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Webinar on Tuesday!

By
Brent Patterson
-

We hope you can join us tomorrow (Tuesday October 11) at 2 pm ET to hear social leaders and human rights defenders from PBI-Colombia accompanied organizations.

To register, click here.

Social leaders Ferney Salcedo and Yulivel Leal along with human rights defenders Reymundo Vasquez (CSPP) and Ninfa Cruz (COSPACC) will be talking about the criminalization of the community of San Lus de Palenque, Casanare by the Canadian oil company Frontera Energy.

Ferney, Yulivel and six other community members have experienced either imprisonment or house arrest and are scheduled to be in court in February 2023.

This is a crucial time to learn about their struggle and to consider ways in which international solidarity can help to uphold human rights.

Please join us by clicking here.

Thanks, Brent at PBI-Canada

Canadian oil company Frontera Energy CEO challenges Petro government’s decision on no new exploration contracts

By
Brent Patterson
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Frontera Energy’s Cubiro Block in San Luis de Palenque, Colombia. Photo by LaReporteria.com. To hear more about Frontera Energy in Colombia, join our webinar this coming Tuesday October 11 at 2 pm ET by clicking here.

On October 7, Infobae reported:

“In the last minutes, Belizza Ruiz, Deputy Minister of Energy of the Government of Gustavo Petro, announced that, as the president had promised in the campaign, no new contracts for the exploration and exploitation of hydrocarbons will be signed.

Ruiz with the Minister of Mines and Energy Irene Vélez Torres.

Given this, the president of Frontera Energy, Orlando Cabrales, told Deputy Minister Ruiz, as quoted in Semana, that “there must be more natural gas exploration.”

He also asked “why don’t we concentrate on getting what we have and have discovered?”, alluding to the announcement by the president of Ecopetrol about great discoveries in the Caribbean.

And he concluded by saying “If we want to guarantee energy security, we have to go beyond what was contracted”.

Frontera Energy CEO Orlando Cabrales.

To which the deputy minister replied that it is a myth that we have a lot of gas and [urged] the sector to be more honest with its projections, in which the social and environmental impacts of gas production must be taken into account.”

Gabriel de Alba, Chairman of the Frontera Energy Board of Directors (and co-chairman of the board of directors of the Montreal-based entertainment company Cirque du Soleil, the largest contemporary circus producer in the world).

Notably, of the 69 new exploration blocks awarded in Colombia between 2019 and 2021 by the previous Duque government, at least 39 went to Canadian companies: Parex Resources (26), Canacol Energy Ltd. (5), Gran Tierra Energy (4), and Frontera Energy (4).

Cabrales has also told Semana: “I think the Duque Government’s approach with scientific [fracking] pilots to obtain supported information is the right one. I don’t think it’s convenient to deny us that opportunity.”

Mongabay Latam also recently reported that there have been 2,133 oil incidents and spills in Colombia from 2015 to June 2022. At least 92 of those incidents have been linked to Canadian companies: Frontera Energy and its former name Pacific Rubiales (56), Gran Tierra (26) and Parex Resources (10).

Mongabay notes that one of the high-severity events during the seven year period related to the Pacific Rubiales company in Puerto Gaitán, Meta. It details: “In the Pacific Rubiales incidents there were more than 2800 barrels of raw water that affected the soil, water and flora, in particular a body of water tributary to Caño Ivoto.”

WEBINAR, OCTOBER 11

This coming Tuesday October 11 at 2 pm ET, we will be holding a webinar focused on the experience of the community of San Luis de Palenque, Colombia with Frontera Energy.

Eight social leaders who had been protesting against Frontera were arrested in a pre-dawn raid involving a Black Hawk military helicopter landing on their farmyards.

That lead UN Special Rapporteur Michel Forst to express his concern about “the apparent connection between Frontera Energy, the army’s 16th brigade and the Attorney General’s Support Office in this criminalization.”

To join this webinar, click here.

Our meeting with the community, including criminalized social leaders, in San Luis de Palenque, July 1, 2022.

Guapinol River defender Dalila Argueta lives in exile at the Basoa Defenders’ House near Bilbao, Basque Country

By
Brent Patterson
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Photo: Dalila Argueta in the Basoa Defenders’ House library. Photo by J. Marcos.

The digital news outlet palabra. reports on Guapinol River defender Dalila Argueta in this article available in both English and Spanish.

The article highlights:

“Dalila’s struggle is the resistance against the iron mine that has polluted her homeland for five years, after the Honduran company Inversiones Los Pinares obtained the permit to mine the Botaderos Mountain.

As soon as construction work began around the mine, Dalila threw herself into the fight that would change her life and ultimately force her to leave her country.

