First I was sanctioned by China, and now I’ve been booted out of Djibouti
My highly intimidating stay in a very strange country shows just how far Beijing’s influence spreads
ACCORDING to a whizzy app on my mobile device I have visited 86 countries. Last week, I was due to notch up No 87 with a stop-over in the tiny East African state of Djibouti while on my way back from a delegation to neighbouring Somaliland. I failed to make it beyond the immigration desk , however, as I was abruptly deported without explanation after more than seven hours in frightening detention.
According to Djibouti government advice and our own Foreign Office website, you can purchase a visa to enter on arrival. All you need is a ticket for an onward flight and proof of your itinerary and accommodation.
Except, it would appear, if you are a British MP on a hit list of parliamentarians sanctioned by China, as I have been for the past three years.
I politely explained that I would be in the country for barely 24 hours, was being picked up at the airport by a tour guide for a visit to Africa’s lowest point, Lake Assal, before checking into one of the country’s most overpriced hotels where I was meeting the British ambassador. As soon as I revealed I was a British MP, however, things turned decidedly frosty. Despite showing every piece of paperwork I had, a particularly surly border official was having none of it. I was ushered to sit in the naughty corner while everyone else who had spilled off my flight behind me was welcomed like long-lost friends.
After an hour of no progress and being assured that there was no problem, and that they were just following procedures, I was ushered into another room with a flight of stairs leading nowhere. I should have twigged when the guard doing the ushering quickly turned tail and locked the door behind him.
Another hour passed without any explanation, no provisions as it was still Ramadan and crucially no Wi-fi connection. Three hours into my ordeal a delegation of three officials came to inform me there was a problem but they wouldn’t tell me what except that I would not be allowed to enter and that I would be put on the next plane out, four hours later. I had no way of knowing whether there was a seat on the next plane out, let alone what had happened to my luggage. In short, it was a highly intimidating and very lonely experience in a very strange country.
The only crumb of comfort came when I was eventually able to log on to the airport Wi-fi and contact the British embassy. Beyond the call of duty but very welcome all the same the deputy ambassador hot-footed it to the airport stopping only to stock up on crisps, biscuits and drinks. Yet even he was unable to get the Djiboutian commissars to release me and I was duly escorted to the flight home 24 hours ahead of schedule.
It is now clear this was no accident but a direct consequence of being one of the seven British parliamentarians sanctioned by China over three years ago for speaking out against human rights abuses there.
During our visit to plucky Somaliland the threat from China was regularly raised. While African regimes have seen the mouths of their leaders stuffed with gold by the munificent Chinese, Somaliland has steadfastly resisted the curse of Croesus. Indeed, Somaliland has almost uniquely recognised China’s nemesis Taiwan as a sovereign state.
China has now built 100 ports around Africa since 2000 as part of its trillion dollar belt and road initiative. In common with many African nations, Djibouti has benefited from China’s apparent munificence. They have financed a new stadium, the People’s Palace, a foreign affairs ministry, an $8.2 million hospital and a $1 billion project to build Africa’s first space port.
In 2016, they started construction of a Chinese naval base paying rent on a long lease. Some, 2000 Chinese troops are now permanently stationed there, and they have built a pier big enough to accommodate Chinese aircraft carriers. Not far away, two Iranian military vessels are moored reportedly feeding intelligence to their Houthi friends across the Red Sea.
All this comes at a price. Djibouti is one of the most indebted countries in Africa and who is their largest creditor? You guessed it – China. China is holding more than $1.4 billion in debt – the equivalent of about 45 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product, according to the International Monetary Fund.
Money buys influence. While in 2019 we were denouncing China’s genocide in Xinjiang, ambassadors from 50 countries at the United Nations, including Djibouti and many African nations, signed a letter to the president of the UN Human Rights Council to support China’s position on issues related to the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.
The following year, Djibouti was one of 53 countries to back China’s national security law which has systematically snuffed out freedoms in Hong Kong.
In 2018, the Djibouti government booted out the Emirates-owned DP World from running the main port which dominates the country and, two years later, awarded a 23.5 per cent stake to the Chinese, an arrangement which is the subject of ongoing international legal action.
Fired up by more than a modest feeling of being shafted DP World now runs the rapidly expanding port of Berbera in Somaliland with the potential to become the most important port on the Gulf of Aden. An impressive new highway, funded by Dubai and the UK, links Berbera to the capital, Hargeisa, and on to the Ethiopian border, with the next stretch, onward to Addis Ababa, well under construction.
Ethiopia is one of the emerging economic powers in Northern Africa and key to its success is a link to the sea which previously had been focussed on Djibouti. Now, a Memorandum of Understanding between Ethiopia and Somaliland threatens to change all that. In return for a long-term access agreement to Berbera, Ethiopia has offered to recognise the state of Somaliland officially which would bring that breakaway state into the international fold. It would pave the way for the West to recognise this oasis of stability and relative safety in a turbulent region ever since this democracy of 6.2 million people declared independence from the anarchy that is Somalia back in 1991.
Somalilanders cannot understand why the West has not exactly rushed to recognise Somaliland, based on its historic boundaries as a former British Protectorate. The country is an investable fledgling democracy which actually likes its former colonial power and is pro-west. Pirates, terrorists and authoritarian Left-wing regimes dominate the coastline to the south and north, while across the Red Sea pro-iranian Houthis fire missiles at Western shipping. Surely, the West should be biting the arm off the Somaliland government to acknowledge their legitimacy, establish closer relations.
So for China, Somaliland represents a threat. A threat to its economic investments in this part of Africa; a threat to its military ambitions; and a threat to the influence it has bought in international assemblies through its many African “client states”.
What China wants, Djibouti wants too. And when an annoying yet insignificant British MP turns up having spouted support for the integrity of Somaliland while casting aspersions about China’s real intentions in the region, then of course Djibouti wants to stick it to him.
This is just the latest example of the intimidation that the seven sanctioned British parliamentarians have suffered. It comes hard on the heels, of course, of the recent revelation that three years ago our parliamentary email accounts were hacked and Westminster’s security compromised by the malign Chinese state. That is insignificant compared to the violence, torture and murder suffered over decades by millions of Tibetans, Uighurs, Hong Kongers and others.
So, I won’t be notching up the Djibouti arrivals desk as No 87. Instead, it will head a new list of countries from which I have been deported, a list which threatens to grow unless the West wakes up and takes seriously the malign and all-encompassing tentacles of the Chinese regime.
‘Despite showing every bit of paperwork I had ... I was ushered to sit in the naughty corner’