Syria: 200 French children at the heart of rising tensions in the northeast of the country
Women and children at the Roj camp, in northeastern Syria, on March 28, 2021. AFP - DELIL SOULEIMAN
Text by: Oriane Verdier Follow
6 mins
French children detained in Syria are in “
mortal danger
”.
Several NGOs launched this Tuesday, February 15 a new "
cry of alarm
" to push the French government to act.
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A month ago, the media around the world reported the ten-day attack by the Islamic State organization on the
Hassaké prison
.
Among the detainees, 600 children including 10 French.
According to Amnesty International, it is not yet known how many of them died.
The overall toll is 374 prisoners and assailants killed and 120 on the side of the Syrian Democratic Forces.
In Paris, Marc, grandfather of four children detained in the
Al-Hol camp
about forty kilometers from this prison, followed the events with dread.
“
It is not difficult to imagine what could have happened if Daesh had decided to attack a camp rather than this prison.
A camp protected only by fence and barbed wire and with the number of children inside...
” This danger is always present according to this representative of the Collective of United Families.
The women and children detained in the camps in northeast Syria have it in mind on a daily basis in addition to the disastrous conditions in which they live.
A total of 80 French women who have joined the Islamic State organization and 200 children are waiting for the French government to decide to repatriate them, but for the moment, radio silence.
Maître Dosé, who represents some of these families, has met several times with the authorities without success.
“
I was told a year ago that the Quai d'Orsay was no longer in control.
That the decision was up to Emmanuel Macron, at the Élysée.
But the lawyer says she does not see the beginning of a change of position even if the current position of the authorities seems "
untenable
"
“Making an orphan and leaving her to rot in the camp”
Among the young women represented by Marie Dosé, a 28-year-old diabetic mother who died from lack of care on December 14 in the Roj camp.
The lawyer claims to have requested his repatriation 42 times to the French authorities, without success.
The young woman left behind a six-year-old orphan who has still not been repatriated by the French authorities.
“
This little girl entered this camp at three years old,
recalls the lawyer, anger in her voice.
She then watched her mother agonize for three years.
Today she is all alone in the camp.
She saw her Swedish and Dutch schoolmates being repatriated with their mother.
This is France's choice: to create an orphan and leave her to rot in the Roj camp even as Daesh is attacking northeastern Syria.
»
►
To read also: Syria: a French woman dies in the Roj camp, her daughter still there
At the beginning of February, a child died in the Al-Hol camp hit by fire from a member of the camp security, three others were injured.
The Syrian Kurdish authorities claim to have had to deal with an attempted kidnapping of one of the guards.
For Bénédicte Jeannerod, France director of the NGO Human Rights Watch, "
this is an additional warning signal vis-à-vis France and the other States which have subcontracted the responsibility for their nationals to an actor not state in a war zone
.
The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria is indeed not recognized by the international community.
The PYD party that leads it is the Syrian branch of the PKK, considered a terrorist organization in particular by the European Union and therefore France.
"
We want to scream,
" breathes Marc.
We want to scream because we are killing our grandchildren physically, psychologically and socially.
Another news recently worried the grandfather of four children, that of the detention camp for boys over the age of 12, then separated from their mother: “
Imagine to what degree of violation of the rights of the child, we arrived in the north-east of Syria insofar as there are children who arrive in camps when they are 6 or 7 years old, who are put in a youth prison at 12 years old and who should enter a prison at 18 years old.
Children who are victims, who are innocent and who cannot be blamed for anything and who are finally promised life imprisonment.
»
These women and children are not detained without any legal procedure, as Bénédicte Jeannerod (HRW) reminds us: “
This indefinite arbitrary detention amounts to collective punishment, which constitutes a war crime.
Governments that actively contribute to this confinement, including France, can be complicit in these crimes.
»
►
To read also: Syria: children of jihadists still detained in Hassaké prison
France able to receive these children
Yet in France, justice is operational, recalls Patrick Baudouin of the International Federation of Human Rights Leagues.
“
The CNDH has heard anti-terrorist judges, all of whom are asking that international warrants be executed in order to be able to try adults in France.
»
In terms of childcare, a process has also been in place for several years within Child Welfare Services.
"
The reality is simply that the only reason for the non-return of his children is electoral
", affirms the psychiatrist Serge Hefez who also fights for the return of these children.
“
Personally, I do not understand that in the name of elections we can accept to let children die and that everyone finds it normal.
Indeed, it was after a poll, carried out in early 2019, affirming that two thirds of French people wanted French children to stay in Iraq and Syria, that the government backtracked.
►
To read also: France: new action for the repatriation of children stranded in Syria
While some of these children are currently spending their fifth winter in a tent, French personalities have joined their cause to try to fight against oblivion.
“
The goal is for them to know that there are people here in France who are waiting for them and who are thinking of them
,” explains Marie Desplechin.
The children's book author believes that the situation simply needs to be explained and that it is contemptuous of the government to think that the French people are stupid, selfish and despicable enough to make the return of a few children a subject of anger.
“
There are millions of people who are moved by videos of kittens, I can't believe that some of those people aren't moved by children who are dying in Syria.
»
►
Also to listen: French children detained in Syria, awaiting return
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