Feds don’t ‘care if they die,’ says lawyer helping Canadian children held in Syria
Five Canadian children are languishing in a squalid detention camp in northeastern Syria after Ottawa denied their mothers permission to come to Canada, says a lawyer fighting on behalf of the families.
The development is the latest setback for Canadians among foreign nationals in ramshackle centres set up after the warravaged region was wrested from militant group Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
Lawyer Asiya Hirji said she sought temporary resident permits in February last year for two women with Canadian children in al-Roj camp, and heard last month they had been refused on security grounds.
One of the mothers has a seven-yearold boy and a five-year-old girl. The other mother has a nine-year-old girl and boys aged seven and five. Her oldest boy has a serious eye condition that requires medical treatment.
Neither mother is a Canadian citizen. The Canadian fathers of the children are no longer in the families’ lives.
Hirji, supervising lawyer at the University of Toronto law faculty’s legal clinic, said the women signed confessions under duress in Syria - information Canada should not rely on.
She is now pursuing a Federal Court review of Canada’s permit denial decision.
“In all security cases, they are very careful about what they are disclosing to the applicants,” she said. “And so it results in a very protracted process.”
A civil society delegation that visited Syrian prison camps last August called on Ottawa to provide immediate consular assistance to Canadian detainees and to swiftly repatriate all citizens wishing to return to Canada.
Delegation members, including Sen. Kim Pate and former Amnesty International Canada head Alex Neve, also urged the government to issue temporary permits to ensure that non-Canadian mothers and siblings of Canadian children can travel to Canada.
The delegation said Canada is complicit in a serious international human-rights failure through a policy of essentially warehousing thousands of foreign nationals, more than half of them children.
A recent Amnesty International report said men, women and children in the detention facilities endure inhumane conditions, in some cases including beatings, gender-based violence and torture.
An estimated 11,500 men, 14,500 women, and 30,000 children are held in at least 27 detention facilities and the al-Roj and al-Hol camps, the report said.
Hirji said she has repeatedly asked Global Affairs Canada to facilitate medical treatment for the five Canadian children she is trying to help, without success.
“I do not think that they care if they die,” Hirji said.
“It’s just heartwrenching that we’re just letting this happen. Kids don’t ask to be born. And so we have a responsibility to do what’s in the best interests of children.”
Non-Canadian parents of Canadian children may ask that their children be repatriated to Canada without them, and Ottawa evaluates these requests on a caseby-case basis, said Global Affairs spokeswoman Charlotte MacLeod.