Syrian farmer in Canada ‘worried for the future’ after land vandalised

A Syrian farmer in Canada has been left distraught after his crops were destroyed and rubbish thrown onto his land.

Mohammed Eldaher, a Hama native who moved to Canada with his family in 2016, discovered on Saturday that someone had broken the gate to his farm near Calgary and driven over his crops.

The tire marks left in the soil suggested the crops had been run over multiple times.

The vandalism left Eldaher "very sad" and "worried for the future," he told Canadian media outlet Global News. He said this was not the first time this had happened to his land.

He was gifted his farmland by Abdullah Chybli, a Canadian businessman with parents from Lebanon and Syria who is also a football coach to Syrian refugee children.

Chybli told Global News that the land had not been vandalised until Eldaher and his family moved in, and feared the family may have been subject to an Islamophobic hate crime.

Eldaher has frequently appeared in Canadian media, touted as a success story for Syrian refugees.

With the help of his wife Nahima Mohamed, his farm has thrived. The family donates a portion of their harvest to the Calgary Food Bank every year, to feed people living in poverty.

Since news of the attack broke, the family has been inundated with offers of help to repair the damage, a friend of the family said on Facebook.

Canada has taken in tens of thousands of Syrian refugees, many through private sponsorship by Canadians.

Not all Canadians have been welcoming of refugees, however.