – men, women & kids – are illegally detained there under conditions the UN calls akin to torture because Ottawa refuses to repatriate them. 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, have all called for repatriation.
One detainee, 26-year-old Jack Letts, jailed over 5 years without charge, has forgotten what the sun looks like. Imagine the horror of never seeing blue skies and sunshine. Learn more about his case at https://homesnotbombs.blogspot.com/2022/03/canada-must-stop-monstering-jack-letts.html
The Canadians' captors have been clear: send an official government representative for a handover and the detainees will be released. Yet Ottawa prefers to keep 8 men, 13 women and 23 children in appalling conditions in camps where 2-3 children die every week.
In addition to signing this petition, below are more events and things you can do to help!
1. CLOSE CANADA’S GUANTANAMO: JUNE 23, 10 AM EST, ONLINE
Please join us on Thursday, June 23 at 10 am EST for a major media conference/public event (see attached). We have a very strong line-up for this hour-long event. To register for this event visit: https://iclmg.ca/event-call-for-repatriation/
Those speaking will be:
• Moazzam Begg, former Guantanamo Bay detainee and outreach director of Cage, UK
• Nafeesa Mohammed, attorney and former Senator of Trinidad & Tobago, suing her government for repatriation as well
• Clive Stafford Smith, human rights lawyer, who was one of the first lawyers into Guantanamo 20 years ago, and co-founder of Reprieve
• Monia Mazigh, author and academic
• Elizabeth May, Green Party MP
• Taha Ghayyur, Justice for All
• Natascha Mikkelsen, Repatriate the Children, Denmark
• Sally Lane, author and mother of Jack Letts, detainee in Syria
• Tim McSorley, International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group
• Matthew Behrens, Stop Canadian Involvement in Torture
• Heather McPherson, NDP MP and Foreign Affairs Critic
Please feel free to share the registration link and this image on your social media
2. HEARING SCHEDULED
The Federal Court hearing has now been set down for November 2 and 3 in Ottawa. We hope to have details soon about whether it will also be available online. While we are disappointed in the length of time we have to wait, we will use this time to continue building the campaign. On both days in Ottawa, we will vigil at the courthouse in the morning before court opens, and during lunch hour. Please mark those dates in your calendar.
3. SELFIES OF SUPPORT
As we continue to build awareness of this horrific human rights issue, please take a Selfie of Support and send it to tasc@web.ca and share on your social media if you have access to twitter, facebook and instagram. Your sign could include phrases including Close Canada’s Guantanamo! Free Jack Letts, Free the Canadian Captives, Free the 44, etc. etc. Be creative, share your writing and drawing talents, and spread the word!
4. ARRANGE AN MP VISIT
Ask your MP for an appointment to discuss this issue that would include yourself, Sally Lane and Matthew Behrens. As a constituent, you can raise any issue you like with your MP and invite anyone you want to attend. Sally and Matthew are available for virtual meetings with MPs throughout the summer. Thursdays are best, or any weekday after 3:30 pm EST.
5. GET YOUR GROUP TO WRITE A PUBLIC LETTER
Do you belong to a faith group/ congregation, a civic group, a community organization, a labour union? We are looking for public letters to the Minister for Global Affairs and the Prime Minister supporting our demands for repatriation. We can help with a draft letter, but if you do have contacts and are willing to get this process started, we would greatly appreciate it! The government relies on silence and believing no one knows about this. The more voices that are part of the public discourse, the harder it is for them to hide this away.
6. NEWS AND EVENTS
Here are links to the May 19 5 hour vigil to mark 5 years in arbitrary detention for Jack Letts (feel free to share these links widely!)
Monia Mazigh issues demands: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mZTTLharRk
Sally Lane talks about the 8-year struggle to bring her son Jack home: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BBMqJSdCvU
Vices of the Detainees and Their Loved Ones, as Read by Raging Grannies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzFJnwGyeWg
Supporters of Jack Letts and the Detainees Share their Insights: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZXcho72vhU&t=4s
Full Media Conference (some sound issues): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwHX7T2YwYU&t=386s
7. KEEP SHARING OUR PETITION (over 9,000 so far!)
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
8. WRITE A LETTER AND MAKE A CALL
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.” Perhaps it is more accurate to say these detainees are in “Canada’s Guantanamo,” since it is Canada’s policies which perpetuate the arbitrary detention of men, women and children under conditions akin to torture for years on end.
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. In addition, Global Affairs has invested $2.5 million to repatriate Iraqi nationals from these same camps and prisons, so why not your own citizens?
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
+++++++++++++++++++
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, 13 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.