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Indigenous Q’eqchi people demand justice for imprisoned defender Bernardo Caal and freedom for rivers from hydroelectric dams

By
Brent Patterson
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Photo: Outside the courthouse where Bernardo’s lawyers keep fighting for his freedom. The sign reads: “Q’eqchi people in resistance for life and dignity demand justice.”

On September 29, the Peace Brigades International-Guatemala Project shared this post by Colectivo MadreSelva that says:

“Women and men of Santa Maria Cahabon, today in front of the Supreme Court of Justice, demanded justice for Bernardo Caal Xol and the rivers of their community, for which they are willing to fight against large extractive companies and corrupt rulers. Cahabon resists for its rivers.”

Colectivo MadreSelva adds that an appeal for cessation was presented to the court.

Caal Xol is a leader of the Peaceful Resistance of Cahabón, a collective of 38 Maya Q’eqchi communities. The resistance was formed to oppose the construction of the Oxec and Renace hydroelectric dams on the Cahabón River and its tributaries.

PBI-Guatemala has accompanied the Resistance since July 2017.

Timeline & background

In December 2015, Caal Xol as a member of an affected Q’eqchi community launched a legal challenge accusing the Guatemalan state of illegally granting licences for the Oxec dam without prior consultation with Indigenous communities.

The Supreme Court ruled in favour of Caal Xol’s legal challenge in January 2017 as did the Constitutional Court in May 2017.

The permits were suspended pending consultation with the indigenous community.

PBI-United Kingdom has noted: “In August 2017, PBI provided security support to the good-faith consultation in which the 195 communities of the Cahabón River overwhelmingly rejected the Oxec hydroelectric projects.”

The Guatemalan Human Rights Commission (GHRC) highlights: “A few months later [in December 2017], Bernardo was arrested [in] a clear act of retribution for the defense of his community’s water rights.”

The Oxec II dam began operation in September 2018.

By November 2018, Caal Xol was sentenced to seven years and four months by a court on trumped up charges that lack objective evidence.

The Renace IV began operation in January 2019.

In July 2020, Amnesty International recognized Caal Xol as a prisoner of conscience.

You can follow Bernardo Caal Xol on Twitter here.

1492 Land Back Lane land defender Skyler Williams faces arrest warrant from Ontario Provincial Police

By
Brent Patterson
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1492 Land Back Lane land defender Skyler Williams has shared that the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) have told him they have a warrant for his arrest.

The CBC reports: “Skyler Williams said he received a call Tuesday [September 29] from an OPP officer informing him that there was a warrant for his arrest for disobeying the current injunction against continued occupation of the land.”

Williams says: “It’s the court’s typical reaction, Canada’s typical reaction to Indigenous people standing up for our lands. If you can throw enough of us in jail and put enough of us under heavy bail and release conditions we can’t fulfil our responsibilities to the land, to our future generations… until there is no one else left on the land to defend it.”

To date, 27 people have been arrested in relation to this land defence struggle.

The legal fund for 1492 Land Back Lane has commented: “These injunctions [such as the one being used by the police as the basis for the warrant against Williams] only serve as a colonial mechanism to disposes us of our lands and resources, which fundamentally violates our rights as sovereign Indigenous people.”

Haudenosaunee lawyer Beverly Jacobs further explains the ahistorical aspect of injunctions against Indigenous land defence struggles in this APTN video clip. The Yellowhead Institute has also commented on the skewed granting of injunctions, as has Kate Gunn of First Peoples Law (who PBI met with in Vancouver in November 2019).

Williams is among the Six Nations land defenders that began a peaceful re-occupation of their territory on July 19 to uphold their right to free, prior and informed consent and in opposition to the construction of the first phase of a 1,000-unit housing development on unceded lands near the city of Caledonia in the province of Ontario in central Canada.

This August 15 statement highlights: “The Haudenosaunee Confederacy Chiefs Council [the traditional governance body for the territory] is opposed to this development and as the holder of collective rights for the Haudenosaunee people has not granted any type of consent which would allow this development to proceed.”

The Chiefs thanked the land defenders who they say are “taking peaceful steps to protect and save the land for our future generations, who will have nowhere to live and prosper if the settler population continues to unlawfully encroach upon our lands.”

1492 Land Back Lane has set up this Legal Fund to assist with their legal costs. For the latest updates, see #1492LandBackLane on Twitter.

