Evidence of meeting #16 for Subcommittee on International Human Rights in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was ethiopian.
A video is available from Parliament.
Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Guelph, As an Individual
Is that directed towards me?
Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Guelph, As an Individual
I have no doubt that it is happening. At what point it becomes genocide, in the sense that you want to acknowledge it, I'm not sure. I'm not sure it would be constructive. It would, I suspect, further alienate the government in Addis Ababa. However, I have no doubt that the government sees that as part of its objective.
October 21st, 2022 / 9:45 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Sameer Zuberi
Thank you.
We're going to continue on to Mr. Brunelle-Duceppe, for two minutes, please.
Bloc
Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe Bloc Lac-Saint-Jean, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'm going to draw an analogy with the study we did on the Uighurs. The second the committee used the word “genocide”, the issue began to garner more media coverage. Canada had to face up to its responsibility.
Mr. Gebreluel, someone said earlier that Canada was doing something, and the proof is that we are conducting a study on the situation in Tigray. That study, however, was proposed by opposition parties. We have yet to hear anything from the Government of Canada, in other words, the Prime Minister and cabinet.
Do you think it would help matters to call a spade a spade and to say that a genocide organized by the Ethiopian government is currently being carried out in Tigray against Tigrayans?
Would that make it easier for Canada to intervene?
Postdoctoral Fellow, Yale University, As an Individual
Thank you for your question.
Yes, most certainly, I think it's important to notice that we've had three years of this war now. In these three years, we've pursued a particular diplomatic approach internationally, which is quiet diplomacy and not confronting the government—really, a policy of appeasement.
It's important to ask what that policy has produced. It has produced 600,000 casualties in Tigray and it has plunged Ethiopia further down into chaos. I think that at this point, it's fair enough—we have enough evidence—to conclude that the diplomatic approach has not succeeded, and there's no reason to think that it will succeed.
Not calling a spade a spade has only emboldened the Ethiopian government. They're continuing to make these genocidal statements in public. I think it's an indication that, really, they have understood that the international community has decided not to confront Ethiopia regardless of what it does, and I think that's very dangerous. I think that getting a genocide declaration out in public will really put pressure on other international actors. It will put pressure on those who are fuelling the war by providing weapons, countries like the UAE, Turkey—
Liberal
NDP
Heather McPherson NDP Edmonton Strathcona, AB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Again, thank you to our witnesses.
I'm going to echo what my colleague from the Bloc said, which is that we have heard members of all parties speak about this, but we have not heard from the government. I have here a list of letter after letter that I have written to the Minister of International Development and the Minister of Foreign Affairs. I have received zero responses to those letters. I'm shocked that we are not hearing from them, and I will be writing them again to urge them for a response.
I want to take this last little bit of time.... I know we have cut you off repeatedly, Dr. Spears, so I want to give you the last minute to talk a bit more, please, about the African Union and the multilateral institutions and the roles they can play in this conflict.
Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Guelph, As an Individual
Well, the African Union has been involved. The problem is that it is not necessarily seen as an impartial body. The African Union is based in Addis Ababa, as you may or may not know. The former Nigerian president, Olusegun Obasanjo, has inserted himself quite actively in this process, but he is seen as too close to the Government of Ethiopia.
I think the African Union is obviously interested in solving this problem. They do not like having the attention on one of its member states. One of the problems is that the African Union is seen as being potentially biased in favour of the government.
If you're asking about a role that is non-African.... I mean, the African Union is often pointed to as an African solution to African problems, but in this case, it's a troublesome one. It may be that other states have to get involved. The issue is that finding a body that is agreeable to both sides is itself a challenge—
Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Guelph, As an Individual
Yes, I think so.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Sameer Zuberi
We'll leave it at that.
Thank you to the witnesses for being here in this first panel. Your testimony is extremely important and is going to be included in the report. I want to thank you again, Dr. Gebreluel, post-doctoral fellow at Yale University, and Dr. Ian Spears, associate professor of political science at the University of Guelph. Thanks for being here.
We're now going to switch it up with our other witnesses and take a moment's break while we do that.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Sameer Zuberi
We're going to resume our meeting.
Thank you to all the witnesses for being with us today.
We have two expert witnesses today. This is the second of three meetings that we're going to be having on the situation in Tigray.
We will have five minutes of introductory remarks from our witnesses. While you're speaking, if you'd like to see how much time you have, I'll put up my hand up at one minute and signal when it's really close to the end. I'll cut you off after we hit five minutes.
