Talisman, Sudan & Canada's Involvement

Open Letter to  Right Hon. Paul Martin, P.C., M.P.
By David Kilgour MP, Edmonton-Mill-Woods-Beaumont
Ottawa
July 5, 2005

                                                                                                OTTAWA, July 5th, 2005.

Right Hon. Paul Martin, P.C., M.P.

Prime Minister

Room 309-S, Centre Block

House of Commons

Re: Sudan

There is a major case under way in the United States District Court, Southern District of New York, against Talisman Energy, Inc. and the Republic of The Sudan for genocide  crimes. Talisman is alleged to have aided and abetted the government’s efforts to “dispose of civilians” in regions where the company intended to look for oil. Specifically, Talisman is accused of helping Sudanese officials to bomb churches, kill church leaders, and attack villages to clear the way for oil recovery in southern Sudan.

The suit has been brought under the Alien Tort Claims Act, which allows U.S. courts to hear suits by non-citizens claiming violations of international law, in this case by the Presbyterian Church of Sudan and many others.

You may also know that the Canadian embassy in Washington has intervened (January 14th, 2005) on behalf of Talisman in an effort to have the suit dismissed. Your government specifically asserted in part that the exercise of jurisdiction in the suit “constitutes an infringement in the conduct of foreign relations by the Government of Canada.”

Given the human rights record of the Government of Sudan and the nature of the allegations against the oil company, human rights organizations, Sudanese refugees and many concerned Canadians wonder why the Canadian government is intervening in the case against Talisman. Many view such an intervention as a demonstration of a lack of concern for justice for the victims of the regime’s brutal oil-fuelled crimes against humanity in southern Sudan.

Mel Middleton, director of Freedom Quest International, was in Ruweng County recently and met with survivors who had all lost immediate family members in what they call a process of ethnic cleansing. When asked whether they thought oil companies, including Talisman, knew what was going on, people laughed, stating that the companies were helping the government directly. They stated that after helicopter and tank attacks swept through the area, wiping out villages and killing civilians, personnel of oil firms would come in and dispose of the bodies. 

These and other horrific accounts of the ongoing attacks on civilians in the area would lead many Canadians to ask a number of troubling questions. Among them:

• Why would the Canadian government wait for almost three years before contacting the US State Department seeking to intervene in the case – after the lawyers for the plaintiffs had gone to the effort of acquiring over one million pages of documentation and evidence? It has been suggested that our government did this in the hope that most of the Canadian public might have already forgotten the allegations involving Talisman Energy at the time.

• Why is Ottawa continuing to pursue a policy of “constructive engagement” with Sudan’s dictatorial military rulers? Constructive engagement is precisely the policy which Ronald Reagan used in South Africa. It was unsuccessful for the late president Reagan, and it has never produced results when dealing with genocidal dictatorships.  As long as Canada is willing to demonstrate that we are prepared to continue trade relations despite Khartoum’s complicity in genocide in several areas of Sudan, your message of concern for Sudan’s victims will not be taken seriously by knowledgeable observers.

Your government’s intervention in this case also casts serious doubts about your commitment to human rights and corporate social responsibility for Canadian companies operating abroad generally. It has also led many to question whether Canada’s own economic interests are—like so many other countries with oil interests in Sudan—preventing us from calling to justice a government deeply complicit with widespread ethnic cleansing and blatant human rights abuses.

I would greatly appreciate your comments on this case in a form that may be shared with others concerned.

Many thanks,

 David Kilgour

cc: Members of Parliament and Senators

DK/mc

-30-