There was another screaming match in the House of Commons this week. To read it in a national newspaper you’d think this behavior from NDP MP Thomas Mulcair was a norm for him.  It is not.  
According to The Halifax Herald Mulcair got up to read a statement about Kulenthiran Amirthalingam, a homosexual Malaysian refugee who was deported last night. He was heckled, and the Conservative MP’s doing the heckling lost no time letting media know how utterly terrible it was for them. A Liberal MP also grabbed media attention to let us know how terrible it was for them.

Mr. Keddy heckled him as he read the statement.

“I just said, ‘Like, that’s ridiculous,’ ” said Mr. Keddy.

Mr. Mulcair then lost his temper.

“You should be ashamed of yourself,” he said.

Mr. Keddy said Mr. Mulcair then went over the line.

“He attempted to intimidate me,” he said. “He walked over a row of desks. He was spitting and frothing at the mouth.”

Liberal MP Scott Simms was watching from the opposite side of the House.

“He walked out from the front benches toward the Conservatives,” he said. “Just yelling at him, and just yelling and yelling. And then he pointed to others and yelled and yelled and yelled some more.”

One reporter (one!) for The Montreal Gazette took the time to ask  Outremont MP Tom Mulcair why he was so upset.

That night, I ran into Mulcair and asked him what was up. Why was he reacting that way to this particular case.

Mulcair recounted how, just before he did the press conference, he viewed a video that had been sent to him by Amnesty International, depicting the kind of corporal punishment this guy could face as a homosexual man in Malaysia.

He had an aide send me a link to the video and after viewing it, I can see why he reacted the way he did. The video on liveleak entitled Malaysia Caning Judicial Corporal Punishment (video 1172940415) is so disturbing and so graphic that we have chosen not to directly link to it. It shows a military official discussing the case of an unidentified man then shows as the man, stark naked, is strapped to a ladder and his exposed buttocks are caned until the raw flesh is exposed.

I can only wonder whether Finley would have acted differently if she had viewed the video as well before dismissing Amirthalingan’s plea for her compassion.
 UPDATE - Amirthalingan was deported Thursday and is expected to arrive in Malaysia later today. Amnesty International is monitoring to see what happens to him once he arrives.

The comments from Canadians under Elizabeth Thompson’s post and a few other papers that picked this up are basically indifferent, defensive and dismissive.  
In Malaysia being homosexual can result in 20 years imprisonment, fines or caning. Amirthalingan came to Canada in 2002 after being imprisoned and beaten for five days. Kulenthiran Amirthalingan is Tamil Hindu, his partner of 12 years a Muslim. There is no word on what happened to his Muslim partner in Canadian news.
He says his family has rejected him because of his orientation and his partners family rejected them and turned him in. 
He was persecuted for who he is, not for anything he had done. (Family rejection also happens in Canada) I understand we cannot save everyone, I understand our system is going to fail people. But when that fact is drawn to the attention of those who govern, and they try to make it about them I have no use for whining and grandstanding from clueless MP’s.
I’ve written a couple of Malaysian bloggers including Jeff Ooi of Screenshots (who has also run into trouble for blogging) to ask if this kind of treatment toward homosexuals or mixed religious and ethic races in Malaysia is common.

We know in Canada homosexuals are twice as likely as the rest of us to be the victims of assault crime. While police say reports of crime aren’t up, most of these crimes are not reported.
Immigration Canada deported Kulenthiran Amirthalingam because they did not believe he was gay.

CBC

Canada accepts about 10 thousand refugees a year, people like Chantal Hadija Lomoyo. Please do not read her story if you are squeamish, what happened to her is horrific.

Global Voices Online, Amnesty International, The Persecution blog…we don’t want to read posts, we don’t want to listen to stories of how horribly we human being’s treat each other for the most mundane of reasons. We don’t want to take action. Speaking up is much harder than being dismissive or indifferent. Humane and compassionate takes back seat to our incredulity and indifference.
And when a refugee with a credible story is turned away by Canada, we blame the refugee and smear the MP who tried to help.
We expect that Amnesty International, churches or aid groups can just make sure people who fall through the cracks of our system, when humane and compassionate will be monitored, be safe. I could not find him in their data base.

Human Rights Watch - Malaysia