NO NEED FOR DEBATE

Time in Canada to debate whether notwithstanding clause should exist, says Liberal MP

GET RID OF IT AND THE SENATE

Sat, February 18, 2023 



OTTAWA — A Liberal MP from Montreal says it is time for the country to debate whether the notwithstanding clause should be on the books.

Sameer Zuberi's comments come after a week where the Bloc Québécois forced parties in the House of Commons to vote on whether they felt provinces had the legitimate right to use the constitutional power however they wanted, including pre-emptively.

Both the Liberals and federal New Democrats voted down the motion to defeat it, while the Conservatives supported the Bloc's call.

The notwithstanding clause is a provision in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms that allows provincial and federal governments to pass laws that circumvent parts of the Charter for a period of up to five years.

While it's not new, debate around its use has heated up in recent years as provinces such as Ontario and Quebec have invoked it pre-emptively, effectively preventing anyone from launching a legal challenge in court.

Quebec Premier François Legault's government used it pre-emptively to usher in his government's secularism law, known as Bill 21, which prohibits public servants in positions of authority from wearing religious symbols on the job.

"When you have the usage of the notwithstanding clause being enacted in such a way that it eliminates rights from people, then it calls into question the very clause itself," Zuberi said.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has criticized the pre-emptive use of the provision and during a 2021 interview told The Canadian Press he shares the disdain his father, former prime minister Pierre Trudeau, had for its place in the Charter. It was a demand from provinces the elder Trudeau acquiesced to during the 1982 constitutional negotiations.

But that is as far as the current prime minister has gone in his criticisms. Zuberi stopped short of directly calling for the Liberal government to reopen the Charter, saying only "there should be a debate within society, and also within governments on this issue."

Asked about the possible implications of revisiting contentious constitutional negotiations, particularly when Canada is facing issues such as high inflation, Zuberi said "just because this subject is complicated, doesn't mean that we should shy away from approaching it."

Zuberi currently sits as a backbench member of the government, first elected in 2019 in the reliably Liberal riding of Pierrefonds—Dollard in Montreal.

As the only Muslim MP in Quebec, Zuberi said he knows his comments around Bill 21, which he opposes, are perceived differently.

And although he believes Quebecers' view of the law is changing, he believes it is important to tell those affected that they could be in for a long battle.

Earlier in the week, he told a Senate committee studying the issue of Islamophobia that he sees the five-year sunset rule on the clause's application as a chance for the law to be revisited, expressing hope it could fall in the next 10 to 15 years.

"We need to be realistic and not pretend things aren't as they are," he said, saying if the law does not fall through the courts, the only other recourse is at the ballot box.

The Quebec Court of Appeal is expected to release a ruling on the constitutionality of Legault's use of the notwithstanding clause to enact the law, challenged by several civil liberties groups and the National Council of Canadian Muslims. A 2021 ruling by Superior Court Justice Marc-André Blanchard said while the law had "cruel" and "dehumanizing" consequences, it was mostly legal.

Trudeau has committed to intervene in the case if it arrives at the Supreme Court of Canada.

National Council of Canadian Muslims CEO Stephen Brown said Friday he believes the court challenge will be successful, but said it is "absolutely necessary" to convene lawmakers, activists and other members of civil society to examine the clause itself.

Zuberi said his message when he speaks to those affected by the legislation is to stay engaged.

"We obviously hope that legislation will fall through the courts in the short term, but it's possible that this might not happen" he said.

"People have to understand that and be prepared for that midterm struggle. And I think it's a disservice for those who are directly impacted to not understand that."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 18, 2023.

Stephanie Taylor, The Canadian Press

Manitoba's high child poverty rate has First Nations leaders deeply concerned

Sat, February 18, 2023 

A study released earlier this week shows that Manitoba is the province with the highest rates of child poverty in Canada, and First Nations leaders in this province say they are concerned because they know a high number of those children living in poverty in this province are First Nations children.

On Tuesday, the Poverty, Pandemic and the Province report was released which shows troubling levels of child poverty in Manitoba.

According to the report, Manitoba’s child poverty rate sits at 20.68%, the highest childhood poverty rate of any province, and 7.21% higher than the national average. Only the Territory of Nunavut has a higher rate of child poverty at 28.09%.

The study also shows troubling numbers related to First Nations children and youth, as currently in Manitoba 41.6% of First Nations children live in poverty, a higher rate than any other demographic group, according to the report.

Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs (AMC) Grand Chief Cathy Merrick said those numbers “reflect the enduring consequences of colonialism, marginalization, and discrimination,” and said she is now asking the province to do more to include First Nations leaders and representation in discussions and policy decisions surrounding child poverty.

“This is the cost of exclusion, and the continued refusal to engage with First Nations leadership on policy and legislative development that has historically led to devastating impacts on our families,” Merrick said.

“It is extremely disappointing.”

The report also found that children and youth living in poverty are at a higher risk for negative health outcomes including pre-term birth, child mortality, and suicide, and are also more likely to experience poor educational outcomes.

“We continue to endure overrepresentation amongst poverty statistics, despite the recognition of the systemic nature of these circumstances and institutional oppression which creates these poor outcomes,” Merrick said.

“The government in this province does little to take accountability nor do they make adequate efforts to challenge the normalization of our suffering and the constant stereotypes our citizens are subjected to as a result of this discriminatory treatment.

“It is time to target policies in a manner that reconciles the ongoing discrimination that keeps our families in poverty.”

In a statement to the Winnipeg Sun, a provincial spokesperson said the province wants to work with Indigenous people and organizations to slow those poverty rates among Indigenous children and youth, but also said that poverty reduction in this province is a “shared responsibility.”

“The Manitoba government values conversations with Indigenous rights holders and community partners on how to best support Indigenous children, youth and families,” the spokesperson said.

“Poverty reduction is a shared responsibility. Manitoba is committed to working collaboratively with all levels of government, community partners and other stakeholders in both private and public sectors to ensure that children and families in our province will have a brighter future.”

The spokesperson also claimed the province recognizes the increased risk of poverty among First Nations families is “directly linked to factors including intergenerational trauma, colonialism, and structural racism,” and said the province has been putting programs and policies in place to try and lower child poverty in Manitoba, and among First Nations children and youth.