PBI-Honduras accompanied Dina Meza and C-Libre comment on the murder of independent journalist Luis Almendares

By
Brent Patterson
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On September 28, the Peace Brigades International-Honduras Project posted on its Facebook page about the death of 35-year-old independent journalist Luis Almendares who had been shot multiple times the day before.

PBI-Honduras laments: “Today we woke up to the news of the murder of journalist Luis Almendares.”

Their post includes an article about the murder of Almendares by journalist Dina Meza, who PBI-Honduras has accompanied since May 2014.

Meza writes: “Three days earlier, he had released a video from which several people had been shot at from a vehicle allegedly belonging to the police.”

The Agence France-Presse article on Almendares’ murder also quotes C-Libre (Comite por la Libre Expresión/Committee for Free Expression), which has been accompanied by PBI-Honduras since January 2018.

AFP reports: “Almendares, a freelancer who used social media to criticize the government of President Juan Orlando Hernandez, had repeatedly complained to police and the country’s National Protection System over receiving death threats, the rights group said.”

Deutsche-Welle adds: “Almendares … had filed at least 10 complaints of death threats with the police and a government mechanism for the protection of communicators, according to human rights defenders.”

Amanda Ponce of C-Libre says that more than 90 percent of the 85 murders of journalists carried out in Honduras since 2001 have gone unpunished.

And Dagoberto Rodríguez, president of the Honduran College of Journalists (CPH), commented following the death of Almendares: “If impunity continues to prevail in the murders of journalists and communicators, a circle of impunity is generated and the government shows it is not interested in solving the murders.”

The CPH has now decided to stop participating in the government protection program that currently provides protection to 44 journalists.

Rodriguez says: “We have decided to withdraw, until there is some real action on solving the deaths of journalists and the system is reformed. We do not want the cases in the program to be so bureaucratic, and we want a real budget to protect threatened journalists, because the funding now only serves to pay for (program) employees.”

While 31 human rights defenders were killed in Honduras in 2019, including 14 land and environmental defenders, making Honduras the most dangerous country in the world per capita for land and environmental defenders, the Government of Canada makes no mention of this in its travel advisory for Canadians visiting Honduras.

Since the 2009 coup d’état in Honduras, PBI has seen with increasing concern the worsening of the situation of human rights defenders. Following a request in May 2010 for accompaniment, the PBI Honduras project was established in 2013.

Colectivo Nicaragua Nunca Mas to speak at PBI webinar on police violence, October 30

By
Brent Patterson
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Peace Brigades International is planning a webinar on Friday October 30 at 10 am ET that will focus on the issue of police violence featuring defenders from Kenya, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Colombia and Canada sharing their experiences and analysis.

To register for the webinar, please click here.

One of the featured groups will be Colectivo de Derechos Humanos Nicaragua Nunca Mas (Nicaragua Human Rights Collective Never Again).

As noted on their Facebook page: “The Collective is an organization made up of human rights defenders, exiled in Costa Rica, committed to defending human rights.”

Human Rights Watch has reported: “In April 2018, massive anti-government protests broke out countrywide. Police, in coordination with armed pro-government groups, brutally repressed them, killing hundreds, and injuring several thousand.”

“National Police subjected protesters to abuses that at times amounted to torture, including beatings, waterboarding, electric shocks, and rape. Many told the press and Human Rights Watch that they were forced to record self-incriminating videos.”

It adds: “Between April and October 19, the number of Nicaraguans applying for asylum in neighboring Costa Rica increased to 15,584… As of November, another 11,383 people had been given an appointment to seek asylum.”

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has stated that 20% of those in exile are students who took part in protests; 23% are human rights defenders; and 18% are people who helped demonstrators with food, medicine and safe houses.

Others are doctors, journalists and former soldiers or police who refused to participate in the crackdown.

In March of this year, Peace Brigades International launched this accompaniment project for Nicaraguan organizations, social groups and individual human rights defenders exiled in Costa Rica. It seeks to address the mental health impacts that displacement causes, while also encouraging the building of networks and trust between defenders in similar situations. 

Coupled with protection and security workshops, PBI hopes this approach will help this community to remain active, denouncing human rights abuse in Nicaragua, despite finding themselves outside the context.

To hear about the situation of police violence in Nicaragua – as well as in Colombia, Guatemala, Kenya and Canada – please click here to register for the webinar.

