Photo: Juana Zúñiga is a member of the Municipal Committee of Tocoa, Colón. In 2014, the Guapinol River was endangered when the state allowed mining exploration in the Carlos Escaleras National Park. The people of Guapinol organized against this and have found themselves criminalized – many community members are behind bars to this day. Global Witness/María Aguilar/Iolany Pérez.

Global Witness has released their annual report LAST LINE OF DEFENCE: The industries causing the climate crisis and attacks against land and environmental defenders.

Among the findings in the report:

Global Witness recorded 227 land and environmental defenders killed in 2020 – an average of more than four people a week. They note that this figure is almost certainly an underestimate. Global Witness has previously recorded that 212 land and environmental defenders were killed in 2019, 164 in 2018 and 197 in 2017.

Global Witness also recognizes that beyond killings, many defenders and communities also experience attempts to silence them, with tactics like death threats, surveillance, sexual violence, or criminalization.

For the second year in a row, Colombia saw the highest number of killings in 2020 with 65 land and environmental defenders murdered. These took place in the context of widespread attacks on human rights defenders and community leaders across the country.

In Mexico, Global Witness documented 30 lethal attacks against land and environmental defenders in 2020, a 67% increase from 2019. Logging was linked to almost a third of these attacks, and half of all the attacks in the country were directed against indigenous communities. Impunity for crimes against defenders remains shockingly high. Up to 95% of murders do not result in any prosecution.

Additionally, 17 land and environmental defenders were killed in Honduras and 13 in Guatemala. On a per capita basis, Honduras ranks second and Guatemala fourth in the global total of defenders killed in 2020 making those countries among the most dangerous in the world for land and environmental defenders.

In 2020 the disproportionate number of attacks against indigenous peoples continued once again – with over a third of all fatal attacks targeting indigenous people despite only making up 5% of the world’s population.

The data on attacks against land and environmental defenders, which Global Witness has been recording since 2012, show that the unaccountable exploitation and greed driving the climate crisis is also having an increasingly violent impact on people. The process of climate breakdown is violent, and it manifests not just in violence against the natural world, but against people as well. The violence against land and environmental defenders and the climate crisis are intimately connected, and we will not solve one without the other.

Among the recommendations in the Global Witness report:

-Ensure State commitments made at COP26 to implement the Paris Agreement align with existing international human rights obligations and standards applicable to business operations, defenders, and indigenous and other communities.

-Explore all avenues within the UN system to support the recommendations of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, as well as UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights.

To read the full Global Witness report, please click here.

For perhaps the first time, Global Witness has recorded the death of a land and environmental defender in Canada. On June 19, 2020, Canadian animal rights activist Regan Russell was run over and killed by an animal transporter after a demonstration outside Sofina Foods Inc., a pig slaughterhouse in Burlington, Ontario.

Photo: Shuswap land defender William Jones “Wolverine” Ignace.

The siege at Ts’Peten (Gustafsen Lake) within the Shuswap nation began on August 18, 1995 and culminated in the police using a landmine on September 11 against a pick-up truck carrying firewood and drinking water for the 18 land defenders inside the standoff and a police sniper firing at an unarmed land defender on September 12.

The CBC has reported: “The standoff began in 1995 when about 20 First Nations occupied a piece of ranch land near 100-Mile House [about 430 kilometres north-east of Vancouver] that they said was sacred and part of a larger tract of unceded territory.”

That article adds: “In response the RCMP brought in 400 armed officers, backed by helicopters and armoured personnel carriers, blew up a supply pick-up truck with buried explosives, and fired thousands of rounds of ammunition.”

APTN has further explained: “The RCMP used an IED [improvised explosive device] against the warriors during the standoff and Bison armoured personnel carriers provided and driven by the Canadian Forces.”

Historian Gord Hill has documented: “The next day, an RCMP sniper opened fire on an unarmed defender walking in a previously agreed upon ‘no shooting’ zone, claiming the person was wearing camouflage fatigues and carrying a weapon. During the trial of the defenders, it was revealed that the person was in fact unarmed.”

The 31-day standoff ended on September 17, 1995.

The trial for the land defenders began on July 8, 1996 and the sentencing process for them on June 6, 1997.

