Silence is Golden

Recently, the big story in Canada has been the incarceration and subsequent trial of Brenda Martin in Mexico. Everyone has been up in arms about this whole situation. Only problem is, I think the way in which people tried to help her they may have done more harm than good.

For starters, she was implicated in a crime, so naturally they took her into custody. Seeing as she was a Canadian, they couldn't very well let her out on bail, or she would be on the first plane back to Canada. Even here, in Canada, we don't grant bail to foreigners for the fear that they will flee the country. We can't very well blame the Mexicans for doing the same thing that we would do.

Then, her friends an supporters decided that they wanted to help her. So what did they do? They went on international television and called the Mexican justice system corrupt and it's judges crooks. What a stupid thing to do! What the hell were they thinking? Did they honestly think that they could get them to be compassionate or cooperative by insulting them?

Canadian diplomats were quietly trying to get her out of there by the proper diplomatic channels, and then her friends pull a stunt like that. She's just damn lucky that they let her go. It took some doing for our foreign diplomats to try to mitigate the damage that they did.

They should have just kept their mouths shut, or should have sent an encouraging message like; "We have faith in our Mexican friends and are confident that Mexican officials will clear up this misunderstanding". Now that would have been good diplomacy. When you want someone to be reasonable and compassionate, you really shouldn't insult them. Bad Idea.