“The province has implemented various measures to help Manitobans who are struggling with the high cost of living. These include increasing the minimum wage and rent assist rates, and issuing affordability payments,” the spokesperson said.

“As well, the Manitoba government has already established partnerships with Indigenous organizations to provide culturally-appropriate supports to help Indigenous individuals and families stabilize and thrive. Some examples include the original and expansion sites of Granny’s House, Clan Mothers Healing Village, the Community Helpers Initiative, and N’Dinawemak.”

— Dave Baxter is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter who works out of the Winnipeg Sun. The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada.

Climate equity working group 'disappointed' after Vancouver city council rejects climate justice charter

Sat, February 18, 2023 

Vancouver City Hall is pictured. On Wednesday, Vancouver City Council rejected a charter intended to help guide city staff around efforts to address climate- and equity-related issues. (Jacy Schindel/CBC - image credit)

For more than two years, Navdeep Chhina and 15 other members of the City of Vancouver's Climate Equity Working Group worked to create a Climate Justice Charter to help guide city staff around efforts to address climate- and equity-related issues.

On Wednesday, city council rejected that charter.

"This does not feel rewarding," said Chhina. "The charter said, let's do things in an equitable way so that people who are facing the biggest burden are not the ones who are paying the biggest price as well."

The working group was created in 2020 to help inform how the city's Climate Emergency Action Plan (CEAP) "could best consider equity either in the way policies are developed or implemented," the charter describes.

The group was expanded a year later with the "dual purpose of advising staff on the implementation" of the CEAP and co-developing the Climate Justice Charter.

The charter documents some of the lived experiences of Indigenous, Black, and people of colour, and people living with disabilities, and provides recommendations around advancing equity and racial justice within sustainability work.

Rather than setting strict guidelines, Chhina says it was created to help city staff build on current policies and develop new ones, and makes clear that climate policy cannot succeed without addressing social injustices.

Ryan Walter Wagner

Earlier this week, a motion was brought forward to implement the charter, but it was rejected by the majority-ABC-Vancouver council.

"I think the work that was prepared for us is something that we could use as one of many tools," said ABC Vancouver Coun. Mike Klassen. "But the fact is that we can't tell staff how to do their job."

Klassen said the city already has a chief equity officer and an existing equity framework strategy focused on building a more climate-resilient city.

Ginger Gosnell-Myers, a consultant on the charter and a decolonization and urban Indigenous planning fellow at Simon Fraser University, says it is not the responsibility of one person in council to ensure climate equity work is being done, but that of all staff to help residents adapt to a changing climate, including mitigating the impacts of extreme weather events.

"People are really disappointed in this decision that was made," said Gosnell-Myers, who is a member of the Nisga'a and Kwakwak'awakw Nations.

"Council is motioning to us what they think is important and what they're telling us is equity and reconciliation and climate change isn't important. We don't need to track it. We don't need to be accountable for it."

The move was also met with disappointment from councillors Christine Boyle, Adriane Carr and Pete Fry, who voted to implement the charter.

Climate equity still a top priority: councillor

Klassen says creating an equitable climate emergency action plan is still a top priority.

"We've kind of run out of time in doing symbolic gestures. We have to reach actual achievable targets," he said.

He cites work by city staff reviewing the use of renewable fuel sources and creating a framework for carbon offsets, which the city doesn't currently have.

He added the motion put forward to council by the working group seemed "prescriptive."

"The motion said that staff will do this, when in fact we know that things are continuously evolving," he said.

"We need to take tools like these, perspectives like these, and incorporate it just as we do in our work around equity."

'It feels like we're going backwards'

Earlier this week, the park board voted for the removal of the temporary bike lane to restore Stanley Park Drive to two lanes of vehicle traffic.

The board also proposed a dedicated bike lane for 2024 but that would mean cutting down trees in the park, Chhina said.

Council also voted to end the 25-cent fee for disposable drinking cups.

"Our elected officials are not being visionary, are not being leaders," he said.

Gosnell-Myers says measures like these indicate "environmental ignorance."

"This council's priorities is all about business," she said.

"It feels like we're going backwards and putting our heads in the sand at the same time."

Northern spotted owl found injured near B.C. train tracks two months after release


Sat, February 18, 2023 



VANCOUVER — One of just four endangered spotted owls known to be in the wild in British Columbia is now recovering from an injury after being found along some train tracks, slowing the careful plans to revive the species, a breeding facility co-ordinatorsaid.

The injured bird had been released last August along with two others in forests near the Spuzzum First Nation, about 200 kilometres northeast of Vancouver, said Jasmine McCulligh, the facility co-ordinator for the Northern Spotted Owl Breeding Program.

They believe the owl — named Sitist, which means night in the Spuzzum language — may have collided with a passing train, McCulligh said.

A railway worker noticed the injured bird in October and brought it to the Orphaned Wildlife Rehabilitation Society in Delta for treatment.

"He was diagnosed with a wing fracture and a scratched eye," McCulligh said in an interview. "That owl has since returned to the breeding centre and his potential for release will be re-evaluated as we get closer to the spring and summer."

She said the other two owls, also males, are "doing really well."

The three males were released in the same area as a lone female that experts know is in the woods.

Northern spotted owls are a federally endangered species, with habitat loss and competition from the barred owl reducing their wild population.

The injury to Sitist leaves justthree confirmed spotted owls in the wild in B.C.

Protection of spotted owls has fuelled decades-long disputes between environmental groups and the forest industry as their future is often tied to saving old-growth forests where the birds live.

"The spotted owl is an old-growth dependent species, so a single pair of owls requires 30 square kilometres of old-growth forest," McCulligh said.

When the birds were released last year, the Ministry of Land, Water and Resource Stewardship said it was "a historic milestone," crediting a partnership between the breeding program and the Spuzzum First Nation.

"The transition from a small group of spotted owls in a distinctly designed breeding facility to a healthy wild population is a long-term process, with an unknown success rate. However, the release of these three birds is a significant step toward an eventual self-sustaining population," the province said in a statement last year.

The province said it would monitor the released owls, including an assessment of the owls' ability to breed in the wild, using radio telemetry, GPS tags, visual checks and acoustic recording to track their movements and health.

