Dozens of parliamentarians, including some of the majority, ask, in a forum to appear on Saturday, September 12 in The Parisian, the “Repatriation of French children and their mothers arbitrarily detained in Syria”, in the name of humanitarian and security imperatives.
“In the name of the humanitarian imperative, we, parliamentarians, call on France to immediately repatriate the French children victims of inhuman and degrading treatment who perish in the Syrian camps”, write the 76 elected to the French and European Parliaments, including Clémentine Autain, Mathieu Orphelin, Karima Delli, Raphaël Glucksmann or Yannick Jadot.
About two hundred French children, the signatories recall, are held in deplorable sanitary conditions in camps and prisons run by Kurds in northeastern Syria.
Malnutrition, dehydration, cardiac arrests
“More than three hundred children died in Al Hol camp alone in 2019”, they remind, “And dozens of children have died of malnutrition, dehydration, cardiac arrest and internal bleeding since the start of the summer”, in this region where temperatures have regularly exceeded 40 ° C.
“Letting these children perish in these camps by exposing them directly to inhuman and degrading treatment is contrary to all our international commitments and unworthy of our rule of law” add elected officials, recalling that Unicef the Defender of Rights, and many other organizations regularly call for the repatriation of these children and their mothers.
The repatriation of the latter, underline the signatories, is a dictated necessity “Above all by a security imperative. For our safety, in fact, the mothers of these children cannot stay in the Roj and Al Hol camps where escapes and insurgencies are increasing: they must be repatriated in order to be tried and sentenced in France ”.
“For months, Daesh has publicly called on its supporters to release these women to better enroll them and increase its ranks” and “The Roj and Al Hol camps are extremely dangerous hotbeds of violence and radicalization” they add. All are the subject of a judicial anti-terrorism procedure in France, recalls the text, asking the government to“Have confidence in the anti-terrorism justice of our country”.
The repatriation of French women and children detained in Syria is carried out according to the doctrine of ” case by case “, adopted by the government, which has so far brought back 28 minors, especially orphans or the children of the few mothers who agree to part with them.
Saturday afternoon, the Familles unies collective, which brings together relatives of these French prisoners, will demonstrate in front of the State Secretariat for Children, in the 7e arrondissement of Paris, to again request the return of the children.
