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Remembering the 2-year long Peace Camp on Parliament Hill that opposed cruise missiles

By
Brent Patterson
-

On March 10, 1982, Don Sellar of Southam News reported on a not-yet-public agreement between Canada and the United States for the testing of a range of weapons in this country. It was a news report that would both prompt an investigation of Sellar by the FBI and spur the peace movement into action.

The agreement Sellar reported on included testing by the United States Air Force of the cruise missile in the Northwest Territories and Alberta.

Around that time, Maclean’s magazine reported: “The air-launched missile has generated intense opposition because it is a new weapon designed to carry a nuclear warhead at low altitude to a target 2,400 km away.”

By late April 1983, a Peace Camp was established on Parliament Hill in Ottawa to oppose the cruise missile and its testing in Canada.

The following month, May 1983, Trudeau wrote an open letter to Canadians defending the testing. Then on June 14, 1983, the Trudeau government used its majority in the House of Commons to defeat an NDP motion opposing cruise missile testing.

And on July 15, 1983, the Liberal government formally announced that it had approved cruise missile testing in Canada starting in January 1984.

As a side note, Trudeau left it to two of his ministers to make the unpopular announcement late on a Friday of a summer weekend and departed from Ottawa that evening with his children, including 11-year-old Justin, for a six-day trip across the Arctic region (where he was greeted by an anti-cruise missile protest).

By late September 1983, Stephanie Coe from the camp and supporter Karen Harrison were able to arrange to have a 10-minute meeting with Trudeau in his Langevin Block office across the street from Parliament Hill.

When Coe asked about the cruise missile tests, she recalls Trudeau looked away and quietly said “Oh, the cruise?” He then defended the tests as part of Canada’s commitment to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

As the camp approached its first anniversary in February 1984, The Peace Calendar described it as a snow-covered tarpaulin with only two Coleman heaters for warmth. That article also noted that NDP MP Doug Anguish gave the campers access to his Parliament Hill office to use the telephone and receive mail.

In March 1984, Maclean’s reported: “On Parliament Hill itself, three hardy protesters have camped out with only sleeping bags and a plastic tent for shelter for almost a year.”

And in February 1985, the Ottawa Citizen reported that four people were living in a five-metre long tent. That article noted: “Their tent canvas is insulated with layers of aluminum and styrofoam. They use a kerosene lamp for light, gas heaters for warmth, a propane torch for cooking and rely on nearby public washrooms.”

While the camp had been described as ragged and unsightly, camper Jacques Demers said, “We’re not here to be attractive. We’re here to inform the people that, after a nuclear war, it’s not very attractive either.”

It wasn’t only the cold that the camp had to deal with.

The book ‘Just Dummies’: Cruise Missile Testing in Canada notes: “In mid-June 1983, Canadians learned that either the RCMP or the new covert security force, the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service, was currently engaged in tapping the telephones of the Cruise Missile Conversion Project.”

That book adds, “The other incident that had to be dealt with was that spy [Andrew Moxley] planted by the RCMP in the Parliament Hill peace camp had been exposed.”

By June 1985, Peace Magazine reported: “For over two years, the Ottawa Peace Camp stood on the grounds of Canada’s Parliament Hill. Braving the cold of Ottawa’s winters, the Camp served as a reminder, to MPs and tourists alike, of the peace movement’s opposition to cruise testing, and its commitment to a nuclear weapon-free Canada.”

That article adds, “Within the last few weeks, a concerted police action, backed by the federal Government, saw the Peace Camp physically destroyed, and its weary participants forbidden to continue their long vigil.”

It explains that on April 23, 1985, the Public Works minister created a new regulation that forbids sleeping, camping or erecting objects on Parliament Hill.

Eibie Weizfeld, one of the founding members of the camp, commented, “The RCMP stood around like storm troopers while the Public Works crew ripped the tent down.”

There were arrests and a second tent was confiscated the next night. A counter-protest against the eviction was organized.

Peace Magazine reported: “Later in the afternoon, after the demonstrators were gone, there were five more arrests when Weizfeld and others tried once more to erect tents and were unceremoniously thrown into waiting paddy wagons.”

The following Monday, the Ottawa Disarmament Coalition set up literature tables each lunch hour. Those were prohibited under the Public Works regulations. At one point, the table was staffed by Members of Parliament, including NDP MP Dan Heap.

By May 5, 1985, the decision was made to close the camp due to lack of shelter and physical exhaustion.