McCulligh said the breeding program, which is the only one in the world for the species, determines if an owl is fit for release based on a number of factors including genetics and breeding potential, gender, ability to hunt live prey and overall health.

She said for the injured male to be re-released, the program must first determine if his wing healed properly and if he still has "silent flight," which determines whether his prey will hear him coming.

McCulligh said the ministry is consulting with First Nations, but there is no official timeline for when or if the owl will be returned to the wild.

"We have no concerns of his health here, but we still have to do a thorough evaluation of if he's actually releasable again."

She said the breeding program, which started is 2007, is a "long-term project."

"It could be 50 years until we see a sustainable number in the wild," McCulligh said. "We would say about 200-250 individuals would be enough to kind of become self-sustaining, but that's generations (of owls) from now, possibly."

She said the centre aims to produce 10-20 offspring per year, but it hasn't yet reached that goal, attributing this to challenges like sex ratio and not having enough breeding-age females.

"That's something we have to be careful with monitoring the owls, to make sure that we're pairing them up for the best chance for success," McCulligh said.

She said other challenges, like what happens to the owls once they are released, remains a concern, referencing the injured owl.

"We can put them in one spot, but who knows where they're going to end up. There are train tracks everywhere and we can't control that they don't go on roads or railroad tracks."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 17, 2023.

Brieanna Charlebois, The Canadian Press

Rare cyclone with track the size of Canada just won't quit making news

Very rare, long lived tropical storm may break records in the coming days

Tyler Hamilton and Rachel Modestino
Sat, February 18, 2023 

Rare cyclone with track the size of Canada just won't quit making news

The extremely rare and long-lived Cyclone Freddy continues to churn in the Indian Ocean.

Its powerhouse strength and expansive track covers Canada's entire width, potentially up to 8,000 kilometres long. The storm may also break cyclone energy records in the coming days.

SEE ALSO: Tropical cyclones decreased last century as global warming sped up

Tropical Storm Freddy was just shy of 2023’s first Category 5 storm on Friday and is expected to sustain Category 3 status through Monday. It won't be until Freddy travels farther west that it moves into a less favourable environment, with strength anticipated to diminish to Category 1, before making landfall late Tuesday.



The Eye of Freddie was passed by the International Space Station

Life-threatening surf and surge are forecast, along with rainfall amounts over 300 mm. Madagascar, a country with a population of more than 30 million, is susceptible to many hazards and has one of the highest cyclone risks in Africa. Wind damage, flooding complications from rapid changes in topography and storm surge threats are all elevated with Cyclone Freddy.

Freddy aims to break cyclone energy readings before making devastating landfall Tuesday.
How much energy is released by an average hurricane?

Hurricanes extract energy from warm ocean temperatures and release it through condensation and thunderstorm activity around the eye. The kinetic energy of the wind energy, although less, is still immense. The average wind energy generated by a hurricane is 1.5 trillion watts per day -- enough power generation to cover half the world’s electrical energy production.

FreddeyTracj

Cyclone Freddy developed on Feb. 5, so over the past two weeks it has generated a high accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) score.

By Tuesday, the cyclone will have emitted more energy than the current Southern Hemisphere record-holder, Fantala, which had a 17-day lifespan in the Indian Ocean.

Cyclone Freddy also developed Longitude-90 degrees east, and with its impacts to the Madagascar forecast, it is a highly unusual feat.

Thumbnail courtesy of Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC/SATOPS).

Capitalism and Humanitarianism Can Coexist. Chobani's CEO Is Trying to Prove It

the notion that businesses exist to maximize profits for shareholders was the dumbest idea he’d ever heard.

John Simons
Sun, February 19, 2023 

Hamdi Ulukaya, CEO of Chobani

In the days that followed the devastating earthquake in Turkey and Syria on Feb. 6, Hamdi Ulukaya, a Turkish immigrant and CEO of Chobani, donated $2 million of his own money to help recovery efforts, then got on the phone with fellow chief executives, U.S. government officials, and the president of the World Bank, urging them to help.

Ulukaya has infused a similar spirit of generosity into Chobani. As founder and chief executive of America’s top-selling yogurt brand, he explained to potential Wall Street investors in a 2021 IPO filing that his 18-year-old company “operates on a simple fundamental principle, that we do well by doing good.” 

Ulukaya made waves in 2019, when he delivered a TED Talk called “The Anti-CEO Playbook.” As part of the presentation, he said the notion that businesses exist to maximize profits for shareholders was the dumbest idea he’d ever heard.

It’s not just talk. In recent years, as Chobani has expanded with new products like oat milk and cold-brew coffee, Ulukaya has granted his more than 2,000 employees shares worth up to 10% of the company’s value, while also donating millions of products to fight food insecurity in the U.S.

TIME spoke to Ulukaya last week about his recent relief efforts—and how they fit with his vision of a modern CEO and a thriving company.

I know you’re currently working to help earthquake survivors in Syria and Turkey. Tell me more about how you’ve gone about that, as a CEO.

Well, in 1992, an earthquake happened in the city in Turkey that I am from, Erzincan, and I have seen first-hand its very dramatic effects on people’s lives. With this recent earthquake, you know that people are going to mobilize themselves and help whichever way they can. That reflex has affected me as well. I immediately thought, what can I do? It’s wintertime, it’s cold, and the buildings are collapsed. Some people are outside. What’s life going to be like? One of the first things that you heard, which I’m so proud of, is the message from White House that they will start sending help. And then the next day, I was in Washington and spoke to a few people and I went to the Turkish embassy. My immediate reflex was, can I mobilize the business community to start sending help? When you’re abroad, the best thing you can do is send monetary help. Sending goods from here is sometimes not as effective. So, with TPF—Turkish Philanthropy Funds—we began reaching out to organizations in Turkey, doing the groundwork, doing the fieldwork. And that set-up really was perfect. Also, we started to reach out to my friends. That’s going well, reaching out to businesses, CEOs that I know, and organizations, and making sure that we help people in Turkey and Syria as they’re going through this devastation.

You’ve done this sort of thing successfully in the past, like during the 2021 refugee crisis that followed the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. Tell me about that process.

