Rad­hi­ca De Sil­va

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Head of the Repa­tri­a­tion Com­mit­tee, Nizam Mo­hammed, has called on Mus­lims to with­hold their votes un­less Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young or Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar make a firm com­mit­ment to repa­tri­ate na­tion­als who re­main strand­ed in refugee camps in Syr­ia.

“There must be no repa­tri­a­tion, no vote,” Mo­hammed de­clared dur­ing a press con­fer­ence at the Com­mit­tee’s of­fice in San Fer­nan­do.

On the brink of tears, he added, “The Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty can­not wait any longer. We are deal­ing here with de­fence­less women and chil­dren who are fac­ing abuse.”

Gov­ern­ment da­ta con­firm that more than 100 na­tion­als are cur­rent­ly de­tained in Syr­ia, in­clud­ing at least 56 chil­dren and 20 women, most of whom are held at the Al-Roj and Al-Hol camps.

Mo­hammed said the gov­ern­ment has ig­nored re­peat­ed re­quests and crit­i­cised the re­liance on Task Force Nightin­gale, claim­ing it has failed to make progress over the past sev­en to nine years.

“They are not equipped, they are not qual­i­fied, and they have done ab­solute­ly noth­ing,” he said. “They are sit­ting on us, the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty.”

He con­tin­ued, “Politi­cians are our ser­vants, not our mas­ters. We the peo­ple have rights. We are hu­man be­ings. Stop the pol­i­tick­ing and pay at­ten­tion to the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty. We are hurt­ing.”

Mo­hammed ac­cused the gov­ern­ment of vi­o­lat­ing in­ter­na­tion­al hu­man rights laws.

He urged Mus­lims, es­pe­cial­ly in con­stituen­cies like San Fer­nan­do West, to with­hold their votes un­less the gov­ern­ment gives an un­equiv­o­cal com­mit­ment to bring home the women and chil­dren.

“There is no point in vot­ing,” he said. “We can­not aban­don our moth­ers, sis­ters and chil­dren. That is not in our DNA. It is im­pos­si­ble.”

He al­so ap­pealed to re­li­gious lead­ers of all faiths to speak out.

“If I have my way, I will take two or three of us and go to the Arch­bish­op. I will go down on my knees and beg him: say some­thing for our peo­ple. I will go to the Bish­op, the Dhar­ma­charya, the IRO, even the Pres­i­dent of Trinidad and To­ba­go. She can­not pre­side over a coun­try with­out a con­science. It can­not hap­pen.”

He said girls in the camps face abuse, while boys are sep­a­rat­ed from their moth­ers and placed in de­ten­tion cen­tres.

“They are ex­posed to all kinds of abuse. Moth­ers are try­ing to pro­tect their chil­dren, but they are help­less. Our women and chil­dren—we do not joke with that. They are our lives,” Mo­hammed said.

He added that the sit­u­a­tion can­not con­tin­ue.

“We have failed. Our chil­dren are be­ing de­stroyed. Our women are dy­ing. This is the re­al sit­u­a­tion. They do not be­long to any oth­er state. We have aban­doned them,” he said.

Ra­heema Khan, who at­tend­ed the press con­fer­ence, shared de­tails of her sis­ter’s life at the Al-Roj camp with five young chil­dren.

“She sends a one-minute voice note every week to say she’s alive. Last week she told us that all the women and chil­dren were forced out of their tents at 6am in hail and rain. They stood un­til af­ter 6pm. The guards searched their tents, threw their food on the ground, uri­nat­ed on their clothes, and beat some of the kids,” Khan said.

She said her sis­ter be­came sick from the ex­po­sure, and sev­er­al chil­dren con­tract­ed virus­es af­ter the or­deal.

“They keep ask­ing, ‘When are we com­ing home?’ I don’t have an an­swer,” Khan added.

Yacila Al­i­mayu, an­oth­er rel­a­tive of a de­tainee, echoed, “No repa­tri­a­tion, no vote.”

Dur­ing Eid cel­e­bra­tions, Prime Min­is­ter Young promised to re­view the repa­tri­a­tion is­sue, but since then, the Com­mit­tee has re­ceived no as­sis­tance. Per­sad-Bisses­sar has spo­ken out on the is­sue since 2020.