Slave Labour in Eritrea: Picket Nevsun
Slave Labour in Eritrea: Picket Nevsun
Vancouver - On May 3rd, at 8:30 in the morning, members of the community will join Vancouver’s Mining Justice Alliance outside downtown Vancouver’s Four Seasons Hotel (791 W. Georgia Street, Vancouver), calling attention to a local company’s use of slave labour.
Nevsun Resources is holding their Annual General Meeting with its shareholders, including the Canadian Public Pension (CPP) Investment Board, in attendance. Nevsun, operating in Eritrea, a north-eastern African nation, benefits from the country’s system of indefinite conscription. It's been called a form of slave labour by the United Nations, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and others.
Forty eight former workers are currently moving forward with lawsuits against Nevsun in the Supreme Court of British Columbia, making it the first time a modern slavery case has been heard in a Canadian court.
This form of slave labour is also the primary cause for another crisis. Eritrea is currently producing an incredible number of refugees. Of a population of fewer than 6 million people, 5,000 are leaving every month, with Eritreans make up a large part of the thousands of people desperately trying to reach Europe and drowning in the Mediterranean or dying along the way every year.
“Nevsun Resources is helping fuel a refugee crisis by profiting from supporting a repressive regime,” says Daniel Tseghay, a local Eritrean organizer working with Mining Justice Alliance. “With the CPP investing in the company, a large number of Canadians are shareholders and therefore complicit in the enslavement of people from my country.”
Mining Justice Alliance calls on people to join them outside the venue for the Annual General Meeting where they will present a petition and make the case that the company’s investors must divest now.
Media Contacts:
Daniel Tseghay
