Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on Oct. 26th, 2010

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

I call the meeting to order.

The Subcommittee on International Human Rights of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development is holding its 27th meeting today, October 26, 2010.

Today we are undertaking a study on the situation of persons with albinism in Tanzania. We have as a witness Mr. Peter Ash, the founder and president of Under the Same Sun. He is with us by video conference.

I remind all members of the committee that our hearings today are being televised. It is always good to keep that in mind.

Let's begin by turning the floor over to Mr. Ash.

Normally we invite our witnesses to talk with us for about 10 minutes, giving us some background information, and then we turn the floor over to questions. Although we don't hold rigidly to that, you have a bit of an idea of what we do now.

Mr. Ash.

[Peter Ash, Founder and President, Under the Same Sun]

Good morning. Thank you for the opportunity to come to share with you today. As has been shared, my name's Peter Ash, and I'm the founder and president of Under the Same Sun, a Canadian international non-governmental organization. We're registered in Canada as a charity, and we also have offices in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

As you may have deduced from my presence, I have the genetic condition albinism. Albinism is a rare genetic disorder that occurs in about one in 20,000 people in North America. It is much more common in east Africa. It is one of those conditions that is often misunderstood in society.

What's going on in Tanzania is a gross violation of human rights. In Tanzania, the disorder is much more common. One in 1,000 is affected. Put simply, there is a crime against humanity being perpetrated against persons with albinism.

The genetic disorder involves a lack of pigmentation in my hair, skin, and eyes, as you can see. Most persons with albinism are significantly visually impaired.

The challenge is that in most non-Caucasian cultures, particularly in African cultures, there's great myth, stigma, and discrimination attached to the condition. It's commonly believed in Tanzania and other parts of east, west, and now southern Africa that persons with albinism have mystical or magical powers. This discriminatory belief that they are less than human, that they are cursed beings, has evolved to the point that those practising witchcraft in certain regions of Africa have proposed a belief that obtaining and using the body parts of a person with albinism in a series of magic potions would give someone magical power. Businessmen and businesswomen, and those who are politicians, in some cases, and police officers, will often attend the services of witch doctors to attempt to gain additional success and power in life.

The threat that has evolved in the last two years in Tanzania is that there have been 58 persons with albinism brutally hacked to death--slaughtered--for their body parts. Nine additional victims have been maimed; they have lost limbs. Additionally, there are at least 10 cases we're aware of in which graves have been desecrated and the remains of persons with albinism have been stolen.

Of course, magnifying the problem is that this export of body parts is becoming a pan-African trade. There is now evidence of several countries throughout the eastern, western, and southern parts of Africa--Burundi, Tanzania, Kenya, Swaziland, Mali, Malawi, and Guinea, and the list goes on and on--that we believe have a sophisticated black market trade. Evidence shows that these kinds of killings are expanding.

My purpose in Under the Same Sun is to highlight for the world's attention what is, as UN Secretary Ban Ki-moon has delineated it, this gross violation of human rights.

I want to take a moment to tell you a brief story. This story will help you understand, probably more profoundly than anything else, what's going on in Tanzania.

I remember on my first trip there, about two years ago now, arriving in a small town in northwest Tanzania. I arrived at the small and humble homestead of a farming family. The mother began to tell me about a night in 2008 when four men approached their home. These men were seen in the neighbourhood a day earlier and had asked the little girl, Mariam, a girl with albinism, where she slept at night. Of course, innocently, like most six- or seven-year-old girls would be, she pointed to her room, saying, “I sleep over there”. Of course, she goes to bed, as she normally does, and all of a sudden, in the middle of the night, there was a banging at the door, a hammering, a loud pounding. The door swung open.

It was at one in the morning that this occurred. She and her two siblings were sound asleep. As they slept, men rushed toward Mariam's bed. They first lifted up the covers of one of her other siblings, her sister, who did not have albinism. She was dark-skinned. They left her and immediately turned to the right and proceeded to the section of the house where Mariam was sleeping. They isolated her in a different part of the house, and they pinned her tiny little body down against her bed. A man produced a machete, wielded the machete, and began to slice, from one end to the other end, the full length of her throat. After her throat was sliced, they flipped her body over and drained her blood into a cooking pot. The killers, as witnessed by the other children, then drank the blood.

They then produced an additional machete. Another man joined in the action and hacked off her right leg, her left leg, her right arm, and then her left arm.

A sack was brought by the killers for the occasion. They produced the sack, deposited the freshly cut body parts into it, and left, running away with a bag full of body parts that would quickly yield them thousands of dollars on the black market.

Add to this scene the fact that Mariam has a slightly younger brother, by about a year, named Menyasi. He also has albinism.

