Refugee stabs herself with knife in front of federal official amid desperate plea for housing.
https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/refugee-stabs-herself-with-knife-in-front-of-federal-official-amid-desperate-plea-for-housing-1.6138287
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TORONTO -
For thousands of refugees, the chance to come to Canada is a dream, but for far too many who are already here, their situation has grown dangerously desperate.
A Palestinian refugee stabbed herself in the stomach, just below the ribcage, last week while in a meeting with a federal government official with Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC).
Sitting on a park bench, a day after being released from hospital, Aziza Abusirdana tells CTV News, “I put a knife in my body because no one cares. Seriously no one cares.”
For seven months she’s been stuck, living in a refugee hotel west of Toronto. She says she never intended to kill herself, but decided to stab herself in the stomach to try and get the attention of the federal government and the settlement agency which, for more than half a year, hasn't been able to assist her in finding what she believes would be a safe place to live.
Abusirdana believes the government has failed her. Exasperated, she says, “If you [the government] know that there’s no suitable place for me to stay why did you accept me to come [to Canada]?”
Raised in Gaza, Abusirdana’s young life has been filled with trauma. She claims her own father and grandfather back home have threatened to find her and kill her. The 22-year-old left home and was on a scholarship from an Algerian university, but says she had to drop out and flee to Canada amid fears that her own family was tracking her down with plans to murder her.
Publicly, she doesn’t share what led to her situation with her father and grandfather, but the incident has left her traumatized, alone and isolated in a new country, and unable to trust anyone. Her request for housing is straight forward: her own bedroom and bathroom with a lock on each door. And she can’t live in a shared space with men.
She says she’s been shown nothing but inadequate apartments. Sometimes she’s been shown the same place twice. The $1,100 a month she receives from the government will run out in five months, and having enough money to feed herself and put a roof over her head in Toronto’s red hot rental market, has limited her options.
Abusirdana says she even travelled to Ottawa to try and speak to Immigration Canada, but the trip resolved nothing.
“I was suffering in Palestine, I was suffering in Algeria, I didn’t think I’d suffer here in Canada,” admits the distraught woman.