(Zaman Al Wasl)- Ammar al-Sheikh Haidar, former detainee and political dissident, has decided to go on a silent hunger strike and to sit in front of the Canadian consulate in Istanbul on Monday to protest against the freezing of his settlement file.
“I am no more than a burden on this earth and there is no point in my existence except for my daughter,” Haidar wrote on his Facebook page. “I decided to refrain from talking and to go on an open hunger strike.”
Haidar told Zaman al-Wasl that he lost everything and that he now lives with the help of some friends, adding that he owns only his mobile phone, the clothes on his back and his refugee status that has become a new home for him. He decided, therefore, that he should not stand idly by and surrender to his reality. He had several options the most rational of which was the hunger strike and the sit-in in front of the Canadian Embassy in Turkey.
Ammar al-Sheikh Haidar, originally from Musyaf where he worked in construction before the war, brother of the minister of National Reconciliation in the government of the regime, Ali Haidar, was arrested in May 2010 and three months after his arrest, his family moved to Jordan. In 2011, he was released from detention but did not want his family back in the city to avoid harassment, especially since – he says - he had declared his support to the revolution after it broke out.
In 2014, he was abducted by Hezbollah in Dummar al Balad in Damascus, where he was tortured. After his release, one month later, he grasped the impossibility of living in Syria, so he moved to Lebanon, where the situation was not any better under Hezbollah's control, which drove him travel to Turkey. Haidar had not been able to bring his family along because of his lack of stability and lack of financial means, and he could not travel to Jordan, because of the requirement of air travel set after 2011.
In 2015, our correspondent tried more than once, like thousands of Syrians, to immigrate to Europe illegally so that he could reunite his family, but his attempts failed. Unable to save the cost of sea travel, he traveled by land. Despite reaching the border, in his four attempts to immigrate, the Greek police returned him to Turkey each time, with the Turkish gendarmerie thwarting his fourth attempt before he crossed the border. After that, he became desperate and resorted to smugglers, preferring to cross the sea as a ferryman to save the cost of the trip to reach Izmir despite the gravity and the legal consequences of such a choice; however, once again, his attempt did not succeed.
At the end of 2017, Haidar submitted his his wife’s and daughter’s files to the Canadian Immigration Ministry with the help of a Syrian woman called Saba Khadour. The file was rejected the first time because his daughter Marwa was over 18 years old and so her file was submitted again separately.
Our correspondent revealed that the Canadian Embassy in the Jordanian capital set an appointment for his daughter in March 2018 and conducted an interview with positive results. However, after the appointment of the medical examination in April of the same year, her file has been frozen to date. The former detainee pointed out that the Canadian Embassy in Istanbul had set a date for him on 1 August 2018. He had an interview, had a medical examination and obtained a health certificate. In September, he was interviewed and given a boarding pass, and yet his file has also been frozen until now. As for his wife, he said, no date has been scheduled for an interview or what might suggest that her asylum application has been approved.
Marwa Haidar explained that the suffering of her family began after her father was arrested for his political activity in mid-2010. At the time, she was taking the second year secondary exam and after the exams she had to go to Jordan, where she still lives with her mother. She presented the baccalaureate and enrolled in Al-Ahliyya University, Graphic Department. However, after the third year, she was unable to complete her studies because of the high financial fees. She had to withdraw her papers from the university and to work as a receptionist at a sports club in the Jordanian city of Irbid.
Marwa expressed her fear for her father’s situation, whom she had not seen for 10 years, as he decided to go on hunger strike, hoping that he would be heard as soon as possible and for her family to be reunited.
Zaman Al Wasl
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