An activist finds her voice, steps into role

Maher Arar’s daughter fights on, Marc and Craig Kielburger write.

Barâa Arar was five years old when her father, Maher, was taken.

Back then, she didn’t know he’d been detained by U.S. authorities on a stopover in New York and sent back to Syria, the country of his birth, instead of home to Canada.

She was too young to understand that it was the RCMP who supplied the faulty intelligence that mistakenly tied him to terrorists.

And it would be years before she realized that he was never charged or convicted, yet for 10 months he languished in a rat-infested, grave-sized cell, emerging only for beatings and bouts of torture.

All she knew was that her father was gone.

Fifteen years later, what she remembers are the protests on Parliament Hill and on the steps of the U.S. embassy, demanding his release. The long days with her tireless mother, Monia Mazigh, who emerged as her husband’s strongest advocate.

Maher Arar’s story has made its way back into the headlines countless times since he returned to his family in Ottawa in 2003 — as revelations about the role of the RCMP led to an official inquiry, as the intelligence community owned up to their mistake, and as the government apologized.

Most powerfully, he’s become a symbol trotted out in the news whenever Canadians are unfairly targeted or detained.

For Arar, who only learned the details of her father’s story from the press years later, it’s not reliving it that bothers her, it’s this tragic need for the retelling.

“What’s upsetting is that is has to be told, all these years later, because we’re raising awareness about another injustice,” Arar reflects. What happened to her father has happened to other Canadians: Abdullah Almalki, Muayyed Nureddin, Khaled Samy Abdallah Ismail — all Canadian citizens detained abroad and tortured over false accusations. The Canadian government has since owned up to their involvement; still, for Arar, it is clear: “We didn’t learn all the lessons,” she says

Arar doesn’t refer to herself as an activist. She’s self-conscious of the title and would rather see others in the spotlight.

Still, she’s a focal point, partly because she is Maher Arar’s daughter and partly because she is an outspoken woman and a visible Muslim in an era of political and social division. She’s become an unwitting symbol, too.

“Being a person of colour, being a Muslim woman who wears the hijab, or being anyone who identifies publicly with a minority group, that identity becomes politicized by others whether you like it or not,” she says.

And like her mother before her, she’s stepped into the role.

That’s why she wanted to be onstage at WE Day Ottawa, the youth empowerment event held a few weeks ago: to be a positive public presence for young women and young Muslims at a divisive time.

Arar still attends rallies. Now, it’s to perform her spoken-word poetry, to give voice to those creating space for immigrants and refugees.

She’s drawn lessons from both her parents and become more comfortable with her own voice, and her inherited role.

“It’s important for me to take the space that I’m offered,” she says.

“You have more power than you think.”