Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on Oct. 21st, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Sameer Zuberi]

I call this meeting to order. It's now 8:52 a.m. We have quorum to start.

Good morning.

I hope everyone is doing well.

We have two items on the agenda today.

This is meeting number 16 of the Subcommittee on International Human Rights of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development.

This meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the House order of June 23, 2022. Members are attending in person in the room and remotely using the Zoom application.

For the proper order of this meeting, all members must be recognized before speaking. Whenever speaking, please speak clearly into the mike.

Interpretation is also available in the Zoom application.

I know everybody knows how to use it by now.

I remind you that all comments should be directed through the chair.

I would like to welcome a new member, Ziad Aboultaif, from Edmonton Manning.

Our first order of business is to elect a vice-chair.

After that, we're going to go into our study on Tigray.

I'd like to thank Mr. Cooper for his service to this committee.

Now, without further ado, we're going to open up the floor to nominations for our vice-chair. Do we have any nominations?

Mr. Aboultaif, go ahead.

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, for welcoming me this morning. I'm happy to work with our colleagues here on an important committee.

I would like to nominate MP Viersen for the position of vice-chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sameer Zuberi]

Thank you for that nomination. That's pursuant to Standing Order 106(2), in that the first vice-chair must be a member of the official opposition.

MP Viersen has been nominated as vice-chair. Are there any other motions for vice-chair?

There are no further motions.

(Motion agreed to)

Mr. Viersen, congratulations. You are our vice-chair.

[Some hon. members]

Hear, hear!

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sameer Zuberi]

Now, without further ado, it's 8:55 and we have until 10:45, so we'll divide that time in two and go through our two panels. Our witnesses are online.

We are continuing our study on Tigray, which we began in our previous meeting. We've already had one meeting on this, at which a number of committee members gave impromptu testimony to us, which worked really well. We now have this meeting and the next one to study Tigray, after which we'll be writing a report.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motions adopted by this subcommittee on Thursday, April 26, 2022, and on Friday, September 23, 2022, our subcommittee will resume its study on the current situation in Tigray.

It's a pleasure to welcome Goitom Gebreluel, a post-doctoral fellow at Yale, and Ian Spears, associate professor of political science at the University of Guelph.

You each have a maximum of five minutes. I'll keep timing, and I ask you to also keep timing. After your opening remarks, we'll enter into rounds of questions and answers.

Go ahead, Mr. Gebreluel. Thank you.

[Goitom Gebreluel, Postdoctoral Fellow, Yale University, As an Individual]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. My name is Goitom Gebreluel. I'd like to thank the committee for inviting me to give this presentation. I'll focus my presentation on why the atrocities in Tigray show very strong indications of genocidal intent.

I'll start by noting that the stated objective of the Ethiopian government when they launched the war in November 2020 was to apprehend the leaders of the Tigray People's Liberation Front. What in fact ensued, however, was a systematic set of atrocities committed on the civilian population of Tigray. Many atrocities were committed. I'll go through some of the most severe ones.

The first one is ethnic cleansing. The moment troops from the federal government of Ethiopia, the Amhara regional state and Eritrea entered western and southern Tigray in November 2020, they proceeded to ethnically cleanse 1.2 million Tigrayans from these areas. The remaining Tigrayans were, throughout 2021, subjected to killings and torture. Some of the most disturbing accounts include those about corpses of Tigrayans, whose hands were tied behind their backs and whose eyes had been gouged out, floating down the river to Sudan in high numbers. A recent report by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International concluded that these atrocities constituted crimes against humanity.

The other atrocity that has characterized this war is the systemic sexual and gender-based violence and the use of it as a weapon of war. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed unleashed a wave of systemic rape on Tigrayan women and girls after entering Tigray. USAID estimated that in early 2021, 22,500 women and girls would need treatment from these violations, whereas a study by the Tigray Region Health Bureau estimated that these numbers should be around 120,000 women. The victims of these atrocities or crimes also reported that in addition to being subjected to rape, they were also often subjected to other forms of physical violence by the perpetrators, such as having nails inserted into their bodies.

