The hypocrisy of the Canadian Government

May 02, 2013 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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I am not a supporter of Fidel Castro and I welcome the removal of the Communist Party from power in Cuba. I will advocate that there must be free and fair, competitive elections in Cuba. The Cuban people must have the right to travel to any part of this world that they want to. Having said this, I was never an endorser of the American condemnation of Cuba.
American castigation of Cuba for lack of democracy is abominably hypocritical. There is more democracy in Cuba than in Saudi Arabia yet the US friendship with the Saudi kingdom is close and enduring. It has to be a mockery of morality that the Americans can condemn Cuba and cozy up to the depraved Saudi absolutist government.
While picking on Cuba, the US had diplomatic relations with one of the most uncivilized set of rulers since time began. The Doe military regime in Liberia marched members of the government it toppled naked in the streets then tied them to electricity poles and publicly executed them. Soldiers then ripped out the intestines of the dead men and posed for the international press with the guts in their hands. Time magazine carried one such photo.
Governments around the world will try to steal some human rights credibility for themselves by picking on countries with which they have no relation, but will be happy to lie in bed with tyrannical regimes that offer some benefits to them.
The Canadian Government’s recent rejection of Sri Lanka as host for the forthcoming meeting of the Heads of the British Commonwealth is nothing but crass opportunism unworthy of one of the great countries and great democracies in the world. Canada is a land I love. I did my Masters and pursued my doctoral degree in that country. Canada is a lovely, pleasant and free nation that must be admired for its enduring democracy. It produced one of the fantastic leaders in the post war period in the 20th century, Pierre Trudeau.
According to the Canadian Government release, Sri Lanka practices racial discrimination and bad governance. Is Canada mistaking Sri Lanka for Guyana? One wonders if the Canadians thought that the summit is being held in Guyana and they inadvertently wrote down Sri Lanka on the press release rather than Guyana. If you are talking about a failed state where racial discrimination has a morbid existence and bad governance is more horrific than bad then the Canadians are living in another time zone and not the 21st century.
The Canadians point to atrocities committed by the army during the defeat of the Tamil rebels. These abominations did occur and the Sri Lankan Government should be made to face a serious UN inquiry with provisions for sanctions.  Though these horrific human rights violations occur during a war they are not excusable but Sri Lanka was in a war nevertheless. How do you explain what has occurred in Guyana the past fifteen years without Guyana having any semblance of a civil war?
Terribly bad governance has characterized the exercise of power in Guyana the past fourteen years. Ethnic discrimination in this land is a disease the Canadian Government has to be aware of. The Canadian Government is incompetent if it does not know that an immigration judge granted asylum to a fourteen-year-old girl who was raped in Friendship, East Bank Demerara.
The judge agreed that because the perpetrators have powerful friends in Government they may harm the victim and not be prosecuted if she is returned to Guyana.
The Canadian Government is incompetent if it does not know that another immigration judge granted a wife and husband team asylum after the husband refused a criminal request by a senior minister of government to hack into the e-mail accounts of this columnist, Mark Benschop, then Opposition Leader Robert Corbin and AFC leader, Khemraj Ramjattan.
The wife was taken to a resort and stripped naked and beaten in front of the Minister.
The Canadian Government in 2012 was handed a dossier by the opposition parties which described extra-judicial executions between 2002 and 2005 of over five hundred citizens. The vast majority of the victims were from a particular ethnic community and government complicity was cited.
The Canadian Government must be told of the massacre of eight gold miners at Lindo Creek which a majority of Guyanese feel was committed by men in uniform. The Canadians cry out about security forces rampage in Sri Lanka. Guyana does not have a civil war but we have the security forces gunning down unarmed citizens like as in the Wild West.
The alleged Rose Hall bank robbers were shot as they surrendered. The hypocrisy and incompetence of the Canadian Government stink to high heavens.

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