[Upd-discuss] Canadian govn't denies visa for Afica's top biosafety scholar against bio-patenting

[Zapopan Martin Muela-Meza]

Sure, no problem:

Email:	"ETC Group" <etc@etcgroup.org>

URL for this announcement:
http://www.etcgroup.org/article.asp?newsid=504

Today, 24.05.2005, appeared a follow-up of the campaign:

http://www.etcgroup.org/article.asp?newsid=506
Canada Jeopardizes Biotech Liability Talks
	Type: News Item
Date: May 24, 2005
Download the PDF (638 kb)  

ETC Group

News Release

May 24, 2005

www.etcgroup.org

 Canada Jeopardizes Biotech Liability Talks

Belated Visa for Africa's Top Diplomat leaves UN's Montreal Biosafety
negotiations in suspense

Ottawa - Dr. Tewolde Berhan Gebre Egziabher of Ethiopia, Africa's chief
scientist and negotiator for the Cartagena (biosafety) Protocol, received
his Canadian visa late Tuesday evening Ethiopian time. Dr. Tewolde, who is
scheduled to be in the crop biotech liability negotiations tomorrow
morning, May 25, in Montreal, has his bags packed and is awaiting a
revised plane ticket that - even under ideal circumstances - could only
get him to Montreal in time for the final day of the controversial set of
UN negotiations (May 27). After extended discussions over Canada's
Victoria Day holiday on Monday, a visa arrived in Ethiopia from the
Canadian High Commission in Nairobi Tuesday. 

 

Dr. Tewolde's delay at the hands of the Canadian government is
particularly troubling because the scientist was a key figure in forcing
industrialized countries and biotech corporations to agree to discuss
liability and redress issues. The unintended spread of genetically
modified DNA from biotech crops has caused unwanted genetic contamination
in other countries, and is now a major problem for countries like Canada
who are being called on to take responsibility for contamination. Canada
is the world's third largest producer of GM crops, after the US and
Argentina.  Not surprisingly, Canada was among the governments opposed to
liability negotiations. The issue became a major stumbling block to
achieving the biosafety protocol in 2000. Only when Canada and other major
biotech countries agreed to Dr. Tewolde's demand that a special meeting on
liability be convened soon after the coming into force of the protocol (in
late 2003), did governments in developing countries accept the protocol. 
That meeting on liability, brokered by the Ethiopian scientist, is the one
that he will miss two days of this week.

 

Dr. Tewolde, the Ethiopian government's chief scientist and its
representative to the Montreal-based UN Convention on Biological Diversity
(CBD) requested a visa from Canada on May 5th and only received it late
Tuesday in Addis Ababa. In response to the delay, the Canadian Government
has been flooded with protest phone calls and letters from around the
world - a reaction similar to that provoked in February when the
government tried to promote Terminator technology (sterile seeds) at
meetings in Bangkok.

 

Dr. Tewolde's case is not unique. Late last year a colleague of his at the
Environmental Protection Authority of Ethiopia, Mr. Dereje Agonafir, was
refused a Canadian visa to participate in a meeting of a CBD Expert Group
relating to the Biodiversity of Water, Marine and Coastal Ecosystems. In a
telephone conversation earlier today, Dr. Tewolde suggested that the
future of Montreal as host to the Secretariat of the CBD should be tied to
the Canadian government's ability to provide other government delegates
with visas. Civil society from developing countries have also been denied
visas for this week's meetings, including Professor Kavulakunpla Ramanna
Chowdry and Kaka Ramakrishna, two farmers from India.

 

For more information: Pat Mooney, ETC Group - Ottawa, Canada phone:
1-613-241-2267 mobile: 1-613-261-0688 etc@etcgroup.org; Ban Terminator
Campaign - Lucy Sharratt, Ottawa, Canada phone: 1-613-241-2267 mobile:
1-613-222-6214

 

 

www.etcgroup.org  
--- Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:
> Can you tell me how to send email to these people from the etcgroup?
> Also, can you tell me a precise stable URL for that announcement?
> 

--------------------------- v ---------------------------
"Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of humankind. Our schoolbooks glorify war and hide its horrors. They inculcate hatred in the veins of children.” 
--------------------------- v --------------------------- 
"El nacionalismo es una enfermedad infantil. Es el sarampion de la humanidad. Nuestros libros escolares glorifican la guerra y esconden sus horrores. Ellos inculcan odio en las venas de los niños."

-- Albert Einstein. In: Sagan, Carl (1980). Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science: El cerebro de Broca: Reflexiones sobre el romance de la ciencia. New York: Ballantine Books, p. 37.


		
__________________________________ 
Do you Yahoo!? 
Make Yahoo! your home page 
http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs