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PBI-Mexico accompanies CONTEC at meeting on the challenges of HRDs with European Union ambassadors in Chihuahua

By
Brent Patterson
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On October 20, PBI-Mexico tweeted:

“During a meeting this morning at #Chihuahua, the @UEenMexico [European Union in Mexico] delegation heard about the challenges of human rights defenders in the state.”

Earlier that same day, PBI-Mexico tweeted:

“We welcome the visit of Ambassadors of the European Union to Chihuahua and the meeting with organizations and human rights defenders. We trust that @UEenMexico will continue to monitor the human rights situation by providing continued political support.”

As noted in a European Union in Mexico tweet, some of the organizations present were the Community Technical Consultancy (CONTEC), the Center for Training and Defense of Human and Indigenous Rights (CECADDHI), the Women’s Human Rights Center A.C. (CEDEHM) and Justice for Our Daughters.

PBI-Mexico signed an accompaniment agreement with CONTEC in March of this year.

PBI-Colombia congratulates the We Are Genesis Network and CAHUCOPANA at the National Human Rights Awards ceremony

By
Brent Patterson
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On October 19, PBI-Colombia tweeted:

“We congratulate @SomosGenesisCol [We Are Genesis Network] who receives the @PremioNalDDHH [the National Human Rights Award] in recognition of their defense of #peace in the territories. The network is made up of more than 160 Afro, mestizo, indigenous and peasant communities in #Colombia that demand protection guarantees and an end to the armed conflict.”

PBI-Colombia also tweeted:

“We congratulate @CAHUCOPANA, a finalist in the 2022 National Human Rights Awards. In the middle of #HumanitarianCrisis in #Northeast Antioquia we accompany @CAHUCOPANA [the Humanitarian Action Corporation for Coexistence and Peace in Northeast Antioquia] that promotes collective protection measures for mining-peasant communities in defense of life and permanence in the territory.”

The website for the award notes: “Annually, and since 2012, the National Human Rights Defence Award celebrates the lives of women and men who work in the defence and promotion of human rights in Colombia.”

Those who are nominated “are leaders because they are defenders of life, of women, of children, of water, of territory, of natural resources, of common interest.”

The Award is presented by Diakonia (an international, faith-based cooperation organization founded by Protestant churches in Sweden that is active in 30 countries around the world) and the Church of Sweden (an Evangelical Lutheran church with 6.1 million members, 3,500 churches and 13 dioceses in Sweden) with the support of the Ambassador of Sweden in Colombia.

PBI-Canada joins PBI-Colombia in congratulating the We Are Genesis Network and CAHUCOPANA.

PBI-Honduras accompanies LGTB Rainbow Association at sit-in for ratification of Convention on discrimination against women protocol

By
Brent Patterson
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On October 20, PBI-Honduras tweeted:

“PBI accompanies the LGTB Rainbow Association of Honduras at the press conference and sit-in to request the ratification of the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).”

The Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) is an international treaty designed to uphold women’s and girls’ rights around the world.

The UN has explained: “By ratifying the Optional Protocol, a State recognizes the competence of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women — the body that monitors States parties’ compliance with the Convention — to receive and consider complaints from individuals or groups within its jurisdiction.”

The General Assembly adopted the 21-article Optional Protocol on October 6, 1999 and called on all State parties to the Convention to party to the new instrument as possible.

Honduras ratified the Convention in 1983, but has not ratified the Optional Protocol.

On October 18-19, a committee of international women’s rights experts reviewed Honduras’ progress in implementing the Convention.

Arcoiris has also shared on their Facebook page:

“Press conference and sit-in with feminist organizations to show that the CEDAW protocol has not been ratified and that the debt to women’s human rights continues.

Honduras has gone backwards in the recognition and guarantee of the sexual and reproductive rights of women, the National Congress in 2021 reformed article 67 of the constitution to shield any possibility of legalizing abortion, in addition, the Secretary of Health continues to maintain the prohibition of the Emergency Contraceptive Pill (PAE), for 13 years.

We demand immediate action in those quickly approved measures that can guarantee the enjoyment of human rights for women!”

Criterio.hn recently reported:

“Between January and June 2022, the Public Ministry has registered at least 2,232 complaints of sexual violence, of which 72% correspond to girls (960) and women (655), according to data that was compiled by the observatory of the Center for Women’s Rights (CDM). According to the figures, an average of 269 complaints of sexual violence against girls and women are registered monthly.

