Amnesty International at York to fundraise for Syrian refugees

It takes one boy to wash ashore on European soil and everyone cares now, says Ragda Habbal, vice-president, Amnesty International at York.
York’s chapter of the global human rights organization is planning a November event to highlight the plight of Syrian refugees and raise funds for the FCJ Refugee Centre.
The group will also present Amnesty Canada’s petition to pressure the Canadian government to take action.
Habbal drew attention to the difficulties associated with fundraising.
“It’s difficult to fundraise because you don’t know where the money is going. For clothing, I want to take it with me, but I’m going on a commercial airline, so I could take with me only a select amount of baggage.”
Money? Who are you going to give it to? asks Habbal.
She locates the cause of the refugee crisis in Western governments’ military interventions, such as the United States, and weapons suppliers fuelling and profiting from wars.
“Wars create refugees and we supply weapons to these wars,” she says.
Behzad Mohammadi, Kurdish refugee and graduate student at York says Syrian refugees comprise four out of 19 million refugees worldwide.
According to Mohammadi, there are many refugees at York. These include Kurdish refugees at York and other Canadian universities.
Questions have been raised as to security ramifications of letting in massive numbers of refugees.
In an interview with Peter Mansbridge, Stephen Harper hit back at calls for Canada to accept more refugees, repeatedly asking “what’s enough?”
Arguing that no matter how many refugees Canada accepts, there will always be more, the Prime Minister emphasizes the importance of “countering the cause (…) a violent movement attempting to conquer an area and kill and displace millions and millions of people.”
“There are millions, millions of displaced persons that we know of in camps. It’s not just enough to turn around and say, oh let’s admit more refugees. We can admit thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands more refugees and we are still going to see those kinds of images,” said Harper.
Mohammadi is skeptical of Canadian military action in Syria. He says the intervention is about political influence as opposed to aid and went on to criticize the role played by Gulf states in the conflict.
“Western intervention is less about humanitarian intervention, but more about securing the socio-economic and geopolitical interest of the United States in the region. Since Western governments are so reliant on resources provided by Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries (some of which have horrible human rights records), they don’t want to upset some of those governments, so they obviously back Saudi Arabia, which in turn is backing ISIS, which creates a crazy situation.”
“We don’t know if we’re fighting ISIS or supporting the people who are funding ISIS,” he adds.
Mohammadi acknowledges ISIS is dangerous, but urges restraint in the way the threat is presented.
“ISIS is a real threat, but our strategy isn’t working. Our domestic policies shouldn’t be appealing to the worst fears of the population.”
In 2014, the Canadian government reported over 130 individuals “with Canadian connections” abroad and suspected of terrorism-related activities, some of which included involvement in training, fundraising, promoting radical views, and planning violence.
We should be more positive, says Mohammadi.
“Instead of undermining our rights and values in the face of possible threats, we should uphold and strengthen them.”
“If you ask Canadians what they’re proud of about the country, they will say ‘diversity.’ They will say the cultural policy, welcoming every nation.”

Alex Kvaskov, Assistant News Editor
Featured image courtesy of Ragda Habbal