Ottawa Citizen: He is a citizen

Let's compare the stout British defence of Don Pacifico many years ago to Canada's dreadful treatment of Omar Khadr

Civis Romanus sum -- "I am a Roman citizen." On June 25, 1850, British Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston, in a celebrated speech, cited this phrase in Britain's House of Commons. He applied it to the then-controversial case of Don Pacifico -- a Gibraltar-born British subject. In 1847 Pacifico, a Jew and Portuguese consul in Athens, saw his house burned down by an anti-Semitic mob. The Greek government dismissed his request for compensation.

As a subject of Queen Victoria, Pacifico appealed to Palmerston for redress. Enraging many "patriotic" Englishmen, Palmerston defended Pacifico's claim. He said the British empire must defend its citizens no less stoutly than the Roman. To pressure Greece into compensating Pacifico, Palmerston sent a naval squadron to blockade the port of Piraeus. After two months, Pacifico won his compensation. The arch-conservative House of Lords censured Palmerston. But the Commons overruled the Lords and backed Pacifico by 46 votes.

Point of the story? In those days, a fellow with a name like Don Pacifico didn't exactly fit the popular stereotype of a ruddy John Bull that the English public cherished. He was a swarthy, foreign-looking Jew working for Portugal in faraway Greece. Yet he was Civis Britannicus. By law, this guaranteed him abroad, as at home, the full support of the British government in securing justice.

Translate this to Canada and the cases of Muslim Canadians caught in the U.S. "justice" system of Guantanamo and the rights-restricting Patriot Act. These men too have been swarthy, "foreign-looking" (to some white Canadians), and of a non-Christian religion. In foggy, violent circumstances, they too ran afoul of a foreign government. Did a Canadian Lord Palmerston rush to demand fair treatment for them?

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