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PBI-Canada remembers when Berta Caceres marched in Quebec City against the Free Trade Area of the Americas

By
Brent Patterson
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Photo of Berta Caceres at a protest in Honduras by COPINH.

“Free trade deals are legal tools to impose a model that advocates taking control over the planet’s natural resources for profit.”: Berta Caceres

As we remember Berta Caceres on what would have been her 50th birthday, we note that she marched in opposition to the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) at the Summit of the Americas that took place on April 20-22, 2001 in Quebec City.

Daniel Fireside was hired by Rights Action to be her driver and translator.

He writes: “Before the Summit, Berta and I traveled to cities across Canada, staying in the homes of local activists and speaking in church basements, Fair Trade cafes, and school auditoriums.”

Fireside adds: “After almost two dozen speaking events in half as many towns, we ended up in Quebec City. There we met up with the co-directors of Rights Action, Grahame Russell and Annie Bird, as well as the leader of an environmental activist NGO based in Chiapas, Mexico, the sociologist Gustavo Castro Soto.”

He further recalls that the five of them – Caceres, Fireside, Russell, Bird and Castro – slept on the floor of a sympathetic family in Quebec City.

Fireside also shares this story of when they joined the protest at the 10-foot-high fenced perimeter of the conference zone.

“[After I was teargassed] Berta squirted my eyes with a cleansing solution and gave me an approving smile. ‘Adelante compañero’, she said. ‘You’ll recover from this soon enough.’ And then she added with a laugh, ‘At least it isn’t the stuff your government sells to Honduras. They add a chemical that makes us vomit.’”

Journalist and author Nina Lakhani adds: “Berta and Gustavo stood in front of parliament facing the impenetrable chain of riot cops, among protesters drumming and singing. It struck Berta that the demonstration was too far back.”

“’¡Hermano! Let’s get closer. Vamos,’ she shouted, grinning at Gustavo, grabbing one end of the blue and white Honduran flag. Gustavo seized the other end and they rushed forward into a cold jet of water from a cannon behind police lines.”

“They were pushed back and soaked, the flag went flying. But Berta jumped up and yelled, ‘Let’s go again.’ This time, blinding tear gas forced the pair back. But they surged forward again and again, recalled Gustavo. ‘That was Berta. Always tenacious and always willing to put herself in the middle of every act of resistance. She never lost that energy.’”

Fireside writes: “Fifteen years later, Berta would die in Gustavo’s arms as he himself was shot and left for dead by Berta’s assassins.”

For more, please see: The remarkable life and legacy of indigenous leader Berta Cáceras (by Nina Lakhani) and In the Trenches with Berta Cáceres (by Daniel Fireside).

Additionally, Peace Brigades International-Canada has pointed out in this article that some are pushing for a hemispheric “free trade” agreement to be on the agenda of the virtual Summit of the Americas scheduled for this April.

PBI-Honduras now accompanies COPINH, the organization Caceres co-founded and led at the time of her death on March 2, 2016.

Photo: Police fire teargas at the protest against the FTAA on April 21, 2001 in Quebec City.

Join us again on March 11!

By
Brent Patterson
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Thank you for registering for our webinar this past Sunday about how to volunteer to be a PBI field brigadista in Colombia, Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico.

If you missed it, here’s the video of that webinar.

We also wanted to let you know about our webinar on Thursday March 11 at 3:30 pm EST that will feature Isela Gonzalez and Neftali Reyes who are accompanied by PBI-Mexico.

If you are thinking of volunteering in the field with PBI, this will be a great opportunity to meet two human rights defenders that PBI accompanies.

Click here to register for the webinar!

The Guardian has reported: “Gonzalez has been threatened more times than she can remember by university-educated men in suits, whose business interests – in logging, mining, agriculture and narcotics – are challenged by her work as director of Alianza Sierra Madre to protect indigenous land rights in Mexico’s western Sierra Madre.”

And Reyes is with Educa Oaxaca an organization that accompanies Indigenous communities that have been impacted by the Vancouver-based Fortuna Silver Mines Inc. owned mine in San Jose del Progreso in the southwestern state of Oaxaca.

The webinar will focus on the experience of Indigenous communities with Canadian mining companies in Mexico, the need to uphold the right to free, prior and informed consent, and what we can do in Canada to support these struggles.

