Talisman - Sudan: Why Canada got serious - Globe & Mail, October 28
A highly organized campaign to get Western governments to do
something about the African nation's civil war is starting to work
PAUL KNOX
IN TORONTO -- When the militiamen rode into town on horseback,
killing villagers with bursts of automatic-rifle fire, Victoria Ajang gathered
up her three children and fled.
Pregnant and terrified, she walked for weeks through the scrublands of
southern Sudan, finally reaching the Kenyan border and the safety of a
refugee camp.
She now lives in Missouri, but the civil war that drove her from Sudan is
still raging. And so is a battle for the conscience of North Americans.
"A human being is a human being," Ms. Ajang, 33, said by telephone this
week. "Imagine the poor people still running around. . . . Try to be
concerned. Why are they being neglected like that?"
A campaign against the war and the practice of slavery in Sudan is
gathering force among Sudanese exiles and their supporters in Canada
and the United States.
Increasingly, it is focusing on Calgary-based Talisman Energy Inc.,
Canada's largest independent oil producer, which has a 25-per-cent
stake in a rich Sudanese oil project.
Talisman says it is introducing "North American ideas, standards and
values" to a poor northeastern African land. Ms. Ajang says that's
rubbish.
She says the oil project helps to perpetuate the domination of Christians
like herself and other southern Sudanese by Muslims from the north. She
wants Talisman to get out.
"I would like Canada to be the best friend of the south," she said. "If
Talisman would leave immediately, the [Sudanese] government would
try to investigate, will find out the reason and will know why the
Canadians left."
In Ottawa and in Washington, they are listening to people like Ms.
Ajang.
On Saturday, U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said she was
dismayed that anyone could think the oil project would benefit the
masses in an authoritarian country such as Sudan. "I am definitely going
to talk to the Canadians about this," she told reporters after a visit to
Africa.
Three days later, Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Lloyd Axworthy
announced a package of new measures on Sudan. He appointed a
Canadian envoy to peace talks chaired by Kenya and dispatched a team
to Sudan to determine whether Talisman is helping prop up a
human-rights-abusing, slave-trafficking regime.
Canada "will view with the gravest concern evidence linking
private-sector interests to violations of human rights or humanitarian law,"
a statement from Mr. Axworthy said.
That was strong language for Ottawa. Individual companies are rarely
singled out for foreign-policy action, but Mr. Axworthy announced that
he will meet Talisman president Jim Buckee next week and ask the
company to observe the government's voluntary code of business ethics.
Mr. Buckee rejects allegations of complicity in slavery or the war.
Sudan is racked by tension between the arid north, populated mainly by
Arab Muslims, and the rainy south, where black Christian and animist
groups live.
Southern Sudanese have been fighting the northern-dominated
government for most of the past four decades. The battle began over
southern demands for better treatment and fairer distribution of national
wealth.
It spread to other parts of the country after 1989, when the
fundamentalist National Islamic Front seized power in a coup d'‚tat. The
major southern antigovernment force is the Sudanese People's Liberation
Army, led by John Garang.
United Nations estimates say two million people have died in the latest
phase of the fighting, which began in 1983. An estimated four million
have been uprooted.
Southerners have deep-rooted grievances. In recent years, the practice
of slaving -- suppressed during British colonial rule -- has resurfaced.
Arab northerners, aided by government measures, have raided southern
villages to carry off slaves for use as domestic servants, farm workers or
mistresses.
Western antislavery groups, many of them Christian in orientation, have
made widely publicized visits to buy the freedom of scores of southern
Sudanese slaves.
Other advocates say such campaigns help perpetuate slavery by
artificially supporting the market for slaves. But everyone believes that
slavery, poverty and Sudan's other ills would be far more treatable if the
war ended.
Talisman bought into the conflict in October of last year.
It bought Arakis Energy Corp. of Vancouver, acquiring a 25-per-cent
interest in the Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Co., whose partners are
the Sudanese government and the state petroleum companies of China
and Malaysia. Its investment currently stands at $735-million.
That gave activists a target -- especially after tankers in August began
loading oil from the project, which is piped to Port Sudan on the Red
Sea.
"As long as the oil company was Arakis, which nobody knew about,
nobody cared," Talisman spokesman David Mann said. "Talisman
becomes an easy target for groups with their own agendas."
