“The Government of Eritrea
strongly condemns this hostile act and expressly requests the Canadian
authorities to rectify this outrageous conduct,” the Foreign Ministry said in a
statement. The government also posted a letter from Canada’s embassy in Kenya,
which said Osman Saleh’s involvement in the 1961-1991 war with Addis Ababa had
prevented him from getting a visa.
“You were a member of the
Eritrean People’s Liberation Front between 1979 and 1991. The EPLF was a group
that engaged in the subversion of a government by force,” the letter said.
“Canadian Federal Court jurisprudence confirms that membership in a group that
attempts to subvert even a despotic government is sufficient to render
inadmissibility,” it added.
Canadian officials in Nairobi
were not immediately available for comment. Some Western nations have been slow
to take Cold War-era African rebels off their old terrorist lists. In June, U.S.
lawmakers finally erased “terrorist” references to South Africa’s Nelson
Mandela.
Eritrea has recently
enjoyed relatively good relations with Canada, particularly compared to its
strained ties with the United States. Asmara accuses Washington of failing to
force Ethiopia to withdraw troops from a disputed border region. In its
statement, Eritrea’s Foreign Ministry said Canada’s move was an “embarrassing
aberration” in diplomatic conduct.
“What is more horrendous is,
however, the reasons that the country’s immigration authorities have given to
explain their provocative act,” Asmara said. During Osman’s time in the EPLF,
Eritrean rebels battled the forces of Ethiopian dictator Haile Mengistu Mariam,
whose “Red Terror” regime murdered tens of thousands until he was overthrown in
1991. Eritrea and Ethiopia went to war in 1998 over the Horn of Africa
neighbours’ frontier, killing 70,000 people. Both nations remain deadlocked over
the 1000-km (620-mile) border.
