Well, I’d hate to make his family feel worse about the whole thing than I’m sure they already do, but “conscription” is a term that can have different meanings in different places. Americans, and probably Canadians, generally think of conscription as an administrative/bureaucratic process, in which one is notified in advance and has opportunity to contest the decision, etc.
I don’t know anything about Syria specifically, but in the Central American context, it frequently meant being rounded up by a military unit, thrown onto a truck, and not being able to contact anyone for months or year, if at all, if you lived to tell about it. I hope that’s not the case here, but whether it’s been jail or conscription, I’m not so optimistic about this poor guy’s family seeing him anytime soon.
Well, I’d hate to make his family feel worse about the whole thing than I’m sure they already do, but “conscription” is a term that can have different meanings in different places. Americans, and probably Canadians, generally think of conscription as an administrative/bureaucratic process, in which one is notified in advance and has opportunity to contest the decision, etc.
I don’t know anything about Syria specifically, but in the Central American context, it frequently meant being rounded up by a military unit, thrown onto a truck, and not being able to contact anyone for months or year, if at all, if you lived to tell about it. I hope that’s not the case here, but whether it’s been jail or conscription, I’m not so optimistic about this poor guy’s family seeing him anytime soon.
I’d have thought so, Eva, but it was his Tunisian wife and his brother (who I can only assume also grew up in Syria with him) who claimed that if he’d been conscripted he could have contacted them.
Mr. Arar has now been found. There is, as of yet, no mention of whether he will be forced to complete the Syrian military service, whether he will be allowed by Syria to return home at all, or, of course, any sort of compensation for being treated so shabbily, without legitimate proof.
And why the hell shouldn’t they?? United States immigration officials have already disappeared a Canadian citizen. He’s finally been found, mercifully, but I still think it’s completely unconscionable the complete lack of respect the American governments are showing for Canadian (or French or British or any other country’s) citizenship.
Yet more evidence that certain branches of that state’s government feel that they can do whatever they want, with no regards for the rights or safety of any other country’s citizenship. It makes me furious.
Whenever I hear about these things, I can totally imagine them happening to someone in my family.
I’m headed back to the States with my US passport, birthplace: Tehran, Iran. It always makes me bloody nervous and panicked to think they’ll interrogate me when I’m travelling with my toddler and she’ll see me carted off in handcuffs. Horrifying.
Just saw a clip from today’s House of Commons. Minister of Foreign Affairs Bill Graham said the USA is backing off on racial profiling Canadians who were born in the mid-east.
And while we’re at it, the Governor-General’s Award- and Giller Prize-winning author Rohinton Mistry has cancelled a book tour due to drumroll! immigration service discrimination against people of colour.
And from this http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49346-2002Oct31.html in the Washington Post, it looks like the USA is trying to backpedal on the recent assurance they gave. They just don’t seem to grasp that racial profiling is racism. Looks like the lessons learned from WWII have been forgotten.
Guinastasia, for someone who claims to be a history major (and a graduate, IIRC), you exhibit a remarkable lack of knowledge about the historical issues of which you speak.
When called on it, you generally always say something like “duh, excuse me”, and then go on to castigate the person you are disagreeing with, even if they show much more knowledge about the historical issue than you, especially if they are an “evil Republican”.
For ex. in this very thread: Quoth Guin-" Fuck the Bush Administration. Fuck them hard and extremely painfully."
You just had to throw that in, because you got burned on something you screwed up on, as usual.
Maybe you should get your head out of your ass and learn some history, because apparently you didn’t learn shit in college, except that everything your leftist prof said about Central America is NOT TO BE QUESTIONED!
And now let everybody sing “Well Guin is a respected poster, fuck you Klaatu, you don’t know shit, and fuck off!”
Fine, be that as it may, but I don’t continually post bullshit masquerading as fact, and then shrug it off, using it as a springboard for political hyperbole.
