According to a press release from earlier this month, Eritreans in the United Kingdom have filed a criminal complaint with police against Asmara’s ambassador in London over the ongoing efforts to force them to pay the diaspora tax:
Members of the Eritrean community in the UK have laid criminal charges against the Eritrean Ambassador to London. This is in line with the written instructions given by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office [see below]. These required members of the Eritrean community to “report any use of coercion of other illicit means to collect the tax to the police.”
Acting on this advice, members of the Eritrean community went to the West End central police station last night and filed a criminal complaint. This illegal tax collection is a clear violation of the assurance given by the Ambassador to the Foreign Office on 25th October 2013 that the tax collection had ended.
The UK supported to a resolution in the UN Security Council in 2011, which outlawed the tax collection. Despite this the illicit collection has continued and this incident is no isolated case. In February 2014 we provided the government with secretly filmed video evidence of the tax being extracted in the London embassy.
This follows similar action three years ago by Eritreans in Stockholm, which led to suggestions in the Riksdag to pass laws banning the collection of the diaspora tax in Sweden. Two years ago, Ottawa also expelled the Eritrean Consul-General in Toronto for similar reasons.
