PARIS – In a desperate appeal to the French government, about ten French women who have joined the Islamic State and are now being held in detention camps in Syria, went on a hunger strike on Saturday, protesting against the government’s refusal to return home. bring for trial.
The women are among dozens of French mothers and their 200 children who have been detained by Kurdish forces in bad camps for at least two years and are in a legal condition.
“We have decided to stop feeding ourselves, regardless of the risks, until we meet the right people to get answers about our future,” one of the women said in a voice message The New York Times received.
Two French lawyers representing the women have confirmed the hunger strike in a statement Released Sunday night.
Since at least 2019, when the Islamic State lost its final foothold in Syria, some 60,000 relatives of Islamic fighters, mostly women and children, have been trapped in an ominous, disease-ridden detention camp led by Kurdish forces in northeastern Syria. managed, without it being clear. future in sight.
France, along with other Western countries that also detained citizens there, resisted calls from families and rights groups to withdraw its people, and it brought back only a handful of children.
The return of citizens who left to wage jihad has long been a sensitive issue in France, a country that continues to suffer from years of Islamic terrorist attacks. But the hunger strike, coupled with recent initiatives by French lawmakers and citizens, could put the government under pressure to act in the situation that is deteriorating by the day.
Last week, United Nations human rights activists urged 57 countries, including France, to repatriate women and children whose “continued detention, on unclear grounds” in the camps’ is a matter of serious concern and the advancement of accountability, truth and justice. undermine.’
France has long argued that adults who have joined the Islamic State, including women, should be tried where they have committed their crimes: in Syria and Iraq. Several men have already been tried and sentenced in Iraqi courts.
But women who have been tried have so far proved impossible because their potential crimes are unclear and because the Kurdish government they hold is not recognized internationally. Kurdish troops in charge of the camps called for all foreigners to be repatriated, saying they could not stay indefinitely in an unstable region.
The women who are on hunger strike say they want to be tried in France.
“We are there waiting, in tents, in the cold, in the winter,” a hunger striker said in a voice message.
She said: ‘We want to pay our debt to society for the choice we made to come here. But it’s time for this nightmare to end and for us to go home. ”
The New York Times received several voice messages from the women, but did not publish their names because they had received death threats from Islamic State supporters opposing their desire to return to France.
Countries such as Russia, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan have each repatriated more than a hundred of their citizens, far more than Western countries where public opinion is strongly opposed to bringing home those who have left to fight with the Islamic State.
Rights groups have urged governments to at least bring their citizens’ children home, arguing that the minors did not choose to go to Syria and that they would only make the situation worse if they grew up in camps that became kettles. of Islamic radicalization.
But France has agreed to repatriate children only on a case-by-case basis, with preference given to orphans and fragile children whose mothers agree to let them go. To date, 35 children have been brought back, including a 7-year-old girl suffering from a heart condition who was flown to France in April for urgent medical care.
In the current French political climate, repatriation may be even more hampered. In the fall, the country was hit by several Islamic terrorist attacks that reopened old wounds. A draft law aimed at combating Islamism is expected to be finally approved in the French Senate next month.
Families of family members stranded in Syrian camps and rights groups have long denounced this piece of repatriation process. In northern France, the mother of a French woman detained in Syria has been on a hunger strike since February 1 to protest France’s policies.
In a public letter, a The French legislature recently condemned the conditions of the camps and the unwillingness of the government to act, which he calls ‘deeply inhuman and irresponsible political cowardice’.
“If, because of our inertia, we continue to endorse the guilty silence of the government,” the letter reads, “we will have been the legislators who have killed innocent children.”
A spokesman for the French Foreign Ministry, which oversees the repatriation process, could not be immediately reached for comment.
Marie Dosé and Ludovic Rivière, the advocates for the women on hunger strike, said in a statement that the women should only be tried in France, and that they have been waiting more than two years to pay for what they did. ”
In one of the voice messages, a woman said that they ‘now need a helping hand from our country’.
According to her, a trial in France is “a second chance”.