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PBI-Honduras notes proposed ecocide law could support threatened land and territorial rights defenders

By
Brent Patterson
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On July 20, the Peace Brigades International-Honduras Project tweeted an article from El Pais about the process to have ecocide recognized as a crime.

El Pais reports that an international group of 12 jurists is working on drafting language on the crime of ecocide that could be prosecuted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) which is governed by the Rome Statute.

The draft law defines ecocide as “unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts.”

The full 165-word definition can be read here.

Earlier this month, the CBC reported: “If the ICC’s member states adopt the law, it would be the fifth crime under the court’s purview, alongside war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and the crime of aggression.”

That article adds: “The ICC is made up of 123 member states, including Canada. Two-thirds of those countries would have to ratify the amendment to add the crime of ecocide.”

NBC News further notes: “Lawmakers from close U.S. allies like France, Belgium, Finland, Spain, Canada, Luxemburg and the European Union have voiced their support for making ecocide a crime.”

“The Netherlands-based Stop Ecocide Foundation, along with a coalition of environmentalists, lawyers and human rights advocates, has been pushing since 2017 to make ecocide a crime prosecuted by the International Criminal Court.”

That article adds: “If the campaign to criminalize ecocide succeeds, the international court would be able to hold accountable those most responsible for major ecological harms, including business and government leaders.”

PBI-Honduras comments: “In this context, the role of defenders of land, territory and the environment is especially relevant and that they can exercise their advocacy work in safe conditions.”

Last year, Global Witness noted that 14 land and environmental defenders were killed in Honduras in 2019.

Their report highlighted: “In Honduras killings rose from 4 in 2018 to 14 last year, making it the most dangerous country per capita for land and environmental defenders in 2019. It is the country with the greatest percentage increase in lethal attacks against activists.”

PBI-Honduras has previously affirmed: “The work of land and territory defenders must be recognized, protected and supported.”

PBI-Mexico draws attention to UN statement on risks faced by families searching for the forcibly disappeared

By
Brent Patterson
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On July 20, the Peace Brigades International-Mexico Project shared this statement from the Office in Mexico of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UN-DH) on the murder of Gladys Aranza Ramos Gurrola.

UN-DH Representative in Mexico Guillermo Fernández-Maldonado says: “The murder of Ms. Aranza Ramos reminds us of the plight of the families of missing persons in Mexico. Not only do they suffer the pain of absence and uncertainty, but they investigate and search for their missing relatives, facing risks they should not take.”

Mexico News Daily reports: “Gladys Aranza Ramos Gurrola, 28, was abducted from her home and shot dead [on July 15]. She had been searching for her husband, Brayan Omar Celaya Alvarado, since he went missing in December 2020.”

“The couple had a 1-year-old child.”

That article adds: “Ramos was a member of Madres Buscadoras, or Searching Mothers, a group of around 1,200 people that has taken up the search for the missing victims of drug cartels in the absence of official efforts.”

The UN-DH notes: “The disappeared persons should never have missed their families, but after their disappearance it must be the state institutions that carry out the immediate search with the maximum of the resources available to locate the person alive. When a state fails to fulfil this duty, the families of missing persons are placed at risk.”

PBI-Mexico has most recently accompanied the work of the Paso del Norte Human Rights Centre. For more on that, please see: PBI-Mexico shares Canal 44 TV report on search for the disappeared by two human rights organizations in Ciudad Juarez.

PBI-Colombia accompanies the CSPP and Defend Freedom Campaign during national strike mobilization in Bogota

By
Brent Patterson
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On July 20, PBI-Colombia tweeted: “@PBIColombia accompanies in the Portal de las Americas the @CSPP_ [Committee in Solidarity with Political Prisoners] and the @DefenderLiberta in their work as human rights commissions during the day of mobilization.”

El Espectador explains: “Human rights commissions have been fundamental in the dialogue with the District [of Bogota], in order to reach agreements so that during the demonstrations there are guarantees for the protest and for those who participate in it.”

Prior to the mobilization, Óscar Ramírez, the vice-president of the CSPP and a member of the Defend Freedom Campaign, commented: “We hope that they will be mostly peaceful, democratic and massive mobilizations. However, we view with concern the climate of stigmatization generated by the National Government, the Attorney General’s Office, Municipal Governors and particularly by the Police.”

(Ramirez, a Bogota-based lawyer, also spoke on this PBI-Canada organized webinar about the national strike on June 3.)