For some reason--the killers either didn't have time or they were not aware of his whereabouts--he was left at another end of the room, where he kept his head covered. But he heard it all happen. Menyasi got out of his bed and saw the remains of his little sister, now hacked apart.

This scene was described to me by the mother, and later by the uncle and the younger sister.

The trauma doesn't end there. Now Menyasi is at risk; his sister has been slaughtered apart, and he too has albinism. So what do we do with Menyasi?

Well, the parents sent him to a boarding school about 100 miles away. He lives behind barbed wire with 105 other albino children. These children have all been herded into these boarding schools, in horrific conditions, simply because there's no safety in their own villages. They can't go to school, they can't walk, they can't be safe in their own beds at night.

Now we have a state of affairs in Tanzania where tens of thousands of people have albinism. The World Health Organization over a decade ago estimated the number of persons with albinism in Tanzania to be in the neighbourhood of 170,000. So we have a whole society of people who are living in fear, hiding in the bushes, and not sleeping in their homes. They are afraid to go to work, or are not going to work or school, simply and only because of the colour of their skin. This is clearly a situation that requires a swift response from the Tanzanian government.

I've been to Tanzania five times and have met with the Prime Minister three times. On one occasion I met with the chief justice and several other government officials. The government assures us they are doing what they can. The problem is that justice is coming way too slowly. Of the 58 murders that have occurred, in only three have there been convictions in a period of over two years. The wheels of justice grind too slowly.

You need to understand, ladies and gentlemen, that this scenario is grinding slowly because of the stigma and discrimination that persons with albinism face in Tanzania. You see, albinos are not human beings: they're substandard, second-class citizens. It doesn't take long to think of U.S. history in the southern United States, or even our own history in terms of the aboriginal people, our first nations people. As soon as you begin to dehumanize somebody and think of them as less than us, as inferior somehow because of their culture or skin colour, it becomes easy to perpetrate acts of unspeakable horror against them. So this is what has occurred with the albino people in Tanzania: isolation, discrimination, and lack of employment.

When I was in Tanzania, my colleagues and I with albinism were called “zeru”, a Swahili word meaning zero, invisible, or nothing. When I travel in the country I travel the security detail, not only because I have albinism, but more importantly because my voice has been loud in opposing this slaughter and confronting the wheels of justice that grind slowly.

You also need to understand that belief in witchcraft in Tanzania is at an all-time high. A Pew study recently indicated that 93% of Tanzanians believe in witchcraft. So the witch doctor is a powerful and influential member of each community. With witchcraft being so predominant, and with some witch doctors peddling the belief that albino body parts have magical power, we're battling a formidable enemy.

I'm asking the Government of Canada is to stand clearly on a firm, historical platform of a voice for human rights to defend the vulnerable and the weak, and send an official communiqué to the Government of Tanzania by means of a resolution in the House of Commons officially condemning these crimes. The U.S. government did this with House Resolution 1088, and the European Union did this in 2008.

I'm asking the Government of Canada to clearly and unequivocally condemn this violence and take a stand in joining the Government of Tanzania to more swiftly and fully prosecute the offenders in these crimes against humanity.

Thanks.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Thank you.

We'll go to two rounds of questions, with seven minutes for questions and answers in the first round, and five minutes for questions and answers in the second round. That will take us to our completion time of 2 p.m.

I'm going to start by asking a question myself, just to get some context.

Mr. Ash, you mentioned one person in a thousand. Tanzania has a population of 44 million. Does that mean there are 44,000 persons with albinism in Tanzania, more or less?

[Peter Ash]

Here is the problem. The numbers on people with albinism vary widely. I've read studies that say there are 18,000, and about 12 years ago the World Health Organization came up with 170,000.

The problem is that none of these people have substantiated how they create the calculations. The fact is that we really don't know exactly how many people with albinism there are in Tanzania. Even the one in 1,000 figure is a guesstimate.

Dr. Murray Brilliant is a U.S. geneticist who has done a little bit of study on the origins of albinism and its occurrence in east Africa. His best guessed estimate, based on limited anecdotal observation, is that it's one in 1,000. So you're correct that if that figure were accurate there would be 44,000. But we're not certain that figure is accurate. There may be communities within Tanzania where one in 100 has albinism.

So your guess is as good as mine, but that's certainly safe to go with. I would say at minimum there are 44,000.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Okay. That gives us an idea of the parameter of the problem.

We'll start then with Mr. Silva, please.

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you very much for your excellent presentation. It's quite disturbing, and we on the committee are very much concerned. It's one of the reasons we wanted to have you before the committee.