In the early days of Chobani—I’m talking about 2008, 2009—I learned there were people who came and settled as refugees in Utica, [N.Y.], where I used to live, and they were having a hard time finding work. I said, “Okay, let’s start. I will get some training in the plants and get some translators.” This shouldn’t be so hard. For me these were not refugees working, they were people in the community. I’m hiring and I don’t want to separate out this population. People started creating this amazing environment in the plant. They started having interactions. This was a beautiful thing to see. They were refugees who left everything behind, lost a lot and came to a new community. But they hadn’t found their new life yet. And then, if you ask me, the minute they get the job, that’s the minute they stop being a refugee. That’s the minute they start living their life, providing for their family. You look at it as, “Well, it’s good for them.” But what it does to the society, community, and especially to the company is mind-blowing.

I went to the United Nations Refugee Agency in Geneva, reached out to a couple of other organizations and realized that the business community has been absent from this topic—one of the biggest humanitarian crises we are facing. I said, “What if, from Chobani’s experience, I can ask other companies to join us? So, in 2016, I launched the Tent Partnership for Refugees, which mobilizes companies to hire, train, and advocate for refugees. I got some pushback and some laughter, but that’s fine. And when the Afghan refugees started arriving, we immediately reached out to our business community and had over 50 companies committing over 20,000 jobs within a few months. We followed-up and it’s beautiful to see most of those companies exceeded their commitments. Today, we have over 300 companies. I’m really proud to see what has been done. We did it in Canada, we did it in Columbia, in the U.S., and in Europe. We’re talking about companies like Hilton and Pfizer, Pepsi, Airbnb, and other companies. I’m going to London next week for Ukrainian refugees. Companies are convinced that this is the most amazing thing to do because they now have stories on the productivity and commitment of the refugee community and how it helped their business. It also has an enormous amount of support from the consumer side. So, it’s win, win, win, in all dimensions. We begin to see that maybe we can make a dent in this massive humanitarian crisis.

How do you go about getting other companies to mobilize? Is it difficult? Are you personally calling other CEOs?

I reach out personally sometimes, and sometimes the team does, and sometimes others reach out to us. From my experience, I know that when they hear the news, there are conversations happening at the C-suite level. Should we get involved, or not? How can we help? Most of the companies I know have that reflex. Trust is extremely important. They have to know that whatever they donate actually goes to people or actually does the work. You create that channel and say, “I trust this, I’ve been part of this work and they do a good job.” If it’s in the U.S., it’s easier to find credible organizations to be partnered with.

You’ve given over $2 million in personal donations to help with relief efforts in Turkey and Syria. Clearly, philanthropy is important to you. Does it inform who you are as a leader?

Sure. I don’t come from a background of business. I’m from the Eastern part of Turkey; I’m a Kurd. I come from a farming background. I never thought I would be a CEO or starting a company. In my early days, I didn’t even like this field. But living in upstate New York, starting a company, seeing firsthand the power of business, how we can make a dramatic change in people’s lives, even faster and more sustainable than sometimes government and other organizations. When I saw that side of things, I fell in love. And then money becomes this tool, a powerful tool. I say, “This is our operating system.” And today we are over $2 billion in sales with over 2,000 people. We don’t know how to operate any other way. So this social side of us—to be mindful of being impactful in our communities and societies—is really what drives us every day. If you take that out for any reason, we wouldn’t be as successful as we are today.

Chobani had scheduled an initial public offering for sometime this year but canceled the plan due to stock market volatility. Do you still plan to go public sometime soon?

We have no pressure or any other outside reasons to do an IPO. We’d only do it for reasons of opportunities and growth and when the time is right for us. That gives us an enormous amount of comfort and freedom to do what is right for Chobani. Since we started this company, I have never viewed it as lasting a short time. We wanted to build a company that can grow. We’ve been so disciplined in that effort. The field of food is probably one of the hardest sectors, especially in the U.S. market. It’s owned by a handful of large food companies and to play in that field you have to have certain structures. You need a lot of capital. We are very patient to keep our independence so we can do what we promise, which is making delicious food and making it accessible for the larger population. An IPO is one of those steps.

I am proud of our record. Last year, we grew almost 30% and half of it is coming from volume—and with two innovative products we have launched, creamers and oatmeal. But the background of that is two years investing in our plants, creating the products, focusing on fundamentals. These are not accidents. We have capabilities to compete and lead compared to all the large food companies, while maintaining this entrepreneurial attitude. We believe that we are in a really historic position and if an IPO is going to accelerate that, we will definitely consider it, but that’s not the only option.

Do you think it’ll be difficult to continue being an “anti-CEO,” who engages in a lot of humanitarian and philanthropic efforts, once Chobani becomes a public company? Do you think the pressures of Wall Street will allow you to operate the company the way you do now?

Changing our purpose-driven mission would be the end of me and the end of Chobani. If you took that out, there is nothing left, really. Our success is related to that. For that reason, I would definitely not change. But also, as I mentioned in the Anti-CEO Playbook, that part of business, whether you like it or not, is what consumers expect. You look at the young generations. You look at the young talent. For them, the notion that the sole purpose of business is to make money is yesterday’s idea. It’s embedded into their DNA. They want to support and be part of the companies that are truly committed to making the world a better place.

You may have to teach Wall Street and your new investors that your way of leading and giving back is part of what makes the company unique and helps it grow.

Last year, I had conversations with the financial community. I think the view is, if a company authentically operates this way, it can be a huge driver of success. The second dimension is that the consumer is extremely powerful. Smart young investors want to be successful and do well economically but they don’t want to give up how they affect humanity and community.

What do you think is the most important thing to remember as people try to help Turkey and Syria recover?

This is one of the worst crises that Turkey or the region has faced. No country can handle this alone. I think the international community and citizens reaching out is so beautiful to see. But my biggest message would be, this is a long-term rebuilding effort. These early days are extremely important, but the weeks and months and years to follow are extremely important as well. I’m asking everyone to not only help now but stay committed to rebuilding people’s lives. That would be beautiful.

Syrian refugees in Turkey face harassment after quake: 'I never felt this level of racism before'

Nabih Bulos
Wed, February 15, 2023 a

A Syrian family sits in the back of a truck at the Syrian-Turkish border following the region's devastating Feb. 6 earthquake. (Tom Nicholson / For The Times)

It was on the third day after the devastating earthquake demolished his home and almost killed him and his family that Basel, a 31-year-old Syrian refugee living in Turkey, was able to find an empty plot of land to pitch a tent as a temporary shelter for his family.