In her community, the water turned into “pure mud” and stopped working to quench thirst.

A few months before her arrest, Dalila managed to leave Honduras.

To stay in Spain, Dalila had to prove that her life was in danger in Honduras.

Victims of social repression are not usually recognized as candidates for asylum. Ironically, the countries that deny asylum are frequently the same ones that caused the conflicts which forced activists to leave their homeland in the first place.

[She] is [now] one of the first residents of Basoa.

The Basoa Defenders’ House [is] a community and self-managed space built a few months ago some 25 miles from Bilbao [in the Arratia Valley (Bizkaia) in the heart of Euskal Herria] in northern Spain.

Photo: Basoa House. Photo by J. Marcos.

The house serves as a meeting space and has four floors, fifty beds, and a large kitchen with its many pots and pans. It has bathrooms and showers, a fireplace, library, bright windows and a large garden with trees.

More than 40 ecofeminist activists from different countries in Latin America, Spain, and Senegal are gathered to weave transnational alliances “against corporate power.”

This is the mission of the organization, Peace with Dignity, who started the house.”

We encourage you to read the full article by J. Marcos and Mª Ángeles Fernández at A Place of Refuge or Refugio.

For more: BASOA, la Casa de las Defensoras en Arratia necesita echar raíces y florecer. Desligado de la dependencia institucional y vinculado a la Red de Acogida Artea, Basoa es un punto de encuentro que apuesta por el Ecofeminismo y la horizontalidad.

The Peace Brigades International-Honduras Project continues to accompany the criminalized defenders of the Guapinol River. More on that here.

Global Witness video highlights Colombian environmental defenders Yuli Velásquez and Óscar Sampayo

By
Brent Patterson
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On October 6, PBI-Colombia tweeted:

“Colombia is one of the most dangerous countries for the defense of the environment, in a decade 322 environmentalists have been murdered. It is urgent to protect environmentalists like Yuli Velásquez of #Fedepesán and Óscar Sampayo who suffer serious risks for defending water and life in #MagdalenaMedio.”

They shared this 2-minute Global Witness video.

When Yuli participated in a PBI-Canada webinar on April 29, 2021, she said: “We are working hard to stop fracking. Pollution will impact future generations. As fisherpeople we are impacted by water pollution. We can’t allow corporations and contractors to come in and affect the well-being of our communities.”

She added: “We have faced various threats and assassination attempts, but we will continue working and contributing to the protection of the environment.”

We met Yuli in Barrancabermeja on June 29, 2022, at a CREDHOS convened meeting and heard more about the struggle to protect water.

The next morning, June 30, we visited the San Silvestre wetland ecosystem with Yuli and witnessed the impacts of Ecopetrol and large-scale agribusiness (buffalos and palm) on the water, wildlife and livelihoods of artisanal fishers.

Just a few days later, Yuli and her guard experienced an armed attack that left her guard wounded.

Then on July 13, PBI-Colombia accompanied Yuli and CREDHOS at a mobilization in defence of life and the environment.

Canadian financing

We continue to raise the concern about Canadian financing of Ecopetrol – which operates the major oil refinery in Barrancabermeja – in this context of environmental harm, violence and alleged ties between Ecopetrol and paramilitaries.

The Banking on Climate Chaos website reveals Scotiabank’s investments in Ecopetrol. Scotiabank provided USD $665 million to Ecopetrol in 2018, another $666.67 million in 2020, and $1.7 billion in 2021 for a total of $3.0 billion in financing.

Bronwen Tucker of Oil Change International also shared on a PBI-Canada organized webinar this slide of the top recipients of Export Development Canada financing in Colombia between 2012 and 2020.

We continue to closely follow the situation in Barrancabermeja.

Brent Patterson (PBI-Canada), Yuli Velásquez (FEDEPESAN), Javier Garate (PBI-Colombia)

Wet’suwet’en man denied access to ancestral territory by RCMP as CGL drills under Wedzin Kwa

By
Brent Patterson
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On October 6, Yintah Access posted on Instagram: “Wedzin kwa and everything that depends on her is under attack. We all have a responsibility to protect her.”

They reposted this video – taken on September 29 – that shows Travis Pete (@honeycomb_25) being blocked from accessing a smokehouse on his land.

