“Repatriate them!
They are in mortal danger!
It's urgent !
Five major human rights organizations united their voices to issue Tuesday, February 15 "a new cry of alarm" on the fate of some 200 children and 80 women, all French citizens, held in Kurdish camps in the Rojava, in the northeast of Syria, where the situation is tense.
During a press conference held alongside the United Families Collective, the Human Rights League (LDH), Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Unicef-France and the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) called on the French authorities to "break the impasse" by bringing these minors back to France as well as their mothers, widows or wives of jihadists who have joined the Islamic State (IS).
“We have to stop trying to make these children invisible,” insisted Françoise Dumont, honorary president of the LDH.
"They are not guilty"
“These children detained for three years in appalling conditions are subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment.
They are not culprits but victims.
They did not choose to go to Iraq or Syria, it was their parents", underlined Mr. Patrick Baudouin, Honorary President of FIDH, recalling also "the absolute competence of French justice to judge these women who are all the subject of an international arrest warrant”.
So far, only 35 children, mostly orphans, have been repatriated.
But no more returns have taken place since January 2021, lamented the lawyer for several families, Me Marie Dosé.
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Very moved, the lawyer mentioned the recent death of a 28-year-old woman for whom she intervened in vain “42 times”.
“She had arrived (
in the Iraqi-Syrian zone
) at 21 years old.
She was very ill.
She had been in the camp (
de Roj
) for three years with her 6-year-old daughter.
France has made an orphan and leaves her alone!
she accuses.
“Let things be clear: it is the Élysée that is blocking!
denounces Me Dosé, describing the policy “case by case with opaque criteria” as “completely inhuman”.
On the ground "nothing has changed for two years except that the deterioration continues: the children are dying", testified from Beirut (Lebanon) Lynn Maalouf, of Amnesty International.
The attack in January by IS on a prison where 700 children, including 10 French, are detained, and "the rise of tensions in the camps" where minors were shot dead, constitute "an additional warning signal “, underlined Bénédicte Jeannerod, of Human Rights Watch.
A risk of indoctrination
To their legal and humanitarian advocacy, NGOs add a security argument.
“Daesh is far from gone and the Kurds themselves, who are tired of this burden, will eventually let these women and children go.
They will be picked up by Daesh, indoctrinated, and the situation will be much more serious than if they came back”, fears Me Baudouin.
“They risk being recruited, of hating their country, of becoming fighters”, chained Adeline Hazan, vice-president of Unicef-France, referring to the case of the boys, transferred to adult prisons from the age 12 years old.
The only NGO to have been able to go to the prison since the attack, UNICEF found that the children, "abused, in bad shape", had been "used as human shields".
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“We live to the rhythm of the sufferings and fears of children.
These are our children, our grandchildren and we are killing them physically, mentally and socially, “said a representative of the Collective of United Families.
He recalled that the first French children from the Roj camp arrived there in 2017, the first who were born there in 2018. “There is already an irremediable part.
These years that we stole from them, we will not be able to give them back, ”he said.
“There is a France that thinks of them”
Several of the twenty-five personalities who decided to sponsor a Syrian child (an initiative of Me Marie Dosé) were present.
“We want these children to know that there is a France that thinks of them”, insisted the actress and columnist of France Inter, Sophia Aram.
“All the first children who have come back and whom I have known are doing well.
They have found their families, they are integrated into their villages and no one knows their story,” said psychiatrist Serge Hefez, who participated in their care.
Me Henri Leclerc, who also lends his voice to this cause, underlined his incomprehension in the face of “the obstinate refusal of the French government, which is not that of other European governments”.
Faced with a divided opinion on the issue, he called for, precisely, "the subject to become a subject of the electoral campaign".