The ethnic motives behind these crimes were also made manifest by the statements made by these perpetrators during these actions. Some victims reported being told that the perpetrators were “Amharaizing” them, “cleansing” them of their Tigrayan blood, and that a “Tigrayan womb should not give birth”. This provides an indication that the purpose of the rape was to destroy the reproductive capacities of Tigrayan women, and thus it constitutes a genocidal intention.

The third atrocity I want to draw attention to is the use of mass starvation as a weapon of war. The Ethiopian government engineered a large-scale famine in Tigray. This began during their occupation of Tigray between November 2020 and June 2021, in which they systematically destroyed water pumps, crops and food storage. They looted the civilian population and blocked those in need from getting access to humanitarian assistance. Since they were pushed out of central and southern Tigray in June 2021, all of Tigray has been under total siege, and no medication, very little food aid and no basic services have been allowed into Tigray.

The former UN humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock has confirmed that starvation is being used as a weapon of war by the Ethiopian government, and he also stated that the Ethiopian government managed to block a declaration of famine in the UN in 2021.

One important aspect of this war that has been neglected is the hate speech and what that tells us about the war. These atrocities were essentially preceded by two and a half or three years of collective demonization of Tigrayans by the state media and the current leaders of Ethiopia.

Prior to and during the war, public calls for the extermination of the Tigrayans by government officials and associated public figures were rampant. In reference to Tigrayans, there were statements such as “Each of us should kill one Tigrayan and die. We are 30 million, and they are six million. If we sacrifice six million, the rest can be liberated.” Another statement we have seen is “Tigrayans are not of the human race. The devil is better than them.” Statements such as these have been rampant and have been made regularly on public TV and state media, which I think illustrates the motivations behind the war.

A recent report by the UN Human Rights Council also echoed these claims. They found that hate speech and acts of violence in Ethiopia seemed “to go beyond mere intent to kill and, instead, reflect a desire to destroy.” They also conclude that the Ethiopian government has “implemented a widespread range of measures designed to systematically deprive the population of Tigray of material and services indispensable for its survival”.

This is very close to the definition of genocide that we find in the genocide convention, article II(c), which stipulates that “Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part” constitutes an act of genocide and—

[The Chair, Liberal, Sameer Zuberi]

Thank you, Mr. Gebreluel. We have used up your time.

We will continue to our next witness, Professor Spears.

[Dr. Ian Spears, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Guelph, As an Individual]

Thank you very much for this opportunity to speak to you about the current crisis in the Tigray region of Ethiopia.

In recent days, the situation in Ethiopia may have reached a turning point as Tigray becomes subject to an assault from two, possibly three armies: one, the Ethiopian National Defense Force, or ENDF; two, the Eritrean Defense Forces, or EDF; and three, the Amhara special forces.

For the government in Addis Ababa, the TPLF represents a threat for the following reasons: one, the TPLF are former rulers who believe that they are uniquely qualified for that role; two, the TPLF have exercised power in Ethiopia for significant stretches of Ethiopia’s history, especially from 1991 to 2018; and three, the TPLF have repeatedly demonstrated a capacity to wield power, military power, and to defeat other claimants to power. The view of the Addis Ababa regime and its allies is that if the TPLF are not eliminated once and for all, they will rise up again.

The Eritreans, under President Isaias Afwerki, have a grudge of their own with Tigray. Eritreans and Tigrayans have been allies at times and, indeed, collaborated in the past to defeat the Marxist regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam in 1991. As leaders of their respective independent states, however, they have once again become rivals.

They fought a bruising border war from 1998 to 2000, and while the Eritreans were defeated in 2000, they have not forgotten these events and seek to take back territory that they regard as their own. There are also suspicions that Eritrean President Isaias has his own designs on Ethiopia. In any event, the government in Asmara effectively has a veto over any agreement between the TPLF and the government in Addis Ababa. That is a problem.

