The slow road home

Yet another update on that Canadian citizen languishing in a Kenyan jail. You may recall I've written on this topic a couple of times before.

As of yesterday, though a government-paid DNA test has confirmed that Ms. Suaad Hagi Mohamud is, in fact, the Canadian citizen she claims to be, and as should have been obvious to anyone after she offered to have a DNA test to prove she's the mother of her son, who's still at home in Toronto with his father.

Now she's proven her citizenship (which, again, big problems here - or do any of you really think this whole thing is unrelated to her ethnicity and/or her names?), she's coming home right away, right?

Not quite. Canada hasn't even asked the Kenyan government to drop the charges that it asked her to be prosecuted on - the Canadian government voided her passport after it was challenged, and claimed she wasn't the Canadian citizen she said she was - so she's still in Kenya, waiting for her government to get its damned thumb out of its collective Harper and BRING HER HOME!

I flatly do not believe that a white Canadian would be facing this kind of appalling treatment. Much as Canada wants to pride itself on being multicultural and post-racial and shit, it's an odd sort of coincidence that it's only Canadians with notably non-English names who end up being deported, jailed, and tortured.

If we want to live up to the reputation we claim we want, we need to do better at this.

Bring our fellow Canadian home, Mr. Harper*. Pick up the damn phone and get someone to feel some urgency about this. Do something to help me feel less ashamed of my country.

* The current Prime Minister of Canada is the (to me) loathsome Stephen Harper. I use "Harper" here as a euphemism for a human body part known for emitting faeces. It seems an apt analogy.