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Canadian woman who fought Islamic State says Stephen Harper fear-mongering about terrorism
8-26-2015
A Vancouver woman who battled Islamic State (IS) fighters on the frontlines of northern Syria is firing shots at how Canada’s political leaders are dealing with issues of security and terrorism.
Hanna Böhman isn’t impressed with either Conservative Leader Stephen Harper or his rivals in the federal NDP and Liberal party.
The 46-year-old warrior was interviewed Saturday (August 22) outside the U.S. consulate on West Pender Street, where she joined members of the Kurdish community at a protest. The rally called on western countries to stop Turkey from attacking Kurdish forces who are fighting IS.
Böhman, who isn’t Kurdish, left in late February this year to join the Kurdish women’s defence forces in Rojava in northern Syria. She returned home at the end of June.
“Harper’s government is making a bigger deal out of security than it really is,” Böhman told the Georgia Straight.
According to her, Canada doesn’t need measures like Bill C-51, the anti-terrorism legislation introduced by the Conservatives that Justin Trudeau’s Liberals supported in the House of Commons.
“The laws we have in place are already good enough. He’s [Harper] fear-mongering,” she said.
Bill C-51 was introduced after a gunman shot dead a soldier at the National War Memorial, and proceeded to attack the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa on October 22 last year. Two days earlier, another man rammed his vehicle into two soldiers in Quebec, killing one. Both lone attackers expressed sympathies towards the IS.
“Those two attacks, the one in Ontario and Quebec, they weren’t true ISIS [the previous name of IS],” Böhman said. “They were just, you know, people with mental health issues, who were trying to find a cause, something to latch onto. But…that wasn’t a real ISIS attack. If ISIS attacks, you’ll know. It’d be a lot more gruesome and well planned-out.”
Böhman isn’t happy either with the Liberals' and the Tom Mulcair-led NDP's opposition in March this year to a Conservative motion in the House of Commons to extend Canada’s military campaign against the IS in Iraq and expand the mission into Syria.
She considers the Liberals’ and NDP’s stand that it’s not Canada’s fight to go after IS as a “chickenshit answer”.
“That’s part of the reason why I went,” she said. “We’ve become so arrogant in our, you know, our luxury, our…lifestyle here that we seem to think that we’re entitled to this, and no one else is entitled to this kind of safety and peace: ‘So why should we help them?’ You know, ‘It’s their problem’.”
Böhman was able to make her way to northern Syria after she got in touch with people behind the Facebook page called The Lions of Rojava. While with the Kurdish women’s defence forces called YPJ, she was given the fighting name Hevi Piling, meaning Hope Tiger.
“We took a lot of villages,” she said about her time in the battlefield.
Not long after she returned to Canada, Böhman was contacted by Canadian security authorities.
“The RCMP knew I was going as I have RCMP friends. So they knew I was going. And then, I have friends in the Canadian military intelligence, they knew I was going. CSIS [Canadian Security Intelligence Service] contacted me a couple of weeks after I was back. They didn’t know I had gone until they saw the videos I had posted. And that was it,” she said.
“They were just wanting to know if I had any contact with the PKK,” Böhman said, referring to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party in Turkey, which western countries regard as a terrorist organization, but whose forces are also fighting IS. “And I said…I had minimal contact with them. They’re there, but they’re not, you know, they’re not trying to convert anyone or me.”
Böhman related that she did a lot of things before. She did some modeling but didn’t make a living out of it. She said that she also worked in sales, but not in retail. She did some jobs in the film industry. She used to drive trucks, and was also a former private investigator.
“It’s too easy here,” Böhman said about life in Canada. “You know, I’m very grateful for the fact that I grew up in Canada.”
Follow Carlito Pablo on Twitter at @carlitopablo.
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