Option Them Out

"The Monitoring Group has confirmed that the collection of such taxes routinely involves threats, harassment and intimidation against the individual concerned or relatives in Eritrea.  Eritrea has failed to comply with Security Council resolutions and remains a destabilizing influence throughout much of the region." 

Eritrea represents one of the world's least developed of countries, it is a one-party state with a population of six million people, ranked last by the group Reporters Without Borders for press freedom.  The country has no formal economy and remains dependent on 'taxation' of its diaspora population living abroad for income.

This informal kind of 'taxation', of Eritreans living outside the country, having escaped the repressive regime that oppressed and circumscribed their lives, infuriates Eritreans who sometimes find they have little option but to submit to the extortion, under threat of reprisals from the government, visiting harm on family members still living in Eritrea.

The country has a consulate operating out of Toronto.  It is through that office, operated by Semere Ghebremariam Micael, that contact with Eritrean-Canadians is made and the 'taxation' overtures are made.  The UN report outlining the way in which Eritrea has continued to violate a UN Security Council embargo on Eritrea and Somalia points to the regime continuing to "harbor, train and equip" armed groups.

Military officials have been found to be trafficking migrants and weapons into Sudan and the Middle East.  Eritrea has given assistance to Somalian jihadists, Al Shabaab, linked to al-Qaeda.  "Eritrea has failed to comply with Security Council resolutions and remains a destabilizing influence throughout much of the region", according to the UN report.

An Eritrean activist, Ghezae Hagos along with other rights campaigners has written to the Canada Border Service Agency with the complaint that members of the Eritrean military are planning to visit Toronto and Calgary to raise funds.  The funds ostensibly to be used for social programs, but funding arms purchases for the military.

UN investigators who visited Canada discovered that the consulate in Toronto was busily collecting taxes for the specific purpose of the Eritrean military.  One can only wonder what CSIS and the RCMP have been so busy doing that they appear to have missed this one. 

That it takes UN 'investigators' to uncover this kind of extreme irregularity and not Canada's security establishment.... Even if the lead investigator is a Canadian, Matt Bryden.

"The answer is clear: Close the Eritrean consulate in Toronto.  That is the sponsor of extortion, fraudulent fundraisers and violator of Canadian laws and international obligations", says Ghezae Hagos.