Amharas, too, have been willing accomplices in the effort to destroy the TPLF. Amharas have historically been among the Ethiopian ruling class, and many were delighted at the displacement of the TPLF from Addis Ababa in 2018. The Amharas were territorial losers in the 1990s when the TPLF reorganized the country according to ethnic or national identity, and since the commencement of the war in November 2020, Amharas have sought to reoccupy this lost territory and ethnically cleanse western Tigray.

The TPLF itself, while apparently victims of this current crisis, is not blameless. For many Ethiopians, Tigrayan arrogance, and the privileging of its own interests after the fall of the communist regime in 1991, is a source of resentment, but the TPLF are also survivors whose capacity to endure hardship in the context of war should not be underestimated.

Again, this is a challenge. The TPLF’s defeat of the regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam in May 1991 was the culmination of a 15-year, or longer, struggle that came at enormous cost. The insurgents, as they were at that time, prevailed because of their singular vision and extraordinary organizational capacity. The TPLF then restructured Ethiopia according to a form of ethnic federalism that did address many—or at least some—of the nationalities questions in Ethiopia, but also generated new tensions.

Because of their minority status, Tigrayans—who formed the TPLF and also formed the core of another group, called the EPRDF, the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front, for three decades—have been extremely sensitive to changes in the local distribution of power among their rivals. Only in 2018 did the Amhara and Oromo coalition partners succeed in what some have described as an “end run” that allowed a non-Tigrayan newcomer, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, to assume the prime minister’s office.

Ethiopia now finds itself locked in a struggle among powerful and very disciplined groups, especially the Eritreans and the TPLF.

The objective of the belligerents, you should be aware, is not peace but security. Virtually every action, every act of aggression, every act of intransigence and every act of peace should be seen in this context. Even the peace between Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and Eritrean President Isaias, which led to the Nobel Peace Prize, should be seen as a strategic move to isolate the Tigrayans rather than an acknowledgement of the benefits of peace.

While the Ethiopian government may respond favourably to political and economic pressure for a humanitarian solution, they are likely to resist any effort that obstructs their ability to destroy the TPLF as a military force. In humanitarian terms, the results will be disastrous.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sameer Zuberi]

Thank you, Dr. Spears. We have used up your time.

We'll move into questions and answers, starting with MP Viersen for seven minutes.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I understood that we were having a third witness. Are they coming later?

[The Chair, Liberal, Sameer Zuberi]

We have two more witnesses in the second panel.

Please go ahead.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Thank you very much to our guests this morning for their presentations.

Dr. Spears, this committee is generally dedicated to human rights abuses. Do you think there is a way to separate the human rights abuses from the political situation? This is fundamentally a political struggle that's happening in Ethiopia. How should we separate the humanitarian issues from the political issue, and is that even possible?

[Dr. Ian Spears]

I think that's a terrific question. I'm not sure that it is possible.

An issue that we deal with in any kind of ethnic or national conflict is that the belligerents will often see themselves as representatives of their respective peoples. Particularly in the case of the TPLF, but also with the Amhara group, they see themselves as defending and, especially with the TPLF, as being of the people. The TPLF and its leadership, during the war against the Derg in the 1980s and early 1990s, never left the country. They were among their own people, so that association is very tight.

I think you're going to have to be addressing, at least to some extent, both of those issues. You're going to have to be managing the belligerents themselves, the ones who are doing the fighting, because they see themselves as defending their people.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Mr. Gebreluel, do you want to perhaps take a crack at that question as well? Is it going to be possible to separate the humanitarian from the political issues that we're seeing in Tigray?

[Goitom Gebreluel]

I think it's important to note here that the war from the outset, in my view, has been waged directly at the civilian population of Tigray. If you look at the atrocities that are happening, they have very little, in my view, political or military origin. What is the military purpose of mass graves? What is the military purpose of the hate speech that we hear on a daily basis, which talks about exterminating civilians? What is the political purpose of the use of mass starvation as a weapon of war if not to harm the civilian population? Attacking civilians has been at the core, in my view, of the government's strategy. It is the core political purpose. It's very difficult to disentangle these.

