Thank you for your question, Ms. Chow. It's true, I thought that if I had had an opportunity to be heard by two or three board members, the result would have been different.
My story is clear. I noticed that there were things in the board member's decision that I had never said at the hearing myself. Because the decision was made two years after the hearing, I wondered whether he still remembered what had actually happened. On appeal, I was going to have an opportunity to correct what was in the decision.
For those who may not know, Congo has been at war since 1994, since the Rwandan genocide. The war in Congo is a consequence of what happened in Rwanda, even though nobody talks much about Congo. Since 1998, since Kabila came to power, the war has gone on to this day. We are talking about more than 4.5 million people dead in Congo. That is several times the number of people who died in the Rwandan genocide, several times the number of people who died in the tsunami and several times the number of people who died in disasters people often talk about. Today, again, I read that practically every day there are more than 45,000 people die in Congo, for various reasons: disease or the war in the east. The war in the east is still going on today. It is recognized that there is no security in Congo today. In fact, it is documented.
I talked about training the officers who make decisions for immigration and border services. It would be important for them to be informed about what is going on in these countries before making decisions. In my case, on the decision, it said “Dominican Republic of Congo”. When I saw that, I said there was a problem right there. “Dominican Republic of Congo” was written on the first page.