UN's High Commission for Human Rights Coming to a Country Near You

What concerning news. Canada is set - again - to be investigated by the UN High Commission for Human Rights. Navi Pillay is dispatching a committee upon Canada again to look carefully at our human rights' record. For it is entirely possible that in some obscure manner Canadian society - even government agencies - may be guilty of making light of someone's human rights.

The United Nations Human Rights Council is not fond, we are informed, of Canada's cavalier attitude toward people of colour. Naming them "visible minorities" as a way of readily distinguishing the most obvious characteristics setting some ethnic groups aside from the bland majority to expedite documentation is considered to be horribly insulting.

But that's the thing about Canadians; we are so out of tune with the real world of careful dignity allocated to all those who declare themselves to have been ill done by because of perceived physical differences. An alienating process, recognizing that people look different from one another, in a way that identifies which part of the world they come from.

That's another thing about most people; they're curious about one another, about various ethnic and cultural experiences and differences. We are curious animals; we like to look around us, make sense of what we see. And when we identify differences we assimilate the fact that they exist, while clarifying at the same time our awareness of how much more we share as human beings.

The UN's Working Group on People of African Descent will have none of this. They know racism when they see it, sniff it, feel it. The group plans to visit Canada in May. They will be busily engaged in rooting out any and all instances of persecution suffered by black African-Canadians.

Our neighbour, the United States, has been visited by them; no word whether they interviewed Barack Obama.

This working group sees no need nor merit in visiting countries like Sudan or Libya. UN Watch, unaffiliated with the UN, but keeping a close eye on what the UN does on behalf of the great, wide world, has noted the acute persecution black Africans suffer in Libya and Sudan, but this appears of little interest to the working group.

It would be a fitting welcome if black Canadians courteously entertained the group, and speedily ushered them on their way, pointing in the direction of Sudan and elsewhere in the world where black Africans are exploited and suffer, usually by their own; Zimbabwe, Congo, Somalia come readily to mind.