On The Horns of a Dilemma
"Passengers at the boarding area are supposed to get on their flights but this man did not do so."
"He is situated in a forbidden zone and we had to take the necessary action."
"[Hassan al Kontar would be questioned by police.] We will then communicate with the Syrian embassy to facilitate deportation to his home country."
Mustafar Ali, head of immigration, Malaysia
"It's the price we keep paying as minority [Syrian Druze] and peace believers."
"In hard times, you will discover that what you become during the process is more important than the aim itself."
"You knew it was hard, but you did it hard."
Hassan al Kontar, 37, Kuala Lumpur International Airport, Malaysia
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| Hassan Al Kontar from a photo posted on his Twitter account. |
Malaysia, a majority Muslim country, will allow Syrian refugees -- mostly Sunni Muslims, fleeing the civil war in their Shiite-ruled nation where Alawite Syrians are the favoured sectarian group, their security sheltered by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, while his forces discipline the Sunni majority for their arrogance in daring to suggest that they would appreciate equal treatment to their Shiite counterparts -- to temporarily stay in the country, but will not accept them permanently.
The score card of the dead in the Syrian civil has reached beyond a half-million Syrians in the eight-year-old conflict. The regime's military has had ample assistance from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, al Quds division, Iran's Lebanese Shiite terrorist group Hezbollah, and Shiite militias in destroying much of the infrastructure of traditional Sunni Syrian enclaves, with considerable air power graciously provided by Russian warplanes.
Hassan al Kontar, a minority Druze resident of southwest Syria, a farming community called Dama, had not responded to the call-up to serve in the Syrian military. In Dawa, his father was an engineer, his mother a nurse and life was tolerable until Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant terrorists moved in. He had himself not been living in Syria for years, having migrated for work in 2006 to the United Arab Emirates as an insurance marketing manager.
When he returned to Syria in 2008 he had trouble renewing his passport. His work visa in the UAE had run out. His Syrian passport only temporarily renewed, the UAE deported him to Malaysia. Although Malaysia will allow Syrians to enter, it is only for a temporary stay; they are expected to move on elsewhere. Not quite the charitable picture of Islamic authorities that is conventionally portrayed.And then his Malaysia tourist visa ran out and he overstayed in Malaysia.
He was left with the dilemma of being unable to enter the country by leaving the airport, nor might he leave Malaysia by boarding a plane, destination elsewhere. Turkish Airlines refused to board him on a flight to Ecuador in February. He managed to arrive in Cambodia a month later, but authorities there returned him to Malaysia. He has until January 2019 before his temporary Syrian passport expires.
Two people in Canada have been attempting to help him come to Canada, as a refugee through sponsorship efforts. Fundraising brought in over $15,000 to help the process along, but his application had been registered in March and the administrative processing of refugee claims is in a severe backlog situation, so that it may take up to two years before his application, on a long list of claimants, can be assessed and moved forward.
Should he be returned to Syria, of a certainty he will be arrested, imprisoned, and be subject to 'interrogation', which will likely be accompanied by torture sessions as is common in Syrian prisons. Many of those prisoners never see the light of day, they somehow suffer 'complications of health' and die gruesome deaths. His situation is nothing if not desperate, all the more so that after seven months of living in the airport's budget terminal he has now been arrested.
While living at the terminal he had kept a blog consisting of daily accounts of his travails, the boredom he experienced being trapped at the airport, his uncertainty for the future, his meals donated by Air Asia staff, and his experience with hygiene, grooming himself in the airport's public washrooms, sleeping on public benches. The blog has ceased its entries, once he was arrested by Malaysian immigration police.
His is an exceptional case. The government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Canada made much ado, boasting and self-congratulation of its generosity in accepting Syrian refugee families. The focus should have been on threatened minority groups, on unaccompanied women and children. Illegal migrants have been entering Canada in droves over the U.S. border into Canada and are given generous treatment while their (mostly bogus) refugee claims are placed on the waiting list.
There is every reason for Canada's immigration minister, Ahmed Hussen, to take immediate steps to contact Malaysian authorities with the assurance that he is prepared to expedite Hassan al Kontar's refugee application, to expeditiously bring him to Canada, the refuge he has been hoping for, to rescue him from certain death on return to Syria.
Labels: Canada, Crisis Management, Malaysia, Syrian Refugee
posted by Pieface @ Friday, October 05, 2018
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