Senior Reporter
shaliza.hassanali@gmail.com
After seven years, a minor who returned from formerly ISIS-controlled Syria has been granted T&T citizenship. It means he can now access education and healthcare.
It was a bittersweet moment for the boy’s mother, Crystal Peters. She told the Sunday Guardian she feels somewhat betrayed that Government is advancing a policy to integrate migrants into the primary school education system by September when she had to home school her son for years.
“These are things I always talk up against. The question I have to ask is if you could do it now, what was the problem before? You are talking about innocent children being denied an education,” she said.
Peters vented her feelings on Friday, one day after Foreign and Caricom Affairs Minister Dr Amery Browne announced plans to educate the migrant children. She said she fought for her eight-year-old son Jason (not his real name), who was born in Syria, to get an education in T&T but was faced with so many obstacles, it broke her spirit.
Peters admitted that she broke down in tears at her Maloney home on Thursday when Browne made the announcement during a humanitarian breakfast series. Her tears were mixed with anger, hurt and disappointment because she had struggled for months to get Jason the education he rightly deserved.
Born in Syria in 2015, Jason was repatriated with his mother and sister from Turkey seven years ago. At that time, he was just one year old.
Jason’s father claimed he was going to Turkey to play professional football but ended up in Syria for seven months.
Peters was denied documents for Jason, a former Syrian refugee and, in turn, access to education since they returned.
Between 2013 and 2016, at least 130 T&T nationals travelled to Islamic State (ISIS) controlled territories in the Middle East—the most people per capita in the Western hemisphere according to Human Rights Watch.
“I felt so hurt because as a citizen of Trinidad, I could not even get my son into a school here because I had no form of documentation for him. Now to hear the children of these migrants will soon be afforded an education it’s painful. I became emotional. I don’t want people to feel that I have something against the migrants’ children. That is far from the truth because I believe that all children deserve the right to an education and should be treated fairly. But this was not the case. It was like a slap in my face when you look at it,” said Peters.
She said the authorities in Syria never gave her a birth certificate for Jason.
“Jason is capable of doing Standard One work,” Peters said with pride, adding that her son is “very smart.”
“He can’t read full sentences. He is now identifying one word at a time,” she said.
Peters said she was taken by surprise last month when her attorney Criston J Williams informed her that the Ministry of National Security had granted Jason his T&T citizenship.
“Girl, you talking to me and my pores raising. Girl, I cried, you know. Why all the fight down? I went through hell and back. After eight years you decide to pass the document. And you granted him citizenship as a minor. So, when my son reaches the age of 18, he would have to fight up again.”
Peters said she was asked to pick up the document at Williams’ office on a particular day but when she arrived in Port-of-Spain her feet buckled.
“I never reach. I went back home. It take me a week to muster the strength to go to my lawyer. Is like I still can’t believe it after waiting so long,” she said.
Jason’s father was killed in Syria seven years ago.
“They bombed him down using a drone,” Peters recalled.
Last month, she visited a school in her community to enrol her son but had a change of heart.
“I watched the behaviour of the children. I don’t think he could fight up there. It would be too much for him.”
She hopes he can start school in September and is still looking around for a place.
Last week, she enrolled Jason in a summer camp in Maloney. It was his first opportunity to interact with children but the third day of the camp, he was sent home for being rude and banned from participating in an excursion.
Peters admitted that her son has a problem socialising and mingling with other kids.
“He was away from children for so long he can’t socialise very well, or he may not even know how to interact with children. That is an issue I have observed. My heart is bleeding a lot for him because I see where he is trying to fit in.
“My son is trying to be a child but what happened over the years has affected him in so many ways. As a mother, I know he has been facing a tough life,” she said.