In June 1985, Peace Magazine noted: “It appeared that the Government’s strategy of constant, but increasingly low-profile, harassment had succeeded [in shutting down the camp]. What the Government had not counted on, however, was a small group of Quakers who happened to be on the Hill when the Camp closed down. They immediately began a round-the-clock vigil, organizing participants into two hour shifts. After four days, these plans gave way to a less exhausting 8 am to 8 pm daylight vigil.”

“On the first full day of the vigil, a literature table was set up at lunchtime. When the Mounties arrived to confiscate the table, Margaret Dyment and her husband, Paul, held on to it, intending to force the police to arrest them in order to take the table. There must, however, have been orders not to make any arrests, for the table was torn from their hands and purposely broken without an arrest being made.”

35 years after the closure of the Peace Camp, in some ways a forerunner of the Occupy movement that gained global attention in September 2011, it is remembered for its contribution to building a world beyond war.

Photo of Peace Camp from CBC News video.

PBI-Canada to mark the 75th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

By
Brent Patterson
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Photo: Murray Thomson at a Hiroshima and Nagasaki remembrance ceremony that took place by the Rideau Canal in Ottawa, Canada on August 9, 2017. Thomson was 22 years old at the time of the bombings and it initiated his 75-years of work in the peace movement, including co-founding Peace Brigades International in 1981. Thomson said, “Hiroshima made me a pacifist.” Photo by Koozma J. Tarasoff.

Peace Brigades International-Canada will commemorate this year’s 75th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9.

We remain convinced that enduring peace and lasting solutions of conflicts between and within nations cannot be achieved by violent means.

The nine nuclear powers spent $73 billion on nuclear weapons in 2019

On May 13, The Guardian reported: “The world’s nuclear-armed nations spent a record $73bn on their weapons last year, with the US spending almost as much as the eight other states combined, according to a new report [by ICAN].”

The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) notes: “On 7 July 2017 – following a decade of advocacy by ICAN and its partners – an overwhelming majority of the world’s nations adopted a landmark global agreement to ban nuclear weapons, known officially as the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW).”

“The TPNW prohibits nations from developing, testing, producing, manufacturing, transferring, possessing, stockpiling, using or threatening to use nuclear weapons, or allowing nuclear weapons to be stationed on their territory. It also prohibits them from assisting, encouraging or inducing anyone to engage in any of these activities.”

Canada has not signed the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons

Reporting at the time of that July 7, 2017 vote, the CBC noted: “122 nations [voted] in favour, the Netherlands [which has U.S. nuclear weapons on its territory] opposed, and Singapore abstaining. Canada did not take part in negotiations.”

In December 2019, the Canadian Press reported: “[The treaty] has no support among the countries that possess nuclear weapons — including the United States and its allies, including Canada.”

“Canada doesn’t have nuclear weapons but its membership in NATO means it adheres to the 29-country military alliance’s nuclear-deterrent policy — that it supports having nuclear weapons in its arsenal essentially because its adversaries have them.”

Matt Korda, a research associate for the Nuclear Information Project, has commented Canada “actively participates in NATO’s Nuclear Planning Group” and allows “American and British nuclear-capable vessels to visit our ports.”

He also comments in reference to Canada’s commitment to a feminist foreign policy: “It is a well-established fact that nuclear weapons detonations disproportionately affect women –– not only in terms of the biological effects of ionizing radiation, but also in terms of the social, economic, and psychological impacts of the weapons themselves.”

Canada’s role in the development of nuclear weapons

Korda also notes: “We don’t like to talk about it much, but Canada played a critical role in the development of these horrific weapons: scientists at the Montréal Laboratory were an essential part of the Manhattan Project, and the first atomic bombs were made with uranium shipped from the Northwest Territories.”

Gordon Edwards, a Canadian scientist who co-founded the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility in 1975, adds that the uranium for the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima was refined at Port Hope, Ontario.

Canada’s role in supplying uranium for nuclear weapons

Edwards also highlights: “For twenty years after World War II, Canada sold plutonium (from Chalk River) and uranium (from Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and the Mackenzie District) for use in the American and British nuclear weapons programs.”

In October 2008, Professor Jim Harding, the founder of the Regina Group for a Non-Nuclear Society, further explained: “Canada signed [the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty] in 1970 and claimed that it would not be using uranium for weapons production. We now know that uranium out of Saskatchewan has been diverted through the depleted uranium (DU) system and has been fuelling the weapons stream.”

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has additionally noted: “Canada has long been the main source of uranium for the U.S. nuclear arsenal, globally the largest and deadliest at 10,000 warheads and bombs.”

75th anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

While the details are not known at this point due to the pandemic, people around the world will be marking this coming August the 75th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that killed up to 120,000 people instantly and tens of thousands of people later from radiation sickness. PBI-Canada is committed to supporting that remembrance and ongoing efforts to intervene in the cause of peace.