Hill has noted: “During a year-long trial it was revealed that the RCMP had carried out a self-described ‘smear and disinformation’ campaign to discredit the defenders and justify the use of lethal force.”

William Jones “Wolverine” Ignace, who was 65 years old at the time, spent five years in prison following the standoff.

APTN has reported: “One of Wolverine’s last acts [before he passed away on March 22, 2016] was to issue a call [on January 4, 2016] for a public inquiry into the actions of the RCMP and Canadian military during the Gustafsen Lake standoff.”

That letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stated: “An inquiry into the Ts’Peten standoff would [help ensure] that threats, intimidation, defamation and force are never again used against Indigenous people in Canada.”

On January 24, 2016, the Vancouver Sun reported: “Federal Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould says she will look into a call for an inquiry, but the issue is not a top priority.” She stated that the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls would need to come first. That inquiry was launched in September 2016 and issued its final report more than two years ago in June 2019. 

Last year, Secwepemc land defender Kanahus Manuel posted on Facebook: “I stand with Wolverine in his call for a federal inquiry into Gustafsen Lake Standoff!”

More than five years after Wolverine’s passing, and now twenty-six years after Gustafsen Lake, the inquiry still has not been held.

These stills from RCMP surveillance footage show a truck being driven by land defenders on a dirt road at Gustafsen Lake and the aftermath of the IED explosion.

For more, please see Gord Hill’s video Gustafsen Lake Standoff in five minutes. Please also see the APTN report: A warrior’s final interview: William “Wolverine” Ignace.

Composite photo from this Facebook video posted by AFN National Chief RoseAnne Archibald.

Assembly of First Nations (AFN) National Chief RoseAnne Archibald has called on the Canadian government to “stop criminalizing our treaty rights”.

On Thursday September 9, Archibald was on a Zodiac boat in St. Mary’s Bay, Nova Scotia and watched Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) vessels surround a Sipekne’katik nation fishing boat and seize lobster traps from it.

Archibald stated: “No more seizure of lobster gear. That is taking food from the mouths of our children. That has to end. Stop criminalizing our treaty rights. No more arrests. No more intimidation.”

She added: “Intimidation and violence on the lands and on the water must stop.”

Archibald further commented: “It’s kind of like the government who put our children into institutions of assimilation and genocide, that they did not want to take responsibility for that. And we’re seeing that same thing with this fishery issue.”

CBC has noted: “The [Indigenous] fishery is taking place when the commercial season in the area is closed. The dispute pits the treaty right of the Mi’kmaq — as recognized by the Supreme Court of Canada to earn a moderate living from the fishery — against the government’s right to regulate it, which has also been recognized by the court.”

Ku’ku’kwes News explains: “The Supreme Court of Canada ruled in the [September 17] 1999 Marshall decision that Mi’kmaq, Wolastoq and Peskotomuhkati have a treaty right to earn a moderate livelihood from catching and selling fish. That treaty right was guaranteed under the Peace and Friendship Treaties of 1760-61 which was signed between the three Indigenous nations and the British Crown. In a second ruling in November 1999, the Supreme Court of Canada issued a clarification stating that the federal government can regulate the treaty right. However, the ruling stated that the federal government has to justify any limit or infringement on the treaty right as well as consult with the affected Indigenous groups on any plans to infringe or limit the right.”

Twenty-one years after the ruling, the Sipekne’katik said: “Since Marshall was decided, [the federal Fisheries Department] has done nothing to recognize the treaty right to harvest and sell for a moderate livelihood. This breach of Mi’kmaq constitutional rights and can no longer continue.”

Global News notes: “Last September, the Sipekne’katik band launched a self-regulated lobster fishery outside the federally regulated season, which led to violence [by white settler fishers] and the burning of a lobster pound that stored Indigenous catch.”

After the burning of the Mi’kmaq lobster pound (building), Idle No More posted: “The violent actions of the commercial fishermen against Indigenous people is terrorist vigilantism. Mi’kmaq people have been threatened, physically attacked, fishing boats have been damaged, and lobster pounds have been destroyed.”

PBI-Canada continues to follow this situation with concern.

Photo: Diem speaking on Parliament Hill, February 10, 2018. Photo by Brent Patterson.

