Photo: Defenders from Colombia, Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico with PBI-Spanish State visit the site of the proposed lithium mine near the city of Cáceres in the autonomous region of Extremadura in Spain. Photo by Asociación ICID.

On November 27, PBI-Spanish State tweeted:

“Because transiting the territories affected by capitalist extractivism in the Spanish State is also defending #Human Rights and the #commons. In #Cáceres, with @salvemosMontana @AsociacionICID @ASOCOLEMAD @la_odico and @guapinolre, sharing peaceful resistance processes.”

The “Save La Montaña de Cáceres” Facebook page notes it “was born in the summer of 2017 as a platform for control and opposition to the open-pit lithium mine project in Valdeflores, in the shady area of La Montaña de Cáceres.”

They add: “There is no case like this in the rest of the world, in which a highly aggressive extractive activity is intended to be installed less than 800 meters from an urban center as important as Cáceres, a World Heritage city with 100,000 inhabitants.”

Earth Island Journal has also explained:

“Infinity Lithium Spain, a local subsidiary of the Australian multinational Infinity Lithium, aims to exploit the Valdeflores lithium deposit, which is considered to be the largest in Europe.

As the demand for lithium has grown in recent years — the metal is used in lithium-ion batteries, a cornerstone of the growing green energy economy due to their use in electric vehicles and for green energy storage.

The regional government of Extremadura granted the company research rights to a site in Valdeflores Valley in 2015. These permits allowed the area to be investigated but not exploited.

The company has since submitted two different proposals for the site, both of which tout job creation associated with the project. The first proposal, submitted in 2018, involved a large open pit mine. The second, offered in response to community concerns in October 2021, involves an underground mine, with hydrogen-powered vehicles as sustainable option.

So far, locals have stalled the mine, forming a citizen group, Salvemos la Montaña (Save the Mountain), which has taken Infinity to court.

This group says that the open-pit mine project announced in 2018 would destroy the protected area of Valdeflores and that the resulting emissions of the mining process and equipment would pollute the city, affecting air quality. Furthermore, members are skeptical about the numbers the company has presented regarding new jobs.”

The full article can be read at Locals Are Fighting Plans for a Lithium Mine in the Spanish Countryside (August 2022).

Photo by PBI-Spanish State.

Brett Forester of CBC reports: “A federally owned pipeline company is withholding records that would expose its dealings with private security and intelligence firms by citing blanket exemptions under access-to-information law.”

He adds: “Calgary-based Trans Mountain responded to a request to see its contracts with these agencies, along with reports delivered under those deals, by refusing to release a single piece of paper, prompting CBC News to lodge an official complaint.”

His article also notes: “After an initial denial followed by delay, on June 5, 2019, [Kamloops, British Columbia-based lawyer Joe] Killoran got access to the some of the company’s files. The files, which CBC News reviewed and reported on in 2019, indicate Trans Mountain employs retired Mounties and unknown security operatives who conduct physical and open-source surveillance, track activist movements, analyze their motives, and work with members of the RCMP’s Community-Industry Response Group, or C-IRG.”

Secwepemc land defenders and allies oppose the construction of the 890,000 barrel per day Trans Mountain tar sands pipeline.

The pipeline would cross 518 kilometres of Secwepemc territory without the free, prior and informed consent of the Secwepemc peoples.

In May 2018, the Canadian government bought the existing 300,000 barrel per day Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline with the intention of tripling its capacity.

As such, Trans Mountain Corporation is now a subsidiary of the Canada Development Investment Corporation, a Crown corporation responsible for managing investments and corporate interests held by the Government of Canada.

Oil Change International has calculated that “the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project would facilitate a major expansion of tar sands extraction – releasing as much as 130 million additional metric tons of CO2 per year.”

It has also been estimated that the emissions caused by producing and burning the oil carried by the pipeline expansion could top 143 million metric tons of CO2 per year. 

In March 2019, the UN Human Rights Council affirmed that “human rights defenders, including environmental human rights defenders, must be ensured a safe and enabling environment to undertake their work free from hindrance and insecurity, in recognition of their important role in supporting States to fulfil their obligations under the Paris Agreement.”

In December 2019, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination also called on Canada to cease construction on the pipeline until free, prior and informed consent had been obtained from all the Secwepemc people.

According to the company, it is expected that the “mechanical completion” of the pipeline will “occur in the third quarter of 2023.”

The full article by Brett Forester can be read at ‘Stonewalled’: Trans Mountain hides dealings with private security and spy firms.

Photo: Land defenders Layla Staats and Skyler Williams outside the Cayuga courthouse. Photo by Bobby Hristova/CBC.

The sentencing hearing for criminalized Haudenosaunee land defender Skyler Williams will continue in January 2023.

