http://www.reuters.com/article/us-eritrea-mining-nevsun-specialreport-idUSKCN11W144
Africa | Mon Sep 26, 2016 | 7:22am EDT
Special Report: We were forced to work for Western-run mine, say
migrants who fled Eritrea
By Allison Martell and Edmund Blair | TORONTO/ASMARA
TORONTO/ASMARA Bemnet Negash never got to say a proper goodbye to his
family. In February 2006, government officials arrived at his school
in the highlands of Eritrea and put him and his classmates on a bus to
a military training camp. He was 20 years old, and still at school
because a childhood illness had interrupted his education.
Bemnet's father heard what was happening and rushed to the school. "He
tried to pass to me my medication and some money through a window of
the bus on which I was being taken away, but it was not possible,"
said Bemnet in an affidavit filed with a Canadian court last year.
For much of the next five years, Bemnet toiled for the Eritrean
national service, a massive conscription program instituted by the
country's autocratic ruler in the mid-1990s. The conscripts become not
just soldiers, but an army of cheap labor, forced to work for years
for little pay, according to the United Nations. The U.N. has said the
program is "similar to slavery in its effects" – a claim the Eritrean
government rejects.
Bemnet, who slipped out of Eritrea in 2011, did not work just for the
government when he was a conscript: In his legal filing he says he
helped build a mine for Nevsun Resources, a Canadian company
headquartered in Vancouver, Canada, and listed on the Toronto Stock
Exchange.
His story illustrates the challenges for foreign investors operating
in this overlooked part of Africa. The Eritrean government says
national service is necessary to protect and build the impoverished
country. The risk for foreign companies is that while they may bring
jobs and infrastructure, they could become entangled with a state
where conscript labor is pervasive.
Nevsun says its investment in Eritrea brings social and economic
benefits that mitigate the pressure for emigration. Even so, the
number of Eritreans seeking refuge in Europe has increased about
five-fold since 2008, according to Eurostat. In 2015, more than 45,000
Eritreans applied for asylum there.
Bemnet's affidavit is part of a lawsuit filed in 2014 by a team of
Canadian lawyers on behalf of Eritreans who allege that between 2008
and 2012 they were forced to work at Bisha, a mine operated and
majority-owned by Nevsun. Lodged with five similar accounts from other
workers, the affidavit says Bemnet was forced to work for about a
dollar a day in harsh conditions.
Bemnet and other workers want to claim compensation from Nevsun for
"severe physical and mental pain and suffering." In the next few
months the Supreme Court of British Columbia is expected to decide
whether the legal case can continue.
Nevsun, which had revenues of $357 million in 2015, denies the
allegations and touts its mine as a model of responsible development.
In its own legal filings, it says the Eritrean military never provided
labor to the mine. Even if it did, the company argues, Nevsun was not
directly responsible for employing the workers.
The Canadian company owns 60 percent of the Bisha Mining Share Company
(BMSC), which owns and operates the mine, and the Eritrean state owns
the remaining 40 percent. BMSC in turn hired Segen, an Eritrean
government firm, to do construction work at the mine.
Bemnet says he worked for Segen, not Nevsun. But his lawyers say
Nevsun should be held responsible for what happened at the mine,
alleging Nevsun had authority over Segen and did not take reasonable
steps to prevent mistreatment of workers.
Todd Romaine, Nevsun's vice president of corporate social
responsibility, denied the allegations and said in a written statement
that the company "will vigorously defend itself in court." He said
BMSC is "an employer of choice" in Eritrea and provides "well-paying,
intrinsically rewarding jobs for local people ... The company has made
a significant financial contribution to the country in terms of
taxation, royalties, local employment (and) supply chain."
Romaine said Nevsun has a screening process to ensure that no
conscripts work at the mine. "Nevsun is a force for good in Eritrea,"
he said.
Nevsun also says that if its prohibition against the use of conscripts
was ever breached, state-controlled Segen was to blame. It says that
it had been obliged by the Eritrean government to use Segen to build
the mine, and that Nevsun had no control over Segen. Reuters tried to
contact Segen via telephone and email, but received no comment.
Alem Kibreab, director-general of Eritrea's Department of Mines, said
no conscripts worked at Bisha, and that some migrants made up stories
of mistreatment in the hope of gaining permission to stay in Europe.
In affidavits filed with the Canadian court, several workers from the
mine have backed up Nevsun. Kahsay Gebremichael, a foreman with Segen,
said that he had worked at Bisha for seven years, by choice. "I was
not forced to work at the Bisha Mine by anyone. I can quit my job if I
want to," he said in an affidavit filed in November 2015.
