What’s behind the Eritrean street clashes in Canada?

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Calgary police are investigating after a violent conflict involving about 150 people broke out in the city’s Falconridge neighbourhood on Saturday.

The incident is believed to have involved Eritrean groups who hold conflicting views about the country’s governance and politics and happened just weeks after violent clashes at Eritrean cultural festivals in Edmonton and Toronto.

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Similar incidents have also recently occurred in Sweden, Germany and Israel, where more than 100 people were injured after the Eritrean embassy held an event to mark 30 years since independence.

Eritrea, a country of about 3.6 million people in the Horn of Africa, has been ruled by President Isaias Afwerki and his party, the People’s Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ), since gaining independence from Ethiopia in 1993.

Eritrea operates as a one-party state, with the PFDJ exercising total control over all aspects of governance and Afwerki, 77, has been characterized as a “brutal dictator” leading one of the “world’s most oppressive governments.”

A 2016 United Nations Commission of Inquiry report found the government’s “totalitarian practices” had manifested in the “wholesale disregard for the liberty” of Eritrea’s citizens, including the suppression of dissent, limited civil liberties and a national conscription program.

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Each Eritrean is initially required to perform 18 months of national service beginning at the age of 18, but in practice, conscripts often find themselves serving indefinitely, according to Human Rights Watch.

Beyond military duties, conscripts are often assigned to construction and agricultural projects, including initiatives that are not government-related but are seen as benefiting military commanders and other officials.

There is no redress for conscripts who face physical and sexual abuse and attempts to flee can result in death. The conscription program is seen as one of the country’s main drivers of migration.

Political scientists say the clashes reveal the divide between those who wish to celebrate their culture and those in opposition to the Eritrean government. According to the 2022 Press Freedom Index, Eritrea ranked 179 out of 180 countries, one spot ahead of North Korea.

“These people are struggling to connect the struggle here in Eritrea by disrupting the transnational institutions of the totalitarian state,” Zeraslasie Shiker, a former Eritrean diplomat who is now studying diaspora political activism in the U.K., told CBC. “That is how you really need to see the local to global connections of these movements.”

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The recent clash in Calgary has left the community shaken, according to city councillor Raj Dhaliwal, who called the incident an “unnecessary, unwanted display of disrespect and disregard for human rights.”

“It’s not acceptable. It’s not acceptable to me, and I hope it’s not acceptable to other Calgarians,” Dhaliwal told the Calgary Herald.

Videos from the weekend show some attendees carrying flags with the current Eritrean flag, while others wore blue and carried the former flag of the country before it was annexed by Ethiopia.

Protesters allege the events, billed as celebrations of Eritrean culture, have been co-opted by the country’s government to promote propaganda and raise money, but event organizers have pushed back against those characterizations.

Lambros Kyriakakos, chair of the Coalition of Eritrean Canadian Communities and Organizations, told CBC that the events have been running for decades and are “a gathering, celebration of friendship, culture, identity, pride of identity for the new generation, connection to homeland and connection to the wider community.”

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At the event in Edmonton, police read the Riot Act as part of their response. According to the Edmonton Police Service, police last read the Riot Act, intended to disperse riots and unlawful assemblies, on Canada Day in 1999.

No arrests were made following the clashes in Edmonton, and while the incident in Calgary remains under investigation, Dhaliwal told the Herald he wants to know what intelligence the police had about the two groups leading up to the event. Given previous incidents, he believes the outcome was predictable.

“There’s spontaneous reaction, and then there’s well-co-ordinated, predetermined outcome. This is the latter,” he said. “If they want to have a gathering, a peaceful gathering, go about it. But if they want to have this violent stampede, then it’s not acceptable.”

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