Peace Brigades International training on Stó:lō territory in British Columbia in 1992

By
Brent Patterson
-

The April 1992 Peace Brigades International-Canada Newsletter notes that 19 people gathered for a “North America training” from March 26 to April 24, 1992, near the town of Hope in the Sunshine Valley on Stó:lō territory in British Columbia.

Alaine Hawkins of the PBI-North America Project wrote, “The training was organized to prepare people in Western Canada to do PBI-type observing within the North American context, particularly applied to Native peoples’ struggle for justice.”

“The training focused on roleplays based on scenarios of situations in which observers have been or might be useful.”

“The direct comments of Elizabeth Little Elk, a member of the National Coordinating Committee of PBI-USA and a member of the Lakota Sioux Nation helped other participants understand more clearly the experience of Native people with regard to the issues [of] racism and oppression.”

“Trevor Chandler provided us with an overview of the history of relations between Natives and non-Natives in BC, and Elizabeth shared the experience of her people.”

“A special gift was the presence of Tate, Elizabeth ‘s 5-year-old daughter, who joined our games, our art experiments and our songs, and at times added her wisdom to our circle of sharing. She helped us to be aware that the reason we do all this is to work towards a future free of racism and other forms of oppression.”

The Toronto-based Peace Brigades International-North America Project (PBI-NAP) operated between April 1992 and December 1999.

PBI began exploring the possibility of a North America Project in September 1990 after the 78-day July-September 1990 Oka Crisis in Quebec that saw a confrontation between the Canadian army and Mohawk land defenders who opposed the expansion of a golf course onto Indigenous burial grounds.

PBI-NAP’s “principles and mandate” statement highlighted, “The North America Project is concerned about and committed to working against racism and structural violence. We recognize that the problems faced by many Indigenous communities are outcomes of structures that do not represent their culture or tradition, and whose imposition is experienced as violence – an ongoing experience of conquest.”

You can read more about the PBI-North America Project in this PBI-USA Spring 2016 News Bulletin article titled Steve Molnar reflects on the early days of PBI-USA and the North American Project (on page 14).

Top photo: PBI-North America Project trainer Karen Ridd with group on Stó:lō territory near Hope, British Columbia.

Bottom photo: “I helped to start the North American Project together with Alaine Hawkins from Canada, and other returned volunteers from the Guatemala Project.” – Steve Molnar (in purple t-shirt) in an excerpt from the PBI-USA News Bulletin.

Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs sign MOU on title, continue to oppose Coastal GasLink pipeline

By
Brent Patterson
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Photo: Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chief Na’Moks

On May 15, The Guardian reported, “A group of Indigenous leaders have struck an unprecedented deal with Canada’s government to resolve a dispute over territorial rights near the site of a controversial pipeline project which provoked fierce protests, police raids and a nationwide rail blockade.”

“At a virtual signing ceremony on Thursday [May 14], hereditary chiefs of the Wet’suwet’en people agreed to a memorandum of understanding with the federal government and the province of British Columbia – a landmark agreement many hope will grant the Wet’suwet’en title rights to 22,000 sq km of territory.”

The CBC notes, “Effective immediately, the MOU commits Canada and B.C. to recognize that rights and title are held by house groups within the Wet’suwet’en Nation, ‘under their system of governance’. …The MOU [also] says transfer of jurisdiction will happen over time and jurisdiction may be shared in some cases with the federal and provincial governments.”

On April 30, the Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs, B.C. Minister of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation Scott Fraser and federal Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations Carolyn Bennett issued this statement that notes:

“There is a great deal of work ahead of us in the negotiation process agreed to in the MOU, to lay out how we will implement rights and title and how our three governments will work together into the future. As negotiations proceed on the affirmation and implementation of Wet’suwet’en rights and title, we will move forward with transparency and openess, and will be further engaging with Wet’suwet’en house groups, neighbouring Nations, local governments, stakeholders and the public.”

The Narwhal has reported that a March 1 joint statement on this MOU would not resolve the outstanding conflict concerning the pipeline: “All parties at the table recognize that the differences relating to the [Coastal GasLink] project remain.”

Earlier this year, Hereditary Chief Na’Moks stated that the Coastal GasLink pipeline did not have free, prior and informed consent and that “The hereditary chiefs have never approved this project. We never have, we never will.”

On December 13, 2019, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination called on Canada to immediately halt construction on the Coastal GasLink fracked gas pipeline on the lands and territories of the Wet’suwet’en peoples given it lacks their UN-recognized right to free, prior and informed consent.

