Editor,

It’s funny that it is only now, 15 years after liberation, that the Canadian government has finally gotten it through their thick heads that Rwanda is a nation that is ‘safe’.  I don’t know what reports their team on the ground has been doing all this time; and here I mean the Canadian embassy staff (from ambassador downwards).

I don’t think the Canadian embassy staff has had to partake in any special security precautions. And I don’t think they have for quite a long time.

So, for the Canadian government, all the way in Ottawa, to deem my country ‘not safe’ is an insult to me. After all, which country in the world is ‘safe’? I mean, just the other day, one of the most eminent scholars of Afro-American history (Harvard don, Henry Louis Gates) was arrested in his own home by an overbearing police officer.

What I’m trying to say is that its not always a black/white affair. After all, what has fundamentally changed recently that wasn’t the status quo last year? Or the year before? Nothing.

I think the refusal was another example of the colonial mentality that many in the West have. They assume that their country is ‘safer’ than anyone elses. Sorry, sirs, but I beg to differ.

I’d rather walk in Nyamirambo in the dead of the night rather than central Toronto…or Ottawa for that matter.
 
Sanny Rwego
Kimihurura