To register for this webinar, please click here. It will be about 90-minutes in length and simultaneous translation will be provided.

We are very pleased to be co-organizing this with our friends at Amnesty International Canada.

Hope you can join us!

Join us on March 11!

By
Brent Patterson
-

Thank you for having registered for a previous Peace Brigades International webinar.

We wanted to let you know about our latest one on Thursday March 11 at 3:30 pm EST that will feature Isela Gonzalez and Neftali Reyes.

They are both with organizations that are accompanied by PBI-Mexico.

Click here to register for the webinar!

The Guardian has reported: “Isela has been threatened more times than she can remember by university-educated men in suits, whose business interests – in logging, mining, agriculture and narcotics – are challenged by her work as director of Alianza Sierra Madre to protect indigenous land rights in Mexico’s western Sierra Madre.”

And Neftali is with Educa Oaxaca an organization that accompanies Indigenous communities that have been impacted by the Vancouver-based Fortuna Silver Mines Inc. owned mine in San Jose del Progreso in the southwestern state of Oaxaca.

The webinar will focus on the experience of Indigenous communities with Canadian mining companies in Mexico, the need to uphold the right to free, prior and informed consent, and what we can do in Canada to support these struggles.

To register for this webinar, please click here. It will be about 90-minutes in length and simultaneous translation will be provided.

We are very pleased to be co-organizing this with our friends at Amnesty International Canada.

Hope you can join us!

PBI links the right to food, access to land, extractivism and evictions at UN Human Rights Council

By
Brent Patterson
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On March 2, Peace Brigades International spoke at the Human Rights Council in response to the presentation made by the Special Rapporteur on the right to food.

UN Special Rapporteur Michael Fakhri noted that the world had been falling behind on fully realizing the right to food even before the current pandemic, which had laid bare the inequities of the food system and accelerated this trend.

Adam Lunn of PBI-United Kingdom stated: “PBI welcomes the presentation of the Rapporteur’s report, in particular the recommendations aimed at guaranteeing and protecting access to and tenure of land, as well as ensuring a moratorium on evictions in this context of exceptionality marked by the pandemic.”

He added: “In Colombia, Guatemala and Honduras, mostly rural countries and, with a marked inequality in land tenure, the percentage of people suffering from malnutrition and hunger is soaring and constantly increasing.”

And Lunn highlighted: “The governments of these countries have continued to favor the expansion of the agribusiness, logging, and the promotion of extractive projects. Far from solving the famine, this has led to an increase in militarization, evictions, attacks and criminalization of people who defend land and territory in these countries.”

The full presentation can be read here.

The video of Lunn’s presentation can be found here (at the 1 hour 52 minutes mark).

Lunn’s presentation is also noted (in Spanish) on the PBI-Guatemala website.

PBI-Colombia accompanied CREDHOS speaks on fracking and water at UN Human Rights Council virtual event

By
Brent Patterson
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UPDATE: The video of this webinar is now available here.

Our article written prior to the webinar:

On March 4, the International Human Rights Network (RIDH) and Peace Brigades International (PBI) will host a virtual side event on the water crisis in Colombia during the 46th session of the Human Rights Council.

The Zoom webinar registration page notes: “In the most dangerous country in the world to carry out environmental work, civil society organizations and communities expose specific cases and tell us about their daily work in the face of the threats and dangers involved in protecting their territories and water resources.”

Hector David Suarez of CREDHOS and the Alliance for a Colombia Free of Fracking will speak about the fracking pilot project in the Magdalena Medio region.

The first licence for a fracking pilot project was awarded by the National Hydrocarbons Agency (ANH) to Ecopetrol on November 25, 2020 for its Kalé project near the community of Puerto Wilches in the Magdalena Medio region.

In November 2020, eighteen social leaders in the Middle Magdalena were threatened with death through a pamphlet signed by the Black Eagles paramilitary. Six of those threatened are members of the Alliance for a Colombia Free of Fracking.

On March 1, Alfredo Molano Jimeno wrote in El Espectador about the threats faced by opponents of fracking in the Magdalena Medio including Yuli Velasquez and Luis Alberto González.