Peace Brigades International-Canada has posted this online URGENT ACTION petition to enable you to send an email to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that calls on him to act in accordance with the UN Committee’s resolution before the UN vote on June 17 on Canada’s bid for a Security Council seat.

PBI-Canada observes International Conscientious Objection Day

By
Brent Patterson
-

May 15th is International Conscientious Objection Day.

It is a day to remember and celebrate the resistance of conscientious objectors who refused to participate in armed conflict or be conscripted into the military. It recognizes those who uphold the right to refuse to kill.

Three of the founders of Peace Brigades International – Charles Walker, Gene Keyes and Lee Stern – were conscientious objectors who had served time in prison prior to their gathering on Grindstone Island in 1981 to launch PBI.

The Jamnalal Bajaj Foundation notes, “Even as a student, Charles Walker abhorred violence and became a conscientious objector to World War II. He was a Board Member of the Central Committee of Conscientious Objectors to War. He was imprisoned for this activity and detached to hospital service.”

On May 15, 1964, Gene Keyes was drafted to serve in the Vietnam War. In a telegram to the President and Attorney General, he wrote, “There is no moral validity to any part of any law whose purpose is to train people to kill one another. I hereby reject the order to report for induction.” Keyes was sentenced to six months for contempt and then in 1965 to three years in prison for failing to report for military service.

And this Swarthmore College Peace Collection biography notes, “Lee Stern was a conscientious objector during World War II. He refused to report to Civilian Public Service as ordered, and was imprisoned as a result, in Milan (Michigan) from December 1942 through January 1946. While in prison, he refused to follow rules on racial segregation and sat with black prisoners during meals. His actions, along with those of other conscientious objectors eventually led to integration in the federal prison system.”

It is also notable that while George Willoughby was not able to participate at the founding meeting on Grindstone Island, he was one of the signatories to the invitation to that gathering and was involved in PBI for many years afterwards.

War Resisters International notes, “George Willoughby joined the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in 1944 and declared conscientious objector status. He then worked at a Civilian Public Service Camp. In 1966, George and other radical Quakers formed A Quaker Action Group. The organization’s primary purpose was to use nonviolent action campaigns to shorten the Vietnam War.”

In 2004, Peace Brigades International-Canada endorsed the War Resisters Support Campaign. That campaign was founded to assist US military personnel who refused to participate in the Iraq war and came here seeking asylum. It called on the Canadian government to demonstrate its commitment to international law and the treaties to which it is a signatory, by making provision for US war objectors to have sanctuary in this country.

The Principles and Mandate of PBI state, “PBI is convinced that enduring peace and lasting solutions of conflicts between and within nations cannot be achieved by violent means and therefore it rejects violence of any kind and from any source.”

Watch Invasion and call on Canada to abide by UN resolution on Wet’suwet’en land defenders

By
Brent Patterson
-

“Everybody needs to stand up, not just Indigenous people. Everybody needs to stand up to the political powers that be that they need to change. And quit making legislation and policies to make us look like criminals when we’re just trying to protect what is ours. The whole world is watching what Canada is doing.” – Freda Huson

An 18-minute excerpt of the documentary Invasion can be seen online here. It tells the story of Wet’suwet’en land and water defenders resisting a megaproject on their unceded territory in British Columbia, Canada.

It includes video of the raid by Canadian police on Wet’suwet’en territory that took place on January 7, 2019. It also includes video of defender Freda Huson addressing the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues on April 24, 2019.

On December 13, 2019, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination called on Canada to immediately halt construction on the Coastal GasLink fracked gas pipeline on the lands and territories of the Wet’suwet’en peoples given it lacks their UN-recognized right to free, prior and informed consent.

It further urged that “the Royal Canadian Mounted Police [RCMP] and associated security and policing services be withdrawn from their traditional lands.”

And yet by January 13 of this year, the RCMP had set up an exclusion zone on Wet’suwet’en traditional lands and on February 6 launched a second militarized raid on the territory to facilitate the construction of the pipeline.

Then on April 28, Export Development Canada, the Canadian government’s export credit agency, approved a loan of up to $500 million to TC Energy, the company building the Coastal GasLink pipeline on Wet’suwet’en territory.

That is arguably in contravention of the UN’s Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights that says states should take steps to protect against human rights abuses by business enterprises that receive support from export credit agencies.

On May 5, the CBC reported that Canada is “doubling down on its bid for a seat” on the UN Security Council that has already “set the government back $2 million.” That vote is scheduled to take place on June 17.

