Canadian Druze community asks for humanitarian corridor into Jordan amid violence in Syria

More than 100 demonstrators from Canada’s Druze community gathered on Parliament Hill on Friday afternoon, asking for the government to intervene in an unfolding humanitarian crisis in Syria where hundreds have already been killed. 

The Druze are a religious sect began as a 10th-century offshoot of Ismailism, a branch of Shia Islam. They make up about three per cent of Syria’s population, with more than half of the approximately one million Druze worldwide living in Syria. 

Over the last week, Syria’s government stepped into fighting in the Suwayda administrative region in the southern part of the country, between local Bedouin fighters and militias linked to the Druze. 

Syria’s intervention caused further bloodshed, and a fragile ceasefire declared just on Wednesday was reportedly broken again by Friday morning, according to Al Jazeera. 

“There’s a clear intention to destroy the group of Druze in Syria,” said Fahd Abou Zainedin, an organizer of Friday’s demonstration on Parliament Hill. 

Some demonstrators held signs calling the killings a genocide. 

“We would like to call and ask for the Canadian government, and all democracies all over the world, to open the humanitarian corridor immediately, to save the lives of innocent children that are being killed,” he said.

With Suwayda only about an hour away from Syria’s border with Jordan, the demonstrators believe Canada can use its diplomatic heft to pressure both governments into allowing safe passage for the Druze, as well as providing humanitarian aid to the population. 

Syria denies involvement in massacres

Syria’s new government, which came into power after toppling President Bashar al-Assad’s regime last December, has denied having any hand in the killings of civilians, saying its armed forces intervened only due to clashes between militias.

Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa said protecting Druze and their rights was a priority for his government, and vowed to hold to account those who committed violations against “our Druze people.”

Al-Sharaa also spoke out against Israel’s involvement in the fighting. Israel has repeatedly conducted airstrikes into Syria this year, with some hitting Syria’s Defence Ministry in the capital of Damascus just on Wednesday.

Israel has said it would protect Druze from any attacks, not allowing military forces to descend on them. Since the new government’s takeover of Syria, Israel has moved troops into the country.

Video circulating on social media has shown government forces and allies humiliating Druze clerics and residents, looting homes and killing civilians inside their own homes. 

The United Kingdom-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an NGO, said it counted 374 people killed since clashes erupted.

It cited “field executions and violations committed by Defence Ministry forces against civilians and local Druze fighters.”

Yara Harb, a volunteer organizer at Ottawa’s protest, said “there’s been dehumanization, there’s been humiliation, there have been aggressions against dignity and the Druze identity,” she said.

Harb said it is very hard to establish contact with loved ones in the area due the internet and power being shut off.

She said her grandparents, who live there, told her their house was ransacked by a group of 40 men, and the last update she heard from them was that they had left their home behind to seek refuge elsewhere. 

Harb said their neighbour’s son was shot.

“They couldn’t get him to safety at all. So he ended up dying after 24 hours with the only intervention being prayers from my 85-year-old grandma,” she said.

Bassma Al Atrache came to the protest from Montreal. She said she has been unable to contact her mother, who is in Suwayda, for four days. “The last time I spoke to her, she was very traumatized, she was hearing airstrikes everywhere,” Al Atrache said, adding her mother is a Canadian citizen. 

Tentative new relationship with Canada

Global Affairs Canada has yet to respond to a series of questions about this story.

The Canadian government is tentatively renewing a relationship with Syria, where it closed its embassy in 2012.

In mid-March, Canada named Stefanie McCollum, its ambassador to Lebanon, to serve concurrently as a non-resident ambassador to Syria. 

In February, then prime minister Justin Trudeau named former cabinet minister Omar Alghabra as special envoy for Syria. 

However, the Canadian government also still lists al-Sharaa’s group, the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, an offshoot of al-Qaeda, as a terrorist organization.