POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL
Events around Suaad Hagi Mohamud's ordeal seem to me the most shameful episode of Mr. Harper's often shabby record in government.
Her lawyer is receiving calls from Ottawa officials asking questions about "her file," a file which he is not permitted to see.
There is a clear implication here that an effort is underway to attack the victim, Suaad Hagi Mohamud, rather than set the record straight, much the way the RCMP tried to blacken the name of the man they needlessly killed in the Vancouver airport by snooping into his background in Poland and suggesting he was a drunk and other things.
This kind of activity is not the Canada I know and love: It sounds like something alien and deeply unpleasant. I do not understand why there is not a public outcry over what representatives of Harper's government did to this woman.
Her problem started with a Kenyan border official, almost certainly fishing for a bribe by telling her that her lips did not resemble her valid passport picture. Such corruption is common there and in other places.
What is most hurtful is the response of Canada's High Commission there when this Canadian citizen sought the help to which she is entitled.
Her valid passport was voided, and the Canadian High Commission in Kenya notified the local government that she was an imposter. Thus her ghastly treatment.
Clearly, this was pure incompetence, if not vicious behavior based on racial attitudes.
Those responsible at the High Commission should be dismissed immediately. Harper should apologize.
This woman's ordeal threatens every Canadian who travels abroad and indeed threatens the meaning of Canadian citizenship.
Harper’s public statement that Canada doesn’t control events in places like Kenya is unacceptable, and even cowardly. Kenya wasn’t the problem: Canada’s High Commission very much was.
