Canada Denies Visa For Chief African Biosafety Negotiator
Posted on Thursday, May 19 at 17:50 by Milton
To demand that the Canadian government issue a visa to Dr. Tewolde immediately, please email, call or fax:
Hon. Pierre Pettigrew, Minister of Foreign Affairs,
Email:Pettigrew.P@parl.gc.ca Telephone (613) 995-8872
Fax: (613) 995-9926
Hon. Andy Mitchell ,Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food,
Mitchell.A@parl.gc.ca Telephone:(613) 996-3434 Fax:
(613) 991-2147
Hon. Stéphane Dion, Minister of the Environment,
stephane.dion@ec.gc.ca Telephone: (613) 996-5789
Fax: (613) 996-6562
Hon. Hon. Joseph Volpe, Minister of Citizenship and
Immigration, Volpe.J@parl.gc.ca Telephone: (613) 992-
6361 Fax: (613) 992-9791
Dr. Tewolde is the recipient of a number of awards and honours for his work in defending biodiversity and the environment. In particular, he received the Right Livelihood Award (also known as the Alternative Nobel Prize). Dr. Tewolde has been one of the most well-known leaders among African diplomats addressing environmental issues. However, his positions have not been popular with the Canadian government.
"I had planned to participate in these negotiations and continue with trying to help finalize the unfinished business of protecting biodiversity and human beings," wrote Dr. Tewolde in a letter sent today to colleagues around the world. "Now that I have been prevented from coming to Montreal, who knows which ones of you will be prevented next time?" he wrote.
Canada's Record:
Canada has thus far failed to ratify the UN biosafety protocol and is known to be opposed to both GM compulsory labeling and liability.
During the negotiations on a UN treaty on crop genetic resources adopted in Rome last year, Dr. Tewolde spoke on behalf of all developing countries in demanding the right of farmers to save and exchange seeds and in opposing "life patenting" (intellectual property over biological products and processes). In the negotiations that led up to the Cartagena Protocol, the Ethiopian clashed with his Canadian counterparts, demanding higher standards to prevent GM contamination. At UN meetings in Montreal and around the world, Dr. Tewolde has spoken passionately against "Terminator" technology
(genetically modified seed rendered sterile at harvest time, forcing farmers to buy new seeds each growing season). In February, the Canadian government was prepared to dismantle a de facto moratorium on Terminator at a UN biodiversity meeting in Bangkok.
Please read this important message from Tewolde Egziabher:
SOURCE: Tewolde Berhan Gebre Egziabher, Ethiopia
DATE: 17 May 2005
It will be recalled that the final showdown in the negotiations on the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety involved a Canadian delegate negotiating on behalf of the Miami Group (Canada, USA, Argentina, Uruguay and Chile), a European Commission delegate negotiating on behalf of the European Union, and myself negotiating on behalf of the developing countries including China, with the exception of Argentina, Uruguay and Chile. It will also be recalled that the two main issues left pending during the final negotiation session of the Protocol in 2000, to be negotiated and settled soon after the Protocol comes into force, were identification (labelling) (see Article 18.2 (a)) and liability and redress (See Article 27).
The issue of identification has to be settled in COP/MOP 2 in Montreal, 30 May-3 June 2005, and I expect that the shape of the future negotiations on liability and redress will be determined in the
preceding 3-day meeting of the 1st Ad Hoc Open-ended Working Group of
Legal and Technical Experts on Liability and Redress on 25 -27 May 2005.
Both meetings will take place in Montreal, Canada, in the territory of a State which is not a Party to the Protocol.
I had planned to participate in these negotiations and continue with trying to help finalize the unfinished business of protecting biodiversity and human beings.
In a related forum under the auspices of the FAO, I helped negotiate the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture as the chief negotiator of the African Group. In this treaty also, we have an unfinished business - that of negotiating a Material Transfer Agreement to go with the Treaty.
On the 11th and 12th of May 2005 we were to have an African Preparatory Meeting on the Material Transfer Agreement in Lusaka, Zambia. On the 19th and 20th of May 2005 we were to have an inter-regional meeting on the same issue in Oslo, Norway.
From Oslo, I was to travel to Montreal via London.