His article also highlighted the threat against Yuvelis Natalia Morales, a member of the Committee for the Defence of Water, Life and Territory of Puerto Wilches (AguaWil).

Yuvelis says: “One night when I was with my sister, two men came into my house and told me to stop fucking around, that I was very alone, and they could kill me any day.”

She made a report to the police and army, but they offered no protection, so this 20-year-old is now displaced from her home and in hiding.

Canada plays a role in this situation.

BNAmericas has reported that four companies have prequalified for a second round of licensing for fracking pilot projects in Colombia: ExxonMobil (in partnership with Toronto-based Sintana Energy), Ecopetrol, Drummond, and Tecpetrol.

The ExxonMobil/Sintana Energy fracking pilot project would also be located in Puerto Wilches in the Magdalena Medio region.

The second round of fracking pilot project contracts are expected to be awarded on March 30.

To hear Hector David Suarez of CREDHOS speak, you can either register for the webinar or watch live via the RIDH Facebook page.

Land defender Stacy Gallagher sentenced to 90 days for smudging near Trans Mountain pipeline construction site

By
Brent Patterson
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Photo: Gallagher was sentenced to 90 days in jail. Photo by Rueben George.

Indigenous land defender Stacy Gallagher has been sentenced to 90 days in prison by Judge Shelley Fitzpatrick of the B.C. Supreme Court.

This Vice news article reports that the sentence relates to Gallagher conducting ceremony in November-December 2019 near the Trans Mountain pipeline route despite an indefinite injunction prohibiting people within five metres of two work sites.

It was also in December 2019 when the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination passed this resolution that called on Canada “to immediately cease construction of the Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion project and cancel all permits, until free, prior and informed consent is obtained.”

The sentence was also handed down despite a directive announced by the British Columbia Prosecution Service on January 15 of this year.

That policy says that custody for Indigenous offenders should be recommended only as a last resort for sentences less than two years.

Coast Protectors says: “The Crown ignored this new directive and continued to seek 90 days imprisonment for Gallagher’s peaceful prayer, smudging, singing and dancing for Mother Earth in ceremony at the TMX Burnaby tank farm.”

The Vice article also notes: “Both prisons that Gallagher could be sent to, North Fraser Pretrial Centre and Fraser Regional Correctional Centre, have been in the news for recent COVID outbreaks.”

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet has stated that due to the pandemic “imprisonment should be a measure of last resort.”

And her spokesperson Rupert Colville has urged States to release “every person detained without sufficient legal basis, including political prisoners, and those detained for critical, dissenting views.”

In this case it is also the State that owns the Trans Mountain pipeline that is being built without free, prior and informed consent.

The human rights organization Global Witness has also highlighted that governments should “safeguard the rights of defenders and protesters to free assembly and speech, as well as potential recourse to civil disobedience.”

PBI-Canada expresses its profound concern about the sentencing of Gallagher.

Photo: Gallagher speaking on the steps of the courthouse to those assembled in solidarity with him today. Photo by Rueben George.

PBI-Canada calls on Canadian Foreign Minister to read civil society letter to his Spanish counterpart about COPINH

By
Brent Patterson
-

Peace Brigades International-Spanish State signed this joint letter to the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, the European Union and Cooperation on the fifth anniversary of the murder of Indigenous Lenca defender Berta Caceres in Honduras.

Other signatories to the letter include Amnesty International, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, Front Line Defenders and Global Witness.

The trial of one of the alleged intellectual authors of the murder of Caceres is now scheduled to begin in Tegucigalpa on April 6 and run for four weeks.

The letter calls on the Minister “to urge the Honduran authorities to comply with due process, further ensuring transparency and public access to the judicial process, including the presence of journalists and observers.”

The letter also notes: “The aggressions reported by the Indigenous Lenca community have increased in recent years. Between 2017 and 2020 COPINH has filed nearly 35 complaints with the prosecution about these facts without legal action being taken against the alleged assailants.”

It then asks the Minister to “publicly acknowledge COPINH’s legitimate work and the importance of its struggle to achieve justice and attain truth” and “to urge the Honduran authorities [to investigate the attacks] in a timely, thorough, and impartial manner so that their perpetrators, both material and intellectual, are brought to justice.”

These requests would be consistent with Voices at Risk: Canada’s Guidelines on Supporting Human Rights Defenders.

