On Syrian Refugees: An Open Letter to the Prime Minister

November 24, 2015

ON SYRIAN REFUGEES: AN OPEN LETTER TO THE PRIME MINISTER

Prime Minister Trudeau,

Your government's emerging policy toward Syrian refugees is a moral catastrophe and a crime against humanity.

Your decision to exclude "unaccompanied" Syrian men from refuge in our country, on security grounds, is a blatant violation of Canada's commitments under numerous international conventions and declarations that guarantee non-discrimination on the basis of gender.

Moreover, your policy specifically excludes refugees drawn from the most persecuted and genocided sector of the Syrian population: younger men. From the beginning of the uprising against the Assad regime in 2011, younger men overwhelmingly have been the ones targeted for extrajudicial killing, arbitrary detention, torture, and "disappearance". The ISIS terrorist group has pursued similar gendercidal strategies.

Yet instead of viewing these men as the most vulnerable of refugees, or at least as meriting fair and equal consideration, you choose to demonize them as security risks. You pile onto their collective trauma and persecution a further stigmatization and denial of elementary human and civil rights. (You also, ironically, insult women when you pretend that they are passive angels who could never pose a security risk. Apparently you have not been reading the news.)

Shame on you, Prime Minister. Your sexist policy – which is also, let us face it, a racist one – directly injures and anathematizes hundreds of thousands of innocent people, on no other grounds than their gender and marital/family status.

Surely, if your government announced that we would accept Syrian women as refugees only if they were married and/or mothers, the political consequences would be severe. You can pursue your present policy because you know that men, especially younger men, are easily demonized and discarded. In this respect, your attitude is quite comparable to that of the murderous Assad regime and the ISIS terrorists. Indeed, leaving these young men stranded and hopeless is exactly what ISIS wants.

Prime Minister, I believe you and your government are better than this. I call on you to abandon this misguided measure immediately, and to bring Canadian refugee policy in line with basic civilized norms.

Sincerely,

Adam Jones, Ph.D.
Professor, Political Science
University of British Columbia
Kelowna, BC, Canada

Petition: For a Gender-Inclusive Inquiry into Murdered and Missing Aboriginal Canadians

[Posted to Change.org and now open for signature/circulation: November 13, 2015]

We, the undersigned, call for a gender-inclusive inquiry into missing and murdered Aboriginal Canadians, and the crisis of violence that afflicts Aboriginal communities nationwide.

The issue of murdered and missing Aboriginal women and girls is a matter of the highest national urgency. It should be a focal point of any inquiry. We applaud the efforts of women activists, especially in Aboriginal communities, to press this issue in the face of considerable resistance from the dominant society, and to establish it as a prominent social and political concern.

In our view, though, it is unacceptable to limit an inquiry or investgation of murdered and missing Aboriginals to Native women and girls alone. Men and boys account for over 70 percent of total Aboriginal murder victims in Canada. We cannot state with certainty what proportion of missing Aboriginal Canadians they compose, as the RCMP refuses to share the relevant data. Nonetheless, it is highly likely that the proportion of men and boys among missing Aboriginals is comparable to their overrepresentation in homicide (and suicide) statistics.

We protest the arbitrary exclusion of the majority of Aboriginal murder victims, and at least a substantial proportion of the missing, from the universe of ethical and political concern. We call for a rigorously gender-inclusive inquiry into the issue of murdered and missing Aboriginal Canadians, and into broader patterns of violence within and against Aboriginal communities, including structural violence and the legacy of Canada’s dispossession of Native peoples, domestic and partner violence, child abuse (including in the residential school system), suicide, homelessness, and addiction issues. Any such inquiry must respond above all to the wishes, perspectives, and priorities of Aboriginal communities, families, and citizens. It should also be sensitive to factors and variables beyond indigeneity and gender, and the intersections among them.

Aboriginal signatories to this petition call for reconsideration and broadening of the limited, gender-exclusive campaign for an inquiry into murdered and missing Native Canadians. Those from the dominant society and abroad express their solidarity with First Nations peoples, and call for the generalized crisis of violence against them to be placed at the forefront of the national agenda.

[SIGN THE PETITION]

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Supporting Documentation:

"Are We Ignoring Missing and Murdered Indigenous Men?", CBC Unreserved, 25 October 2015.

Adam Jones, "Aboriginal Men are Murdered and Missing ...", National Post, 27 April 2015.