I would also draw attention to the fact that sexual and gender-based violence is not something you see in every war. These things are not natural phenomena. How many governments today are using mass starvation as a weapon of war against their own citizens? How often does ethnic cleansing happen?

There are multiple conflicts around the world. Ethnic cleansing of one million people and these things are quite rare. I really want to draw attention to the dangers of normalizing them as simply part of conflict or simply part of war. These are extraordinary human rights abuses today. I would dare anyone to name two or three conflicts today in which we see attacks on civilians on this scale. I think a big problem in the way we've been approaching the war is that we have normalized and minimized the acts of the Ethiopian government.

Thank you.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Mr. Spears, as this committee goes forward and makes recommendations to the Canadian government as to what action the Canadian government should take, it feels to me as though we play the role of a referee. We can make statements around condemning bad action, but we also have an opportunity, perhaps, to build democracy and build institutions and to help them do that in that country.

Do you have any recommendations around those two areas—how we play referee and how we build a stronger democracy? Should we spend time on the democracy side?

[Dr. Ian Spears]

This is a very good question again.

It is not clear to me that there's an obvious solution. I'm reluctant to put it in those terms. The Derg was the Marxist regime that was overthrown in May 1991. Since that time, there has been some progress. Governments and their regional leaders are, as I said, extremely sensitive about and defensive of their respective populations, and they are very reluctant to concede anything that will allow them to be dominated by somebody else.

What I am concerned about is that the groups are so intransigent, so disciplined, so powerful and so reluctant to concede anything to the other that it is going to be difficult—or at least the groups will not see it as possible—to have what we in Canada or in the west would perhaps see as a democracy without defeating their adversaries. It's not going to happen.

Other people may disagree. I think my views tend to be a little more what is referred to as realpolitik, but I think that is the reality.

I would add that virtually every organization that writes on these issues will say that, for example, we need inclusive dialogue and negotiations without preconditions. It is difficult to disagree with that, but it is easier said than done, especially in this case, where each group is so formidable.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

My other question was, how do you think Canada can play a referee role in this?

[The Chair, Liberal, Sameer Zuberi]

We'll have to take that question up in another round from one of the other members.

Next we'll move to Mr. Ehsassi for seven minutes.

Go ahead, please.

[Ali Ehsassi, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Allow me to thank both witnesses for their powerful yet harrowing testimony.

I'd like to start off with Mr. Spears.

Mr. Spears, could you explain to us how international humanitarian mechanisms have been able to deal with all of the challenges on the ground?

[Dr. Ian Spears]

I'm not sure I'm the best person to answer this question, because I don't think they've been able to deal with this.

Twenty-five years ago, I met with one of your colleagues, John Bosley, in Addis Ababa, and he told me that there was very little that Canada could do—maybe I can answer both of these questions—because the belligerents themselves—

[Ali Ehsassi, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Mr. Spears, I'm asking about international humanitarian efforts, not Canada's role.

[Dr. Ian Spears]

Well, for humanitarian efforts, then, you have to find a way to get the parties on the ground to allow humanitarian efforts in the country. Right now, the government in Addis Ababa is blocking that. Of course, it is a sovereign state, and it has been quite effective in blocking any access, especially when there are, as has been stated quite clearly and quite powerfully, atrocities being committed.

The only thing that I think can be done.... Ethiopia is uniquely situated, I suppose, because it has been an ally of the west, especially the United States, so there is the capacity to lean on it and effectively coerce it into allowing humanitarian organizations to enter the country. That is really the only thing—and then just leaving it to them to provide those services.

[Ali Ehsassi, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

With the exception of the U.S.—which, as you explained, has an alliance with the Ethiopian government, it seems—what can other members of the international community do to ensure that humanitarian assistance isn't being impeded, that it's not being stymied? What kind of pressure can other members of the international community subject the government to?