Virtuously Despicable Canada

"We shared [Bob Rae's] report [assigned  as special envoy to Burma by the Trudeau government] with many people here [at the annual Organization of Islamic Cooperation, Dhaka, Bangladesh, May 5, 6], and we plan to translate it both into Bengali and Rohingya so that people in Bangladesh and the Rohingya can read it in their own languages."
"A number of [recommendations] we are already implementing, and my trip here ... is one example of acting on Bob's recommendation that Canada should be taking a leadership role."
"The most valuable part of this trip is being able to talk to people who are being persecuted who are at the heart of this crisis."
Chrystia Freeland, Minister for Foreign Affairs, Canada

Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland meets with Médecins Sans Frontières volunteers at a Rohingya refugee camp at Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh on May 4, 2018. (Chrystia Freeland/Twitter)

The foreign ministers of 57 Muslim majority countries met for their annual conference taking place this year in Dakha, Bangladesh, primarily to discuss the plight of the Rohingya Muslims who in their tens of thousands were violently persecuted in Buddhist-majority Burma, the Burmese military and citizens alike threatening, killing, raping, burning their villages, causing them to flee the carnage and make the dangerous river crossing from Burma (Myanmar) into Bangladesh. Three-quarters of a million Rohingya now live in refugee camps, crowded and miserable.

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation has a distinct purpose; to come to the aid of persecuted Muslims globally. This is their sole interest and mandate. Among the OIC countries there are those represented in the possession of immense wealth at their disposal. Indonesia and Malaysia, two large Muslim-majority southeast Asian countries could absorb Rohingya refugees; the Gulf States have sufficient riches to fund the transfer, rescue and support required to absorb the Rohingya in Muslim countries.

Yet Canada, out of the goodness of its non-Muslim soul, has intervened, its Minister of Foreign Affairs a special guest at the conference, to address those gathered, for the purpose of affirming Canada's dedication to human rights and to aid in the rescue of these miserable cast-outs whose condition is truly pathetic. Canada's portrayal as a champion of human rights and specifically of the Rohingya is a wretched sham; yet another instance of Justin Trudeau extending Canada's resources in a virtuous bid to demonstrate how selfless Canada is prepared to sacrifice on behalf of the downtrodden.

But the Rohingya have many champions, they were all present at the conference, expressing their anger at the Buddhist Myanmar enemies of Islam. How many among them stood to affirm their nation's intention to come to the rescue of the Rohingya in their time of need? Canada alone? If Canada's Liberal government was sincerely given to aiding those in need, they had ample opportunity to recognize the friendless Yazidis, an ancient ethnic Middle East group with an exotic religion scorned by Islam, their people a target for mass murder and enslavement of women and children.

Many of the Yazidi children suffer from malnutrition and diseases. They live in hovels built from stones and rubble. Photo: Christian Werner

The Yazidis have few champions other than the Kurds to whom they are distantly related ethnically and perhaps culturally. Their plight is truly desperate. Yet it has been ignored. They are persecuted by Islam and were very much so by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant which still holds many women and girls captive, and still remain a threat to the Yazidis who they have driven from their ancestral homes. The Canadian Liberal government's virtue-signalling on behalf of Muslims is a capricious and truly stellar hypocrisy.

To champion the Yazidis and come to their rescue requires a resolve and dedication to a kind of altruistic move that will bear no advantage to the Liberals; Muslims in Canada represent a huge voting bloc; the Muslim community represented by the OIC in the United Nations are another choice voting bloc bringing the non-aligned nations with them to lift Canada into its coveted United Nations Security Council seat.

The sanctimony of Justin Trudeau's Liberal government is infuriatingly unrepresentative of decency and honesty. And certainly unreflective of most Canadians' values and wishes.

Some Yazidis have managed to reach the province of Dahuk in Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdistan region