Viewpoint

Residents of a capital city are so very fortunate, for residing in their nation's capital, they have the kind of exposure to points of view not widely shared by others of their countrymen. In capital cities reside the embassies of foreign countries. On occasion representatives of those embassies will write articles or letters to the editor for publication in the local newspapers. These letters form a type of social/political defence, a screed if you will, representing the true nature of a country.

Generally, the picture that these diplomats paint of their countries is one not readily recognized by even the most ignorant of individuals in their general knowledge of international affairs. The fact of the matter is, populations residing in national capitals become more interested in and cognizant of the politics and social state as well as historical antecedents of foreign countries. It becomes a kind of public mind-game for people to educate themselves; they are more exposed to news stories highlighting occurrences of note in foreign countries.

And, generally speaking, the countries' representatives, the diplomats posted to represent their countries in posh embassies and residences abroad who tend to argue publicly on behalf of their countries' reputations, tend to be those very countries whose governance is dictatorial, theocratic, suppressive, oppressive, human-rights-abusing by nature. Generally a news item will be published generating reader comment published as letters-to-the-editor, often condemnatory in nature.

It is this little gambit of public participation that elicits responses. Responses from countries such as Pakistan, Afghanistan, Thailand, China, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Sudan, Zimbabwe; you get the picture... The thing of it is, Canadians, living in social democracies where basic freedoms and rights are guaranteed, simply don't understand the complexities of life in other countries with emerging rights-protections for their populations. Right-o!

So the Ambassador of Egypt to Canada will lecture readers that Egypt has taken great strides toward democratization and modernization. There is no state-sponsored discrimination on the basis of religion or ethnicity. There "is zero tolerance for anti-Semitism in Egypt nor for any kind of discrimination", in his excellency's own words. That the government and its media approved a very popular television series on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is simply incidental and irrelevant. That homosexuals, Christian Copts and Baha'is, suffer state-sponsored harassment and discrimination is similarly irrelevant.

Similarly when the ambassador of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to Canada writes convincingly that the Wahhabi-based Sharia practised in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia does not discriminate against other religions, those in the know have reason to be puzzled. When the good ambassador assures his readers that this is an egalitarian state, we wonder why women must wear full body coverings, why women are unable to drive in the Kingdom.

We wonder why it is that the Canadian Embassy in Saudi Arabia is now protesting the Saudi decision to shut down a Canadian information booth at an education fair in Jeddah because the booth was being staffed by Canadian women attached to the Canadian Embassy.

Oh, we wonder, wonder, wonder, wonder why...?