Liberian radio host Gboko John Stewart finds himself in political purgatory.
Gboko says he wants more than anything to help his country after being educated at Quest University in Squamish, where he has been accepted as a student.
But he cannot get a visa to enter Canada due to the outbreak in his homeland.
“We have had a terrible civil crisis, we have had Ebola and so many things,” Stewart told The Squamish Chief over the phone from his home in Monrovia, Liberia.
“Nobody can heal Liberia, but Liberians… I am into women’s rights issues: rape, issues of violence against women… I am strongly against those things,” said Stewart.
Stewart wants to advance his education in Canada to allow him to go back and best help his country, and therein lies the problem.
Although he was accepted to Quest University a year ago, he said he can’t come because in October 2014 Canada, like Australia before it, froze visas from three West African nations recently rocked by the Ebola virus: Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone.
According to an Ebola situation report by the World Health Organization, transmission levels are very low in Liberia, with one new confirmed case reported in the last seven days of February. Statistics show cases have been declining in Liberia for over a year.
And yet despite evidence that Ebola has long been abating in Liberia and even though the World Health Organization argues against blanket travel bans, Canada hasn’t budged on its position.
Frustrated, Stewart started an online petition, “Prime Minister Harper: Don’t let my nationality prevent me from attending Canadian university.”
The campaign made headlines across the country, but Stewart said nothing has changed because of the spotlight.
“There is no good news,” he said.
And Stewart’s story is not unique. Rodney Sieh, editor of FrontPage Africa, said he was denied a visa to allow him to attend Journalists for Human Rights, which had invited him as a guest of honour in December.
“If Canada wants to be taken seriously in the world, it needs to change such discriminatory practices against people from our part of the world. Ebola was deadly and killed a lot of people but not all of us were infected and in fact we all fought the battle and are now winning the war,” Sieh told The Squamish Chief by email.
Meanwhile, a spot at Quest is being held for Stewart. “We have no concerns whatsoever about Ebola arriving with Gboko in Squamish,” Quest president and vice-chancellor David Helfand told The Squamish Chief.
“It is by now a well understood disease and is non-transmissible until an infected person has symptoms. Gboko has not had the disease, does not have it now, and is extremely unlikely to contract it, since the epidemic has essentially been extinguished in Liberia.” The situation perplexes Helfand.
“The number of new measles cases in the U.S. this week is greater than two, but I suspect no visa ban will be implemented on U.S. citizens,” he said.
“We are still hopeful rationality will prevail and [Stewart] will get his study permit to come at that time. If not, we will certainly consider deferring his arrival further – he’ll be an excellent fit at Quest and bring an important new perspective to our diverse student body, which this fall will represent more than 45 countries from around the world.”
Stewart said the support he has received, mostly from students from Quest, has been overwhelming.
“I was reading through the comments and I was reading through the signatures and I could feel tears falling out of my eyes. It seems a bit overwhelming that some of those who are signing the petition, they are Canadian and Americans and Europeans – people from all around the world,” he said.
His goal is to continue to get signatures to his online petition. When he gets 1,000 signatures he will write the Liberian president and foreign minister to see if his own government can intervene diplomatically.
“I want to show that I haven’t just been sitting here blindly, waiting for something to drop from the sky,” he said.
Citizenship and Immigration Canada has said in media reports that there is no travel ban in place for citizens from Liberia. “Canada has temporarily paused visa processing in the affected areas. However, should essential travel be required, including travel for economic reasons, discretion remains to approve it,” reads a statement from Kevin Menard, press secretary of Citizenship and Immigration Canada.