29-year-old Inuk defender Diem Saunders was found dead in her home in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, Labrador on Tuesday September 7.

After the murder of her 26-year-old sister Loretta in 2014, Diem became an advocate for the rights of Indigenous women. APTN reports: “Diem was one of the first to speak at the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.” Diem said: “A lot of the work that I do, I think subconsciously I want my sister to be proud of me.”

APTN highlights: “A water and land protector, Diem was also part of the fight against the Muskrat Falls hydroelectric project in Labrador and took part in hunger strikes against the project which flooded hundreds of hectares of traditional territory.” After that two-week hunger strike in October 2016, Diem wrote: “I want to say nakummek to everyone who continue to protect our beautiful land and way of life.” Matthew Behrens writes: “Diem shared with us an inspired level of creativity and a fierce resistance to colonial violence.”

In December 2017, Diem was hospitalized in Ottawa with acute liver failure. CBC reported: “Saunders has been told she does not meet sobriety criteria set by the Trillium Gift of Life Network, the Ontario agency that manages organ transplants. [A vigil in Ottawa] heard that the policy of requiring six-months of sobriety before being put on the wait list for a liver transplant discriminates disproportionately against Indigenous people, who suffer from addiction issues due to intergenerational traumas like residential schools.”

In February 2018, Diem spoke on Parliament Hill following an all-white jury finding Gerald Stanley not guilty of murdering 22-year-old Colten Boushie of the Red Pheasant First Nation in Saskatchewan in August 2016. Later that month following the acquittal of Raymond Cormier in the murder of 15-year-old Tina Fontaine in Winnipeg, Diem said: “The justice system doesn’t work for us, it works against us. It steadily works against Indigenous Peoples. It doesn’t protect Indigenous women or girls and it’s completely broken.”

Diem was also an advocate for transgender rights. This July she wrote: “I came out as trans to my parents, brother, closest queer friends and neighbours last summer. I am non-binary and always have been. I didn’t have the language to say I am third gender.”

The circumstances of Diem’s death are not known at this time. On July 17, Diem posted on Facebook about the recent deaths of five women, three of them Indigenous, in Happy Valley-Goose Bay. Diem commented: “I think HVGB has a serial killer or just violently apathetic community who enable tragedy to strike.”

The Canadian Press now notes the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) is investigating Diem’s death and that “the force’s major crimes unit and the office of the chief medical examiner were helping with the investigation.”

Diem’s family is now fundraising to travel to Goose Bay to mourn her. More on how you can support that here.

Photo by Ossie Michelin.

On the 40^th anniversary of Peace Brigades International, we look back at some of the offices PBI has had in Canada over the years.

345 Adelaide Street West, Suite 606, TORONTO

In 1986, PBI opened its first Central America Project Office at 345 Adelaide Street West, Suite 606, in Toronto. In this photo, there is (left to right) Alaine Hawkins (the coordinator of the PBI Central America Project from 1986 to 1991), Lyn Adamson and Jennifer Dennison in that Toronto office in December 1988.

345 Adelaide West now.

192 Spadina Avenue, Suite 304, TORONTO

By 1990 our Central America Project Office was located at 192 Spadina Avenue, Suite 304. By 1998, the Central America/Mexico Project office had moved to California and PBI-Colombia opened an office in London, UK.

427 Bloor Street West, Suite 201, TORONTO

By 1998, the recently formed PBI-North America Project had its office at the church at 427 Bloor Street West, Suite 201. That location was also the office space for PBI-Canada at that time (until 2005-06 when the PBI-Canada office moved to Ottawa).

PBI-Nepal office, SURREY

In 2005-06, the office for the PBI-Nepal Project was at 13817 102 Avenue, Suite 70, in Surrey, British Columbia (by the following year it had been relocated to London, UK).

PBI-Canada, OTTAWA

PBI-Canada has had offices in Ottawa at 145 Spruce Street, Suite 206 and then later at 323 Chapel Street.

By 2018-19, the PBI-Canada office had moved to 211 Bronson Avenue, Suite 220. That office was closed in favour of a home office (to reduce costs) in November 2019. This is still our mailing address and where we pick up our mail on a weekly basis.

For more on 40 years of PBI solidarity, please see our Anniversary Timeline.