Canadian detainees in Syria 'warehoused in inhumane conditions': Senator
‘We should be hanging our heads in shame,’ Kim Pate says after humanitarian delegation
Sen. Kim Pate says she's never seen anything like the conditions she witnessed in a Kurdish detention camp housing Canadians in Syria.
The independent senator from Ontario has just returned from a humanitarian delegation to an autonomous region of northeast Syria, where suspected ISIS members and their families are being held.
The delegation says at least 23 Canadian citizens are being held in the camps, including nine men, one woman and 13 children, seven of whom have non-Canadian mothers. The group was able to meet with two Canadian men.
Pate and her colleagues say it's time for Canada to repatriate the Canadians and their families, and if necessary, bring them to justice at home. The federal government has maintained these individuals may pose security risks to Canada.
Here is part of Pate's conversation with As It Happens guest host Katie Simpson.
Were you prepared for what you saw?
Only because we had heard so much about them from the Human Rights Watch and the UN Special Rapporteurs' reports — but also from the administrative authorities as well.
They talked about the fact that the longer things go on without humanitarian support for them to feed, house and bring to justice folks that are in their camp ... the stress that's put on the autonomous administration is something that is very difficult for them to maintain.
And, horrifically, by not taking up our part as Canadians to bring folks back ... the longer it goes on, the more the injustices and the inhumanity and the human rights violations mount.
If what we are truly interested in is exercising human rights, ensuring that people are held accountable, then we can and we must bring Canadians back here. And particularly when we're talking about some of the children we met.
Their mothers are being told to send their children [to Canada] … basically children being put into the child welfare system.
Going through my head constantly was: Have not we learned one thing? Look at the ... intergenerational impacts of taking kids into care, particularly Indigenous children in this country, and separating mothers from children, families from children, people from communities. [That's] an untenable situation for these mothers to be put in. And all of them are asking for consular support.
Can you describe a little bit more about the conditions, particularly when it comes to the children?
At every level, these children are being denied what we expect every child to be provided with — you know, shelter, food, clean water and education at the very minimum. And these are Canadian children. These are children accused of nothing. Except that they're in detention.
Some of the mothers are not accused of anything. Some of them may be. But without those charges being laid and people being processed through courts, that evidence is never going to be tested. And for the idea to be then that we can punish the children as well in that context, or separate them and abandon them into our child welfare system, is simply just not tenable.
What is it you want to see the federal government do right now?
For the federal government to immediately provide full support and in-person consular visits to all of the Canadians that are there in the camps and the prisons.
We also want them to engage with the Autonomous Administration for North and East Syria, AANES as it's referred to, to repatriate all Canadians detained in the camps and prisons, [and] issue temporary residence permits to ensure that non-Canadian mothers and siblings of Canadian children detained in the camps are able to travel to Canada.
To provide resources, technical assistance and other necessary supports to strengthen the justice response in Northeast Syria, including the capacity for them to hold trials.
And, also in collaboration with the international community AANES, to increase support for and to be able to meet the humanitarian needs of the people in northeast Syria, including, but not limited to, the infrastructure, health care, education, food and water that is needed.
Essentially is the point here [that] you want to see the wheels of justice moving and human rights respected so that people aren't just being held in limbo with no sort of time frame as to what comes next?
Yes. And it's more than just being held in limbo. It's being warehoused in inhumane conditions.... We should be hanging our heads in shame that we're leaving folks in those conditions — and so should other countries, quite frankly.
There are going to be Canadians who hear this conversation and who read stories about the situation, and they may not have any sympathy — at least for the adults in this situation. Because, you know, they look at the situation and they see ISIS is involved.... Can you see where they're coming from?
Absolutely. And we met with family members in Syria, Kurdish families who had lost loved ones, who are actually now some of the ones guarding individuals who are accused of atrocities.
What they said to me spoke volumes. They said, "We don't want vengeance. We want justice."
You can't achieve justice by continuing to violate people's human rights and by treating people in incredibly punitive ways. That was certainly my view before. My view now is even more strengthened.
As we know from the situation with Maher Arar, with so many others in the past, we don't know until we have all of that evidence whether in fact, these individuals are guilty of something — and if so, let's hold them to account.
And the only way to really fully assess that is to have all of that information, to develop a due process, a process where that evidence can be tested, and then to follow through. And none of that is happening at this stage.
What we heard on the ground was that this kind of [ISIS] radicalization is continuing. Where there are individuals with that kind of thinking within the prisons, they may be recruiting others. Presumably, that is not in the best interests of anybody — not in this country, but not internationally, either.
The federal government has pushed back against repatriation of some of the individuals involved here, saying it's a security risk. Is that not a valid concern?
We're not talking about repatriation and people walking away with no accountability. Quite the opposite. Right now, that accountability cannot happen.
Q&A edited for length and clarity. Interview produced by Sarah Jackson
