An agency for migrants in Canada reports that they face a new case of domestic violence every week.
Zena Al Hamdan, a programme manager at the Arab Community Centre in the Canadian capital of Ottawa, says the “trauma of migration” has led many migrants who have come to Canada as refugees to act violently toward their spouses, the Toronto Star reports.
She said: “It creates a backlash on the male partners. They become more aggressive and more defensive and they want to assert dominance more because of the perception that the West, that society will support the female.”
Huda Bukhari, executive director of the Arab Community Centre of Toronto, commented on the story of a man from Syria who had been arrested by Canadian police after his wife had told authorities he had been beating her.
Ms. Bukhari said: “This is not something that is prevalent within this particular group, it is prevalent within all refugee and newcomer populations,” adding, “but because this particular group has come in all at once, then we see a lot more.”
The Syrian man who was arrested had previously been in a Toronto jail for 10 days for a prior offence. After his release he returned to the Arab Community Centre to find his wife and their two children gone. The following day he went back to the police station to file a missing persons report when he was then arrested on charges of domestic violence.
The Canadian Syrian migrant programme has come under scrutiny from critics who say that there has been a severe lack of transparency when it comes to the allocation of the one billion dollars designated for the 25,000 Syrians. The money is intended to be used for settlement services which includes the hiring of additional government staff.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of the Liberal Party came under fire when it was revealed that the Canadian government had transformed seven military bases into migrant camps shortly after pulling out of the fight against the Islamic State.
The report revealed hundreds of thousands of Canadian tax payer dollars going toward the funding of items such as Qurans, prayer mats and special prayer areas for the Muslim migrants.
In Europe the responses to Canada’s migrant policy have also been met with scorn. French Front Nationale leader Marine Le Pen called Canada’s immigrant policy the “wrong path” when she visited the French speaking province of Quebec in an effort to forge ties with the separatist Parti Quebecois.
Even Syrians have come out against the Canadian prime minister and his policies with the Archbishop of Aleppo, Jean-Clement Jeanbart, saying: “We’re not happy when we see the Canadian government moving refugees and facilitating their integration. It hurts us. A lot.”
Archbishop Jeanbart remarked that he would rather see Syrian Christians remain in the country rather than be forced out of the lands they have lived and worshipped in for almost two millennia.