Bemnet and the other former workers involved in the lawsuit were
living in Ethiopia, Germany, Denmark and Switzerland when they swore
affidavits in 2014 and 2015. Reuters was unable to contact them and
their lawyers declined to make them available for interviews, citing
the ongoing legal proceedings.
But Reuters has reviewed the former workers' detailed allegations and,
while their case is not new, this article draws on court records that
have not been previously reported, including Bemnet's affidavit. It
also draws on accounts of two former foreign workers who helped build
the mine: One said employees of Segen endured tough conditions in 2009
and 2010, working without adequate food, water or shelter.
The Eritrean government dismisses criticism of its national service
program as politically motivated and biased. Government officials deny
that national service involves forced labor and say a program to
improve pay began in mid-2015. They insist conscription remains vital
for the security of the nation, which only secured independence from
Ethiopia in 1991 after decades of conflict.
NATION BUILDING
Bemnet spent his first weeks of military training at a camp called
Wia, near the Red Sea, where he slept on the ground in the open,
according to his affidavit. Next he was moved to a desolate stretch of
coastline, where he worked seven days a week, completing more
training, gathering large stones and building houses. He was still
there in September 2006, when, halfway around the world, then Nevsun
Chief Executive John Clarke pitched Eritrea to mining investors at one
of the industry's top conferences, the Denver Gold Forum.
Canada is home to hundreds of small mining companies, many exploring
for gold both in Canada and around the world. Staffed by a few
executives and a small board of directors, these companies buy mineral
claims and raise a few million dollars at a time to pay for
exploratory drilling. One strategy is to focus on countries where poor
infrastructure, skill shortages or political unrest have made mining
difficult, leaving rich deposits untouched.
Clarke's presentation focused on Gash Barka, a region in western
Eritrea where gold was mined during the colonial era. No one had built
or operated a mine in the country for decades because of the risk of
conflict and fears the government might expropriate assets. So Clarke
promoted the project, which he called Bisha, by emphasizing Eritrea's
good roads and well-educated people.
"Given that it is a poor country, they're just using their resources
extremely well, including their youngsters, who do a couple years
national service after university, everybody contributing to nation
building," he said, in a presentation that until recently was
available online.
Clarke, who is no longer with Nevsun, did not respond to requests for comment.
National service in Eritrea, which still fears attack from its far
larger neighbor Ethiopia, has no set length, according to the
government. The country has been ruled by former Marxist guerrilla
leader Isaias Afwerki since independence. In 1998, in the midst of a
border war with Ethiopia, Isaias declared a state of emergency and
extended national service.
Eritrea's Information Minister, Yemane Ghebremeskel, told Reuters that
the length of national service had originally been 18 months, but that
it had been "prolonged" because of border tensions with Ethiopia. He
did not specify how long national service now lasts.
A U.N. commission charged with investigating human rights abuses in
Eritrea said in a June 2015 report that all sectors of the Eritrean
economy rely on conscripts. Most citizens are conscripted before they
finish high school, and undergo limited military training before being
assigned to jobs. Some are sent to work in construction or farming, or
as civil servants or engineers. In a statement, Eritrea said the
allegations of human rights abuses are "totally unfounded and devoid
of all merit."
"CONTINUOUSLY HUNGRY"
By September 2008, the Bisha mine had its permits and work was
underway at the site. As mining companies often do, Nevsun hired an
engineering, procurement and construction management firm to run
construction, selecting a South African company called Senet. One of
Senet's employees was Mike Goosen, a civil construction supervisor who
arrived in 2009.
Day to day, Goosen and other Senet staff supervised Segen, the
Eritrean government-owned contractor brought in to do construction
work. While Senet declined to comment on its work at Bisha, citing the
ongoing legal action, Goosen told Reuters he became friendly with some
Segen workers, though they lived some distance from the main camp. He
visited their camp and was alarmed by the conditions he found. None of
the buildings had proper windows or doors. Workers slept on the floor,
with no mosquito nets. "We had a lot of them going down with malaria,"
he told Reuters.
The workers were "continuously hungry," he said, and subsisted on
lentil soup and bread. Drinking water was left in the hot sun all day.
Goosen said he asked cooks at the main camp to set aside leftover food
for Segen workers but Segen managers told him to stop.
In affidavits filed to support the lawsuit against Nevsun, former
Eritrean workers described rations of lentil soup and bread. "We were
always tired and hungry, and fell ill very often," reads the affidavit
of Mihretab Yemane Tekle, who said he worked at the Bisha mine from
February to October 2010, and now has refugee status in Ethiopia.
"Many conscripts caught malaria at Bisha."
In an affidavit filed in June 2014, Segen manager Abadi Gebremeskel
Alemayo described the death of a worker named Berhane, who he said was
a conscript.