Despite the high rates of sexual assaults directed towards half of its population, the State of Honduras maintains the absolute prohibition of abortion and the use of the Emergency Contraceptive Pill (ECP), so that women and girls who have experienced sexual violence can be forced to continue an unwanted pregnancy against their will, perpetuating the cycle of violence faced by girls and women, Human Rights Watch said.”

PBI-Honduras has accompanied the Rainbow Association since July 2015.

Wet’suwet’en land defender Molly Wickham: “It’s time to plan, prepare and protect what is left”

By
Brent Patterson
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On October 19, Wet’suwet’en land defender Molly Wickham (Sleydo’) along with Hereditary Chiefs Woos and Na’moks spoke at a Decolonial Solidarity online organizing call attended by more than 300 people.

Wickham told those assembled: “[The drilling at the site of our sacred headwaters] is happening now. The salmon are spawning in the river and you can actually hear the drilling happening from kilometres away. You can feel it in the ground, in the earth, from kilometres away. …The salmon are spawning and you can feel the vibration of the drilling happening.”

She highlighted: “We are calling on you, our allies, other Indigenous nations, labour unions, anarchist groups, environmentalists, students, climate activists. The threat to our survival and our freedom is our collective responsibility. Enough is enough. It’s time to plan, prepare and protect what is left.”

Wickham then put out this call: “Organize yourselves and take action in protection of Wedzin Kwa, in protection of clean water and salmon.”

She then pointed at RBC as one of the largest financial institutions backing this project, and at TC Energy and KKR, the owners of Coastal GasLink, all seeking “economic gain”. And she pointed at the governments of Canada and British Columbia and “their power”. Wickham stated: “That’s what they want and that’s what we have to go after. That’s what we have to put into question and call into question.”

She also highlighted: “The only thing that has worked to get the government and industry’s attention is money. When the people of the land impacted their pocketbook.”

Wickham lamented: “There are now racist injunctions [across every rail line, at every port, every piece of major infrastructure] to disrupt and criminalize our right to humanity and to repress our ability to fight for a clean future, for clean drinking water.”

And she acknowledged: “Our ancestors fought knowing they would be jailed and fined and become outlaws essentially, criminalized in their own territories.”

Decolonial Solidarity is calling for actions including chalking, sit-ins, banner-making, rallies and continued calls to RBC executives. Wickham added: “Actions are not limited to those discussed here. You do you friends!!”

The drilling under the river began around mid-September. CGL has previously stated the active tunneling work is expected to take two and a half to three months.

For updates, please follow Gidimt’en Checkpoint and Decolonial Solidarity on Twitter.

This is one of the first actions in response to this call.

      

               

PBI-Guatemala accompanies the Peaceful Resistance of La Puya and the BDH law firm at workshop in El Tizate

By
Brent Patterson
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On October 18, PBI-Guatemala posted:

“PBI accompanies the Peaceful Resistance of La Puya and the Human Rights Law Firm to a workshop where the community of El Tizate was informed about the process of choosing representatives for the p…”

In June, Prensa Latina reported: “The Minister of Energy and Mines, Alberto Pimentel … stated that the Government will soon issue regulations for carrying out community consultations stipulated in Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization (ILO) on indigenous and tribal peoples.”

“In addition, the pre-consultation stage is being prepared for the Progreso VII Derivada Mining project, also known as El Tambor or La Puya.”

The article also noted: “[Pimentel] also announced that the National Mining Policy is being prepared, which is not only based on a reform of the Mining Law, but also on a broader discussion process with the rest of the country’s sectors that will be convened to carry out the exercise of defining the future of mining in the country. Other entities such as the Ministry of the Environment and others should also be integrated. According to the official, the Policy would be finished in 2023, since he wants to finish it before the change of government.”

Canadian mining in Guatemala

According to Natural Resources Canada, Canadian Mining Assets (CMA) in Guatemala were valued at $382 million in 2020 (up from $377 million the previous year). That chart further notes that six Canadian companies are operating in Guatemala.

Notably, on March 2, 2012, residents from San José del Golfo and San Pedro Ayampuc – an area known as La Puya, just north of Guatemala City – set up a 24-hour a day blockade at the entrance of the Vancouver-based Radius Gold Inc. By August 2012, the Canadian company sold El Tambor to US-based Kappes, Cassiday & Associates, but retained an economic interest in the mine (including quarterly royalty payments on the gold production from the mine).

PBI-Guatemala has accompanied the Peaceful Resistance of La Puya since November 2012 and the Human Rights Law Firm since 2013.

CEHPRODEC lawyer Donald Hernández: “For those whose lands are stolen and poisoned by mining companies, Canada is synonymous with mining”

By
Brent Patterson
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Development and Peace animator Kiegan Irish writes: “In capitulating to mining industry interests, the Canadian state is complicit in gross abuses of the land and environmental rights of Indigenous and impoverished communities across the Americas. That was the stark takeaway of an event I cohosted for Development and Peace ― Caritas Canada on September 22 at the Kingston Frontenac Public Library in Kingston, Ontario”

The article by Irish adds: “The panelists were Donald Hernández, a human rights lawyer who directs CEHPRODEC, one of our partner organizations in Honduras and Joan Kuyek, a noted activist and the author of Unearthing Justice: How to Protect Your Community from the Mining Industry.”

Joan Kuyek highlights what international solidarity can include.

CEHPRODEC in Honduras

Irish continues:

“Hernández gave an overview of the accompaniment and legal aid that CEHPRODEC provides to land defenders standing up to the extractive industry. This work is critical in Honduras, one of the world’s most dangerous countries for land and environmental defenders.

Hernández explained that because poor rural communities lack the time and resources to acquire expertise in complex mining and property law and international trade frameworks, CEHPRODEC also educates them about these issues and their rights and legal protections.

He said that although much hope is vested in the new Honduran government’s progressive election manifesto, the repression of land defenders continues, and legal structures remain disadvantageous to Indigenous communities. Hernández recalled the criminalization and persecution of [Indigenous Lenca environmental defender] Víctor Vásquez and [journalist] Sonia Pérez, whose cases Development and Peace has highlighted.

PBI-Honduras accompanies CEHPRODEC legal team during the trial for Vásquez, June 2021.

Hernández decried the jarring disproportion between the tiny quantities of minerals extracted and the enormous amount of waste and destruction by the mining industry. He lamented the incalculable social and ecological harm inflicted by unscrupulous mining companies, many of which are Canadian.

Asked by an audience member what Hondurans thought of Canada, Hernández replied, “For those whose lands are stolen and poisoned by mining companies, Canada is synonymous with mining!””

The full article by Kiegan Irish can be read at A call to Canada’s collective conscience.

The Peace Brigades International-Honduras Project has accompanied the Honduran Centre for the Promotion of Community Development (CEHPRODEC) since May 2014.

PBI-Honduras accompanying CEHPRODEC, September 2022.

PBI-Spanish State hosts events with defenders from Mexico and Kenya in Santander, Reinosa, Torrelavega and Maliaño

By
Brent Patterson
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Photo of public forum in Santander by El Faradio.

Peace Brigades International-Spanish State (Estado Español) is hosting a visit by defenders from Mexico and Kenya to Santander, Reinosa, Torrelavega and Maliaño/Camargo, cities in Cantabria, an autonomous province in northern Spain.

(Photo, left to right): Jacinter Agunja (WHRD Toolkit Organizer), Diana Villalobos (Community Technical Consulting/ CONTEC), Florence Mwikali (PBI-Kenya).

The advocacy tour is highlighting the experience of women human rights defenders in Mexico and Kenya, including the struggle for the territory of Indigenous communities of the Sierra Tarahumara and the problem of forced displacement in Mexico and women’s and girls’ rights, sexual and reproductive rights, and gender equality in Kenya.

The advocacy tour is happening within the framework of the initiative ‘Cantabrian municipalities for the defence of human rights’, which forms the Education for Development project financed by the Government of Cantabria.

El Faradio reports: “The closure of schools in Kenya resulted in more pregnancies in girls and violence in the home, while in Mexico armed groups increase their control of territory, according to Kenyan activists Jacinter Agunja and Florence Mwikali in Cantabria, and Diana Villalobos, director of Community Technical Consulting (CONTEC).”

The article adds: “These three activists will hold different public meetings under the name ‘Defending the territory and women’s rights in Latin America and Africa’.”

“After the one held this Tuesday in La Vorágine [a bookstore] in Santander, the other three will be held on Wednesday 19 at 6:30 p.m. at La Casona [a library] in Reinosa, on Thursday 20 at 6:30 p.m. in the Mauro Muriedas Exhibition Hall in Torrelavega and on Friday 21 at 7:00 p.m. at La Vidriera [a theatre] in Maliaño [Camargo].”

The visit has also included a meeting with Lorena Gutiérrez Fernández, Councilor for Social Dynamization, Immigration and Development Cooperation in Santander.

They also met with Silvia Abascal, General Director of Development Cooperation of the Government of Cantabria.

And they met with the Basque Agency for Development Cooperation.

Next week, PBI-UK and Amnesty International-UK will be hosting a screening of ‘Cruz’ that will include a question-and-answer session with Villalobos Diaz.

The full El Faradio article can be read at: La COVID y la guerra en Ucrania empeoran la situación de las mujeres en Kenia y de los defensores del territorio en México.

Prior to visiting Cantabria, Agunja and Mwikali were in Switzerland.

PBI-Guatemala accompanies UVOC at sentence reading for Poqomchi’ community leader David Maxena Caal

By
Brent Patterson
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On October 18, PBI-Guatemala posted:

“#PBI accompanies UVOC [the Union of Verapaz Campesino Organizations] at the hearing of the sentence reading of David Maxena, who was criminalized because of his defense of land and territory. Finally, Maxena was acquitted and should be set free.”

UVOC has 367 affiliated communities (about 50,000 families); 98 per cent of which are Indigenous Maya Q’eqchi’, Poqomchi’ and Achi.

After he was arrested in February, UVOC posted:

“We ask for freedom of comrade David Maxena, defender of life and the mother of earth, accused of aggravated usurpation by the Santa Teresa Hydroelectric Company of the municipality of Tucuru A. V. The Q’echi Chintun Indigenous Community owns their territory where they have a cemetery more than 100 years of existence we demand justice and freedom for Maxena.”

Former United Nations Special Rapporteur Victoria Tauli-Corpuz has given the example of how the charge of “usurpation” is used as when “Indigenous peoples become trespassers or illegal occupants of their own lands.”

PBI-Guatemala has accompanied Maxena throughout this court process this year.

Accompanying Maxena at court hearing, early-October.

Accompanying Maxena in court, August.

Accompanying Maxena in court, July.

Visiting Maxena in prison, June.

Accompanying Maxena in court, June.

Accompanying Maxena in court, May.

Accompanying Maxena in court, April.

Accompanying Maxena in prison, April.

UVOC has previously posted: “Months in prison without committing any crime. Since February 14 of this year, the Mayan Poqomchi’ community leader David Alejandro Maxena Caal, defender of human rights and mother land, was detained.”

UVOC adds: “The Santa Teresa Hydroelectric and the Shintun Agriculture S.A. municipality of San Miguel Tucuru, are the main plaintiffs against the communities that were stripped of their land that was an ancestral belonging to them.”

The Santa Teresa dam is situated on the Polochic River, which discharges 70 per cent of the total freshwater input to Lake Izabal.

The Peace Brigades International-Guatemala Project has accompanied the Union of Verapaz Campesino Organizations (UVOC) since 2005.

PBI-Honduras accompanies COFADEH at trial of police officer accused in the murder of Keyla Martinez

By
Brent Patterson
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On October 1, PBI-Honduras posted:

“PBI accompanies Cofadeh [Committee of Relatives of the Disappeared in Honduras] in the trial against policeman Jarol Perdomo, accused of the death of Keyla Martínez. The process had entered a recess since September 29, 2022, due to the pending amparo appeal, filed by the private prosecution, to modify the simple homicide figure to aggravated femicide. Yesterday the parties announced the conclusions of the case.

The lawyer Karol Cárdenas, who is part of the private prosecution in the case, together with the lawyer Dora Oliva, requested that ‘the Public Ministry be urged to open an investigation process against all the police officers who helped Jarol Perdomo, to modify or hide the scene of the crime and they failed in the duty of the officials, because what was appropriate at that time was to put them at the order of the Public Ministry and take care of the scene of the crime.’

20 months after the murder of Keyla Martínez in the custody of the National Police, we remember the importance of clarifying the facts and we want to highlight the tireless struggle of her family in the search for justice.”

Keyla Martinez, a 26-year-old nursing student, was murdered on February 7, 2021, while in police custody. She had been detained by police around 11:45 pm because of a curfew when returning home after eating with friends on a Saturday evening. There were more than 13 police officers on duty at the police station when she was killed.

Criterio.hn also reports:

“After 20 months demanding justice, with the slogan ‘Hope is missing a girl: Keyla’, relatives, women’s and feminist organizations, gathered in front of the Sentencing Court of Siguatepeque, to know the breakdown of conclusions against the only one implicated by the Honduran justice in the murder of the young Keyla Martínez, killed during a pandemic-imposed curfew in February 2021.

Beginning at 10:00 in the morning, the Sentencing Court of Siguatepeque, Comayagua, in the center of the country, announced the beginning of the stage of reading the conclusions of the oral and public trial in the judicial case against the policeman Jarol Rolando Perdomo Sarmiento, the only agent who has been brought before the courts for the murder of Keyla Patricia Martínez Rodríguez.

‘[Keyla] was illegally captured and was supposedly under the protection of them [the police], but they ended up murdering her committing the crime of femicide. All the people and witnesses know that there was not only one perpetrator, there were accomplices, even the head of that region is involved, according to witnesses, he covers up this type of facts,’ said Ana Ruth García [coordinator of Ecumenical for the Right to Decide].

Jarol was accused by the Public Ministry (MP) of aggravated femicide, but the court of La Esperanza, Intibucá, was responsible for typifying the crime as simple homicide.

The courts must [still] rule on the requirement typified in the appeal, filed with the Court of Appeals of Comayagua, to change crime to aggravated femicide but not as simple homicide.

For now, the Court that hears the case enters the stage of deliberation, a process in which the evidence presented during the development of the Oral and Public Trial will be evaluated, thus determining whether the policeman is guilty or innocent of the murder of Keyla.”

Between 2016 and 2021, there were 2,264 cases of femicide in Honduras.

In the past five years, 381 women have been killed on average annually. Ninety-six per cent of the murders remain unsolved.

We continue to follow this.

On February 8, PBI-Honduras tweeted: “One year after the violent death of Keyla Martínez in the custody of the National Police, PBI accompanied @RedDefensoras [National Network of Women Human Rights Defenders] in an act in memory of Keyla. From PBI, we remember the importance of clarifying Keyla’s femicide.”

RCMP spend $25 million to enable construction of CGL pipeline, while UN committee calls for police to leave the territory

By
Brent Patterson
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Photo: The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) raid on Wet’suwet’en territory, January 2019. Photo by Michael Toledano. The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has urged Canada to withdraw the RCMP from Wet’suwet’en territory and “to prohibit the use of lethal weapons, notably by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, against indigenous peoples.”

Amanda Follett Hosgood reports in The Tyee: “An ongoing RCMP presence on the Morice Forest Service Road in northern B.C., where a gas pipeline is under construction through Wet’suwet’en territory, has cost Canada’s police force more than $25 million.”

Her article notes: “The most recent accounting, obtained by The Tyee through federal access to information laws, covers policing costs from April 1, 2021, to March 31, 2022, and shows that, over the course of a year, the force spent $6.8 million policing the area.”

It adds: “Most of those expenses, roughly $4.5 million, were accrued during the first three months of this year, based on a separate accounting that showed the RCMP had spent just over $21 million by Dec. 31, 2021, three years after the conflict began.”

CBC News has previously reported that $13.1 million had been spent on the RCMP presence on Wet’suwet’en territory; $3.6 million for the fiscal year 2018/2019 and $9.5 million in 2019/2020. The Tyee now provides us with updated spending figures.

The RCMP has launched three raids (on January 8, 2019; February 6-10, 2020; November 18-19, 2021) on Wet’suwet’en territory to enable construction of this fracked gas pipeline to continue without free, prior and informed consent.

Fourteen people were arrested in January 2019, twenty-eight people in February 2020.

Follett Hosgood notes: “Last November, the RCMP arrested 30 people over two days after those opposing the project established a camp at the drill site and spent two months occupying the site. Among those arrested were two journalists who spent several days in custody. Coastal GasLink later announced it would not pursue charges against the journalists. Among the others arrested, 19 others now face criminal contempt charges.”

The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has repeatedly called on Canada to withdraw the RCMP from Wet’suwet’en territory.

This was conveyed in this resolution dated December 13, 2019, and in follow-up letters sent to Leslie E. Norton, Canada’s Ambassador at the United Nations in Geneva, on November 24, 2020, and April 29, 2022.

On September 28, Kim-Mai Vu of Peace Brigades International presented to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva during the Interactive Dialogue with the Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

She stated: “The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has called on Canada to stop construction of the Coastal GasLink pipeline on Wet’suwet’en territory. Canada ratified this International Convention in 1970 and said in 2016 that it supported the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, however, the construction of this gas pipeline without consent continues as does the criminalization of land defenders.”

The video of this presentation (made in Spanish, with English translation) can be seen here (starting at 28:55).

Organizing call tomorrow

More than 560 people have registered to participate in this organizing call. PBI-Canada will also be joining this call. To register for it, click here.

To read the full article about policing costs in The Tyee, go to RCMP Spending on Pipeline Conflict Reaches $25 Million: As Coastal GasLink begins drilling under the Morice River, police presence on Wet’suwet’en territory appears to be on the rise.

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