Guapinol defenders and Berta Cáceres nominated for the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize

By
Brent Patterson
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On September 28, Tilly Metz, a Member of the European Parliament from Luxembourg, tweeted this photo with the text: “Presenting @GreensEFA’s nomination for the #SakharovPrize: Imprisoned Guapinol defenders & Berta Cáceres.”

She adds: “Honduras is not in the everyday media attention, although it has the highest record of killings of environment and land defenders. The award would be so deserved!”

The European Parliament awards the Sakharov Prize every year to honour exceptional individuals and organisations defending human rights and fundamental freedoms.

This year, the Guapinol activists and Berta Caceres in Honduras have been nominated for the Sakharov Prize by the Greens/European Free Alliance and the European United Left–Nordic Green Left.

The Brussels Times has noted: “The Guapinol activists have been imprisoned after taking part in a peaceful protest against a polluting mining company in Tocoa, Honduras. Berta Caceras was assassinated in 2016, and was a land-rights activist and protestor against illegal logging and land-grabbing from indigenous peoples in Honduras.”

The winner of the Sakharov Prize will be announced on October 22 and the award ceremony will take place on December 16.

The Peace Brigades International-Honduras Project accompanies COPINH, the organization that Berta Caceres co-founded, and accompanies processes related to the calls for the criminalized Guapinol water defenders to be released from prison.

“PBI was a true introduction to the meaning of solidarity”: Justin Mohammed on his time as a PBI volunteer in Kenya

By
Brent Patterson
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As Peace Brigades International approaches its 40th anniversary in 2021, we are sharing the reflections of past volunteers from Canada who accompanied at-risk defenders in various PBI project countries over the years.

Justin Mohammed, who now lives in Ottawa, accompanied defenders through the Peace Brigades International-Kenya Project in 2015-16.

Justin tells us:

“PBI was a true introduction to the meaning of solidarity. It provided an opportunity not only to better understand the day to day challenges of human rights defenders in Kenya, but also stand beside these advocates as they carried out their work with courage and conviction.”

In December 2015, just after Justin started his work with PBI-Kenya, PBI-Canada posted: “Justin is trained as an international lawyer and has for years dedicated himself to human rights work in Canada, Jerusalem, Rwanda, and elsewhere. He has worked on issues ranging from justice for the crimes of genocide, to support for refugees and asylum seekers, and against forced evictions and house demolitions.”

At that time, Justin commented: “Due to the high levels of poverty in Kenya, PBI has sought to adapt its methods to this challenging context. We are exploring new forms of protective accompaniment and are positioning ourselves to make a meaningful impact in the lead up to the country’s elections in 2017.”

PBI-Kenya, which was established in December 2012, continues its work to this day supporting a range of grassroot defenders across Nairobi’s urban settlements, raising their profile in the national and international contexts. Notably, PBI-Kenya supports the Social Justice Centres Working Group and is part of the Missing Voices network and the Police Reforms Working Group network.

Please consider making an online donation to PBI-Canada to help us continue write and share the stories of the defenders PBI-Kenya accompanies.

Lawyer Edgar Pérez and Peaceful Resistance of La Puya to speak on webinar, October 1

By
Brent Patterson
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Álvaro Sandoval of the Peaceful Resistance La Puya and Edgar Pérez of Human Rights Law Firm will be speaking on the webinar “Mining Injustice through International Arbitration” that will take place on October 1 at 7 pm ET.

To register for this webinar, please click here.

The Peace Brigades International-Guatemala Project accompanies both the Peaceful Resistance of La Puya and Edgar Pérez and the Human Rights Law Firm.

In March 2012 residents from San José del Golfo and San Pedro Ayampuc – an area known as La Puya, just north of Guatemala City – set up a peaceful, 24-hour a day blockade at the entrance of the Vancouver-based Radius Gold Inc. El Tambor mine.

By August 2012, the Canadian company sold El Tambor to US-based Kappes, Cassiday & Associates, but retained an economic interest in the mine (including quarterly royalty payments on the gold production from the mine).

By February 2016, the Peaceful Resistance of La Puya won a Guatemalan Supreme Court ruling that provisionally suspended the mining licence because there had not been prior consultation with affected communities, as is required under Guatemalan and international law, in particular the International Labour Organization’s Convention 169.

In response, Kappes, Cassiday & Associates filed a claim with the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes, a World Bank arbitration mechanism, claiming its investor rights under the Dominican Republic–Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR) had been violated.

