"I am begging Canada to save all 4 of my children"
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- Published on Sunday, 29 November -0001 16:00
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Sign now with a clickSadia risked her life for years working to empower Afghan women under Canadian-funded projects. But Canada has slammed the door on Sadia, a mother of four, and hundreds... of fellow women’s rights advocates, despite knowing they have been placed on a Taliban hit list as alleged “Canadian spies.” Sadia has spent 17 long, fearful months fearing a forced return to certain death under the Taliban, who have tortured and murdered many of her colleagues who were unable to get out after Kabul fell in August 2021.
The Canadian government has all the necessary paperwork it needs to welcome Sadia and some 200 of her fellow workers, all of whom submitted applications to escape the Taliban and come to Canada after having worked on Global Affairs Canada-funded projects that placed their lives are at risk. Canada assured them during those years that it had their backs, but more than 90% of those applicants to Canada’s Special Immigration Measures (SIM) program have yet to receive a confirmation number and no one returns their emails.
“As a woman, I am facing grave risks because of my affiliation with Canada and by working with the highly sensitive project of Afghan women’s empowerment,” says Sadia. “These people [Taliban] are very brutal and I want to know why Canada doesn’t want to work on our application? Even yesterday, I decided to kill myself and after that, I think a lot about my children. If I kill myself, then what will my children do?”
The risk to Sadia and her family is not speculative. One of her daughters was kidnapped 3 years ago while in Afghanistan and Sadia is worried that the Taliban kidnapper – who has connections in the third country where Sadia’s family is in hiding and has made subsequent threats against the family – may target her once again. "If Canada provides safety to my family they will rescue a girl who is yet to study and fulfill her dreams. I am begging Canada to save all 4 of my children,” Sadia says.
It is unconscionable that Canada has knowingly forced women like Sadia into such despair. There are no logistical difficulties in rescuing these at-risk workers and their families. All are outside of Afghanistan and only require Canadian permits and travel documents, but the longer they are abandoned by Canada, the more at-risk they are due to massive street sweeps that round up Afghan refugees and forcibly deport them back to the torturing hands of the Taliban.
Having worked for 5 years on Global Affairs Canada (GAC)-funded programs to uplift and empower Afghan women, Sadia believed the Canadian government when it said it had her back and the backs of her fellow workers. But Canada has abandoned Sadia, who applied for the Canadian Special Immigration Measures (SIM) program on August 9, 2021, weeks before Kabul fell. She knew her life would be worthless under a Taliban regime.
In August 2021, the non-governmental organization administering the Global Affairs Canada (GAC) programs submitted a list of all staff to GAC and Canadian immigration officials. Scores of those women have yet to hear any response from Canadian officials.
The message has been as clear as it is painful. The Canadian government does not value the lives of Afghan women like Sadia. Despite being featured in national news stories about her plight, including a Globe and Mail feature which detailed how Sadia’s work placed her on a Taliban hit-list, Canada refuses to lift a finger. Janice Dickson of the Globe and Mail reported: “Two hundred Afghans, mostly women who worked on Canadian-funded aid projects in Afghanistan, are being tracked down by the Taliban and are in hiding after the militants obtained their names from a confiscated cellphone. A pair of Afghan women [including Sadia], whose names were on the seized phone, say their lives are in imminent danger because the Taliban obtained their phone numbers, pictures of themselves and saw text messages where the women criticized the country’s hard-line rulers.”
Sadia is not in Afghanistan. There is no barrier to Canada issuing her and her family the permits necessary to book flights out of the third country and fly to safety.
In April 2022, Sadia and almost 200 fellow former employees for Global Affairs Canada projects began to publicly advocate for their rights. Sadia gathered a report sharing the many traumatic stories and life-threatening incidents faced by her fellow workers and shared it with the Government of Canada. The Trudeau government, which calls itself a pro-woman feminist regime, was unmoved.
“Kindly note that in Pakistan I am jobless and my children don’t attend schools and also I can’t return to Afghanistan back because Taliban are hunting us and if they catch us will kill me on the spot because when I was in Afghanistan I have received many death warnings from Taliban for my work with Canada on women empowerment program and my advocacy,” Sadia tells the Rural Refugee Rights Network.
“Many nights, my children sleep without dinner and wake up without breakfast. They are sick and we have no money for medicine. My daughter had typhoid for two months and I cannot afford to pay the doctor. We live in hiding and it’s almost impossible to go out to find work and food. In late 2022, my sister, who was waiting for safe relocation to Canada, died of cancer. We have been weeping for her all the day and night long.”
Under the SIM program, individuals would submit resumes to Global Affairs Canada (GAC) and, if GAC felt they had a sufficient connection to Canada, they would be passed to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), which would then determine whether to issue an “Invitation to Apply.”
IRCC Racism
Unfortunately for Sadia and her colleagues, Canada’s SIM program relies on an immigration bureaucracy whose incompetence (losing 2900 urgent Afghan files, https://globalnews.ca/news/8907142/ndp-alleges-feds-lost-afghan-applications-canada/ and racism have been well documented. From racism at the call centre taking calls regarding the Afghan program (https://www.cbc.ca/news/immigration-refugees-citizenship-ircc-racism-1.6362896 to a parliamentary committee recommending that Immigration Canada make sweeping changes to the way it selects and accepts new immigrants and refugees after hearing that racism and bias are plaguing the processing system (https://newcanadianmedia.ca/racism-bias-plaguing-canadas-immigration-processing-system/Afghans face far more obstacles than the almost 150,000 white Ukrainians who arrived here in record time. If the system can work for one group (and thankfully it has), why not for another?
The consequences for these failures are lethal. As Sadia tells the Rural Refugee Rights Network, “we are living in hiding here and if the police find us they will deport us by force and if we go back to Afghanistan, Taliban will kill me and my family as they killed many of my colleagues and other women in Afghanistan who were involved with the Canada mission.”
As Canadian politicians boast about “getting better” with their seriously deficient Afghan refugee program, they sit in their comfortable offices insulated from the pain and cries of Sadia’s children and so many others who could easily, with the signing of a few documents, be on the next plane to Canada.
“My children are weeping day and night because they had dreams of education and a free life to do sports and get educated, be good doctors and engineers. My kids were first-position holders when they were in schools in Kabul but now they are hopeless and sick and under pressure. Before all this, they had a good life, enough food and opportunities because as a woman I was supporting my family by working with international organizations. Canada gave us the courage to work and provide us capacity building trainings to support our families and ourselves and after 20 years they left us behind to face the wild animals in charge of Afghanistan.”
We are joining the Rural Refugee Rights Network and Women Who Choose to Live in calling on the Government of Canada to immediately prioritize and approve the applications for Sadia, her family, and those of all of her colleagues. By working for Canada (and being assured Canada had their backs) these brave women got Taliban targets on their backs. Every moment of further delay means bloodshed that will be on the hands of the Canadian officials who know this but continue failing to act.
“I am everyday counting the days and hours while my ears are always alert, and it gives me goose bumps thinking that armed people would enter our home and destroy all of us,” Sadia tells the Rural Refugee Rights Network. “I am not feeling safe here, every moment me and my children have fear of deportation and killing as well.”
Sadia checks her emails 100 times a day for word. Let’s ensure that she soon opens the email that says Canada values her life, the lives of her family, and the lives of her colleagues who all worked for Canadian programs in Afghanistan.
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