We have with us today Dr. Hayelom Kebede Mekonen, who is a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Maryland. We also have Maître Sarah Teich from United Tegaru Canada. She is an international human rights lawyer.
We're going to start off with Dr. Mekonen.
You have five minutes for your opening remarks.
Dr. Hayelom Mekonen Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Maryland, As an Individual
Thank you very much for giving me a chance to speak to the committee.
Before I came to the United States, during the war I was in Tigray. I was an academic dean for the Mekelle University hospital, Ayder, in Tigray. I was witness to all the atrocities happening during the war as the COO of the university hospital.
Today I will only mention a few of the cases of sexual harassment and abuse that happened to girls and women. I was overseeing the transfer of these girls and women from our hospital to the safe house downtown in the city. I will only mention a few of the cases.
I'm sorry if some of the words are a bit disturbing. I'm just making an apology ahead of time.
The first one was a 65-year-old lady who came to our hospital. She presented with a complaint of gang rape. She was raped both anally and vaginally by five Eritrean troops, and she was also beaten with a stick. On examination, she had bruises on her back and her side, and she developed a second-degree perianal tear.
Another case was a six-year-old child, a girl. She presented at our hospital, and she was raped by the military in an area called Hawzen in front of her mother and father. Upon examination, it was found that she had developed a full-blown psychiatric problem, and she was admitted to the psychiatric ward.
Another case was a 21-year-old, a parent with a son, in her first month of postpartum after pregnancy. She was a lactating mother. She was abducted by Ethiopian military and Eritrean military from the outskirts of Mekele, and she was raped for two weeks by 12 assaulters. She had been weakened, and finally her husband was asked for a ransom to get his wife released, and he paid 5,000 Ethiopian birr to get her released after she had been in sexual slavery for two weeks in the camp of the Ethiopian military.
Another one was 30 years old. Before the war, she was on an antiretroviral drug. Then the assailants came, and they tried to rape her. She told them that she was HIV-positive, and they said they were okay with that because they wanted the virus to disseminate to all Tigrayan girls and women so that would help them. They raped her, four of them, and finally.... You can imagine how they are also transmitting the HIV virus to all the girls and women who have been raped. Finally, she had problems of rectal prolapse because they also abused her anally, and she also had psychiatric problems. She was also admitted to the psychiatric ward because she was completely, completely mentally lost.
Another patient was 19 years old. She was gang-raped in all orifices by 10 combined forces, Ethiopian, Eritrean and Amhara. She came from the western part of Tigray, and she had multiple lacerations in the perineum. She had also developed what's called “all orifices”—anal and vaginal orifices are combined—and she was not in a position to contain her urine and feces. She totally developed a fistula. She cannot sit properly, and she is also HIV-positive. She was also admitted to our hospital.
Another girl was 25 years old, and she came from Adigrat, which is 120 kilometres from Mekele, from the region. Eritrean troops had gang-raped her, and they put hot metal inside her body. She was completely devastated, and all her internal and external organs were damaged. She also came to our hospital. We could not help her because she developed a very high destruction of her body. She also developed a psychiatric problem and was admitted to a psychiatric ward.
Another example is that two of our medical students were taken at night by the Ethiopian military and they were raped. In the morning, I personally reported to the security apparatus in the region because medical students had been raped, and I was told to keep silent. These two women medical students...the perpetrators were in the street. They just moved with impunity, and they didn't face justice.
Another one was 52 years old, a para 5 mother. Before the war, she was diagnosed with cervical cancer, but after the war broke out, she was raped by two military Eritreans on the border of Eritrea. She was brought to our hospital, and on examination she had vaginal bleeding from the fragile cervical and vaginal mass and she also developed an offensive foul smell.
Another girl who came to our hospital was gang-raped, and inside her body they inserted a condom and some softer tissue to protect the bleeding. She came to our hospital, and our gynecology obstetrician removed all this stuff from her body. She was also admitted to the psychiatric ward.
One of the most important parts in this case...553 were diagnosed. This was before I left. I left Ethiopia in April 2021. Before I left, I witnessed 553 rape cases that came to our hospital. All of these were raped either by Ethiopian troops or by Eritrean and Amhara militia.
There is also—
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Sameer Zuberi
Thank you, Dr. Mekonen.
If you can give a concluding statement to your initial five minutes, you'll have more time to elaborate on this.
Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Maryland, As an Individual
My conclusion is that all of this rape is not just an incident; it is a systematic campaign to subjugate the whole of society so that they will live in fear and panic and be submissive to the central government.
