OTTAWA (Middle East Eye) – A progressive Canadian member of parliament has blasted the government’s inaction in repatriating dozens of its country’s citizens from detention camps housing former Daesh terrorists and their families in northeast Syria.
Elizabeth May, a former leader of the Green Party and MP for the Saanich-Gulf Islands, said during a press conference that while Canada has made a “good first step” in repatriating some of the children held in those camps, “there are 44 Canadians that we want brought home”.
“As a Canadian Member of Parliament, I am ashamed. I’m ashamed that my government has not done what other governments have done to take Canadian citizens, children, moms and individual men who have not been convicted of anything and who are caught up in the horrific events of terrorism in Syria, and are being kept in horrific conditions,” May said.
Ottawa has faced sharp criticism from human rights advocates and families for failing to repatriate its citizens who ended up in the Kurdish-run camps in Syria over ties to the Daesh terrorist group.
May was joined by a number of rights groups as well as Sally Lane, the mother of Jack Letts, a Canadian man currently being held in one of the camps in Syria.
Letts had Canadian citizenship by way of his parents. A convert from Oxfordshire in the UK, he travelled to Syria in 2014 and ended up in territory under the control of Daesh. He was eventually captured and imprisoned by Kurdish militants in May 2017. He is currently being held alongside suspected Daesh group members in northeastern Syria and has been stripped of his British citizenship, as he was a dual national.
According to the United Nations, which visited the Kurdish-run al-Hol camp in June, the camp is facing a “deteriorated security situation”, and one of the biggest concerns is a lack of access to medical care.
It currently holds 55,000 detainees, 80 percent of whom are women and children. Last year, the UN said that an “unknown number” of people had died due to the squalid conditions in the camps.
While many countries, including the US, Germany, and France, have repatriated a number of their citizens from the same camps in Syria without issues, Canada has lagged behind.