I want to know a few things. The impunity that seems to be quite prevalent in Tanzania in allowing this type of outrageous killing to take place concerns me. The government seems to be doing nothing about it and is not prosecuting anybody. It seems that nobody is being brought to justice. We know that there are issues of rituals and old traditional practices that include the use of human sacrifice. The albinist community is very much affected by this.

What is the government doing, not just in terms of the impunity but in terms of education, going after these people, and making sure law officials are also onside?

Second, you said that a number of parliaments, including the European parliament, have taken note and pronounced themselves on this issue. I'd very much like to know what the pronouncement was or what type of resolution was put forward, so we on the committee can see if we can also bring it forward in our Parliament.

[Peter Ash]

In answer to your first question as to what the Government of Tanzania is doing, if I had to summarize I would say a lot of talk and little action. As I said, I met the Prime Minister a few times. In Tanzania there are some very good people in society and in the government who are genuinely opposed to these killings and who regard people with albinism as contributing members of society. There are also a large number of people in society who don't view it that way.

Probably the closest analogy we would have would be the time of segregation and discrimination in the southern U.S. during the civil rights movement. There were many good white people who really believed black people were equal and should not be killed and should not be discriminated against. There was another group of white people, the Ku Klux Klan and those who stood alongside them, who believed black people were non-human and that they didn't deserve the same kind of rights, and those white people would gladly burn them on a cross. And there was a third group of people who had some level of discrimination against black people but might not kill them.

If you had asked the government in those southern states at the time for their view on black people, what do you think they would have said? They would all have said that black people were equal, that they should be treated well, and that they opposed those crimes. But that wasn't stopping black people from being burned on crosses.

We have a very similar dynamic going on in Tanzania. The official position of the Government of Tanzania, including President Kikwete and Prime Minister Pinda, is that these albino killings are wrong, that they need to stop, and that albinos should not be discriminated against. If you phone up or write to any member of the government in Tanzania, that's what they'll tell you.

What's happening in practice is an entirely different thing. To give you an example, I was speaking about our human rights activities to an outdoor assembly of 32,000 people at a church service in Tanzania. I was speaking English, and the pastor of that church, a Tanzanian man, was translating into Kiswahili. I talked about how people with albinism were equal human beings, and I said, “We are not zeru, zeru”, which is a derogatory term for persons with albinism.

Forgive my use of the term, but for people with albinism, zeru is akin to the term “nigger” for a black person. It's an unacceptable term, but it's a term that's used in Tanzania for a person with albinism. Even the pastor himself, who gave me a platform to speak on the issue, used zeru, zeru to describe me. So here's a highly educated man who has a concern for the issue but who has been so uninformed and so steeped in the discrimination in his culture around people with albinism for so long that even he uses the term.

As I say, the results speak for themselves: 58 murders have occurred, which their own police departments have documented. Only three of those cases, in over two years, have been brought to conclusion in court. So you tell me how important this is to them.

When I ask why things move so slowly, one of the answers I get is that there is a lack of resources. They have a limited number of courthouses and a limited number of judges, and Tanzania is a poor country. All of this is true. Tanzania is a poor country, and they do need more courthouses and more judges. However, in Tanzanian history there have been cases of other groups of people being murdered, ordinary black Tanzanian citizens, and the wheels of justice have spun at about 10 times the speed.

I've confronted members of the Government of Tanzania and said, “If 58 normal black Tanzanian children were murdered, with their limbs hacked apart in this fashion, over a period of a year and a half, do you think it would take two years to get three convictions?” The answer is silence, because the records speak for themselves.

The Tanzanian government is, in my opinion, throwing us a bone. They're giving us a few convictions. They're making strong pronouncements against the killings. But I believe members of the Government of Tanzania use witchcraft. Some of them publicly admit to doing so, so that's not just conjecture on my part.

The power of witchcraft is strong. You have to understand that for the Government of Tanzania to deal with this, they're going to have to expose some politicians who may be using witch doctors who are in fact using these body parts.

So the corruption is strong.

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

My second question is on the issue of the parliament, including the European parliament, and what resolutions they've put forward, and the language that was used.

[Peter Ash]

I don't have the exact document in front of me at the moment, but there was a resolution of the European Union Parliament in Brussels back in 2008. I can't cite the particular number of the resolution, but it was an official resolution of the European parliament in 2008. Basically it called upon the Government of Tanzania to take swift action to prosecute the offenders to the fullest extent of the law, to expedite the court proceedings, to launch educational programs, and so on. I can furnish the committee with a copy of that resolution quite easily. You could find it quickly with a Google search.

