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Eritrean minister denied Canadian visa

Written by Lesley Ciarula Taylor

Saturday, 13 September 2008

Entire government shares same rebel past, community leader says - The entire Eritrean government belongs to the former rebel army that Canada used as a reason to refuse entry to its foreign minister, the director of Toronto's Eritrean Cultural Centre said yesterday.

"This is a foolish act on the part of the Canadian government. It is embarrassing," said Estifanos Mehari, who described himself as a proud member of the Eritrean People's Liberation Front and "a proud Canadian, too."

Foreign minister Osman Saleh Mohammed learned he was being denied a visitor's visa in an undated letter from immigration counsellor Tracey Vansickle at the Canadian High Commission in Kenya, who cited his membership in the EPLF between 1979 and 1991.

"The EPLF was a group that engaged in the subversion of a government by force," Vansickle wrote. "Canadian Federal Court jurisprudence confirms that membership in a group that attempts to subvert even a despotic government is sufficient to render inadmissibility."

Saleh Mohammed was to have visited the city for an annual festival marking the East African nation's hard-fought independence from Ethiopia in the early 1990s.

About 2,000 attended the Aug. 2-4 event at Earlscourt Park.

The front was one of the rebel groups that liberated Eritrea, with which Canada set up full diplomatic ties in 1993. Saleh Mohammed was its first education minister.

"This guy is a hero," said Mehari. Canada has never before refused entry to an Eritrean official, he said, even though "100 per cent of the government of Eritrea are proud members of the EPLF" who are "creating a nation from scratch."

"Is it sheer ignorance by a junior government official or a deliberate desire by the Government of Canada to desecrate Eritrea's legitimate struggle against colonial occupation?" the foreign minister said in a release. It said Eritrea "strongly condemns this hostile act and expressly requests the Canadian authorities to rectify this outrageous conduct."

Canadian foreign affairs spokesperson Rodney Moore insisted it was an immigration matter rather than a diplomatic one and declined to comment further.

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