Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on Feb. 7th, 2012

[Patricia Malikail]

There are the UN agencies there. We have information that international NGOs can collect through various sources.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Do we have any Canadian NGOs there?

[Patricia Malikail]

We don't have any Canadian NGOs operating right now in Eritrea.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

I know this was going on long before I walked into the room, so please forgive me if I end up asking you questions about something you might have mentioned before I came in. I suppose, once again, I'm trying to understand, and I think I heard my colleague across the way asking the same thing. What are some of the tools we have (a) to try to get more information, and (b) to try to influence Eritrea? I'm hearing that there's the UN or there's the UN, right? And obviously there's not very much of it.

Then the other tool you're left with is economic sanctions, and we are trying these with other countries, to try to get them to see things our way. We do $3 million of trade. That's not a huge amount, but I can imagine for Eritrea that might be a huge amount. We also have Canadians working in Eritrea as well as having investments there. At the same time, we don't have any Canadian personnel through the embassy or anything else. What kind of a protection is there for the mining company and its interests in Eritrea? Never mind what the mining is doing to Eritrea; let's just come at it from this angle first.

[Patricia Malikail]

There are several parts to your question. One is that we do think it's important to maintain diplomatic relations. We do have relations with Eritrea. We do have an ambassador we would like to get into the country. The accreditation was just shifted. This is perhaps another opportunity to see if we can get in.

As far as the company is concerned, the company is a private company. It makes its decisions about where to invest and where to operate. That's not under the purview of the Canadian government.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Just as a follow-up, we have no idea if the mining company that is in there is following the guidelines established by the United Nations or if they're giving us a black name out there.

I want to go back to your bit about the ambassador, that we do have diplomatic relationships. At the same time as I'm hearing we have diplomatic relationships, I'm hearing that the ambassador hasn't been allowed on Eritrean soil yet. So what do our diplomatic relationships look like right now, besides chatting to them when they're at the UN meetings, which you can do with anybody who's there?

[Patricia Malikail]

From time to time, we are able to get people on the ground there. Obviously, it's much better to have the accreditation at the ambassador level. That's what we would like to again achieve in the next little while.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

I'm sorry to push on this. I'm a new MP, so forgive my naïveté.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Sorry, actually, we're kind of out of—

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

We're out of time?

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

We are.

If you have one question you think they can do briefly, please go ahead.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Did I hear you say, even though we don't have an ambassador there, officials from the other side are talking to officials on our side?

[Patricia Malikail]

We can talk. We can talk in various forums.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

I don't mean at the UN. I mean outside of the UN, in other forums. Can we pick up the phone and talk to somebody in Eritrea?

[Patricia Malikail]

We could.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

If you don't mind, I have a couple of contextual questions that I was hoping you could clarify for me.

While we've been chatting here, I've been surfing through Wikipedia, to be honest about it—

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

—and just a couple of things occurred to me that I wanted to get sorted out.

Eritrea has a couple of the cleavages that you tend to find in situations where there are widespread human rights abuses.

One is that there is a number of ethnic groups, according to what I have here in front of me: Tigrinya, 55% of the population; Tigre, 30%; Saho, 4%; and some smaller ones, such as Afar and so on.

The country also has religious cleavages. There's a Muslim population and a Christian population, and I gather the party structure during the revolutionary period was largely split on these lines.

Is there any kind of work that has been done by the folks at the UN who keep track of refugees to determine what the nature of the refugee population is, that is, who are the people who are being oppressed? Is it based on religious lines? Is it based on nationality, on tribal considerations...? Is it just simply people who the regime doesn't like, people who are opposed to the current president? What kind of grouping would we see among those who are being oppressed and being driven out of their country?

[Patricia Malikail]

I don't think there has been anything specific drawn to our attention about the oppression of refugees as to them being part of certain clans or certain religious groups. We know there has been discrimination against Jehovah's Witnesses, but we do know that four religious groups are allowed in Eritrea. I would have to check on that, but I'm not aware of any specific pattern in the refugees in terms of clans or religious affiliations.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Okay. What about the refugees themselves?

We've dealt in this committee with various situations that involve refugees. Sometimes they're highly organized into a coherent group. We looked at some Iranian refugees who are currently in Iraq at Camp Ashraf, for example. Sometimes they're not similarly organized; they are broken into many groups that don't really have a single coherent body, or they're simply individuals who fled on their own.

Is there any kind of description you can give of the refugee population from Eritrea and which of those two poles it would tend towards?

[Patricia Malikail]

Sorry, the two poles...?

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Well, very highly organized—

[Patricia Malikail]

All right.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

—as a single oppositional group, or completely disorganized, just people who fled on their own....