DO you know who Lena Diab is? She made the headlines in Canada in 2017 when her husband was charged with beating her up. At the time, she was a Minister in the government of the Canadian province of Nova Scotia. She is Lebanese, whose parents and she left Lebanon to avoid the civil war that ravaged Lebanon in the 1970s.

You would think that because she is Arab, she would be sympathetic to the Palestinian refugees in Gaza. But she is not. She is currently the Minister of Immigration in the Canadian Government. Read the words of Ms. Diab when asked by Canadian academics and human rights activists about helping Palestinian students who have applied to Canadian universities to get out of Gaza.

These students have no facilities in Gaza to meet the biometric and fingerprinting requirements.  Ms. Diab said that all students in the world have to go through the normal procedure and Palestinian students in Gaza are no exception.  Ms. Diab is both an evader of the truth and an ignorant person.

Let’s deal with the ignorance first. It was the President of the United States, Donald Trump, who, when discussing Gaza, said there is nothing left standing there. The Israeli air force has destroyed Gaza and not in a war. There is no war in Gaza. There is no navy, military battalions and air force in Gaza fighting the Nazi-like regime in Israel. What Israel has been doing for the past two years is simply dropping bombs nonstop on Gaza, indiscriminately killing people. The toll stands at 75, 000. The bombs are far deadlier than any bombs used in any war in history.

I say, unapologetically, Ms. Diab is an ignorant person. When you think of what is happening in Gaza, how can this woman treat Gaza students like any other students from other countries? These people have nowhere to live muchless to get a computer with internet service to apply for a Canadian visa.

Now, Ms. Diab is part of being an evader of the truth. Ukrainian students have had the biometric requirement waived. Also waived for Ukrainian students is the application fee.

Does this racial preference surprise anyone? Nazim Baksh, who lived 40 years in Canada and was an outstanding journalistic investigator for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, said, on the Freddie Kissoon Show, that Ukrainian refugees are housed in expensive hotels while non-White refugees from the Global South live in squalid houses provided for them.

So, let’s address Mr. Sebastian Segouin, the current Canadian High Commissioner to Guyana. I couldn’t pronounce his last name on the Freddie Kissoon Show and appealed to viewers to help me with it. No one phoned or emailed me with the pronunciation. You still can. My phone is 614-5927. My email is fredkissoon@yahoo.com.

I still can’t pronounce it. It is French. I did Spanish at university. Guyanese would recall Mr. Segouin urged Guyanese to speak up and demand that their government accept the report on Guyana’s 2025 by the EU Observer Mission. I responded to Mr. Segouin’s undiplomatic peccadillo. Please see my two columns – Thursday, November 27, 2025, “Canadians must hold their government accountable.” And Friday, November 28, 2025, “Questions for the Canadian High Commission in Guyana.”

I think that, given what Mr. Segouin said about Guyana’s politics, Guyanese should ask him his views on his government’s attitude to Gaza students. Shouldn’t the Canadian people press their government to stop what obviously looks like racial preferences that favour Ukrainians over non-White people?

Since we are on Canadian democracy and it flaws, let’s look at more flaws in Western democracy that the Presidents of China and Russia would find amusing. The UK government and the Dutch government have withdrawn a combined $2.2 billion investment project in Mozambique over human rights violations.

The state-administered UK Export Finance, which was financing the British investment, hired a law firm named Beyond Human Rights Compliance to investigate torture and disappearances associated with the Mozambique army. The Dutch Finance Ministry also ordered a human rights report for Mozambique.

If it weren’t so serious, it would have been something to break your ribs laughing. Israel has committed war crimes never seen in history before. Israel’s Prime Minister is a far more sadistic ruler than Adolph Hitler. Israel has murdered more journalists, nurses and doctors in Gaza than Nazi Germany ever did. Israel has killed more humans than Mozambique will ever do in the next 500 years.

So, it has to be a joke that the UK and Holland are concerned with human rights violations in Mozambique when both governments have investments in Israel and export military equipment to Israel. I end with a question to Guyanese. Do you think the UK and Holland are more democratic countries than Guyana?

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.