Life Goes On

The Government of Canada by consular services obtained through diplomatic missions abroad has a tradition of long standing of assisting Canadians travelling abroad for business, living or recreational purposes who find themselves in difficulties. Consular services are considered as "helping Canadians to best help themselves". Those services also meet government obligations as a signatory to the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations as well as for the purpose of intervening to protect the safety, security and human rights of Canadian citizens.

Knowing this to be so, as any Canadian can ascertain by visiting the DFAIT site on line, or through the spread of common knowledge by frequent travellers who have had to call upon consular aid on occasion while in foreign countries, is a comfort to most Canadians. It is also apparently, seen as a life raft available to those whose personal decision-making and lack of due diligence to their own well-being leads to their finding themselves in difficulties. Assuming that Canada can wave a magic diplomatic wand to rescue them however, represents an absurd expectation.

As increasing numbers of Canadians travel to destinations once thought of as exotic, and willingly engage in high risk activities, this reality has placed additional pressures on both routine and non-routine consular services. Canadians are becoming fairly unrealistic in their expectations with respect to what they can logically expect through consular services. Canada's foreign missions have certain resources they can call upon through the Consular, Security and Emergency Management Branch and Missions, but there is no magic wand involved.

If Canadians commit illegal acts while abroad and they are apprehended by security agencies of those countries they can expect to stand trial and pay the price for their activities through that country's judicial and penalty system. The Government of Canada does try to intervene as far as it can on behalf of a Canadian citizen, hoping for co-operation from the country involved, but having to respect that country's sovereign right to respect of its laws and its administrative systems of justice is a given.

And when Canadians take it upon themselves to enter countries that are not reflective of Western values, countries where lawlessness, civil unrest, lack of government control is a fact life, they make a free choice decision to risk their safety. Which doesn't stop them and/or their families and loved ones calling upon the Government of Canada for intervention and rescue, whether or not it is possible. When abductions take place and ransom is demanded, huge sums of money can be involved.

And when adults make a decision for whatever reason to explore and experience adventure in parts of the world they are completely unfamiliar with for the purpose of entertaining themselves it is actually their responsibility to do their homework, to find out what conditions are like there, and whether they really want to risk their well-being by venturing there. When and if they do, they should be prepared to fend for themselves. There is just so much and no more any government should be expected to do on behalf of these people.

Foreign correspondents know the risks they take when they venture to places of conflict to report back to readers at home. That is a risky business in a very unfriendly world community. If they work as staff journalists for newspapers or television stations, often risk insurance is taken out by the media involved. Freelance writers who share the dangers and risks of well-known staff newspeople have no such back-ups, yet they very often decide they have a mission to report, to be there where the news is being made.

A rank amateur seeking excitement and adventure with an obviously limited imagination when it came to the potential danger she was courting, decided to visit, of all places, Somalia. She was drawn to the idea of travelling to a dangerous country; the prospect of thrilling adventure to be found there was captivating to her. She saved tips as a Calgary cocktail waitress and planned to backpack around the world. Turning to freelance journalism to help fund herself in her prospective world travels.

She convinced a former Australian boyfriend to join her as a photojournalist, on a proposed trip to Somalia, and he agreed. They had met originally in Ethiopia in a previous trip she had taken. She would do the interviewing, the writing, he would take the photographs. Within the first few days of their arrival in Somalia they were abducted as they rode in a hired car with driver and security guards to a camp for displaced refugees outside Mogadishu.

Terrorist groups do this; they abduct Europeans whom they assume are all wealthy, and exploit them for ransom, to fund their violent activities. In an Islamist society that views the place of men and women differently, Nigel Brennan was treated with a modicum of consideration and given acceptable living arrangements while Amanda Lindhout was kept in a dark room with rats for company. She was repeatedly raped.

Canada's consular services were unable to do much of anything, understandably. And the Government of Canada has a policy, like most Western countries, of not submitting to ransom demands for the release of their nationals or for any other reason. Their appeals to the government in Mogadishu went nowhere, since it hardly had control of the capital Mogadishu, let alone other more remote areas of the lawless country.

Which is where the families of both people became involved, raising the $600,000 it eventually took to secure their release, bargained down from the original $3-million. They did succeed, in securing their rescue after well over a year of brutal imprisonment where starvation, brutalization, rape took place from August 2008 to November 2009, when they were finally released, the ransom delivered.

A picture released by the Somalian presidential office on November 26, 2009 shows Canadian journalist Amanda Lindhout (L) sitting next to Australian journalist Nigel Brennan a few hours before their departure from Mogadishu airport. Photograph by: Handout, AFP/Getty Images

 

At one juncture in her captivity, raw with pain and hopelessness, she wanted to die and attempted suicide. And then changed her mind: "I would live and go home. It didn't matter what came next or what I had to endure, I would make it through", the 32-year-old Amanda Lindhout said in an interview relating to the soon-to-be-released book about her torment, titled A House in the Sky, which she had written along with a writer with the New York Times Magazine.

In 2010, she founded the non-profit Global Enrichment Foundation to help support education for women and girls in Somalia and Kenya. As a memorial for an elderly woman who attempted to protect her in a mosque where she had run for help, and where her abductors followed and took her back into custody. As they departed the mosque she heard a single shot which she deciphered as the death of the woman who had taken compassion at her plight.

In a sense, then, she would have been responsible for the death of that Muslim Somalian women who no doubt had already suffered more than her share of misery and abuse. Amanda Lindhout gained her moment of fame, will now sign copies of her newly-published book, take deserving credit for establishment of educational support for the sadly underprivileged women and girls in Somalia and Kenya.

Amanda Lindhout, a freelance journalist who was held captive for 460 days in Somalia, speaks during One Billion Rising, the global activist movement to end violence against women, at TD Square on Thursday.  Photograph by: Leah Hennel, Calgary Herald

 

And life goes on.