Now, AFP reports: “Thousands of Colombians returned to the streets on Tuesday [July 20] to protest against President Ivan Duque’s government.”

“Protesters in several cities marked Colombia’s independence day by demanding police reform and greater support from the government in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, which has seen the poverty rate rise from 37 to 42 percent.”

That article further notes: “The demonstration was called by the influential National Strike Committee that represents indigenous people, trade unions and students, among others. The group had suspended its protests on June 15 but vowed to kick them off again on the nation’s independence day with the aim of taking demonstrators’ demands to Congress.”

AFP had also reported that more than 6,000 police officers and 2,700 soldiers would be deployed to police the 35 events in Bogota.

PBI-Colombia has accompanied the CSPP since 1998.

PBI-Honduras observes march in Tegucigalpa demanding the return of four missing Garifuna land defenders

By
Brent Patterson
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On July 20, PBI-Honduras posted on Facebook: “On the anniversary of the enforced disappearance of the four Garifuna defenders, we watch the campaign of OFRANEH [the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras] and the Committee of Inquiry and Search of the Missing from Triunfo de la Cruz (SUNLA).”

PBI-Honduras adds: “The Garifuna community is marching to demand justice and truth and that the Honduran government finds the whereabouts of Suamy Mejía, Milton Alvarez, Alberth Centeno and Gerardo Calix, who were taken by a group of armed men and in police uniform on July 18, 2020.”

Their post also quotes OFRANEH leader Miriam Miranda who has tweeted: “It’s 12 months of demand, 12 months of pain for families.”

In this feature interview, Miranda says:

“In Honduras there are systematic violations of the human rights of the Garífuna people and in the last decade they have intensified.”

“The State must accept, support and understand that SUNLA is a necessary space and that we have the right, as an Afro-indigenous people, to promote our own research. The states should allow organized sectors, social movements and, in this case, family members to participate to find out the truth.”

“The reports of the State of Honduras, in the face of requests for information by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the Committee Against Forced Disappearance, are inconsistent, empty, and disrespectful. The State shows great contempt for the Garifuna people by responding with lies.”

“When we say ‘enough already!’ [in Garifuna, sunla] we are demanding that the genocide against the Garífuna people stop, that the criminalization and prosecution stop. Beyond the search for justice in this particular case, the essence of our committee is that there is no repetition, since there is a plan to end us in which the genocide of our people is posed.”

“The Garífuna people face problems similar to those of the rest of the indigenous peoples of the country. For example, extractive industry projects or the grabbing of ancestral lands; However, in addition, the Garífuna people, who are a people that settle in the coastal areas, face a situation of very serious vulnerability: the climate crisis is causing the sea to eat up the communities’ ground.”

“Another key issue that I want to mention is the massive production of biofuels from African palm. The production of this material is not only facilitating money laundering, but is also altering the country’s biodiversity to the detriment of food security. This industry harms life, nature and our health.”

“There [are also] the Zones of Employment and Economic Development (ZEDEs). These are areas of the national territory that by law become the jurisdiction of investors so that they can become tax havens and there is no institutional control. With this, the territories become spaces for the forced displacement of the communities; people are taken out in the name of development.”

Q’eqchi’ leaders from Chicoyogüito ask Canada for help in reclaiming their land from a Guatemalan military base

By
Brent Patterson
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On July 15, Olivia and Domingo from the Indigenous Q’eqchi’ community of Chicoyogüito asked for help from Canada in their land back struggle.

They both spoke on this PBI-Canada webinar.

Olivia explained: “In 1968 the military base arrived and we were pushed off our land. We were displaced. Our rights were violated.”

“We need to know whether our land will be given back to us. As Indigenous people we eat on the land, we survive on the land, that’s what we want and what we need.”

Domingo added: “We have been seeking support since the signing of the Peace Accords for the lands taken from us in ’68 when we were children.”

“The Peace Accords said we were supposed to be returned to our lands. It is because of the Peace Accords that we are able to move forward in our search for justice.”

“We know Canada has provided a lot of support for [the Creompaz peacekeeping base on our land]. But where is the peace that they say they are creating? Peace doesn’t continue, the military continues. It continues to act as it always has.”

Domingo then noted: “We want to return to those lands. [But] we are not taken into account by the government because we are Indigenous people. Please in Canada we need your support to lift up our community.”