Based on these facts, I planned my travels and obtained all my visas for Zambia, the Schengen States, and the United Kingdom and sent my
diplomatic passport to the Canadian Embassy in Addis Ababa for the
Canadian visa.
They gave me some highly complex forms to fill in. I filled them in. The passport and the forms duly filled in were sent to the Canadian High Commission in Nairobi by courier on 5 May 2005.
The Canadian High Commission sent me back even more complicated
additional forms to fill in. I filled them in immediately and sent them back on 10 May 2005 together with clear information on all my travel plans.
I should have left for Lusaka on 10 May 2005. So, I missed the African
Preparatory meeting on the Material Transfer Agreement of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture because my passport was still in the Canadian High Commission in Nairobi.
Today is the 17th of May 2005. My passport returned from Nairobi and was given to me this morning at 10:00. The British Airways flight which was to take me to Oslo had already left in the night. Therefore I will not be able to attend the meeting in Oslo. My passport came back to me without a Canadian visa. Therefore, I am not going to Montreal to attend the liability and readdress and COP/MOP 2 negotiations either.
What a neat instrument of interfering with negotiations to which you are not a party, refusing an entry visa has become!
My friends, we have passed various hurdles in assuring our rights for
fairness and justice in both the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety and in the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and
Agriculture.
I am writing this letter to you all for the following reasons:
1. I would like to urge all Parties to the Cartagena Protocol on
Biosafety to continue withstanding the ex-Miami Group and keep insisting on:
a. Clear labelling on all genetically engineered commodities;
b. State liability in cases of damage to the environment and/or human
beings arising from products of genetic engineering;
c. Entitlement to full compensation in cases of damage to the environment and/or human beings;
d. Burden of proof of any product of genetic engineering not being the
cause of damage resting on the country exporting that product;
e. Venue of litigation and enforcement of judgement being in the country where the damage occurred and not in the country of export.
2. But, now that I have been prevented from coming to Montreal, who
knows which ones of you will be prevented next time? Should we allow the country where our own Secretariat of the CBD is located to become the sieve to let pass only those of us it wants to participate in negotiations?
I protest, and I invite you to join me in the protest, to the Government of Canada. If this act of sieving by Canada continues, I suggest that we either move our Secretariat of the CBD elsewhere, or at least refuse to hold any negotiation sessions in Canada.
3. I would like to urge you all my African and other friends in the
Material Transfer Agreement discussions to ensure a common understanding on aiming at communally obtaining the benefits that the CBD entitles us,
i.e.
a) Research on the genetic resources accessed to be carried out "with
the full participation of" the Parties that need to develop their
capacities ( Art. 15.6);
b) Research to be carried out in the territories of the Parties that
need to develop their capacities (Art. 15.6);
c) Research results to be made available to Parties (Art.15.7);
d) Financial benefits to be shared with the Parties (Art.15.7);
e) Technologies generated to be transferred to the Parties (Art. 16);
f) The continuing right to revise the Material Transfer Agreement to be maintained by the Parties to make it consistent with developments in the CBD, especially with the outcome of the ongoing negotiations on access and benefit-sharing.
Of course, in spite of this present hindrance by the Canadian High
Commission in Nairobi, I will try to get on the processes with you at a later stage.
Please, in the mean time, negotiate effectively.
With best wishes for you all,
Tewolde Berhan Gebre Egziabher
[Proofreader's note: this article was edited for spelling and typos on May 23, 2005]
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These days, if you are not confused, you are not thinking clearly. Mrs. Irene Peters
<a href="http://www.greenpeace.ca/e/action/bsp/index.php">http://www.greenpeace.ca/e/action/bsp/index.php</a><p>---<br>These days, if you are not confused, you are not thinking clearly. Mrs. Irene Peters
The entire "oil for food" fiasco has been proven to bear no wrongdoing by anyone but the Americans. Americans cause all the world's problems.
Meanwhile, the current corrupt implementation of Canadian government via mafioso absentia, is seen as a farce, both inside and outside Canada.
So, instead, I propose: Canadians for Kofi!
Think how much money could be saved keeping the world safe from itself if only Canada performed this act of submission to the self-annointed for the good of the world!