Git’luuhl’um’hetxwit Media explains:

“We are sharing a video from our dear friend @honeycomb_25, who was confronted on his ancestral clan territory by foreign industry goons. This took place on the opposite side of the river from where Coastal GasLink is currently attempting to drill underneath very active spring salmon spawning grounds. These salmon have likely been spawning in this river since it was first formed. Salmon runs have been struggling for years on this river, and now the ground water flow, spawning gravel, and water temperature are all being influenced by the vast clear-cuts of the right of way, rock blasting, fuel spills, in-filled ravines, drilling, and then eventually the pipeline itself. The smokehouse, the salmon, and our way of life is something that can never be replaced with money. This is a national crime in progress, and the impunity of the colonial-Industrial mentality is something that needs to be challenged and overcome.”

The drilling by Coastal GasLink is happening despite the lack of free, prior and informed consent from the Wet’suwet’en peoples and three letters from the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination calling on Canada to halt this project.

On September 28, Peace Brigades International echoed these concerns during the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland during the Interactive Dialogue with the Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

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

PBI-Canada visited the territory in November 2021.

We continue to follow this situation.

The Breach reports on Toronto-based GCM and paramilitaries in Northeast Antioquia, Colombia

By
Brent Patterson
-

The Breach has published Toronto gold miners unfazed by paramilitaries’ brutal reign by Joshua Collins, a journalist based in Colombia who covers migration, social movements and the impact of criminality on human rights.

We share excerpts from this article given the Peace Brigades International-Colombia Project accompanies the Humanitarian Action Corporation for Coexistence and Peace in Northeast Antioquia (CAHUCOPANA) and the Small-Scale Farmer Association of the Cimitarra River Valley (ACVC) in this region.

PBI-Colombia also accompanies the Medellin, Antioquia-based Corporation for Judicial Freedom (CJL) that has as a main focus “the support and defence of displaced communities or those at risk of forced displacement, and populations at risk of dispossession due to the implementation of urban development projects and mining and energy projects.”

Earlier this year, PBI-Colombia explained: “The abundance of natural resources in these lands and the arrival of multinational companies, such as the Canadian Gran Colombia Gold, has provided the illegal armed groups who are present in the region with an extremely lucrative funding source in mining.”

Collins focuses on the Toronto-based mining company GCM (aka Gran Colombia Gold) in Segovia, northeastern Antioqua, which he describes as a “town as belonging to the most powerful criminal armed group in Colombia, the Gaitanista Self Defense Forces of Colombia, or AGC by its initials in Spanish.”

He highlights “The Canadians do very little actual mining, and instead rely on subcontractors to access the gold they bring to market—a risky proposition in a region under the thumb of criminal organizations.”

A key portion of his article notes:

“In 2010, the Toronto company indirectly acquired the mine holdings, licenses, and infrastructure that had belonged to Frontino Gold, a US company that was in bankruptcy.

Gran Colombia quickly ran into labour problems, and its activities sparked land disputes with small independent miners in the region. As the company acquired new mining titles near Segovia, it displaced artisanal miners who had worked in the region for generations, and who organized to resist the company’s efforts.

Independent miners from Segovia, whom Gran Colombia denounced as criminal operations infringing on their titles, were presented with a choice: work for the company, or be evicted, by force if necessary.

Workers who stayed claimed the conditions were dangerous and pay amounted to “slave wages.” Those who pushed for better pay and safety standards were violently removed from mines they had worked in for years. Labour groups protested via strikes and meetings with regional government officials in Medellín, where they denounced Gran Colombia’s actions.

In November 2016, the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights solicited state protection for informal miners from Segovia amid a dispute with Gran Colombia, which claims that areas used by informal miners in Segovia belonged to it.

A year prior, informal miners that had been working in that mine were invited to Antioquia’s state congress in Medellín to explain the situation in Segovia and the threat posed by paramilitary groups.

Two days later, a mysterious pamphlet declared the miners that opposed Gran Colombia’s interests “a military target.”

Four of them were found dead within a week, allegedly assassinated.

Over this same period, large numbers of artisanal miners were also displaced from the region by armed groups— though no link between AGC and Gran Colombia interests was ever proven.

Faced with labour disputes, criminal armed groups and a local community in rebellion, Gran Colombia changed its strategy. The company hired Colombian sub-contractors to mine their gold, as a way of dealing with escalating security, legal and social issues.

Using subcontractors gave Gran Colombia a key advantage: plausible deniability. The company could put distance between their operations and the problems that come with working in a region effectively controlled by criminal armed groups.

Gran Colombia has in the past claimed that it has no knowledge of any of the subcontractors in their employ making payments to armed groups. The company did not respond to repeated requests for comment from The Breach.

Multiple miners in Segovia, who requested their names not be published due to fear of retaliation from armed groups, told The Breach that no company, large or small, can operate in Segovia without paying the vacuna or vaccine, the slang term for extortion payments, to the AGC.”

