‘Very emotional’: Syrian refugee stranded at airport in Malaysia for months granted Canadian citizenship

By Natasha O’Neill, CTVNews.ca writer

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    TORONTO (CTV Network) — Hassan Al Kontar sang Canada’s national anthem for the first time as a citizen on Wednesday.

The citizenship ceremony marked a new beginning for the man who was trapped in a Malaysian airport for seven months before arriving in Canada in 2018. Throughout his journey, Al Kontar documented the story on Twitter and became known as ‘the man at the airport.’

Initially from Dama, Syria, Al Kontar was working in the United Arab Emirates from 2006 to 2017. When the Syrian civil war broke out in 2011, he refused to return to Syria to join the military and the government refused to renew his passport. Without status or a work visa in the U.A.E., he eventually ended up in Malaysia, one of the few countries accepting Syrians without a visa for 90 days. After he was denied a permanent visa in Malaysia, he desperately tried to find a country to accept him. He tried Cambodia, which was accepting Syrian refugees, but was denied entry and sent back to Malaysia.

That’s how he ended up trapped at the airport in Kuala Lumpur for months, spending two months in a deportation centre. With his story making headlines around the world, a group of Canadians eventually helped him get to Vancouver in 2018. He was sponsored by Canada Caring – a non-profit aiding refugees – a group of Whistler, B.C. residents and the B.C. Muslim Association.

“I’m able to say that I’m stateless no more and now I belong to a country,” Al Kontar told CTV’s Your Morning on Thursday. “I belong to a society, I have a place I can call home.”

Although he is happy to be Canadian, the moment was bittersweet.

“It costed me a father, I was not able to travel to say goodbye at the time he died. It costed me 15 years of separation away from my family,” Al Kontar said. “It costed me a destroyed country, millions of refugees and displaced people… It costed me prison, jail detention, hundreds of interrogations and being subjected to racism, discrimination, and segregation, for years while the whole world judged me because of my nationality, not because of my own crimes.” Since coming to Canada, Al Kontar has worked with the Canadian Red Cross’ Emergency Disaster & Response Team in Vancouver and has written a book about his experience called “Man at the Airport: How social media saved my life.”

“When I look back at it now I don’t remember the good moments…I remember all the bad memories, the detention jail and the faces of the people who used to be jailed with me,” Al Kontar said. “I think it made me who I am today. It gave me a different understanding of life.”

Now that he’s a Canadian citizen, Al Kontar said he’s planning to visit family members he hasn’t seen in 15 years.

“I’m going to enjoy having the Canadian passport and the airport is now just a transit stop.”

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