On the anniversary of Caceres’ death, Mary Lawlor, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, also wrote:

“This week I will again remind the UN that their members are failing in their moral and legal obligations to prevent the killings of human rights defenders. It is no use for government officials to wring their hands and agree that the murder of Cáceres and other defenders is a terrible problem and that someone should do something about it.”

The day after Caceres was killed, the Canadian Embassy stated: “Canada strongly condemns this cowardly crime and urges the Honduran authorities to investigate the facts and to bring the perpetrators to justice in the shortest possible time, so that this crime does not go unpunished. Likewise, it urges the Government of Honduras to ensure the protection of other activists and human rights defenders who have been threatened.”

We encourage Canadian Foreign Minister Marc Garneau to read the letter to his Spanish counterpart and the full commentary by Mary Lawlor and to take further steps to ensure justice for Berta and protection for all human rights defenders.

PBI-Honduras has accompanied COPINH since May 2016.

The letter to Spanish Foreign Minister Arancha González Laya can be read here and was signed by the following organizations:

Braided Warriors to file complaint with UN over police violence during ceremony at pipeline insurance company

By
Brent Patterson
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Video: “We wish to see abolishment of all police, of all police forces, on all Native lands.”

The Braided Warriors are filing a complaint with the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) over the police violence they experienced last month while in ceremony calling on insurance companies to drop coverage of the Trans Mountain tar sands pipeline.

CTV reports: “Video showed members of the VPD [Vancouver Police Department] aggressively handling and pushing protesters to the ground. In one instance, it appears an officer pulled a person by their hair [as can be seen here].”

The Braided Warriors say that youth were “violently thrown to the ground, dragged across floors and down stairways, pulled by the hair and braid, thrown to surfaces covered in glass, strangled in a chokehold, and dragged face down on concrete.”

21-year-old Kaylee Wolflinger of the Cowessess First Nation in Saskatchewan says: “While they were getting thrown out the door I saw that their drum was falling on the ground, and I’ve always been taught that drums should never touch the floor, so I went and leaped over and I went on my knees and I tried to pick up the drum.”

Wolflinger adds: “When I picked up the drum, I just felt a sudden force on my back, that pushed me down and my body and my head hit the floor where shattered glass was. I just remember being in a daze and continuing to watch the police violently displace Indigenous youth that were occupying this space.”

The Braided Warriors have also stated: “We call on these insurance giants [including AIG, Chubb Insurance, Liberty Mutual Group] to drop the toxic Trans Mountain tar sands pipeline. These Human Rights violations are what these insurance companies are covering – this pipeline project that violates our rights, and the criminalization of Indigenous Land Defenders and Human Rights Defenders are being exposed internationally.”

They add: “We are not just environmentalists, we are Indigenous Peoples with inherent rights to our lands and waters and responsibilities to uphold our Indigenous laws to defend these lands. Indigenous youth are not trespassing on unceded lands. We are defending this land from the destruction Trans Mountain will cause.”

This incident happened on February 19 in the lobby of the BMO building on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh nations (in Vancouver) where American International Group, Inc. (AIG) is located.

The Braided Warriors returned on March 1 to record the video testimonials to be sent to the United Nations Committee.

The Braided Warriors have also tweeted: “AIG and VPD need to understand that indigenous youth holding ceremony on their ancestral territories, in the lobby of a building operating on unceded land, is not ‘trespassing’.”

The UN Committee expects report by November 15

On December 13, 2019, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination passed this resolution expressing its concern about the construction of the Site C dam (on Treaty 8 territory), the Trans Mountain pipeline on Secwepemc territory, and the Coastal GasLink fracked gas pipeline on Wet’suwet’en territory.

That decision called on Canada “to guarantee that no force will be used against Secwepemc and Wet’suwet’en peoples and that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and associated security and policing services will be withdrawn from their traditional lands.”

On November 24, 2020, the CERD wrote this letter to Canada’s ambassador to the United Nations that highlighted: “The Committee regrets that the State party has provided no information on measures taken to address the concerns [about the three megaprojects] raised by the Committee in its decision of 13 December 2019.”

That letter also noted that the Committee expects Canada to submit a report on its compliance with the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (that Canada ratified in 1970) by November 15, 2021.

