White South African granted refugee status

[htonl]

http://www.ottawasun.com/news/ottawa...10659546.html:

An Ottawa man has been granted refugee status after an immigration board panel ruled he would be likely be persecuted if he returned back to his native South Africa — because he is white.

A Canadian immigration and refugee board panel ruled Thursday that Brandon Huntley, 31, could stay in Canada because he presented “clear and convincing proof of the state’s inability or unwillingness to protect him.”

“I find that the claimant would stand out like a ‘sore thumb’ due to his colour in any part of the country,” tribunal panel chair William Davis said in his decision to grant Huntley refugee status.

[...]

Growing up in Mowbray, a town near Cape Town, Huntley was attacked seven times — including three stabbings — by black South Africans during attempted robberies and muggings.

During these attacks, Huntley told the refugee board that he was called “a white dog” and “a settler,” a reference to South Africa’s colonial past based on racial apartheid.

[...]

Davis said the evidence of Huntley and Laura Kaplan “show a picture of indifference and inability or unwillingness” of the South African government to protect “White South Africans from persecution by African South Africans.”

I find this whole thing very odd; I am white and actually live one suburb over from Mowbray, and I have never experienced the kind of insults he refers to. I mean, I've been lucky enough never to have been mugged, but I have never experienced any racial hostility from black people.

Quite frankly, the "indifference and inability or unwillingness" of the government is simply an inability to protect all South Africans from crime; there's no racial component to it. It's a simple result of demography and economics that most criminals are black; but then most victims of crime are black too. So, I hope the Canadian government is willing to accept South Africans of any colour as refugees, because otherwise they're being, well, racist.

ETA: and, the idea that he would necessarily "stick out like a sore thumb" is a bit silly. I mean, in Cape Town the population is ~20% white, which isn't a tiny minority; and my suburb, for example, is ~70% white.