The Peace Accords

In June 1994, Guatemala signed the Agreement for the Resettlement of the Populations Uprooted by the Armed Confrontation which undertook to “promote the return of the lands to the original possessors and/or seek adequate compensatory solutions.”

That Agreement was formally incorporated into the second section of the Peace Accord that was signed on December 29, 1996.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) has noted: “Indigenous peoples have a right to restitution of their ancestral lands, and when it is not materially possible due to objective and well-founded causes, they have a right to be given alternative lands of at least the same size and quality and/or to receive payment of fair and prompt compensation.”

In December 2015, the IACHR commented: “The information available suggests that years after the conclusion of the conflict there are still displaced communities who have not been able to return to their ancestral lands.”

Displacement of Q’eqchi’ community of Chicoyogüito

On July 28, 1968, the community of Chicoyogüito was displaced from their ancestral lands so that a Guatemalan military base could be built.

Olivia, whose grandparents were evicted in 1968, says: “When the armed forces arrived, they began to shoot, and people were beaten. People began to flee, and some fell into the river. Siblings were separated. Over 200 families were evicted.”

Olivia adds: “I would like us to return to this land and for the soldiers to no longer be there.”

That military base became a clandestine centre for illegal detention, torture, extrajudicial executions, enforced disappearance, and rape committed from 1978 to 1990.

At least 565 Indigenous people were disappeared at that base. Exhumations of mass graves at the military base began in 2012. The bodies identified are of Mayan Achí, Q’eqchi’, Pomochí, Ixil, and Kiché peoples.

Justice delayed

Despite the Resettlement Agreement of 1994 and the Peace Accords of 1996, the community of Chicoyogüito is still struggling for their land back.

The military base that displaced them was closed in 2004 and reopened/rebranded as Creompaz, a training base for UN peacekeepers funded by Canada and other countries.

Canada and the peace process in Guatemala

Canada supported the 1996 Peace Accords in part by sending 15 Canadian Armed Forces officers to serve in the MINUGUA mission to verify the ceasefire.

In January 2019, Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland highlighted: “Canada remains committed to supporting justice and accountable governance for the Guatemalan people. We call on the Government of Guatemala to respect the rule of law, the independence of the judiciary, and the democratic rights of the people and country.”

PBI-Canada calls on the Canadian government to support the promise of the Peace Accords to return land to Indigenous people by ending its funding relationship with Creompaz and calling on the Guatemalan government to return that land to the people of Chicoyogüito.

Domingo implores: “We want support from you all so that the land can be returned to us. This land that we dream of.”

To watch the video of the webinar, click here.

For updates, follow @CasoCreompaz on Twitter and @ElCasoCreompaz on Facebook.

“This land is ours”

PBI-Kenya saddened and shocked by the murder of Kiambu forest and wetlands defender Joannah Stutchbury in Nairobi

By
Brent Patterson
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On July 19, the Peace Brigades International-Kenya Project posted: “We are saddened and shocked by the murder of environmental defender Joannah Stutchbury, who was killed on 15 July just outside her home.”

The Guardian reports: “A prominent environment activist has been shot dead near her home in Kenya, after receiving multiple death threats following her campaign against the development of wetlands in a national park.”

“Joannah Stutchbury, 67, was killed at 10pm local time on Thursday as she returned to her home on the outskirts of Nairobi. Friends said she had stopped her car to clear branches blocking her driveway when she was shot several times. Neighbours found her body in the car with the engine still running and valuables still in the vehicle, suggesting the attack was not a robbery.”

That article adds: “Stutchbury had vocally opposed attempts by powerful local businessmen to build on the nearby Kiambu forest and had received death threats in the past.”

The Standard also notes: “Her actions [to protect the Kiambu forest on the outskirts of the Nairobi] was not only local. Gitathiru, one of five perennial tributaries of the Nairobi River, is located here. These tributaries form the Nairobi Water Basin and are a critical source of fresh water for the Thwake Dam, 200km away in Kitui County.”

PBI-Kenya highlights the statement signed by more than forty organizations.

It says: “She never looked the other way when she witnessed illegal operations in Kiambu forest. We believe that this is why she was killed. …As long as environmentalists are not protected, we will be forced to attend new funerals.”

The statement also notes: “Threats to active environmental protectors have claimed the lives of the courageous ivory investigator Esmond Bradley Martin, Esther Mwikali, Sengwer Robert Kiprotich, and forced Phyllis Omido and other environmental defenders into hiding recently.”

The full statement can be read here.

