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
The only refugees who should be allowed in Canada are those who are sponsored by private citizens. It's not government's job to look after people - but to look OUT for people.
ReplyDelete