Secondly, with respect to the United States resolution, that was passed just months ago. It was House Resolution 1088 in the U.S. House of Representatives. I actually sent to the committee—I think you should have received it in your briefing notes—a resolution that I am proposing the Government of Canada adopt. I've taken elements out of both the European Union resolution and the U.S. House resolution, and we've modified those. There are some suggested wordings that might be considered by the Government of Canada.

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Ash.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Ms. Deschamps, go ahead please.

[Johanne Deschamps, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I hope that the witness is using the interpretation channel and can hear me well.

Thank you for your testimony, Mr. Ash. The subject matter is very touching. I knew nothing of this situation. I'm still wondering how these kinds of crimes continue to be perpetuated even in this day and age, in 2010.

In your presentation to the committee, you asked that Canada let the Government of Tanzania know in clear terms that it condemns this injustice. How can our country do that? Canada is already present in Tanzania through CIDA, which is there supporting a number of projects. If memory serves me right, Tanzania is on the Minister of International Cooperation's list of countries given priority. Government representatives can correct me on this if I'm wrong.

I think that, through different projects, we could find ways of educating people from that region. The violence you spoke about is based on a growing popular belief, which probably affects the Tanzanian border regions. Does this phenomenon also affect other countries? That's what I understood from your testimony.

In addition to educating those living in the region, we should work on getting the message across to the general population, the government and the authorities. I assume that Canada could quickly come up with solutions and take concrete measures.

[Peter Ash]

Yes, there are.

One thing I should note here is that Canada does send CIDA funds to Tanzania. I spoke with Canada's High Commissioner to Tanzania, Robert Orr, on my last trip there in April. Canada sends a large amount of CIDA funds to Tanzania, about $40 million if I'm not mistaken. It is one of the countries in Africa that does receive funding.

So I think we have influence we can exercise from that, because Tanzania is very dependent on these kinds of foreign aid contributions. This, in my opinion, is something that the Tanzanian government can be reminded of.

One concrete solution being put in place by Under the Same Sun, which is a Canadian NGO, as you know, is that we have produced a one-hour documentary film. In fact we employed Cité-Amérique, a company in Montreal, Quebec, to do this. They've worked with us and we've produced a one-hour documentary film about the killings in Tanzania and the discrimination that albinos face. It's a wonderful film. We just screened it in Vancouver on Saturday, and I would be happy to give each member of the committee a copy of the film. This film has been produced in English, French, and Kiswahili.

We are going to produce these films and distribute them across Tanzania in schools, government offices, and so on. Perhaps one partnership that CIDA could have with Under the Same Sun would be to assist in the production and distribution of these films in Tanzania, and perhaps partnering with us in educational programs.

Under the Same Sun has an office in Tanzania and we are involved in trying to educate the society, because once the society understands that people with albinism are human beings and are equal and are not ghosts and curses, then eventually the killings will stop.

[Johanne Deschamps, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

I assume that even more could be done. The Tanzanian population is very poor. We could perhaps implement other projects to alleviate that poverty. The country's illiteracy and unemployment rates are also very high. The resulting vicious cycle is conductive to the types of despicable crimes currently being committed. People are hungry, and this is one way for them to ensure their survival. Education is key in a situation like this. How can we alleviate poverty in Tanzania?

[Peter Ash]

The comment I would like to make in that respect is that while poverty is certainly a very big concern in Tanzania, I do not believe it's the primary motivator behind this particular crime. You need to understand that an albino body part, such as my arm or leg, is worth about $3,000 U.S. If you took my body and chopped it up and sold the parts on the black market in Tanzania, it would yield $250,000 U.S. The consumers who purchase these organs from witch doctors are not poor Tanzanians. For you to go out and buy an arm for $3,000 U.S., you have to be wealthy. The average income of a Tanzanian is $800 a year.

So the consumers who are going to the witch doctors in Tanzania and purchasing albino body parts are wealthy. They are businessmen, businesswomen, and politicians, people of prominence in the community who have wealth and education.

While poverty is a big issue in Tanzania, it is not the primary motivator behind this crime. These people believe in witchcraft despite their wealth and education. They purchase albino organs to make themselves more wealthy and more powerful.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

You have two minutes left.

[Johanne Deschamps, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Could you tell me, in practical terms, what the government could do to expose the injustice or to emphasize Canada's indignation over it?

[Peter Ash]

I think the Government of Canada needs to pass a resolution in the House of Commons, as I've outlined with my proposed wording, condemning these killings. The Prime Minister of Canada needs to make it a personal priority of his to directly address the President of Tanzania and tell him that it's unacceptable for us as a country, when we're providing $40 million a year in assistance, to have a partner country conducting itself this way.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Okay, c'est ça.