Talisman's stock trades on the Toronto, Montreal and New York
exchanges, and U.S. activists are calling for shareholders to dump it in
protest.
So far, most Canadian churches and aid agencies have been more
cautious. A 12-member coalition welcomed Mr. Axworthy's statement
yesterday.
"It's taken a lot of effort to get a policy statement of this nature," said
Gary Kenny of the Inter-Church Coalition on Africa. "We want to give it
the benefit of the doubt at the moment."
One tireless U.S. campaigner is Eric Reeves, an English professor at
Smith College in Northampton, Mass., who jokes that writing
newspaper commentaries denouncing Sudan and Talisman "is what I do
for a living now."
He said he was gripped by the Sudan issue after a conversation in
January with the U.S. executive director of medical-relief charity Doctors
Without Borders, Joelle Tanguy.
Ms. Tanguy was "halfway to despair," he recalled, because she couldn't
find a way to publicize the plight of the southern Sudanese.
"I resolved that when she spoke about the need for a champion, I would
see what I could do." His articles have been published in several U.S.
and Canadian newspapers, including The Globe and Mail.
Mr. Reeves is trying to get Smith College to adopt a statement saying it
will not buy Talisman shares.
In a defence of Talisman's position, Mr. Buckee said in a written
statement: "Intertribal fighting . . . associated with cattle raiding and
hostage taking" was responsible for much of the fighting in Sudan. "All of
this is abhorrent activity but not what is normally thought of as slavery,"
he said.
But Ms. Ajang said it was wrong to call raids by government-linked
militias "intertribal fighting."
"This is what the Sudanese government wants you to believe -- that the
problem is not so serious, and that minor raids occur on all sides," she
said in a letter to the college.
Ms. Ajang caught the attention of the Boston-based American
Anti-Slavery Group in March. Its African affairs director, Samuel
Cotton, heard her speak about her experiences at a reception in Kansas
City.
The group took her to Washington to speak to a hearing on Sudan held
by two subcommittees of the House of Representatives, along with
AASG head Charles Jacobs.
In July, the group began calling for investors to sell their Talisman
shares. The divestment effort recalls similar campaigns aimed at curtailing
investment in South Africa, which were credited with helping end
apartheid.
Divestment "sends a message to Talisman and any other company who
would consider going in," said Jesse Sage of the AASG.
Canadian church, labour and aid-agency activists met Mr. Buckee on
July 15 to press their concerns and followed up with a meeting with Mr.
Axworthy.
Dave Toycen, president of World Vision of Canada, said the agency
decided to step up its efforts after realizing that oil was about to begin
flowing through the pipeline. It had been hearing reports for years about
deteriorating conditions from its relief workers on the scene.
Mr. Toycen said Talisman must show that its participation in the oil
project is persuading the Sudanese government to clean up its act.
"What's frustrating to us is that we've not seen any evidence that their
influence is being used constructively," he said.
World Vision, one of Canada's largest foreign-aid charities, holds a few
Talisman shares and would consider giving them up, he said.
But with the investigation Mr. Axworthy has ordered, "We will have an
even clearer view on issues of human rights, structure and accountability,
and what sort of presence and influence Talisman can bring to the
process."
Paul Knox reports on foreign affairs for The Globe and Mail.
GOOD CORPORATE CONDUCT ABROAD
Under the philosophy that "the business sector should show ethical
leadership," Foreign Affairs Minister Lloyd Axworthy wants Canadian
companies to adopt a set of guidelines when working abroad that
includes:
Ensuring all those affected by the business's activities get a "fair share" of
the benefits;
Behaving as "good corporate citizens" and consulting local communities;
"sound environment management and conservation practices;"
Providing "meaningful opportunities for technology co-operation,
training" and increasing capacity in the host country;
Supporting and respecting international human rights;
Not being complicit in human-rights abuses;
Not participating in corrupt business practices such as bribery;
Complying "with all applicable laws and [conducting] business activities
with integrity;"
Ensuring that the business's contractors, suppliers and agents also
operate under ethical business principles;
Protecting the health and safety of workers;
Striving "for social justice and [respecting] freedom of association and
expression in the workplace;"
Complying with "other universally accepted labour statements related to
exploitation of child labour, forced labour and non-discrimination in the
employment."
Source: Alliance of Manufacturers and Exporters Canada |