But the respite didn’t last.

“Turkish people in the area came and told us they didn’t want us here — that we were to blame for the earthquake and that we weren’t welcome to stay,” said Basel, who gave only his first name to avoid harassment. “They started breaking up the tent, shouting at us until we left.”

He and his family were the victims of a growing wave of resentment against the more than 3.6 million Syrians who have fled their homeland during its ongoing, 12-year-old civil war and settled across the border in Turkey, which hosts more Syrian refugees than any other country.

More than 1.6 million of them live in areas hit hard by the magnitude 7.8 earthquake that shook southern Turkey and northern Syria last week. As the death toll climbs past 40,000 and millions face homelessness in what the World Health Organization calls the region’s worst natural disaster in a century, anti-refugee sentiment in Turkey has spiked, driven by politicians hoping to capitalize on public hostility before general elections meant to be held in May.

In recent days, with people’s grief morphing to fury, Syrians have become the target of a misinformation campaign accusing them of looting destroyed homes and stealing aid or blaming them as the reason for the cataclysm hitting Turkey.

The main driver of the campaign, observers say, is Umit Ozdag, a far-right politician who has long pushed to expel Syrians from the country. In the aftermath of the earthquake, he has pushed vitriol-filled messages on social media characterizing their presence as an insidious threat to national security and organized marches to expel Syrians from shelters. Meanwhile, anti-refugee slogans such as “Syrians are no longer welcome” are proliferating on billboards, in conversations and on television talk shows and social media.

The result is escalating harassment against refugees across the country.

In the port city of Mersin, Syrians at a shelter set up in a girls’ dormitory were kicked out to make way for Turkish citizens; witnesses said they were bused to the city of Adana, 40 miles away, and dumped on the street. Authorities in Mugla province warned refugees that they would be given no assistance and that they should seek help in other provinces. Even Syrians trying to help in rescues of quake survivors have been assaulted.

That’s what happened to Usama and his friends in Antakya, one of the hardest-hit cities. On Friday, they were transporting the body of a friend they had recovered from the wreckage and another friend’s electric bicycle when they stopped to get soup at a charity street kitchen.

Volunteers asked them where they were from, and called the police when they said they were Syrians. Before officers had a chance to investigate, a crowd formed around them, with half trying to beat them up while the other half tried to protect them, said Usama, who gave only his first name for fear of reprisals. Police finally came, put them in handcuffs and took them away; they were released hours later.

“People are hurting, and you can’t blame them. And of course someone stealing is not an easy matter in this time, but still, I never felt this level of racism before,” Usama said.

Many Syrians take pains to point out that authorities have provided services for them and that they’ve received support from Turkish friends and colleagues.

“My employer gave us our salary without delay and even sent us heating supplies when we were in the shelter,” said Mustafa, a 31-year-old janitor here in Kilis, who also declined to give his last name.

But few dispute that anti-Syrian sentiment has been a growing concern in the country for some years. When civil war erupted in Syria in 2011, Turkey became the primary destination for those fleeing the violence. Accommodating them became a central policy of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government, which has spent $40 billion to house the refugees and offer them access to employment, education and healthcare.

For most Syrians, Turkey was supposed to be a temporary stop, either as a way station on the road to asylum in Europe or a place to wait until the situation at home improved enough for them to return. But with European measures to restrict migration, and with the conflict stuck in a stalemate, many have stayed on.

As the Turkish economy slumped badly in recent years, the refugee issue became a major political battleground, with the opposition seeing it as a way to topple the long-serving Erdogan.

As elections near, the dominant message of the three leading opposition parties is that of "sending Syrians back,” said Begum Basdas, a human rights and migration researcher at the Center for Fundamental Rights at the Hertie School in Berlin. She added that, long before the Feb. 6 earthquake, people were “totally frustrated” with the government’s inability to bring about a durable solution.

The refugees themselves became a convenient scapegoat, Basdas said — "the classic scenario of not actually targeting authorities but those who are vulnerable because they’re easier targets.”

Government regulations meant to restrict Syrians’ movement around Turkey are compounding the community’s problems. Syrians are normally prohibited from leaving the cities they’re registered in without permission from provincial authorities. Although that injunction has mostly been lifted because of the quake, Istanbul remains off limits, removing an important option for the many Syrians fleeing the quake zone, said Taha Ghazi, an Istanbul-based refugee advocate who is Syrian but holds Turkish citizenship.

“Istanbul has the highest percentage of relatives" of Syrian refugees, he said. "So what’s the use? What did the Syrian refugee benefit from allowing him to go to another province?”

The government has also blocked refugees from going into Syria’s Turkish-controlled northern territories and allowed only Syrian corpses, certified by Turkish hospitals and issued an accompanying permit signed by the regional governor, to be transported across the border.

"The permit, it took us two days to get it,” said Samer, a 32-year-old Syrian refugee from war-torn Aleppo who was delivering the bodies of two children — one of them 5 years old — to their relatives near the Bab al Hawa border crossing.

Others are grappling with impossible choices, such as Samar Bawaba, who sat with her six children in the back of a truck among burlap bags of rice and other supplies.

Their house in Kahramanmaras, close to the epicenter of the quake, was now rubble, she said, and her husband had been deported three months before by Turkish authorities. With nowhere to turn, the family wanted to go back to Syria, but doing so would mean giving up their Turkish temporary settlement permit; without it they wouldn’t be able to cross back into Turkey.

“I have nothing here. What am I going to do? I can't stay here in this truck or in a tent,” she said. “I know going back to Syria isn’t easy, but what other solution is there?”

Erdogan has repeatedly vowed that his government would begin rebuilding quickly and pay up to one year of rent for those who do not wish to remain in tents. But there's no clarity if that would include Syrians, Basdas said.

"Will the state and aid organizations provide sustainable housing to all people affected by the earthquake without discrimination? There’s no sustainable solution for anybody. How do we manage internally displaced people in the long term?" she said.

"This affects everyone, but in these situations, people who are already extremely vulnerable, whether that's children, women, LGBTQ, refugees or migrants" are even more at risk, Basdas said.