In my view, all this amounts to a genocide and sexual slavery happening in Tigray.
Thank you very much.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Sameer Zuberi
Thank you for sharing those powerful truths with us.
We're now going to move to Maître Teich.
You have five minutes, and I invite you to keep an eye on the screen.
Sarah Teich International Human Rights Lawyer, United Tegaru Canada
Good morning. Thank you for inviting me to speak today on behalf of United Tegaru Canada.
It has been almost two years since the start of the conflict, and evidence has mounted of atrocity crimes and human rights abuses committed by Ethiopian and Eritrean forces against Tigrayans. There is evidence of sexual and gender-based violence, forced displacement, mass killings and cultural destruction in what Human Rights Watch has described as a “campaign of ethnic cleansing” targeting Tigrayans. Humanitarian access and aid have been blocked. There is also emerging evidence of genocide, and this is the crime on which I will focus the bulk of my oral submission.
Genocide is defined in the UN genocide convention and in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. The definition is identical in each instrument. Genocide occurs when any one of five underlying acts is “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”.
The five underlying acts are:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
In Tigray, there is growing evidence of genocide. At the least, there is evidence of a serious risk of genocide, which is enough to obligate Canada to act to prevent it, pursuant to Canada's own international legal obligations as a state party to the genocide convention.
First, and this relates to the first of the five underlying acts, there is substantial evidence that Tigrayans are being killed. Mass killings of Tigrayan civilians have permeated this conflict since November 2020, when hundreds of Tigrayans were massacred in Axum. There have also been killings in Humera and Mekele. The UN International Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia in its report last month documented that Ethiopian and allied forces are increasingly engaged in air strikes, indiscriminately killing and injuring Tigrayan civilians.
There is also substantial evidence that serious bodily and mental harm are being committed against Tigrayans, and that conditions of life such as famine and the denial of humanitarian access are being inflicted. These relate to the second and third underlying acts in the genocide convention, respectively. The UN international commission concluded that there are reasonable grounds to believe that Ethiopian and allied forces “implemented a widespread range of measures designed to systematically deprive the population of Tigray of material and services indispensable for its survival”. In other words, famine is being used as a weapon of war.
The requisite intent to destroy a group is often the hardest to prove, but in Tigray, there is mounting evidence of intent to destroy Tigrayans as a group.
Reporting by Human Rights Watch found sexual violence to be a defining feature of the conflict, and evidence of genocidal intent is evident from the testimony. For example, one 30-year-old survivor shared that as she was raped by four men, they said to her “you and your race are a foul, toilet-smelling race and should not be on our land”. The UN international commission found that Tigrayan women and girls are targeted with particular violence and brutality, and that attackers used dehumanizing language, suggestive of an intent to destroy the Tigrayan ethnicity. One Tigrayan woman was told, after she was gang-raped, “Our problem is with your womb” and “A Tigrayan womb should never give birth.”
Genocidal intent is also indicated by the indiscriminate targeting of civilians and by repopulation of Tigrayan areas in keeping with a governmental policy to change the ethnic character of the region. We heard earlier this morning about dehumanizing hate speech. All this is indicative of an intent to destroy, in whole or in part, the Tigrayan people.
This evidence of an intent to destroy, when paired with at least one of the five underlying acts, is indicative of genocide. At the least, the evidence documented so far in this conflict denotes a serious risk of genocide, which is enough under the law that Canada is obliged to act.
The next question becomes how Canada should act. Our fulsome recommendations to that effect are included in UTC's most recent brief, dated October 2022, which I am told you will receive next week.
Among other things, Canada should impose targeted sanctions on Ethiopian and Eritrean officials responsible, engage in criminal prosecutions using our universal jurisdiction laws, and resettle Tigrayan refugees, including the 65,000-plus who are currently in Sudan.
I will leave it there for now. I'll be happy to answer any questions.
Thank you.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Sameer Zuberi
Thank you for that, Ms. Teich.
We will now continue on to our first round of questions. I'm going to give five minutes per questioner in the first round, and two minutes in the second round.
We're going to start with Mr. Viersen for five minutes, please.
Conservative
Arnold Viersen Conservative Peace River—Westlock, AB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I thank our witnesses for being here.
There's a recurring theme coming out here, which is that we should recognize the genocide, that we should make a report to suggest that the Canadian government recognize the genocide that's happening in the Tigray region. How do we do that without participating in the political realities that are happening in Ethiopia? That's going to be the challenge, I think.
