Activist urges Govt: Emancipate women, children from Middle East refugee camps

Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

“Promis­es were made and promis­es are be­ing bro­ken - please eman­ci­pate these chil­dren and women and bring them home."

So said at­tor­ney Nafeesa Mo­hammed yes­ter­day, as she called on the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar Gov­ern­ment to ful­fil its promise to repa­tri­ate the 72 chil­dren and 25 women from Syr­i­an and Iraqi refugee camps as the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) had promised.

“This Eman­ci­pa­tion Day, let us ask our­selves one sim­ple ques­tion: if free­dom is worth cel­e­brat­ing, why are we still al­low­ing our own women and chil­dren to be aban­doned and ren­dered state­less?" Mo­hammed added in African Eman­ci­pa­tion Day greet­ings.

"Eman­ci­pa­tion isn't mere­ly about re­mem­ber­ing the chains of the past—it is about re­fus­ing to ig­nore the suf­fer­ing of the present. A na­tion that cel­e­brates free­dom can­not, in good con­science, leave its own women and chil­dren beg­ging for it."

Mo­hammed has led the lob­by for the repa­tri­a­tion of the group since 2019. Some 130 T&T na­tion­als went to Mid­dle East con­flict zones from 2012-2015, join­ing the Is­lam­ic State (ISIS) ter­ror­ist group. Fol­low­ing ISIS' de­feat in 2018, how­ev­er, sur­vivors were de­tained at the refugee camps.

The Unit­ed States’ Cen­tral Com­mand has, since 2019, been urg­ing coun­tries to repa­tri­ate their cit­i­zens to pre­vent en­trenched rad­i­cal­i­sa­tion and has worked with var­i­ous ter­ri­to­ries to fa­cil­i­tate the re­turn to their home coun­tries.

The Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment gov­ern­ment be­gan moves to repa­tri­ate the women and chil­dren. Per­sad-Bisses­sar, as Op­po­si­tion leader, had promised, dur­ing the UNC's cam­paign­ing, to bring them home. Rein­te­gra­tion plans have been pro­posed by fam­i­lies, who have signed le­gal doc­u­ments to guar­an­tee re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the per­sons when they re­turn home.

The new UNC Gov­ern­ment ap­point­ed an in­ter-min­is­te­r­i­al team head­ed by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie to deal with the mat­ter. Yes­ter­day, he didn’t re­ply to queries on if work is close to com­ple­tion, when it will be, what is­sues are be­ing faced, if iden­ti­fi­ca­tion ver­i­fi­ca­tion is an is­sue and is US as­sis­tance will be dis­cussed when a high-lev­el US team vis­its T&T soon.

Yes­ter­day, Mo­hammed said, "What is Eman­ci­pa­tion with­out com­pas­sion? Is it worth cel­e­brat­ing? Every Eman­ci­pa­tion Day, we cel­e­brate the tri­umph of free­dom over op­pres­sion. We ho­n­our those who suf­fered, en­dured, and those who re­fused to aban­don the hope of lib­er­ty. But what does eman­ci­pa­tion mean? Can we tru­ly cel­e­brate free­dom while turn­ing away from our own cit­i­zens still trapped in a hu­man­i­tar­i­an cri­sis? “

Cit­ing the Gov­ern­ment com­mit­tee, Mo­hammed added, "The peo­ple de­serve to know what has been done? What progress has been made? Trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty aren’t op­tion­al—they are owed to the na­tion and to these fam­i­lies. Coun­try af­ter coun­try has brought its na­tion­als home through care­ful­ly man­aged repa­tri­a­tion pro­grammes. Trinidad and To­ba­go con­tin­ues to de­lay. Promis­es were made. Promis­es are be­ing bro­ken.

“For years, T&T’s women and chil­dren have re­mained strand­ed in camps in north­east Syr­ia and Iraq. Many of the chil­dren were tak­en there by adults or were born in­to a con­flict they nev­er chose. They’ve spent years grow­ing up be­hind fences, de­prived of the safe­ty, ed­u­ca­tion, and child­hood every child de­serves."

Mo­hammed said that to min­imise the bur­den on the State, ad­vo­cates have made avail­able to the au­thor­i­ties com­pre­hen­sive repa­tri­a­tion, re­uni­fi­ca­tion and rein­te­gra­tion plans with pro­fes­sion­al­ly trained per­son­nel in these fields ready and will­ing to as­sist.

"What makes this even hard­er to un­der­stand is that while our Gov­ern­ment ap­pears will­ing to strength­en diplo­mat­ic re­la­tion­ships abroad, it has shown lit­tle ur­gency in res­cu­ing its own vul­ner­a­ble dis­placed cit­i­zens," she said.

"We seem more pre­pared to build new in­ter­na­tion­al part­ner­ships than to ful­fil our hu­man­i­tar­i­an du­ty to Trin­bag­o­ni­ans who have been suf­fer­ing for years. His­to­ry will not on­ly re­mem­ber what we cel­e­brat­ed. It will re­mem­ber what we tol­er­at­ed," she lament­ed.