Canadian detainees in Syria should be brought home immediately
Sharry Aiken is an associate professor in the Faculty of Law at Queen’s University. Paul Champ is a constitutional lawyer at Champ & Associates in Ottawa. Kent Roach is professor at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law.
On Jan. 20, the Federal Court ordered several of the detained Canadian men returned under Section 6 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which guarantees Canadian citizens the right to enter Canada: a protection for all Canadians against banishment. Yet instead of honouring this decision, the federal government is appealing it, and the arguments are being heard in court Monday. In appealing the case, the government is prolonging the dire and life-threatening conditions of the detainees.
The detained children face extreme physical danger, and at least 371 died in just one of the camps in 2019 alone from causes such as malnutrition, dehydration, tent fires, shootings, stabbings, and drownings in open sewage pits. These children also face separation and warehousing away from their mothers, where they suffer from untreated war injuries, missing limbs, and severe trauma.
Calls for repatriation have now been issued by U.S. President Joe Biden, the International Committee of the Red Cross, 22 United Nations experts, the Canadian House of Commons Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development, and the Kurdish authorities administering the camps and prisons.
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