Ottawa urged to take action on Syria ISIS camps’ ‘echoes’ of Guantanamo Bay – National | 24CA News
A Canadian civil society delegation working with Sen. Kim Pate is urging Ottawa to take motion over detainees in northeast Syria whose expertise “echoes” that of these in Guantanamo Bay after Sept. 11, 2001.
The delegation offered a report in Ottawa on Thursday after getting back from a go to to the area that’s residence to camps full of accused members and relations of Islamic State group militants.
The group rose to energy amid an uprising-turned-civil warfare that erupted 12 years in the past and has left lots of of 1000’s of lifeless. At one level, the militants managed massive swaths of Syria and Iraq, however Kurdish forces backed by a world anti-IS coalition, in addition to Iraqi and Syrian authorities troops, recaptured that territory by 2019.
Tens of 1000’s of others stay left behind in detention centres — together with Canadians who left to struggle for the Islamic State and kids they’d whereas there — with no rapid signal of getting out.
“They languish, warehoused with thousands of other foreign nationals in detention centres across the region held beyond the reach of law, far from outside scrutiny in a detention regime that is devoid of any sense of accountability and in which human rights violations are unsurprisingly rampant,” mentioned delegation member Alex Neve, a senior fellow with the graduate college of public and worldwide affairs on the University of Ottawa.
“It has echoes of the widespread abuses we witnessed following Sept. 11. We found ourselves thinking of Guantanamo Bay, black-hole detention sites … and wondering how we could possibly be back in that same space again.”
The group mentioned it was conscious of 9 Canadian males being held in detention centres on allegations of working with ISIS, and spoke to 2 of them. The delegation mentioned the Canadians have been detained for a few years with out cost or trial, with out contact or communication with their households, with out entry to legal professionals, and with out receiving consular visits.
U.S. Naval Base Guantanamo Bay in Cuba grew to become infamous following the Sept. 11 terror assaults as a consequence of allegations of torture of prisoners by the U.S. army and intelligence actors, and their denial of safety beneath the Geneva Convention.
“Nothing in my working life prepared me for the experience I would have over the last week. Canada prides itself on being a human rights leader and has prided itself on being an international human rights leader,” Pate mentioned.
“What we saw was Canada not being at the forefront of both fulfilling its obligations or participating with the international community to ensure that human rights are upheld in the region of northeast Syria, where the Canadians we met with are detained.”
The group mentioned not one of the Canadian prisoners have obtained any in-person consular visits.
“There are significant health concerns of individuals who are there,” Pate mentioned.
The delegation known as on Ottawa to start offering full consular help, together with in-person visits, to all Canadians detained in camps and prisons in northeast Syria.
Furthermore, it’s asking the federal government to have interaction with officers of the Autonomous Administration of North and East of Syria (AANES) to repatriate all Canadians detained in camps and prisons in northeast Syria, who want to return to Canada.
“We saw human rights violations in large part because of the absolute incapacity of AANES to keep up with the needs of the 4,000 to 5,000 prisoners who are currently being detained,” Pate mentioned.
Ottawa has repatriated some girls and kids from the camps, however has not introduced any males again. The federal authorities has arrested and sought peace bonds towards among the girls.
Those asks apart, the delegation known as on Ottawa to problem momentary residence permits for non-Canadian moms and siblings of kids born to Canadian residents, and being held within the camps.
Children born exterior of Canada to a Canadian citizen could also be Canadian residents, however should submit purposes for a Canadian citizenship certificates to the federal authorities to be formalized as residents.
“Not all children born outside of Canada to Canadian citizens are entitled to Canadian citizenship,” the authorities’s citizenship web site states.
The delegation added Ottawa should assist present sources, technical help and all different needed help to strengthen the justice response in northeast Syria, and in collaboration with the worldwide neighborhood, and AANES, considerably improve help for assembly the humanitarian wants of the folks in northeast Syria, together with, however not restricted to, such areas as infrastructure, healthcare, schooling, and meals and water.
“All of this must change immediately, and we will continue to work on the ground and with our colleagues in the government to actually try to change this,” Pate mentioned.
— with information from The Canadian Press and The Associated Press
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