Mr. Marston, please.

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Ash, welcome. In my four years sitting on this committee, this is one of the most compelling testimonies I've ever heard, and heartbreaking. To think of a child being treated as you described earlier is beyond the pale even for us to try to envision. Your mind won't allow you to even envision what happened to that child.

Normally in western countries such as Canada, such brutality is associated with some kind of severe mental illness. Your observation about how society has dehumanized these particular victims makes it more possible for these atrocities to be accepted by the public. It's a horrific fact to even consider that society gets to that level.

In times of war, such as World War II, the militaries would assign names to groups--geek, gook, kraut, jap, or whatever--to make it psychologically more possible for somebody to do the kinds of things in war that maybe are necessary, because you get into hand-to-hand combat, or whatever. But to take that back and to consider those things occurring to a child in such a manner--it's just so hard to even find the words to deal with it.

But in societies, as you alluded, things are so ingrained. A man I worked with for 30 years was a peace activist, and once there was an exchange of money when he said to the person across from him who had made a nickel error in the change, and he was giving him the nickel back, “That's so hymie of me”.

That just showed that this man had no concept of what that word meant. It was just a word for cheap to him. It had nothing to do with the Jewish community.

So you have a culture here in Tanzania that is viewing this in that manner. It's become so ingrained in it. There's a huge, huge educational component that has to be part of it.

[Peter Ash]

There is.

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

It's wonderful to have the various governments, the EU and the United States and, hopefully, and I would expect, Canada, to make these pronouncements. But on the other side of this, how do you and how does the world come to terms with the level of education required to bring that society back from where they're at?

[Peter Ash]

The answer is public education, one of the two mandates of Under the Same Sun. We are really the only international NGO in Tanzania working on this issue. Recently we've been fortunate to forge some partnerships with the Red Cross and UNICEF, who have both said to us that they support us as the NGO in Tanzania on this issue.

Our goal, as I said earlier, is to do it primarily through the distribution of this film. The largest private media network in Tanzania is owned by a man by the name of Reginald Mengi. He's become a personal friend of mine. He is a strong advocate for human rights and the disabled community, and he has told me that he will take our film and broadcast it on prime-time television across Tanzania.

We have strong relationships with the media. Tanzania has a free press. That's one beautiful thing about this country; some African countries don't have it. Freedom of the press has been a huge asset to us. Whenever I land in the airport in Tanzania, I have a dozen journalists wanting to interview me.

We do constant public education. We also take people with albinism who have been successful in Tanzania.... For instance, one fellow who is a partner with us is a lawyer, in fact the dean of a faculty of law in Tanzania. He has albinism, and he makes his voice known.

So you're right, the answer is public education. It's not going to happen overnight. How did Hitler motivate a country to kill millions of Jewish people? Because he somehow convinced many people that the Jewish people weren't like us. They were inferior to us. We could experiment on their bodies for medical research because they were animals, basically. It's interesting to me to see how this same dynamic is at work in Tanzania.

So public education is a big part of it. We're doing that through our educational programs, brochures, films, and so on. Even in our office in Tanzania, we have ten people with albinism on our staff, and all have university degrees.

Perhaps you'll permit me one brief vignette. There's a presidential election under way right now in Tanzania. It's actually going to happen October 31. Witchcraft is often used during times of elections. Candidates consult witch doctors to try to get elected. In the process of this election campaign, there was a man with albinism running for a seat as an MP, in the opposition party. The albino man's opponent, the incumbent MP, did not have albinism. The opponent and his campaign manager said publicly that people with albinism have bad memories and don't think well due to a lack of vitamin C; the sun affects them and they don't think well. This was a public statement made by a member of Parliament and his campaign manager. They told people they shouldn't vote for the albino candidate because “albinos don't think well”.

Well, we had the wonderful opportunity to convene a press conference and have this man, who works with us, who is an albino lawyer, say, “I assure you, sir, my memory works very well. I'm the Dean of the Faculty of Law, and I assure you that people with albinism will remember for a long time what you have said.”

So education and advocacy are the solutions. To the extent that perhaps our High Commission in Tanzania, through the High Commissioner there, can come alongside us and support us in this endeavour in Tanzania, we can make a difference on the ground.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

You have one minute left, Mr. Marston.

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Great, thank you, Mr. Chair.

To my mind, isolating the witch doctors and their practices would be one component of this.

What's the literacy rate like in Tanzania? How difficult will it be to get past the barriers that this would provide?

As well, you've asked for a resolution from the Parliament of Canada. I would hope, too, that you would see a statement from this committee as being helpful as well.