PBI-Guatemala recently noted: “The Peaceful Resistance La Puya is forming legal alliances and solidarity across national and international organizations and groups. Their objective is to make their voices heard in this exclusionary procedure and to create an antecedent that favors, not only the Resistance itself, but many other community processes that defend land, territory and water against projects which exploit natural resources.”

The promotion for the upcoming webinar highlights: “Join this webinar to learn about this $400 million claim, which is currently proceeding at a World Bank Group tribunal, as well as the ongoing resistance at La Puya, lessons from El Salvador, and the inherent injustice in the supranational Investor State Dispute Settlement System (ISDS).”

To register for the webinar, please click here.

Jani Silva defends communities in Putumayo, Colombia where Canadian oil companies operate

By
Brent Patterson
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The Peace Brigades International-Colombia Project has just published this profile of community leader Jani Silva.

PBI-Colombia explains that Jani is the president of the Association for the Integral Sustainable Development of the Perla Amazónica (ADISPA), the association that manages the Perla Amazónica Peasant Reserve Zone (ZRC).

Jani is accompanied by the Inter-Church Justice and Peace Commission, which in turn has been accompanied by PBI-Colombia since 1994.

The ZRC is located near Puerto Asis in the department of Putumayo, which is located in south-west Colombia near the border with Ecuador.

PBI-Colombia notes: “Over the years, one of the great challenges they have faced has been the arrival and expansion of oil companies.”

“According to Jani, these projects came about in the early 2000s when the people leading the ZRCPA were less active due of the threats they were receiving.”

That timing coincides, as Canadian Dimension has reported, with Canada’s Petrobank investing $50 million in its Putumayo oil operations.

Petrobank was a Calgary-based company whose Putumayo operations were taken over by Calgary-based Petrominerales Ltd. in December 2010. Calgary-based Pacific Rubiales (now Frontera Energy Ltd.) bought Petrominerales in September 2013.

Notably though, it was the British company Amerisur, and its exploitation of the Platanillo Block, that has negatively impacted the ZRCPA.

Most recently, Amerisur has sought to formalize the exploitation of the Bienparado Exploratory Drilling Area, Put 8 Block despite community opposition.

“The inhabitants of the ZRCPA claim that the company has not respected its commitments to repair the environmental damage caused and that they are planning an expansion of oil exploitation in unauthorized areas of the ZRCPA.”

In November 2019, Amerisur was purchased by GeoPark, a private oil company that is based in Hamilton, Bermuda.

Beyond GeoPark/Amerisur and Frontera, Calgary-based Canacol Energy Ltd. is involved in the Capella oil field in the Caguán-Putumayo basin and Calgary-based Gran Tierra Energy Inc. has described itself as the “premier operator and top landholder” in the Putumayo basin.

The PBI-Colombia article notes: “Almost three years ago, Jani Silva and her husband Hugo Miramar packed up all their belongings, got on a boat and travelled down the river to Puerto Asis, where they sought refuge. After so many threats and so much stress it was no longer possible to stay on the farm.”

That said, in late March information came forward about a plot to kill Jani, then on April 17 she heard six gunshots at less than 30 metres from her home, and again on April 22 she heard three gunshots less than 50 metres from her home.

Her home in Puerto Asis is located just 60 kilometres south-east of Orito, the hub of Putumayo’s oil operations where Frontera also continues to operate.

To read the full PBI-Colombia article, please click here.

49.9% vote against Switzerland buying new fighter jets in referendum

By
Brent Patterson
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Today, Swiss citizens voted 49.9 per cent against their government spending CHF 6 billion (CAD$8.7 billion) to buy new fighter jets.

The Swiss “No to the fighter jets billions” (Nein zu den Kampfjet-Milliarden) campaign says: “The result shows that skepticism about this billion-dollar tax among the population extends far beyond the left-wing camp. That is why the Referendum Committee sees the result of the vote as a success.”

Notably, the no fighter jets campaign in Switzerland was backed by “The Greens – Swiss ecologist party”  as well as Greenpeace.

The Canadian Voice of Women for Peace #NoNewFighterJets campaign is utilizing many of the same arguments as the Swiss campaign.

Le News had reported: “Those behind this vote argue that the purchase is unnecessary and wasteful of public money. They would prefer to see the money spent on health, protection against natural disasters and climate change.”