A virtual vigil will take place today to honour the life of Joannah Stutchbury.

Mobilizations taking place in Bogotá and Cali today

By
Brent Patterson
-

There will be a major protest in Bogota and other cities today, Tuesday July 20, Independence Day in Colombia.

The PBI-Colombia accompanied NOMADESC has tweeted: “July 20, through the streets of #Cali within the framework of #ParoNacional We are going to mobilize from different sectors towards the hill of dignity, we are waiting for you.”

Agence France-Presse reports: “More than 6,000 police and 2,700 soldiers will be deployed to control 35 events planned for the capital.”

That article adds that the government is expected to put forward a new tax reform proposal today. It was the Duque government’s first tax proposal that prompted the national strike protests that began on April 28.

While the Colombian government withdrew their tax proposal within days, the national strike protests continued highlighting deeper systemic issues of economic disparities and human rights violations.

The Financial Times reports that the tax package to be announced today “aims to raise $4bn — around two-thirds as much as the initial package.” The finance minister says around $1.8 billion of that would come from a corporate tax increase.

International Observation Mission

On Monday July 19, the International Mission for Guarantees for Social Protest and Against Impunity urged the Colombian government to guarantee the right to peaceful protest and avoid police violence.

The Guardian notes: “A recent human rights commission to Colombia made up of delegates from 13 countries found that authorities used counter-insurgency tactics against protesters.” Heather Neun of Peace Brigades International-Canada was a member of that international observation mission.

IACHR

AFP also notes: “Earlier this month, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights hit out at Colombia’s ‘disproportionate’ and ‘lethal’ response to the protests.”

“Cosmetic” police reforms

The Guardian adds: “Duque announced on Monday [July 19] some reforms to the national police, including new uniforms and human rights training for anti-riot officers. Critics say the changes are cosmetic rather than practical.”

The Associated Press further notes: “Officers and junior officers will be obliged to take a new course on human rights, and the police will toughen sanctions against those who commit abuses. The nation’s mobile riot squad [called the ESMAD] will also have to undergo a new course on human rights.”

That article adds: “The reforms announced by Duque are not as far reaching as those proposed by Human Rights Watch and other international organizations like the Inter American Commission for Human Rights.”

The IACHR had recommended: “Implement immediately mechanisms to prohibit in a way effective use of lethal force as a resource in public demonstrations.” The Mission recommended: “Demilitarize and structurally reform the National Police in order to carry out the dissolution of the ESMAD [mobile riot squad].”

The week, the National Strike Committee will be announcing 10 proposed laws including one that “guarantees for the exercise of the right to peaceful protest.”

PBI-Canada will be following via social media the events of today.

Pegasus hacking software targeted lawyer, three family members of Ayotzinapa 43 in Mexico: The Guardian

By
Brent Patterson
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Photo: PBI-Mexico was present as thousands marched in Mexico City on September 26, 2020 to commemorate the 6th anniversary of the forcible disappearance of 43 students from a progressive, mostly Indigenous teachers’ college in Ayotzinapa.

On July 18, The Guardian reported: “Human rights activists, journalists and lawyers across the world have been targeted by authoritarian governments using hacking software sold by the Israeli surveillance company NSO Group.”

That article further explains: “Pegasus is a malware that infects iPhones and Android devices to enable operators of the tool to extract messages, photos and emails, record calls and secretly activate microphones.”

The Guardian has also noted that: “Analysis of the data suggests the NSO client country that selected the most numbers – more than 15,000 – was Mexico, where multiple different government agencies are known to have bought Pegasus.”

Pegasus linked to Ayotzinapa

On July 19, The Guardian linked Pegasus to Ayotzinapa.

The Guardian explains: “On 26 September 2014, 43 young men from the Ayotzinapa rural teachers’ college in Guerrero state were abducted by police officers colluding with a local crime faction.”

“Amid growing outcry, the government was forced to accept an international investigation by a team of experts with diplomatic status, known as GIEI [the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts].”

It has been previously revealed that a phone belonging to a member of GIEI was targeted by Pegasus in March 2016.

Now, The Guardian reports: “The leaked data seen by the Pegasus project shows that at least one other GIEI phone was selected as a candidate for surveillance, as were those belonging to relatives of at least three of the victims.”

“They include Melitón Ortega, the uncle of 19-year-old Mauricio Ortega, who became a spokesperson for the families as they campaigned for justice.”