Collins also notes that Gran Colombia has now announced the completion of a merger with Aris Gold, another Canadian company that owns the Marmato mine.

To read the full article by Collins in The Breach, click here.

PBI-Colombia has accompanied CAHUCOPANA since 2013, ACVC since 2007 and CJL since 2000.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Oscar Sampayo: “We have recorded at least 20 acts of human rights violations against voices that refuse fracking” (September 21, 2022).

PBI-Colombia accompanies CAHUCOPANA at meeting with Canadian Embassy on the situation in northeastern Antioquia (August 12, 2022)

PBI-Colombia accompanies Corporation for Judicial Freedom to meetings with Embassies on the situation in Antioquia (April 6, 2022)

Gran Colombia Gold and its “free trade” investor-state challenge relating to the communities of Marmato and Segovia (October 10, 2021).

PBI-Colombia observes launch of the CSPP co-authored “Guarantees for Change” report

By
Brent Patterson
-

Photo by Ivonne González Rodriguez.

On October 5, the Committee of Solidarity with Political Prisoners (CSPP) co-sponsored an event that asked: “What is required to protect the lives of people who signed the agreement, human rights defenders and social leaders?”

The forum launched the 114-page report: Guarantees for change: Public policy devices in favor of human rights defenders and social leaderships.

As noted on the CSPP website:

“This report makes a series of recommendations to the Government of Gustavo Petro and other State agencies to a) overcome the violence that still persists in the country and lay the foundations for the construction of a stable and lasting peace and b) protect, urgently, the lives of human rights defenders and social leaders who day by day, to exercise their rights, they face a situation of risk against their life and integrity.”

The first recommendation in the report highlights:

“There is a multiplicity of instances, programs and regulations that have within their objectives to provide protection and/or establish prevention measures for human rights defenders. In this sense, the State has currently with a complex and prolific institutional scaffolding that is poorly articulated and efficient. Hence it is imperative advance in a complete mapping of regulations, instances and existing programs, which allows to have a diagnosis of what exists, its strengths, weaknesses, functionality, compatibility with the devices provided for in the Final Agreement of Peace, as a necessary budget for the formulation of a comprehensive public policy of guarantees for the exercise of the work of defending human rights.”

For news reports in Spanish on this, see Cuatro cambios claves para proteger a personas defensoras de derechos humanos (Verdad Abierta) and  ONG de derechos humanos piden mayor protección a Gobierno de Gustavo Petro (W Radio).

To watch the 90-minute video of the presentation of the report, click here.

PBI-Colombia has accompanied the CSPP since 1998.

PBI-Canada webinar this Tuesday October 11 at 2 pm ET

By
Brent Patterson
-

On Tuesday October 11 at 2 pm ET PBI-Canada will be hosting a webinar with social leaders from the community of San Luis de Palenque, Colombia talking about their experiences with the Canadian oil company Frontera Energy.

To register, click here.

After protesting against the company over social, environmental and infrastructure concerns, eight community members were arrested in a pre-dawn military raid that involved a Black Hawk helicopter landing on their farmyards.

Notably, that happened after the company signed $1-million-plus protection agreements with the military.

That lead UN Special Rapporteur Michel Forst to express his concern about “the apparent connection between Frontera Energy, the army’s 16th brigade and the Attorney General’s Support Office in this criminalization.”

Ferney Salcedo, Yulivel Leal, Reymundo Vásquez, Ninfa Cruz

This webinar will feature two of the criminalized social leaders: Ferney Salcedo and Yulivel Leal.

It will also include the community’s lawyer Reymundo Vásquez, who is with the PBI-Colombia accompanied Committee in Solidarity with Political Prisoners (CSPP) and Ninfa Cruz, a human rights defender with the PBI-Colombia accompanied Social Corporation for Community Advice and Training (COSPACC).

To join the 75+ people who have already registered for this webinar, please click here.

The webinar will have simultaneous Spanish-English translation.

PBI-Guatemala accompanies Bernardo Caal Xol and Human Rights Law Firm at court hearing on charges of “improper retention”

By
Brent Patterson
-

On October 5, PBI-Guatemala posted:

“#PBI accompanies the Human Rights Law Firm and Bernardo Caal Xol in the hearing to continue the debate on the teacher’s case. Bernardo is accused of having received a salary as a teacher without working, while he claims to have had a leave of absence to perform work for the teachers’ union.”

This morning, Caal tweeted:

“At 08:30 a.m. today, I am summoned for a court hearing, related to one more case of criminalization that the State of Guatemala has brought against me since 2017. To my friends, to the national and international community, I ask you to stay tuned. Thank you.”