You can find the Braided Warriors on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

“Our Mother Earth demands that we take action”: Berta Cáceres

By
Brent Patterson
-

Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize.

Today is the fifth anniversary of the murder of Berta Cáceres, the co-founder of the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH).

PBI-Canada remembers Cáceres on this day by sharing an English translation of this speech that she gave less than a year before she was killed:

—

“In our worldview, we are beings who come from the Earth, from the water, and from corn.

The Lenca people are ancestral guardians of the rivers, in turn protected by the spirits of young girls, who teach us that giving our lives in various ways for the protection of the rivers is giving our lives for the well-being of humanity and of this planet.

COPINH, walking alongside people struggling for their emancipation, validates this commitment to continue protecting our waters, the rivers, our shared resources and nature in general, as well as our rights as a people.

Let us wake up! We’re out of time. We must shake our conscience free of the rapacious capitalism, racism and patriarchy that will only assure our own self-destruction.

The Gualcarque River has called upon us, as have other gravely threatened rivers.

We must answer their call.

Our Mother Earth – militarized, fenced-in, poisoned, a place where basic rights are systematically violated – demands that we take action.

Let us build societies that are able to coexist in a dignified way, in a way that protects life.

Let us come together and remain hopeful as we defend and care for the blood of this Earth and of its spirits.

I dedicate this award to all the rebels out there, to my mother, to the Lenca people, to Rio Blanco, and to the martyrs who gave their lives in the struggle to defend our natural resources.”

—

To watch the video of Cáceres giving this speech (with English subtitles), please click here.

The full text of the speech in Spanish is here.

PBI-Honduras began to accompany COPINH, the organization Cáceres co-founded, three months after she was killed.

This morning, PBI-Spanish State signed this joint letter with other organizations calling on the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs to continue to seek justice for Cáceres and to “publicly acknowledge the legitimate work carried out by COPINH and the importance of their struggle to achieve justice and reach the truth.”

COPINH has submitted about 35 complaints about aggressions it has experienced between 2017 and 2020. The Honduran state has not taken action against the alleged aggressors nor has it signed the Escazu Agreement to protect environmental defenders.

#JusticiaParaBerta

 

PBI-Mexico accompanied ASMAC demands justice for lawyer Ernesto Rábago killed eleven years ago

By
Brent Patterson
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On March 1, the Sierra Madre Alliance (ASMAC) tweeted: “Eleven years after the cowardly murder of the defender Ernesto Rábago, the events remain unpunished, @ASMACChihuahua demands #JusticiaParaErnestoRábago.”

Norte Digital has explained: “Ernesto Rábago Martínez was a defence lawyer for the territory who supported the Baquéachi community, which was the victim of the dispossession of thousands of hectares of land, but thanks to the work of him and his wife [Estela], they managed to recover part of the lands that had been taken from them.”

That article adds: “Ernesto was murdered on Monday, March 1, 2010, and to date his murderers have not been arrested, nor has it been clarified who or who ordered his death, despite multiple evidence of threats from caciques who harassed them.”

PBI-Mexico has highlighted the high cost of defending land and territory in the Sierra Tarahumara. In this article they cite the assassination of Ernesto.

Last year, more than 200 Indigenous Rarámuri from the communities of Baquéachi, Chinéachi and Bakuséachi in the Sierra Tarahumara marched in Chihuahua to demand justice on the 10th anniversary of the murder of Ernesto.

A statement read at that assembly noted: “Ernesto Rábago’s death was a direct consequence of his work in favor of indigenous communities.”

CEDEHM has documented that at least 38 human rights defenders have been killed in Chihuahua between 1973 and 2019.

It adds: “Chihuahua also has the largest number of precautionary measures adopted by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) regarding defenders in Mexico. In the State, at least 82 defenders of seven civil society organizations have measures of protection from the Inter-American System of Human Rights.”

Webinar with ASMAC on March 11

To hear Isela Gonzalez, the director of ASMAC, speak about the defence of Indigenous rights and territory, please join us on Thursday March 11 for a webinar that will highlight the impact of Canadian mining companies in Chihuahua.

To register for the webinar with Gonzalez, please click here.

PBI-Mexico has accompanied ASMAC since 2018.

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