Even in death, Syrians may also be forgotten, warns Ghazi, the Istanbul-based refugee advocate. Undocumented refugees, who make up a significant portion of the Syrians in Turkey, do not get recorded in official casualty figures, experts say.

"The most affected areas that were struck are poor neighborhoods with older buildings, and those tend to be the ones with refugees," Ghazi said.

"I fear that the highest percentage of deaths will be among Syrians."

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

Earthquake aid to northern Syria: Why did it take so long?

Cathrin Schaer
02/18/2023

February 18, 2023

It has taken longer for humanitarian aid to reach earthquake victims in northern Syria than almost anywhere else. Those people who dug through rubble with bare hands and lost loved ones want to know why.

When the earthquake hit, Ramadan Hilal and his family left their home in Jinderes, northern Syria, in a panic. "Everyone was barefoot," he told DW. "We ran for our lives, injured and carrying nothing."

Now, almost two weeks after the earthquake, Hilal's situation has still not improved. Jinderes is one of the worst affected towns in this area and Hilal, who left his hometown of Aleppo seven years ago because of the Syrian civil war, is now living with his family in a self-made tent near what remains of their home.

He's been trying to scavenge useful items from inside the ruined house, even though the building is in danger of collapse.

"Even this tent [we're living in], I had to borrow the iron frame and purchase the sheet [covering it] myself," Hilal complains. "We haven't received any aid until now."

Slow start to aid deliveries to Syria

Four days after the earthquake, the first aid convoys arrived in the area. But these had been on their way before the disaster. So it is only this week that aid convoys — carrying tents, medication, food and other supplies — began arriving in the area in any significant number.

Locals like Hilal, who are struggling to survive in the winter temperatures, say it's too little and much too late. Over the past days, there have been many stories about rescuers desperately clearing rubble with their bare hands, only to hear buried survivors' voices eventually fall silent.

Why has it taken so long?

There are just over 4 million people living in this this area, mostly Syrians displaced from other parts of the country during the country's long civil war. The area is controlled by various groups that oppose the Syrian government.

Years of fighting, ad-hoc governance and direct attacks on infrastructure by Syria and its ally, Russia, mean that medical facilities and other emergency services were already under pressure or non-existent. The majority of the civilians living in this part of Syria were dependent on international humanitarian aid to survive even before this latest disaster.

And getting aid and supplies into this opposition-controlled area has long been political.

The town of Jinderes is among the worst affected by the earthquake in northern Syria

Omar Haj Kadour/AFP/Getty Images

The Syrian government, headed by dictator Bashar Assad, insists all humanitarian aid should be channeled through Damascus. In practice, Assad used international aid deliveries both to enrich himself and his supporters by taking a cut, and to ensure that his enemies in opposition-held areas were starved of supplies.

This is why, early in the civil war, the UN and humanitarian organizations insisted aid be delivered across the Turkish border, directly into opposition-held areas, and without asking permission from the Assad regime. This is how the majority of aid has arrived in opposition-held areas over past years.

In mid-2014, the United Nation's Security Council, or UNSC, got involved in making decisions on aid for Syria.

Security Council members decided that UN humanitarian agencies and their partners should be allowed to use four different border crossings — two through Turkey and one each through Jordan and Iraq — without asking for permission.

However since 2014, the situation has changed radically because of Russia's increased military support for Assad from around 2015, and then after 2022, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has heightened diplomatic tensions inside the UNSC itself.

 

More convoys of trucks carrrying much-needed supplies began arriving in northern Syria this week

OMAR HAJ KADOUR/AFP

The idea of cross-border aid into northwestern Syria has become a political bargaining chip, with Russia using its permanent seat on the UNSC to support the Assad regime and exact concessions from other UNSC members. From 2020 on, at Russian insistence, the UNSC has allowed only one Turkish-Syrian border crossing to be used for aid deliveries.
So who was really to blame?

That was the situation when two devastating earthquakes struck early on February 7.

By February 13, the Assad regime agreed that two further Turkish border crossings could be opened for three months. While Assad's supporters argue that international sanctions are to blame, Assad's critics say that the Syrian government had deliberately waited so long for cynical, political reasons.

Opening the borders is "a way for the regime to … instrumentalize this tragedy for its own political purposes," Joseph Daher, an expert on Syria at the European University Institute in Italy, told the Washington Post.

The White Helmets were the first, and for a long time, the only, rescuers in opposition held parts of northern Syria

Image: Ahmad al-Atrash/AFP

"We have seen, time and again, that the Syrian government is more than capable and willing to manipulate emergency crises to expand its control," added Jesse Marks, senior advocate for the Middle East at Refugees International, in a statement.
Blaming the United Nations

Meanwhile others said it was the UN that was to blame. The Turkish government had apparently agreed to open two more crossings as early as February 8 but the UN decided to wait for the Syrian government to agree too.

"When I asked the UN why help had failed to arrive in time, the answer I received was bureaucracy," Raed Saleh, head of the Syrian volunteer rescue group, the White Helmets, wrote in an op-ed for CNN this week. "In the face of one of the deadliest catastrophes to strike the world in years, it seems the UN's hands were tied by red tape.

"It's a Catch 22 for the UN," Ibrahim Olabi, a lawyer and founder of the Syrian Legal Development Program, previously told DW. If the UN ignores the difficult politics behind the border-crossing debate, and the UNSC mandate, "then they're at risk of endangering their relationship with Damascus and they can't work there anymore."

"There was no reason the UN should have waited a week to secure this superfluous permission [to open borders] and present it as a triumph of diplomacy," editor Muhammad Idrees Ahmad pointed out in an essay published this week in the foreign policy magazine New Lines. "It was akin to requesting Russian permission to deliver aid to Ukraine," Ahmad argued.

Other organizations had similar arguments to make. "The slow humanitarian response to the earthquakes [in northern Syria] … highlights the inadequacy of the UNSC-mandated cross border aid mechanism in Syria and the urgent need for alternatives," Human Rights Watch said in a statement this week.

Parts of Syria under government control, like Aleppo, were also impacted by the earthquake but received help more quickly

Image: FIRAS MAKDESI/REUTERS

Profitting from disaster

But it wasn't just UN hesitation causing problems with aid shipments. Some aid convoys trying to cross from government-run parts of Syria into opposition-controlled areas were blocked by opposition fighters themselves.