"One day, he was building partitions in the residences for the foreign
workers, and he just collapsed," he said. "In his report, the doctor
said it was heat stroke. I buried him myself – I took his body to his
village and buried it."
Abadi, a safety officer at Bisha, said in his affidavit that he knew
some of the workers were conscripts because he attended a Segen
meeting in mid-2009 at which the use of conscripts was discussed.
Reuters was unable to contact Abadi for comment.
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ESCAPE
Segen workers were on site in significant numbers during the mine's
initial construction from 2008 to 2011. In February 2009, for example,
more than half the workers on site were from Segen, according to a
Senet progress report filed with the Canadian court.
In a 2013 press release, Nevsun said it first heard allegations that
conscripts were working at Bisha in early 2009. In response, Nevsun
instructed Senet to change Segen's contracts to explicitly prohibit
the use of national service members. Nevsun also told Senet to start
screening workers to ensure there were no conscripts at the mine.
Court filings from Senet say screening began in May 2009; the system
involved workers providing certificates to show they had finished
national service.
It is unclear how effective the screening was, said a foreign worker
who was on site at the time and spoke on condition of anonymity. Segen
would put off filing paperwork, telling Senet that its workers were no
one else's business. When papers did arrive, they were photocopies of
Eritrean documents that no one outside Segen understood because they
were written in the local language of Tigrinya, the foreign worker
said.
In an affidavit for the court case, Senet project director Pieter
Theron described the screening process, and said that as far as he
knew, the Eritrean military was not involved in building Bisha. Theron
declined requests for comment. In his affidavit, he said allegations
about harsh working conditions were not consistent with his
observations: "It is simply not the case that individuals worked in
dangerous conditions and were often injured or ill."
Bemnet arrived at Bisha with the rest of his military unit in February
2010, according to his affidavit. He was told to take off his military
uniform, and given gray coveralls to wear, with "Segen" across the
back. An officer laid out some rules for his time at Bisha. He was not
to tell anyone that he was a national service member. If asked about
his pay he should say he was being paid $21 to $22 per day. He would
actually be paid 450 nakfa per month, about $1 a day, according to the
legal claim.
Bemnet and other conscripts were sometimes allowed to spend time in a
nearby town. One Sunday in July 2010, he stayed late in town, eating
and drinking with a friend, according to his affidavit. In the early
hours, a group of military men came to retrieve him. Bemnet said they
accused him of trying to desert and leave Eritrea. He was tied up with
his friend, he said, with only short breaks for five days, and then
sent to prison.
Bemnet said he was not sent back to Bisha after his release in
November 2010, but remained in national service. In 2011, stationed
near the Ethiopian border, he saw a chance to escape and swam across a
river with two other men. From Ethiopia, Bemnet traveled to Sudan,
Libya and across the Mediterranean to Italy. Like thousands of other
Eritreans, he applied for asylum in Germany.
Many Eritreans aiming for Europe cross the Sahara into Libya, risking
death by dehydration, starvation and violence in the desert. In Libya,
some are kidnapped by Islamic State, and executed or enslaved before
they can attempt to cross the Mediterranean. The United Nations
refugee agency reported that 11,564 Eritreans made it to Italy in the
first seven months of 2016. That was more than from any country other
than Nigeria.
REGRET
In 2013, Human Rights Watch published a report about the alleged use
of conscripts at Bisha. Anticipating the report, Nevsun sent out a
press release that expressed "regret if certain employees of Segen
were conscripts ... in the early part of the Bisha mine's construction
phase." It hired Lloyd Lipsett, a Canadian human rights lawyer, to
assess the mine.
Lipsett's reports have focused on the period since he was hired. In a
2015 report he said he had found nothing to corroborate allegations
against the company, but that it was difficult to draw conclusions
about anything before 2013.
In an interview, Lipsett said there were limits to what he could do
and how reliable witnesses were. "It's hard in a country like Eritrea
where there is, I think, a plausible and potential risk that people
may feel intimidated or be threatened with reprisal," he said. "I
think you just have to work at it, and see what the weight of the
evidence points to ... If someone is directly lying, I can't say that
I will always catch that."
In February, Nevsun invited Reuters to visit the mine and interview
managers and government officials on site and in Eritrea's capital,
Asmara. During that tour, Romaine, the company's vice president for
corporate social responsibility, said: "We take all allegations very
seriously, but to date, based on all our extensive investigations, we
have not found any corroborating evidence to support the allegations
being made."
(Martell reported from Toronto, Blair from Asmara; Additional
reporting by Jim Morris and Nicole Mordant in Vancouver, and Selam
Gebrekidan in New York; Editing By Richard Woods and Simon Robinson)
Received on Mon Sep 26 2016 - 09:41:52 EDT