That article also highlights: “As details of the state’s role in the attack and cover-up emerged, the director and lawyer of a human rights nonprofit group representing families of the victims were also selected by the armed forces and Cisen, analysis of the information suggests.”

That lawyer is Vidulfo Rosales of the “Tlachinollan” Human Rights Centre, an organization accompanied by the Peace Brigades International-Mexico Project.

Rosales says: “[The government] felt pressure and began a smear campaign against experts, parents and representatives of the GIEI … They tried to tap my phones and misrepresented many conversations, making them public to discredit the work we were doing.”

The full article can be read here.

Tlachinollan lawyer Vidulfo Rosales Sierra.

Mexican journalist murdered in Guerrero among names listed in Guardian report on Pegasus hacking software

By
Brent Patterson
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Image of press card of Cecilio Pineda Birto from El Periodico.

On July 18, The Guardian reported: “Human rights activists, journalists and lawyers across the world have been targeted by authoritarian governments using hacking software sold by the Israeli surveillance company NSO Group.”

That article further explains: “Pegasus is a malware that infects iPhones and Android devices to enable operators of the tool to extract messages, photos and emails, record calls and secretly activate microphones.”

More than 15,000 telephone numbers in Mexico

“The consortium’s analysis of the leaked data identified at least 10 governments believed to be NSO customers who were entering numbers into a system.”

“Analysis of the data suggests the NSO client country that selected the most numbers – more than 15,000 – was Mexico, where multiple different government agencies are known to have bought Pegasus.”

25 Mexican journalists on the list

“[Cecilio Pineda Birto] was among at least 25 Mexican journalists apparently selected as candidates for surveillance over a two-year period.”

Journalist murdered in Guerrero

“The phone number of a freelance Mexican reporter, Cecilio Pineda Birto, was found in the list, apparently of interest to a Mexican client in the weeks leading up to his murder, when his killers were able to locate him at a carwash.”

Another article in The Guardian further reports: “The 38-year-old freelance reporter was shot dead on 2 March 2017 in Ciudad Altamirano, a town in the southern Mexican region of Tierra Caliente – a battleground for rival organised crime factions.”

“A few hours earlier, Pineda had in a broadcast on Facebook Live accused state police and local politicians of colluding with a violent local capo known as El Tequilero.”

Journalist had sought help of Mexico’s protection mechanism

That article also notes: “In 2015 he contacted the federal protection mechanism for human rights workers and journalists, a quasi-independent agency within the home affairs ministry. …Officials acknowledged the gravity of the situation but closed Pineda’s case because he refused to relocate to another state.”

The Guardian adds: “Our investigation suggests Pineda was selected as a possible target by Mexico’s ministry of defence, NSO’s first client.”

One of the key findings in the PBI-WOLA report Turning the Tide on Impunity was that: “Mexican authorities are frequently identified as the perpetrators behind crimes against journalists and human rights defenders. Public officials were determined to be the likely aggressors in 39 percent of cases the Mechanism has overseen.”

More names to come

The Guardian notes that in the coming days it will reveal more names, including those of human rights defenders, who have been targeted through Pegasus.

For the full articles noted above, see:

Revealed: leak uncovers global abuse of cyber-surveillance weapon

Revealed: murdered journalist’s number selected by Mexican NSO client

Memoria cast express solidarity with youth, social leaders and environmental defenders in Colombia

By
Brent Patterson
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Juan Pablo Urrego (on the left) at Cannes with director Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Elkin Diaz, Tilda Swinton and Jeanne Balibar.

On July 17, Justice for Colombia tweeted: “During a press conference at the Cannes festival to promote new film ‘Memoria’, Colombian actor @urregojuanp [Juan Pablo Urrego] condemns state violence and the murder of activists.”

In this video clip with the tweet, Urrego says: “Young people are being killed in the streets and they are protesting for the right to life.”

Urrego said: “We send a message because we want the right to life to be respected. The youth in these moments in Colombia are fighting for their rights and they are killing them in the streets, they are assassinating social leaders, environmental leaders.”

The film ‘Memoria’ was filmed in Bogota and Pijao from August to October 2019.

Front Line Defenders has reported that 106 human rights defenders were killed in Colombia in 2019. Global Witness further reported that 64 land and environmental defenders were killed in Colombia that same year.

Defenders have continued to be killed in 2020 and 2021.

Peace Brigades International has been accompanying human rights defenders in Colombia since 1994. That accompaniment has continued throughout the national strike.

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