From: Yemane Natnael (yemane_natnael@yahoo.com)
Date: Wed Sep 17 2008 - 08:11:43 EDT
Ottawa provokes diplomatic flap
By PETER WORTHINGTON
17th September 2008
This is one of those stories that defies reason and underscores the occasional lunacy of bureaucracy.
The government of Canada -- or rather our ministries of both
foreign affairs and immigration -- have denied a visa to the foreign
minister of Eritrea on grounds that he participated in Eritrea's war of
liberation against the tyrannical Marxist regime of Ethiopia that ended
17 years ago.
Foreign Minister Osman Saleh was denied a visa to visit
Canada's large Eritrean community because (according to a letter
delivered to Eritrea's ambassador in Nairobi, Kenya, from the Canadian
counsellor): "You were a member of the Eritrean People's Liberation
Front (EPLF) between 1979 and 1991 ... a group that engaged in the
subversion of a government by force."
The letter added: "Canadian federal court jurisprudence
confirms that membership in a group that attempts to subvert even a
despotic government is sufficient to render inadmissibility."
Holy mackerel! It was a war that the EPLF was fighting -- and
won in 1991, gaining independence and sovereignty in 1993. It is now a
member of the African Union. (Eritrea had been an Italian African
colony and after World War II the UN made Ethiopia its "guardian").
It was a war the Tigryan People's Liberation Front (TPLF) also
fought -- and won -- against Ethiopia's homicidal regime of Col. Hariam
Mengistu. The TPLF leader, Meles Zenawi, is now Ethiopia's PM - and
presumably would also be denied a visa to Canada for "subverting" an
existing government.
Most of the countries of Africa, at one time or another, overthrew the previous existing government by coup or force.
By the standards applied to the Eritrean foreign minister,
Canada should deny a visa to Nelson Mandela because he was a member of
the African National Congress (ANC) seeking to subvert the white
apartheid government of South Africa. Today Mandela is an honorary
Canadian citizen.
With what seemed a sigh of relief, a Canadian foreign ministry
spokesman said the visa decision was not theirs, but the immigration
department's.
An immigration spokesman acknowledged she knew of the Eritrean
case, but "I can't speak to specific cases" (privacy and all that). As
far as she was concerned, the case stands. She said the only one who
could give permission to speak about the case would be the prime
minister.
Eritrea's ambassador to Canada, Ahfrom Berhame, is puzzled and
appalled at the Canadian decision. He said foreign minister Salah meets
all the qualifications to be accepted, and to call the EPLF a
"subversive organization" makes no sense, since it comprises the core
of the Eritrean government today.
"We have always had good relations with Canada," he said.
"Canadian businesses operate in Eritrea. Your soldiers were
peacekeepers after the 1998 border war with Ethiopia. In the war of
liberation, my wife was a fighter. I was a fighter. We were all EPLF.
Why is Canada doing this?"
The Eritrean government is indignant, and its foreign ministry
noted that some nations were "slow" to take cold war references to
African rebels off their old terrorist lists -- as U.S. lawmakers
recently did by removing the "terrorist" designation for Nelson
Mandela.
Their foreign ministry called it "an unheard act from a
country that enjoys full diplomatic ties with Eritrea (that) would, in
itself, construe an embarrassing aberration in diplomatic conduct. What
makes it more horrendous is, however, the reasons ... given to explain
their provocative act."
In condemning what it called "this hostile act," Eritrea
wonders if it is "sheer ignorance by a junior government official, or a
deliberate desire by the government of Canada to desecrate Eritrea's
legitimate struggle against colonial occupation that exacted more than
60,000 of our best sons and daughters?"
One hopes it is the former. At very least an apology seems in
order -- unless Canada knows something about foreign minister Saleh
that no one else does.
http://www.torontosun.com/news/columnists/peter_worthington/2008/09/17/6790751-sun.html
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