Human Rights Watch reported that groups like Hayat Tahrir al-Sham turned trucks away because they refuse to accept anything from a government that has bombed, starved and shot at them for years. So did fighters from Turkish-backed militias in other parts of northern Syria.

Additionally, reports came in that the various independent militias operating in the area were taking a cut from aid shipments passing through their checkpoints, so they could distribute this to people in their own areas. This was common practice before the earthquake too.

The Syrian government is allegedly also involved in this kind of skimming. An aid worker in the area told Human Rights Watch that a Syrian aid convoy heading into opposition-held areas had been blocked from travelling further by local officials unless it handed over half of its cargo. Later videos on social media showed packages marked with UN and Syrian Red Crescent logos being sold in Damascus and other Syrian cities.

Turkish cultural heritage sites hit hard by quakes

Issued on: 19/02/2023 

01:20

From 40 to 50% of historic sites in Turkey’s Hatay province are currently estimated by UNESCO to have been destroyed by the earthquakes © Screengrab FRANCE 24

From 40 to 50% of historic sites in Turkey’s Hatay province are currently estimated by UNESCO to have been destroyed by the earthquakes, but it is feared that the actual losses in terms of heritage could be higher. The most significant losses in Turkey are in the Diyarbakir region, such as at Diyarbakir Castle, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Damage at these sites is currently being assessed in view of eventual restoration, for some. FRANCE 24's Thameen al Kheetan reports from Gaziantep.

Rush to save trapped animals in Turkish city after tremor

Issued on: 19/02/2023 - 

Antakya (Turkey) (AFP) – With helmets and flashlights, the rescuers enter a collapsed house in the earthquake-hit Turkish city of Antakya. Their objective: to rescue Asghar and Nouma, two bulls trapped under rubble.

Rescue workers have saved hundreds of trapped cats, dogs, rabbits and birds cherished by the people of the ancient city devastated by last week's 7.8-magnitude earthquake.

Efforts have focused on saving people but also rescuing animals.

The quake has killed nearly 45,000 people in southeastern Turkey and nearby Syria and completely devastated some 75,000 buildings including Nazli Yenocak's home.

Yenocak considers herself one of the lucky ones. Her family is unharmed, although the six of them now live in a tent in the middle of the garden.

But Yenocak is distressed. Her normally noisy bulls hardly make any sound.

"To hear them so quiet, it makes me cry," she said.

For 11 days, Yenocak fed them through a basement window. She then contacted rescuers at Haytap, a Turkish animal protection association for help to save them.

Haytap, a Turkish animal protection association, has been in the region to find trapped animals and take care of others

Hours later, they got her bulls out with the help of German and Austrian volunteers.
Loyalty

Haytap has rescued 900 cats, dogs, rabbits, cows and even birds from the rubble in Antakya after receiving calls from tearful owners or neighbours.

There is relief at a volunteer camp where each rescued animal is treated like a rock star, filmed by several with mobile phones and welcomed with applause.

Volunteers treat five chow-chow dogs first then take them to a shelter away from the debris. The next day, a husky with bright blue eyes and several other puppies bring some cheer with their high-pitched barks.

In Haytap's tent where vets provide care, a litter of kittens sleep soundly, at times bottle-fed by volunteers.

Sometimes the only signs of life in Antakya among the rubble are animals: a dog dozing near a destroyed sofa, a cat grooming itself in a shattered kitchen.

Turkish animal protection association Haytap has feeding points throughout the city 

One man saved from the rubble two days after the quake who became a rescuer takes care of a black kitten, found near a collapsed building. "His owner fled. He stayed here. So we feed him."

A few streets away, a large dog stirs and barks towards the first floor of a ruined building.

"He could come down but he stays out of loyalty to his owners," said Efe Subasi, 27, a Haytap volunteer who came after a neighbour informed him of the situation.
'Rubble' the cat

Animal rescue stories are a balm for the country, left in shock by the worst natural disaster in Turkey's post-Ottoman history.

One cat in Gaziantep named "Enkaz" (rubble in Turkish) has become an online hero after images showed the animal refusing to leave his rescuer's side.

Stuck under debris, cats and dogs are able to crawl to food or a fridge, giving them enough nourishment to survive longer, said Mehti Fidan, head of Istanbul's veterinary unit which has treated 300 animals in Antakya.

"But when they come to us, the cats have dilated pupils. The dogs refuse to be approached. They are traumatised, just like humans," he said.

Sometimes their presence can frustrate rescue teams. Thermal scanners cannot differentiate between animals or humans' temperature.

"After several hours, we found a cat, which once free, ran away without even a 'miaow' for us," said one foreign rescuer who did not wish to be named.

Nine days after the quake however, rescuers found a baby alive in Antakya thanks to a neighbour searching for a cat, CNN Turk channel reported.

For Erol Donmezer, he is worried as he still hasn't found his son's cat.

"They just amputated my son's two legs," Donmezer said. "After the operation, he said to me, 'Dad, all I want is for you to bring my cat back'."

Animal rescue stories are a balm for the country, left in shock by the worst natural disaster in Turkey's post-Ottoman history 

PHOTOS © Yasin AKGUL / AFP

© 2023 AFP

TURKEY HAS AN ANIMAL POSITIVE CULTURE

 

Syrian veterinarians save pets, farm animals who lost their humans in earthquake

By Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff
February 11, 2023

Workers from Ernesto's Sanctuary for Cats in Syria dug through rubble to find a dog injured by the earthquake and lost from its humans.

(Ernesto's Sanctuary for Cats in Syria)

An animal sanctuary in rebel-held Syria rescued a cat trapped inside its human’s shop for three days, a chicken stuck in the middle of a flooding river and a dog bleeding profusely from its leg. But it couldn’t save them all.

“Just like humans, we had to do triage,” said Mohamad Youssef, one of two veterinarians with Ernesto’s Sanctuary for Cats in Syria. “But we saved a lot, and we are still searching.”

As hopes for rescuing earthquake survivors in northwest Syria dwindled, roughly a dozen of Ernesto’s workers continued pulling out dogs, cats, goats and chickens from underneath the rubble. With few tools, they worked mostly by hand.

