Another Islamic terrorist attack has recently taken place in the exotic West African country Burkina Faso (formerly Upper Volta). Two men and two women attacked the Splendid Hotel and nearby restaurant Cappuccino Café. Altogether thirty people were killed, including six Canadians from the French-speaking province of Quebec. The latter were lay associates of the Congregation of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Saint-Damien-de-Buckland which had been established by the end of the 19th century to conduct missionary activities in various parts of the world. One of its branches opened at the capital of Burkina Faso, Ouagadougou, in 1994. That’s where the six Quebeckers – Yves Carrier, Gladys Chamberland, their children Charlelie and Maude and their friends Louis Chabot and Suzanne Bernier – were killed. They died in the course of a farewell dinner, just before flying home to Canada.
This shocking tragedy has been made even more outrageous by being subjected to the typical manipulation in the Canadian media (with the chief ‘sinner by omission’, the government-sponsored CBC, in the lead.) A few articles that have appeared so far about the Burkina Faso massacre speak about the victims belonging to „a humanitarian mission” and call the Confraternity of Our Lady of Perpetual Help „a religious organization”. There is not a single word about the murdered Canadian citizens being Christians, about the mission being Catholic and about the attackers being Islamists whose goal is the destruction of the West, starting with Christianity. This absurd camouflage of the key terms is so thorough that even the nuns are called merely „sisters.” The arrogance of many contemporary journalists makes them automatically assume that the habitual consumers of media gruel will not notice such standard abuses and manipulations. These people, who are supposed to shape the so-called „public opinion”, do not lie openly but their cynical political correctness should deny them the moral right to pursue their profession.
In this particular case, however, the Liberal prime minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, has surpassed even the CBC spin doctors. His condolences were limited to just two banal sentences, spoken during his visit to a mosque (sic). The second one of them is worth quoting because of what kind of light it throws on the intellectual qualities of this particular world leader. He said, „We are deeply saddened by these senseless acts of violence on innocent civilians.”
But the attack on Christians in Burkina Faso was not „senseless.” It was a preplanned episode of the systematic war waged by Islam against Western civilization. Its victims also were not „innocent civilians”. They were Christians who had witnessed with their hearts and lives to the faith for which they perished. Canada must find the courage to speak up for such people too. Its prime minister has had the time to visit the mosque which had been burned down in the name of hate and rebuilt in the name of love but he couldn’t find the time to go to the victims’ hometown and pray in the local church for these latest Christian martyrs. Cardinal Gérald Cyprien Lacroix, the Primate of Canada, did this for him but you won’t find any mention of it in the mainstream Canadian media either.
Aleksander Rybczynski