Prensa Comunitaria explains:

“Caal regained his freedom on March 24, after spending more than four years in prison, for a sentence of seven years and four months in prison, issued by the Sentencing Court of Cobán for defending the rivers in Santa María Cahabón.

Caal is [now] accused of the crime of improper retention.

The events of which the Mayan Q’eqchi’ professor … is accused, occurred in 2013. In the accusation against him … they point out that between January 2012 and August 2013 he did not show up for work.

Caal served as a teacher and in 2012 was Deputy General Secretary of the Union of Education Workers of Guatemala (STEG). …The law empowers trade union leaders to have eight working days a month to do the work that corresponds to them; in the collective agreement of 2008 this situation was changed and the days were increased.

Caal is surprised by the accusation, because the law says that, if a worker is absent three days in a row, the fourth his salary should be suspended, so when he [first] voluntarily appeared before the judge on June 21, he said that at no time had he defrauded the State.

[Caal says STEG leader] Joviel Acevedo and the former Minister of Education Cynthia del Águila, were the ones who initiated the conditions for his criminalization from his union work that coincided with the defense of the Cahabón River.

[PBI has also noted: “Caal maintains his innocence in the matter. An administrative procedure by the Ministry of Education, in any case, should have preceded any criminal complaint. Caal and his attorneys argue that the charges were lodged against him in reprisal for his work to defend land, territory, and the environment.”]

In this process, until the intermediate stage, MINEDUC [the Ministry of Education] and the Attorney General’s Office (PGN) participated as complainants in the case; at the beginning of the trial on September 7, only the PGN and the MP [Public Ministry] were present.

Although [Caal] is clear about what can happen in the trial, he does not lose hope of the resistance and mobilizations at the national level for the defense of natural assets and justice.”

PBI-Guatemala has accompanied Bernardo Caal and the Peaceful Resistance of Cahabón since August 2017.

Pacific Exploration/ Frontera Energy in Meta and Casanare, Colombia

By
Brent Patterson
-

The Campo Rubiales oil field, in Puerto Gaitán, Meta, Colombia, was operated by the Canadian oil company Pacific Rubiales Energy in association with Ecopetrol.

Rutas del Conflicto has reported: “A notice at the entrance to the Rubiales-Piriri and Quifa oil complex noted that visitors were entering a piece of Canada in Colombia.”

A Canadian Labour Congress media release has stated: “In 2011, Colombian unions report Pacific Rubiales dismissed 1,100 workers for trying to unionize to address issues like health and safety. There are also reports of Colombia’s anti-riot police (ESMAD) being used to intimidate workers and violently suppress pro-union gatherings.”

This report co-authored by the Peace Brigades International-Colombia Project accompanied José Alvear Restrepo Lawyers’ Collective (CCAJAR) also documents violations of labour rights and union rights; the distortion of the prior consultation process and the social disarticulation of Indigenous Peoples; environmental impacts and land issues; and criminalization, an imbalanced justice system, and abuses at the hands of security providers.

The report states: “An increase in social, labor, environmental, and trade union conflicts between oil companies, local communities, and industry employees in Puerto Gaitan has coincided with a phenomenon in which individuals involved in social protest have increasingly become the subjects of criminal proceedings. Scenarios were documented in which illegal persecution and an excessive use of force have been employed by state and private agents, especially targeting trade union leaders, human rights defenders, and others who organize protests in response to labor conditions, environmental mismanagement, contracting models, and the social investment policies implemented by private companies.”

And the report cautions: “This is a worrying situation, especially when one takes into consideration the existence of Cooperation Agreements between the companies (Ecopetrol and Pacific) and the Colombian Prosecutor General’s Office, the National Police or diverse units within the armed forces.”

Webinar, October 11

This webinar will feature social leaders Ferney Salcedo, Yulivel Leal, Ninfa Cruz (the Social Corporation for Community Advice and Training/ COSPACC) and Reymundo Vásquez (the Committee in Solidarity with Political Prisoners/ CSPP).

In August 2015, Pacific Rubiales changed its name to Pacific Exploration and Production and then again in June 2017 to Frontera Energy.

By November 2018, Frontera had signed two agreements with the Ministry of Defence after the community of San Luis de Palenque, Casanare organized protests against the impacts of the company’s Cubiro Block operations.

Days after those agreements were signed, a pre-dawn military operation arrested eight social leaders in San Luis de Palenque.

That lead UN Special Rapporteur Michel Forst to express his concern about “the apparent connection between Frontera Energy, the army’s 16th brigade and the Attorney General’s Support Office in this criminalization.”

To register for this upcoming PBI-organized webinar that will discuss this criminalization, please click here.

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