Let's all write letters and emails to our local paper! Title them "Canadians for Submission to Global Presidential Decrees".
Eh?
---
Dave Ruston
A very sad country, Canada.
---
Vera Gottlieb
<br />
PRESS RELEASE<br />
For immediate release<br />
<br />
Contact: Beth Burrows (425-775-5383, at the Edmonds Institute until May 24,<br />
1-514-845-9803 - Hotel Manoir des Alpes - after May 24)<br />
<br />
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *<br />
<br />
<br />
"Farmers Denied Entry Visa to Canada to Tell Their Story"<br />
<br />
"Keeping out the Opposition or Just the Usual Treatment for the Third World?"<br />
<br />
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *<br />
<br />
Edmonds, Washington and New Delhi, India. Today, in a story that began late last week when Canada denied an entry visa to Dr. Tewolde Berhan Gebre Egziabher, the Ethiopian government’s chief scientist and its representative to the Montreal-based UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), two farmers from India were denied visas to attend the same meeting that Tewolde was hoping to attend. The meeting begins Wednesday, May 25 in Montreal, Canada..<br />
<br />
Professor Kavulakunpla Ramanna Chowdry, a farmer, retired professor of agricultural economics, and adviser to the Andhra Pradesh state government, and Kaka Ramakrishna, a farmer who suffered huge losses to the recent Bt cotton disaster in his region, were scheduled to speak about their experiences with the genetically engineered cotton at a side event at the Convention on Biological Diversity, which headquarters in Montreal. The side event, aptly entitled "Lie Ability and Liability", was to have been sponsored by the Edmonds Institute, which headquarters in Edmonds, Washington, and the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology (RFSTE), which headquarters in New Delhi, India.<br />
<br />
"I don't know whether this is about keeping the opposition out of Canada," said Beth Burrows, Edmonds Institute director referring to the fact that Canada is an ardent proponent of genetically engineering, "or whether this is about Canada's usual treatment of people from the Third World."<br />
<br />
"After their visas were denied," she added, "the farmers were invited to reapply, provided they showed their bank records and that of the Edmonds Institute, a non-governmental organization that has been following the Convention on Biological Diversity since before it began."<br />
<br />
"Afsar Jafri, of RFSTE, called me from India this morning to tell me about it. The farmers were there. We all felt so bad. It was too late to reapply. The event is the day after tomorrow."<br />
<br />
"My apologies to people in the Third World," said Burrows, "I should have protested this kind of thing long ago. I had no idea that this was going on as a general rule. I learned just this morning that Canada - which I have always thought of as a lovely country - does this all the time to visitors from the South."<br />
<br />
"I have brought many people to lecture at side events before and never had a problem like this. Despite the bank account request, it can't be about money. I mean, if everyone had to show their bank account, all the people from all the debtor countries in the world - the United States included - wouldn't be allowed to enter Canada. It must be about something else."<br />
<br />
<br />
For more details contact:<br />
Beth Burrows<br />
Edmonds Institute<br />
Until May 24: 1-425-775-5383 (in Edmonds, Washington)<br />
After May 24: 1-514-845-9803 (in Montreal, Canada)<br />
<br />
Afsar Jafri<br />
Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology<br />
phone: 91-11-26968077 or 91-11-26853772 (in New Delhi, India)<br />
<br />
* * * * * * * * * *<br />
<br />
The Edmonds Institute is a non-profit public interest group that is recognized as a 501(c)(30 organization by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service. Focused on education about environment and technology, the Institute is registered as a non-profit corporation and a public charity in the State of Washington.<br />
<br />
Edmonds Institute<br />
20319-92nd Avenue West<br />
Edmonds, Washington 98020 USA<br />
phone: 425-775-5383<br />
email: beb@igc.org<br />
website: < <a href="http://www.edmonds-institute.org">http://www.edmonds-institute.org</a> ><br />
<br />
Dear Friends,
On 17 May 2005, I informed you by e-mail of my problems with obtaining a visa to enter Canada for the biosafety negotiations which will take place in Montreal from 25 May to 3 June 2005. On 20 May 2005 I sent you an update. I have still not got a visa to Canada. So, I am now giving you a second update.