CBC reports: “Williams testified last week, answering questions from [Justice Gethin] Edward about why he has taken part in a two-year-long occupation of the site of a controversial development in Caledonia, Ont., and what ‘land back’ means to him.”

“Williams said his first introduction to the land back activism he does now was Ipperwash in 1995 [when he was 12 years old].”

Indigenous land defender Dudley George was shot and killed at Ipperwash by an Ontario Provincial Police sniper on September 6, 1995.

Photo: An OPP officer rushes toward Tina George at Ipperwash Provincial Park the day after her cousin Dudley was killed. Photo from Toronto Star/Ipperwash Inquiry.

The provincial Inquiry that followed suggested a political resolution to a land rights issue should be pursued, not an armed police response that can result in the death of a land defender.

Williams has previously commented that the state response to Land Back Lane “led to 50 people being arrested, it saw us get shot at, tasered, and beaten. Families stood by and watched their loved ones dragged from their cars and swarmed with brutality.”

The OPP spent $16.3 million on policing Land Back Lane from July 19, 2020, to January 19, 2021, an average of $90,000 a day.

Photo: An OPP officer at 1492 Land Back Lane, October 22, 2020.

In court, Williams also commented there are “200 years of colonialism, oppression, racism, over-incarceration rates, child welfare being stacked against us.”

The article adds: “Williams, 39, previously pleaded guilty to a mischief charge and two counts of failing to comply with an undertaking, all related to his actions on what is known in the area as 1492 Land Back Lane.”

The next court date has been set for January 23, 2023.

Background

On July 19, 2020, Haudenosaunee land defenders began a reoccupation of a 25-acre area of land about near the city of Caledonia, located about an hour southwest of Toronto.

Foxgate Developments planned to build at least 218 houses on this land. That was reportedly the first phase of a 1,000 unit housing development.

The Haudenosaunee asserted it was their territory through the Haldimand Treaty of 1784 that granted them an area of 950,000 acres in southern Ontario.

On July 31, 2020, the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) escorted a court sheriff who delivered a first court injunction against the reoccupation.

Kate Gunn, a Vancouver-based lawyer with First Peoples Law, has also pointed out that an injunction is not a determination of which party is right, rather it seeks, in principle, to preserve the status quo until the underlying dispute is resolved.

That means, for instance, that a land developer can more easily persuade the court that the economic harm is greater to them than communities seeking to protect their culture and traditions from centuries of land dispossession.

Williams has stated: “This development must be seen as being yet another instance in an ongoing history of colonial land theft and genocide, that it is people from Six Nations who are facing the greater harm if this matter is decided against their interests.”

On July 2, 2021, the developer backed down, temporarily at least.

On March 17, 2022, Williams commented: “After a year of relative peace, we have received word from what would have been the developer at Landback Lane. They intend to reapply for their injunction. We are taking this very seriously. We see it as an open threat against our people and our lands.”

The Haudenosaunee Confederacy Chiefs Council, the traditional government of the Six Nations of the Grand River, has stated that no development can proceed on their lands without the consent of the Haudenosaunee.

Cayuga Snipe Chief Deyohowe:to (Roger Silversmith) says: “It is time to end the injustice. We want the land that is ours. We are not interested in approving fraudulent dispossessions of the past. We are not interested in selling land.”

Photo by Steve Mongeau/APTN.

Photo: City, provincial and federal police and a 3 metre (10 foot) high fence will surround the Palais des Congrès in Montreal where the COP15 biodiversity summit will take place. Photo by John Mahoney/Montreal Gazette.

The COP15 summit will take place at the Palais des Congrès in Montreal starting this coming Wednesday December 7.

Already the city is being fortified for the summit.

The Montreal Gazette reports: “Workers are putting final touches on an imposing, three-metre-high fence. Police are preparing for the biggest security operation Montreal has seen in decades. …Montreal police, the Sûreté du Québec and the RCMP will staff checkpoints, letting in only accredited visitors, with more officers standing ready in case of trouble.”

That article highlights: “Multiple protests are planned by the Anti-Capitalist and Ecologist Coalition, with thousands of CEGEP and university students set to strike so they can express opposition to the United Nations gathering, known as COP15.”

The coalition explains its opposition to COP15 here.

Sarah Masse of the coalition says: “[Governments must] stop brutalizing Indigenous people who defend their territory and listen to what these communities have to teach us. Stop funding billions of extractive projects that are destructive to biodiversity, or logging projects pushing certain species such as woodland caribou to extinction.”

The 30×30 goal

The Gazette also notes: “Among the ideas being considered: vowing to conserve 30 per cent of the Earth’s land and sea by 2030 — a so-called 30×30 goal.”

Among the 100+ countries backing the 30×30 goal are the governments of Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and Nicaragua.

