12:20 a.m. - 2003-08-09
Escoba
My friend, whose husband is working in the Middle East, has arrived in the city to visit for a few days. She's also spent some time with each of her children in three different countries, all of whom are starting new jobs and or relationships. I had the opportunity to spend a couple of hours with her this afternoon. Lunch at Escoba's; their staff very attentive but unintrusive.
What did we talk about? Our families and friends firstly. Education extensively; partly because our friendship was formed while volunteering on a provincial level with respect to education issues and partly because that is and was her profession - teaching. Privacy legislation was explored because it has a fairly significant impact on both our day to day activities and of course, international issues. On the last, we try to pool our various perspectives and information sources to try to come out with a more accurate picture of what is really happening. Every country has its own form of blinkers and censorship. It was a good visit, but still unsettling in a lot of ways. She has spent a lot of time out of the country her hubby is in, moving around Europe on holidays and visits with family, but there is a knowledge of the tremendous risk in their current residence.
In the past few months a Canadian woman was beaten to death in Iran after authorities apprehended her for taking pictures of Evin prison; a Calgarian is in jail in Lebanon because he has also visited Israel; one Canadian is in prison in Syria because he didn't do his mandatory term of service in their military having been born there and another Ontario man was just released in Saudi Arabia, after three years of incarceration, when sufficient evidence for the very serious crime he was accused of was never found. Of those, it has been verified that three were tortured for certain and the other case is suspect.
Being a Canadian/British citizen is not a protection, even though what each was doing at the time of apprehesion would not be considered criminal behaviour here. My friend is a very knowledgeable and competent person, but sometimes just being in the wrong place at the wrong time is all it takes to put one in very dangerous circumstances. The thing that seemed to bother her most though, was the assaults on the school where she teaches and on the bombings of some of the compounds where ex-pats live. I think she sees those as more of a threat because they cannot be avoided if the assailants are determined and the assailants in those cases are renegades who cannot be called to account for their behaviour by the international community. With the Middle Eastern governments at least, the Canadian government can and has intervened when they have learned of their actions against our citizens. Troubling.
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