Today is 23 May 2005. Inspite of intimations from some quarters that I will get a Canadian visa, I still do not know when, or if at all, I will get that elusive visa. I would not be the first one prevented from going to Montreal on legitimate government duty demanded by international agreements because Canadian immigration authorities failed to honour their commitment to facilitate the giving of visas to delegates. My colleague at the Environmental Protection Authority of Ethiopia, Mr. Dereje Agonafir, was to participate in the meeting of the Expert Group on Outcome-oriented Targets for the Programmes of Work on the Biodiversity of Inland Water Ecosystems and Marine and Coastal Ecosystems, 25-27 October 2004. He was refused a Canadian visa. I then wrote a protest letter of the High Commission of Canada in Nairobi. I know of another Ethiopian refused a visa in 2004. He was to attend a meeting of the International Civil Aviation Organization.
This means that now I cannot give the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity a precise enough travel plan to enable them to arrange my flight to Montreal, which they kindly do because I am a delegate from one of the poorest of countries.
The negotiations on liability and redress under the Cartagena Protocol will start the day after tomorrow, on 25 May 2005. Whatever happens tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after..., therefore, it now looks certain that I will have been prevented from joining you in those negotiations. Of course, I will keep on trying to join you at any time before and including 3 June 2005.
Now, it seems certain that I have failed in my duty of trying to help put in place an international liability and redress regime to protect the interests of the poor of my country, the poor of the world, and the biodiversity of the biosphere from adventurism in genetic engineering. I hold the Government of Canada responsible for my forced dereliction of duty.
Given this, I would demand redress from the Government of Canada if I could. But we, the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, have not passed any binding decision that I know of to enable me to do that. If I am wrong in my understanding, I would appeal to those of you my friends who read this Second update and who know the law better than I do to advise me. In the mean time, I will set aside the issue of liability and redress concerning my forced dereliction of duty and focus on the future.
Many of you will recall that, in 1998 in Montreal when we were negotiating the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, the delegations of the industrialized countries refused to even consider liability and redress in genetic engineering. Those of us from the developing countries had to refuse to consider any issue other than liability and redress before we could arrive at a compromise. This compromise was to start negotiating on an international regime on liability and redress when the Protocol has come into force (See Article 27 of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety). Now, 7 years later, I have a feeling of déjà vu of a Miami Group behaviour. Shall we keep being haunted by past scenes of disharmony instead of looking forward only because our Secretariat is in Canada? I suggest that you exorcise the unpleasant past by passing a decision like the following at COP/MOP 2:
A) Any delegate shall be given a visa by the Government of Canada on demand provided that that demand is conveyed formally from the delegate's Government which is a Party to the Convention on Biological Diversity or any protocol emanating from it to the effect that the delegate will be travelling to Canada for work related to the Convention on Biological Diversity or to any protocol emanating from it.
B) One refusal or delay by the Government of Canada in issuing a visa requested as in (a) above that results in any diminition of participation by the delegate in the planned work shall become sufficient ground for the closure of the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity in Montreal and its transfer to the territory of another Party. The complete transfer of the Secretariat shall be effected within 2 years from the date when the impeded work of the delegate was to have began.
Today is a public holiday in Canada-Queen Victoria's birthday. I expect that this holiday will delay whatever might have happened with my request for a Canadian visa. In any case, I join all Canadians in commemorating this symbolic day. I invite you all my friends from the rest of the world to join them as well. I will tell you how I will commemorate it.