In May, the Colombian military spent $12,000 on a Black Hawk helicopter mission that arrested 54-year-old farmer Gladis Galindo who said she had settled in Tinigua National Park to provide food for her seven children. In October, the newly elected government of Gustavo Petro received more Black Hawk helicopters from the United States to protect the Colombian Amazon from deforestation, fires and illegal logging.

Photo: Galindo taken into custody. Photo by Andres Cardona/Al Jazeera.

The Journal Métro reports: “The [Anti-Capitalist and Ecologist] coalition is particularly opposed to the plan to transform 30% of the earth’s surface into protected areas since, according to the current proposal, ‘indigenous peoples who have inhabited the territory for millennia are forcibly evicted.’”

That article adds: “The coalition calls instead on the various actors present at COP15 to recognize the authority of indigenous communities over their territories, on which 80% of the world’s biodiversity is found.”

This past July, Mongabay explained: “The first draft GBF [Global Biodiversity Framework] targets contained no effective safeguards to protect the lands, rights and livelihoods of IPLCs [Indigenous peoples and local communities] in conservation programs or protected areas, say Indigenous leaders. Since then, Indigenous groups have been calling for the full recognition of their rights over their lands, waters, and territories within the GBF.”

The article further cautions: “Many Indigenous leaders and human rights advocates say [the 30×30] goal may lead to the mass eviction of Indigenous and local communities for the creation of more protected areas.”

Human rights organizations concerned by 30×30

Many organizations – including ProDESC Mexico, CONDEG Guatemala, CENSAT Agua Viva Colombia and the International Network for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ESCR-Net) – have highlighted: “Protected areas have led to displacement and eviction of Indigenous Peoples and other land-dependent communities and brought serious human rights abuses by conservation organizations and enforcement agencies.”

Amnesty International has also stated that “while the [30×30] proposal has the potential to be a significant step forward in protecting biodiversity on the planet, and at the same time contributing to the fight against the climate crisis, it also presents a grave risk to the rights of Indigenous peoples and local communities. This is because of the devastation that the implementation of protected areas has wreaked among these peoples and communities in many cases.”

Amnesty then urges “parties to the CBD [Convention on Biological Diversity] that the protected areas target must not be included in the Global Biodiversity Framework unless robust protections for the rights of Indigenous peoples and local communities, as currently enshrined in international human rights law, are hard-wired into the text.”

And 49 organizations – including the CS Fund, EDGE Funders Alliance, Fund for Global Human Rights, Grassroots International, Inter Pares, Panta Rhea Foundation, Tides Foundation and the Tikva Grassroots Empowerment Fund – expressed concern with the 30×30 initiative last year warning: “The Framework’s focus on ‘protected areas’ will likely continue to lead to human rights abuses across the globe.”

One of the signatories, the Swift Foundation, said: “How it’s working right now is a militarized form of conservation. You have guards with guns, people imposing fines, building fences and kicking people out of their traditional lands. And if communities react in defense they are perceived as anti-conservation.”

Protests

The Gazette adds: “[There will be] an ‘anti-capitalist, anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist procession’ beginning at 1 p.m. on Dec. 10.”

It also notes: “That’s the same date and time of a pro-COP15, family-friendly ‘march for biodiversity and human rights,’ organized by the Collectif COP15. The collective, which is taking part in COP15 and organizing parallel events, includes about 80 organizations, representing scientists, environmentalists, unions and others.”

Collectif COP15 includes Environmental Defence, Équiterre, the David Suzuki Foundation (though David Suzuki signed this letter expressing concerns about the human rights violations that could come with 30×30), Indigenous Climate Action, the Sierra Club, Nature Québec and Climate Action Network Canada.

We will be in Montreal on Saturday December 10 to observe the situation.

The Coalition and Collectif mobilizations.

Target 3 of the Global Biodiversity Framework. Image from The Conversation, July 25, 2022.

Photo: “MoveUP delegate Colin Sanderson speaking in support of a MoveUP submitted resolution calling on the prov. and federal governments to disband the Community-Industry Response Group and require on-site Indigenous civilian oversight on RCMP operations on Indigenous lands.”

Resolutions related to Indigenous land defenders were considered at the British Columbia Federation of Labour convention that took place from November 21-25 at the Vancouver Convention Centre (East).

The Tyee reports: “Unions representing more than half a million B.C. workers called on the provincial government Tuesday to resolve disputes on Indigenous territories without the use of force, a clear nod to years-long clashes over resource development in the province’s north.”

Resolution 2228, page 132.

That article continues: “The federation also considered several additional resolutions related to Indigenous rights and police oversight, including calling on governments to disband the RCMP’s controversial Community-Industry Response Group, or C-IRG.”