In a region devastated by tragedy upon tragedy, returning lost pets to owners can bring emotional comfort, and gathering up displaced farm animals ensures a steady source of food for a people largely cut off from international trade.

Workers from Ernesto's Sanctuary for Cats in Syria tend to a dog that wounded its leg in this week's earthquake while searching for abandoned pets. 

(Video: Ernesto's Sanctuary for Cats in Syria)

Ernesto’s founder, Alessandra Abidin, said her group was the only one in northwest Syria focused on finding animals — others, like the Syrian Civil Defense, also known as the White Helmets, concentrated on finding humans in the rubble before ending those recovery missions Saturday. Without Ernesto’s, the animals left behind by their humans fleeing for their lives, or by those who were killed by collapsed buildings, would likely die.

The team has brought roughly 35 animals to the sanctuary in Idlib city and treated dozens more in the region, driving 20 to 30 miles to find animals on farms and affected by floods. The rescue operation will continue for about another week, Abidin said.

“Humans cannot exist without dogs, without cats, without goats, without chickens,” Youssef said in Arabic. “They are part of our families, like a mom or a dad. They give us food, they give us happiness, they give us comfort. We would not be without them.”

After a traumatic event such as an earthquake, Youssef added, pets provide a love that few humans can match, a psychological support that can be a lifeline following so much loss. Earlier this week, the team heard a meow underneath a pile of stones. The team rushed over and dug a cat out with their hands. They later found puppies, too, whose owners had been killed or had fled.

Abidin started Ernesto’s in Aleppo in 2016 at the height of Syria’s civil war. Across the country, animals were being left behind by the millions fleeing their homes or the hundreds of thousands who were killed in the conflict. Named after the founder’s late cat, the sanctuary was the only place in northwest Syria dedicated to taking care of animals. What started with 20 cats rose to more than 180 a year later.

Then the sanctuary was bombed and gassed with chlorine, its owners said. Many of the cats were killed. Millions in Syria were internally displaced. The sanctuary relocated west to Kafarna, near the Turkish border, but was bombed again.

They finally built the facility that would be their home in Idlib city and now have roughly 2,000 cats, 30 dogs, five monkeys, three donkeys, a horse, a fox, a chicken and a goat, saved from deserted homes or ravaged villages. Ernesto’s hopes to change the culture of violence toward animals that roam the region in part by going out to villages to sterilize ownerless dogs and other rabid animals. They also offer a free clinic.

When the earthquake woke Youssef on Monday morning, he, his wife and kids dashed outside, where it was pouring and cold. They didn’t know if there’d be an aftershock, so they stayed outside for hours, feeling attacked from below by the earthquake and above by the rain. The electricity went out, and so did the internet.

 

A cat is pulled out of the rubble of a collapsed building in rebel-held Syria as workers from Ernesto's sanctuary search for trapped pets. 

(Video: Ernesto's Sanctuary for Cats in Syria)

At Ernesto’s, the cats made strange meows between eerie silences and rumbles. Though none of its animals were hurt, the sanctuary sustained some minor damage.

Youssef and the rest of the team soon decided they had to go out and find surviving animals. The rescue efforts began in full on Wednesday at 6 a.m. with a team of a dozen bringing a makeshift animal ambulance, a hammer, metal cutters and little else.

“We have just our hands, our hearts and our eyes,” Abidin said.

The team found neighborhoods utterly destroyed. In the region, the quake toppled nearly 500 buildings and damaged roughly 1,500 more. Over 2,000 people were killed and nearly 3,000 were injured in what the U.N. aid chief on Saturday described as the “worst event in 100 years in this region.” No one is sure how many animals have died. It looked like a tsunami of earth had taken over the city, Youssef said.

The team quickly got to work in towns outside Idlib city like Harem, Salqin and Al Atarib, walking by piles of stone that used to be buildings as quietly as they could, listening. They set up a Facebook group for locals to contact them about beloved pets trapped or lost. When they heard an animal crying for help, they stopped and zeroed in on where it was, often under rocks or in the middle of a flooded river.

They tended to a dog with a severed groin and bandaged another with a broken leg. They found two cows sitting next to rubble, alive but alone. The large numbers of cats they saved were in shock and wouldn’t eat for days.

“This kind of damage and trauma, we had never seen anything like this before, even with the war,” said Ahmed Khalaf Alyousef, the group’s other veterinarian.

People stopped them on the street to ask for help. Wading through water, three members of a team found a cat that had climbed a tree in the middle of a flooded river. In the leveled villages, Alyousef focused on finding trapped or dying creatures. When he did, he retrieved medicine from his vet pack, treating larger animals in the field and vowing to return with food.

“We are the only team doing what we were doing,” Alyousef said. Like those searching for humans, there was no international aid or other veterinarians there to help treat the injured animals.

In earthquake-battered Syria, a desperate wait for help that never came

In a particularly triumphant moment, they found a cat trapped inside his human’s shop — his owner had not returned since the earthquake — so the rescue workers got down on their stomachs to try to lift the garage door off the ground. It was locked, so it would only go inches off the ground. Little by little, first by its front paws and head, and then its body, they pulled the cat under the door.

After a cat's human disappeared in the quakes in Syria, animal sanctuary workers pull it out from under a locked storefront door. 

(Video: Ernesto's Sanctuary for Cats in Syria)

Youssef, the other vet, said they need more people and tools to find animals, and more food and vets to keep them alive. Electricity at the animal clinic cuts out frequently, making it near impossible to perform any major operations. They do what they can, stitching wounds, fixing bandages and offering food.

They search for nine or 10 hours a day, until it gets dark, but then have to go home, leaving the trapped animals alone for another day.

“We cried for the animals that died,” he said. “But we cry for the animals that are still out there. We want to find their humans, too. But we don’t have enough people or time to help everyone. We want to help, but we also need help.”

Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff  is a reporter on The Washington Post's General Assignment desk, where he covers breaking news and writes of-the-moment features. He has reported for The Post from Europe and covered crime and criminal justice on the Metro desk. He previously worked for the Texas Tribune and was a Fulbright scholar in Germany. Twitter


Syrian animals found days after earthquake killed over 2,000 people - The Washington Post