I will be remembering the genocide that wiped out the Carribs and other indigenous peoples in the New World; I will be remembering the millions of my fellow Africans who perished opposing slavery and who suffered as slaves; I will be remembering the millions of all our ancestors who died opposing colonialism and those who survived to become disposable objects on their own lands; I will be remembering our parents who freed us from colonialism and died in improving our chances of enjoying the dignity that life deserves. Obviously, I will be remembering the opposite of what the Canadian public holiday formally commemorates, which I presum is the greatness of the Victorian era. But I know that many Canadians will join me in remembering also what I will be remembering. Globalization has scrambled not only the genome, but also the globe; not only biology, but also geography. Geography has not yet been scrambled enough to bring me to Montreal at any time I want, but it is scrambled enough to make Montreal hear and see Addis Ababa and vice versa. I will thus be thinking also of the scrambled world; not only of the scrambled genome. I will be thinking of the thousands who died in Rwanda, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, Liberia and the United States. I will be thinking of the thousands who are dying in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Congo Democratic Republic and the Sudan. I will also be thinking of the thousands who died of the tsunami in South-East Asia, South Asia and Eastern Africa. I will be thinking of the destruction of humans and other forms of life that could be prevented and that is being promoted. I will be thinking of the many species that are becoming extinct.
But I am an optimist. The global scrambling is going to be fully harnessed to save life. It is only the baggage from the Victorian era that is still causing destruction. However, the scrambling caused by globalization makes it easy for us to leave this baggage on the wayside of history. My ancestors who valiantly fought and kept out colonial Western Europe would, if they could now see, be gratified with the support that I, their less significant descendant, am getting from all of you in the world, including from those of you in Western Europe, and especially from those of you in North America!
For the time being, this is all that I feel that I need to say to you in way of updating you, my friends. Of course, I am happy that those who are not my friends are also updated.
Thank you all for your tremendous moral support, my friends. And I assure you that I will not be demoralized by those who are not my friends.
Your comrade in the search for safety for all life, especially for the safety of the poor of the Earth,
Tewolde Berhan Gebre Egziabher
Cc:- - Dr. Hamdallah Zedan, Executive Secretary of the CBD
secretariat@biodiv.org
Montreal, Canada
To:
Hon. Pierre Pettigrew, Minister of Foreign Affairs,
Email:Pettigrew.P@parl.gc.ca Telephone (613) 995-8872
Fax: (613) 995-9926
Hon. Andy Mitchell ,Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food,
Mitchell.A@parl.gc.ca Telephone:(613) 996-3434 Fax:
(613) 991-2147
Hon. Stéphane Dion, Minister of the Environment,
stephane.dion@ec.gc.ca Telephone: (613) 996-5789
Fax: (613) 996-6562
Hon. Hon. Joseph Volpe, Minister of Citizenship and
Immigration, Volpe.J@parl.gc.ca Telephone: (613) 992-
6361 Fax: (613) 992-9791
Dear sirs:
The following has come to my attention:
Edmonds, Washington and New Delhi, India.
Today, in a story that began late last week when Canada denied an entry visa to Dr. Tewolde Berhan Gebre Egziabher, the Ethiopian government’s chief scientist and its representative to the Montreal-based UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), two farmers from India were denied visas to attend the same meeting that Tewolde was hoping to attend. The meeting begins Wednesday, May 25 in Montreal, Canada..
Professor Kavulakunpla Ramanna Chowdry, a farmer, retired professor of agricultural economics, and adviser to the Andhra Pradesh state government, and Kaka Ramakrishna, a farmer who suffered huge losses to the recent Bt cotton disaster in his region, were scheduled to speak about their experiences with the genetically engineered cotton at a side event at the Convention on Biological Diversity, which headquarters in Montreal. The side event, aptly entitled "Lie Ability and Liability", was to have been sponsored by the Edmonds Institute, which headquarters in Edmonds, Washington, and the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology (RFSTE), which headquarters in New Delhi, India.
What are you people trying to pull!!? This kind of shoddy behaviour is entirely unacceptable. If amends are not made to ensure that this obstructionism ceases permanently, I intend to go door to door in my community to make sure that a liberal or conservative is never elected in this constituency again.
Apologies and monetary reimbursement for any losses incurred should be immediately issued to these three people.
Sincerely Yours
Please everyone, let's not ignore this one. Send a letter or make that call. <br />
Another article on this:<br />
Special report: Global biotech battle heats up in Montreal <br />
<a href="http://www.foodproductiondaily.com/news/news-ng.asp?n=60154-special-report-biotech">http://www.foodproductiondaily.com/news/news-ng.asp?n=60154-special-report-biotech</a><br />
<p>---<br>These days, if you are not confused, you are not thinking clearly. Mrs. Irene Peters