“The motion to disband RCMP’s C-IRG was submitted by MoveUP, which represents more than 12,000 union members across Canada, including support staff at the BC Federation of Labour.”

“Marjorie Dumont, a BC Teachers’ Federation delegate and a Wet’suwet’en member, had planned to speak in favour of a motion that called on senior governments to disband the RCMP’s controversial Community-Industry Response Group. Dumont drew a parallel between the Coastal Gaslink clashes and the experiences of her great-grandparents, who she said were marched by RCMP out of their home community in the early 1990s.”

Resolution 2223, page 130.

The BC Federation of Labour has tweeted:

The full package of resolutions can be read here.

At the convention, long-time BCGEU member Sussanne Skidmore was elected BC Federation of Labour president and Hermender Singh Kailley was elected Secretary-Treasurer.

Related reading: Peace Brigades International in solidarity with the labour movement and the struggle for workers rights and social justice.

PBI-Honduras accompanying Franklin Almendares, the General Secretary of the National Union of Rural Workers (CNTC) which is affiliated with the Unified Confederation of Honduran Workers (CUTH) and the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC).

Photo by Mike Graeme.

An action in solidarity with Wet’suwet’en land defenders was held at the BC Oil and Gas Commission (BCOGC) in Victoria on Lkwungen territory on November 24.

The outreach for the action highlighted:

“After many militarized raids, ongoing criminal charges against Indigenous land defenders and supporters, and incessant colonial chatter about reconciliation, the Wet’suwet’en remain steadfast and present on their yintah upholding their system of laws.

We want to signal that colonial institutions who permit the violation of Indigenous lands and laws must be undone for decolonization to be possible, and that we too will continue to renew our relationships and uphold our responsibilities to participate in this undoing.

Specifically, we are bringing this message to the BC Oil and Gas Commission, as the entity permitting Coastal GasLink, and more broadly created by the NDP in 1999 to help corporations speed the rate of destruction.”

On the day of the action, Mike Graeme tweeted:

“A group of activists supporting Wet’suwet’en sovereignty prevented BC Oil & Gas Commission (BCOGC) staff from getting to work in #yyj this morning. The group says the BCOGC—which streamlines oil & gas permits—is complicit in the invasion of unceded #Wetsuweten lands.

“The BCOGC is currently permitting drilling for the pipeline under the #WedzinKwa, without the consent of Wet’suwet’en people living on their land,” the group says. They add the action was carried out in direct communication with #Wetsuweten land defenders.

“Hereditary #Wetsuweten Chiefs have never consented to the construction of the Coastal GasLink pipeline on their territories,” says the group. The BCOGC was formed 1 year after Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs won the historic 1997 #Delgamuukw case recognizing Wet’suwet’en title.

Despite the historic #Delgamuukw case, TC Energy & settler governmental institutions like the BCOGC have attempted to bypass the legal precedent. “The BC Government and their offices of the BCEAO and BCOGC have chosen to back private industry at all costs,” says the group.

Police arrived on site just before 8 a.m. and threatened to arrest anyone who continued to block the entrances to the BCOGC building. No arrests were made. Activists continued to stand on the premises with banners, and served breakfast on site.”

A series of seventeen photos by Graeme of the action can be seen in this Twitter thread.

Seb Bonet, one of the organizers and a member of the PBI-Canada Board of Directors, comments: “There is no path to decolonization that does not go straight through the elimination of the BCOGC and all the violence these bureaucrats are inflicting on Indigenous people.”

For updates on the Wet’suwet’en struggle against the Coastal GasLink pipeline, please see Gidimt’en Checkpoint on Twitter.

Photo: CIDH photo.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (CIDH-IACHR) reports:

“Representatives of Brazil, Colombia, Honduras, Mexico and Peru participated on November 21 in Quito, Ecuador, in a meeting of National Protection Mechanisms for Human Rights Defenders and Journalists in Latin America.

The meeting, organized by UN Human Rights and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), highlighted the strategies and preventive actions developed by the protection mechanisms in each country, with emphasis on the implementation of measures and attention to collective cases.

During the activity, there was also an exchange with civil society organizations specialized in the protection of defenders and journalists, who provided their perspective on the functioning of national mechanisms. Article 19, Front Line Defenders, the Mesoamerican Initiative of Women Human Rights Defenders, Peace Brigades International, Protection International and Reporters Without Borders participated.

The representatives of the National Mechanisms highlighted the regional meeting as a space for exchange on the situation of human rights defenders and journalists in which they have been able to discuss the main challenges they continue to identify, as well as the good practices they have been developing. They also agreed on follow-up actions for 2023, with the support of UN Human Rights and the IACHR.”

The full media release can be read at En encuentro regional, países compartieron nuevas estrategias para proteger a las personas defensoras de derechos humanos.