O Canada! True Patriot Love

"The other day I had the honour to meet and listen to the honourable P.M. Justin Trudeau discussing the domestic and international policies of his government as well as his views and style of leading his caucus."
"With his government winning the next and upcoming federal election we have hopes to see Canada playing a bigger role in world peace."
Wasseem Ramli, honourary Syrian consul, Montreal 

"Shocked by the comments made to the press by the Syrian Honorary Consul in Montreal and the views he has espoused publicly on social media and elsewhere."
"Neither my team nor I were aware that officials at Global Affairs Canada had approved this appointment. I have asked the department to look into this right away."
"Let me be very clear that in my view, the current situation is unacceptable and we intend to respond very quickly. I think it's important to act with speed, but not with haste. And it's important to hear out the public service."
Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland

A photo of Waseem and Trudeau posted to Waseem’s Facebook page. (wramli/Facebook)

"I think it's outrageous. She [Chrystia Freeland] needs to do more than just a review. This individual should never have been appointed in the first place."
"Again we see people who hold extreme views, who make anti-Semitic comments and who sympathize with terrorists seem to feel welcome in the Liberal Party of Canada."
Leader of the Conservative Parliamentary Opposition Andrew Scheer

"I'm baffled that it wouldn't have gone up [red flags within the Department of Foreign Affairs]."
"I would have assumed somebody in the chain of command would have said: 'Hey guys, bugger off, we're not going to do that'. Or: 'Let's wait until we bring it to the minister'."
"I'm somewhat surprised nobody at the political level seems to have known."
Former Canadian Ambassador to Pakistan, Indonesia, Egypt, Ferry de Kerckhove

Chrystia Freeland ✔ @cafreeland

 · Sep 23, 2019

1/2 Shocked by the comments made to the press by the Syrian Honorary Consul in Montreal and the views he has espoused publicly on social media and elsewhere.

Chrystia Freeland ✔ @cafreeland

2/2 Neither my team nor I were aware that officials at Global Affairs Canada had approved this appointment. I have asked the Department to look into this right away.

In a world bursting with refugees, millions of them resulting from a civil war in Syria where the ruling Shiite-Alawite regime of Bashar al-Assad has violated all human morals by employing the most atrocious means of delivering death to his majority-Sunni Syrian citizens, that ruined country has emptied its cities by millions of desperate-to-survive Syrians fleeing a hopeless situation, seeking refuge in bordering Islamic countries and migrating as refugees from a vicious, ongoing war to Europe and North America.

Every moral convention of warfare and civilian life in Syria was obliterated in President Bashar's no-holds-barred war against his Sunni Syrian population among whom orderly protests against their inferior status had emerged in 2011 only to be confronted by a vicious backlash from the regime. Since then, tens of thousands of Syrian Sunnis, among them children, have been imprisoned, tortured and murdered. Treaty-forbidden chemical weapons were used in bombing civilian enclaves. Markets, funerals, schools and hospitals and medical clinics have been deliberately bombed by the regime's forces.

Wartime munitions not only levelled municipal infrastructure and historical monuments along with people's homes, apartments, but barrel bombs were used indiscriminately to kill and to maim thousands of civilians. The death toll during the Syrian civil war between the regime and the resulting Sunni militias rose over a half-million until no one counted any longer. Of the pre-war population of 22-million people, an estimated 13 million have fled their homes, some internally displaced, an equal number external refugees.

The Syrian regime, aided and abetted in its relentless murder spree by the Islamic Republic of Iran dispatching al-Qods units of its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, its proxy terrorist militia Lebanon-based Hezbollah and Shiite militias loyal to Iran resolved to destroy any vestige of resistance against the Alawite regime. Even so, the tide was turning in favour of the rebel Sunni Syrian militias until the entry of Russia, supporting the Syrian regime with air power.

Canada had responded to the United Nations' call for countries of the Western world to respond to the refugee emergency by accepting 50,000 Syrian refugees, both government- and privately-sponsored. It is the needs of these refugees given haven in Canada, many of whom live in Quebec now, that a Syrian regime-sponsored consul would serve. Given the very obvious connection of the honourary consul to the Syrian regime whom Canada had officially welcomed, the untenable scope of the situation is incredible.

A photo of Assad and Waseem posted to Waseem’s Facebook page. (wramli/Facebook)

The new consul, in his online postings makes no secret of his admiration of and support of Bashar al Assad and  his murderous regime. That the government of Canada welcomed his appointment is shocking in and of itself. That that same government now professes to have had no idea of the situation is equally beyond belief. The minister involved blames her bureaucrats. In one online post Ramli wrote on September 23, he accuses the Syrian American Medical Society giving humanitarian assistance in Syria, of supporting terrorist groups.

In another post he extends an invitation to readers of the post to visit Syria for themselves so they can "see for yourself the truth that mainstream media is hiding from you". As for the storied Syrian White Helmets, Syrian Sunnis who have dedicated themselves to rescuing wounded civilians after regime bombing runs, risking their lives to save the lives of others and often risking the regime's deliberate after-bombings targeting them, Ramil describes them as a "terrorist organization" linked to al-Qaeda.

The website for Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs states quite clearly that such appointments, made by the department's office of protocol "should avoid controversial or politically active persons, or persons whose professional activities might otherwise interfere with the effective discharge of consular functions". How likely is it that Syrian Sunnis so horribly persecuted by the Alawite Syrian regime would turn for consular assistance in acquiring documents to a representative of that murderous regime?

Official Canada has been most helpful to Bashar al Assad in establishing his regime as one deserving of diplomatic relations with Western democratic liberal governments that focus on human rights and equality.The Syrian honourary consul drives around in a red Humvee, a customized 1Syria licence plate and photographic artwork of the Syrian president emblazoned on a side window. On Ramli's Facebook  profile photos are posted with him standing smiling beside Assad, and another, with Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

This man had the unmitigated gall of stating "...We hope to see Canada playing a bigger role in world peace"; the 'we' he refers to being Syria whose long-standing war of epic proportions by an odiously loathsome regime, celebrates the role Canada could play in promoting world peace ... of course aided by Canada's willingness to host a representative of the promoter of death and destruction.

A photo of Waseem’s vehicle, posted to his Facebook page. (wramli/Facebook)