And Swissinfo.ch noted: “[Opponents] argue it makes more sense to use the funds for disaster relief, health, climate projects, public transport, old age pensions or education. They argue that Switzerland can police its airspace with cheaper jets which would also cause less damage to the environment.”

“Campaigners have also warned that the government is downplaying the real costs for the new aircraft. When maintenance and other costs are accounted for, the bill will amount to CHF24 billion [CAD$34.8 billion] rather than CHF6, opponents say.”

In April 2012, the Auditor General of Canada stated that the $9 billion cost of buying 65 F-35 fighter jets was an “underestimate” given the “sustainment” cost of $16 billion over a 20-year period meant the truer price tag would be $25 billion.

Using the Auditor General’s figure of sustainment costs of an F-35 ($19 billion ÷ 65 fighter jets = $292.3 million), the truer cost of purchasing 88 fighter jets in 2022 could be closer to $44.7 billion (88 x $292.3 million = $25.7 billion + $19 billion purchase price).

The Canadian government accepted bids from three transnational corporations on July 31 and has stated that it will award a contract to one of them in 2022 to manufacture 88 new fighter jets for the Royal Canadian Air Force.

This petition has been launched calling on the Canadian government to change its mind and to choose people and peace, not weapons and war. This day of action against fighter jets has also been called for this coming Friday October 2. And the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute and World Beyond War are organizing this webinar – with Paul Manly, Leah Gazan and Tamara Lorincz – on Thursday October 15.

#NoNewFighterJets #DefundWarplanes

PBI-Mexico present as thousands march to commemorate the 6th anniversary of the disappearance of the Ayotzinapa 43

By
Brent Patterson
-

On September 26, the Peace Brigades International-Mexico Project was present as thousands marched from the Angel of Independence (a prominent monument in downtown Mexico City) to the Zócalo (the main city square and seat of the federal government) to commemorate the sixth anniversary of the disappearance of 43 students.

On September 26, 2014, these students from a politically radical, poor, mostly Indigenous teachers’ college in the town of Ayotzinapa in the state of Guerrero, Mexico were forcibly disappeared from a bus in the city of Iguala (about 200 kilometres north-west of the school) while they were en route to Mexico City to commemorate the anniversary of the Tlatelolco massacre (in which the Mexican Armed Forces had killed hundreds of people who were protesting against the Olympics on October 2, 1968).

The Peace Brigades International-Mexico Project posted:

“Today marks 6 years since the disappearance of the 43 students of the rural Normal of Ayotzinapa (Guerrero). Over 6 years, mothers and fathers of the 43 have become a symbol of the fight for truth and justice, and against the impunity that Mexico gangrene.

With the support of the Tlachinollan Centro de Derechos Humanos de La Montaña, the Centro Prodh and other national and international organizations, it has been shown that the alleged ‘historical truth’ that resulted from the investigation of the Attorney General’s Office of the Republic (PGR) was a strategy to cover up those responsible for the disappearance of the students and shows the lack of political will that the Mexican government has had to respectfully and fairly address the issue of enforced disappearance.

6 years after this painful event, PBI stands in solidarity with the victims, mothers, fathers and family members, as well as all the people who continue to search for their disappearances, facing unbearable impunity, inspiringly, with strength and dignity.”

PBI-Mexico also shared this statement from the Tlachinollan Human Rights Centre that highlights that the Iguala Municipal Police had forcibly removed the students from the bus and took them near the Palacio de Justicia (Courthouse) in Iguala but that the external closed-circuit videos of what happened there have been taken.

Aljazeera now reports that 25 arrest warrants have been issued for the intellectual and material authors of the disappearance including police from various municipalities, federal police, members of the army, current and former officials from the federal prosecutor’s office, and people involved with organized crime.

That article also reports: “The highest-ranking official wanted in the case is Tomas Zeron, who at the time of the abduction was the head of the federal investigation agency. He is being sought on charges of torture and covering up forced disappearances.”

On June 29, Idle No More, Defenders of the Land and the Truth Before Reconciliation Campaign issued this open letter to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau expressing their solidarity with the families of the disappeared students and concern about media reports that Zeron may have fled to Canada in late 2019.

El Universal now reports that Zeron is in Israel.

PBI-Mexico has accompanied Tlachinollan Human Rights Centre, which accompanies the Ayotzinapa case, since 2003.

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