Peace Brigades International-Canada has posted this online Urgent Action advocacy petition to enable those who support environmental and human rights defenders to send an email to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that calls on him to act in accordance with the UN Committee’s resolution before the UN vote.

PBI facilitates meeting with Canadian officials and Colombian human rights defenders

By
Brent Patterson
-

On May 7, Peace Brigades International (in Colombia and Canada) helped bring together a telephone conference call meeting that included Global Affairs Canada and Embassy of Canada to Colombia officials, Alexandra González Zapata from the Committee in Solidarity with Political Prisoners (CSPP) and Fabian Laverde from the Social Corporation for Community Advisory and Training Services (COSPACC).

Alexandra began the meeting by providing the context of Colombia as one of the most dangerous countries in the world for human rights defenders. She noted that on average each month there are 33 threats against defenders, 4 attempts on their lives, 7 assassinations and 3 criminalizations.

She also spoke about the cooperation agreements between corporations and state security services that can also include the Attorney General’s Office.

Rutas del Conflicto has reported, “In Colombia, more than 70 national and international companies, mainly in the mining-energy sector, celebrate cooperation agreements with public institutions such as the Ministry of Defense, made up of the Military Forces; with the Police and even with the Attorney General’s Office.”

Alexandra noted that 10 companies backed by Canadian capital have signed this type of cooperation agreement.

Furthermore, the Colombian news magazine Semana recently reported, “Between February and the first days of December last year, the activities of more than 130 citizens were the target of what the military called ‘profiles’ and ‘special jobs.”

Alexandra added her concern that the cooperation agreements that impact the social and environmental rights of communities are made between corporations and the state security forces implicated in the intelligence gathering reported on by Semana.

She also raised the issue of overcrowding in Colombia’s prisons.

On March 25, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet called on governments “to take urgent action to protect the health and safety of people in detention” given the COVID-19 pandemic.

Bachelet stated, “Now, more than ever, governments should release every person detained without sufficient legal basis, including political prisoners and others detained simply for expressing critical or dissenting views.”

Alexandra highlighted that, for example, there is a 65 per cent overcrowding rate in the prison in Yopal, Casanare where 10 human rights defenders are being held.

Fabian then noted that there have been significant oil extraction activities in the department of Casanare, which is situated in the eastern part of Colombia, for the past 40 years and by Canadian companies for the last 10 years.

Those Canadian companies include Toronto-based Frontera Energy Corp. and Calgary-based Gran Tierra Energy Inc.

Fabian noted that these extractive activities have had an impact on the historic presence of small-scale farmers/peasants and their lives and agricultural practices.

He then outlined briefly the history of concerns with Frontera Energy and the community of San Luis de Palenque, Casanare dating back to 2014. Some of that is detailed in this El Espectador newspaper article and this Colombia Reports article.

The tensions between Frontera and the community culminated in the arrest of eight community leaders on November 27, 2018.

Fabian highlighted that the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders Michel Forst noted this in his report to the Human Rights Council earlier this year.

Forst’s report noted (on page 9, points 29 and 30), “Social protests [took place] between 2016 and 2018 in response to the failure of Canadian public company Frontera Energy to fulfil its obligation to compensate communities affected by environmental damage and to repair damaged roads.”

It then says, “In November 2018, Frontera Energy signed two agreements with the Ministry of Defence for a total of US$1,343,106 to secure army protection for its activities.”

Forst notes that on December 4, 2018, the army and the police accused the aforementioned leaders of being members of an illegal armed group. Fabian further explains that because some of the community leaders were members of the same family the Attorney-General presented them as part of a criminal organization.

Fabian also noted that the eight social leaders were originally charged with obstruction of a road (common in a social protest) and with impeding access to a workplace and infringing on the right to work. Fabian added that an assault charge against a police officer was added later but that it’s not mentioned that members of the community were also injured.

Overall, Fabian expressed the concern that cooperation agreements with companies essentially mean that the state security forces are acting as private security for the oil companies against the rights and interests of community members.

Alexandra then noted several key requests including that Frontera continue to pay in full its debt of 2 billion pesos (about $70,000) to the community. El Espectador has reported on this grievance related to the community providing “dining, lodging and transportation services (cargo and personal) through private vehicles.”

The newspaper has also reported on the community’s call for “the repair of the uncovered road”. Alexandra noted that the degradation of the road was the main reason for the protests. She further highlighted that the damage to the road from the heavy trucks associated with Frontera’s extractive activities has isolated the community from the town centre. This has impeded farmers taking their produce to market.

Alexandra then requested, after the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions have been lifted, that Canadian officials visit the community of San Luis de Palenque to follow-up on the concerns expressed during this call as well as visit the eight community leaders who have been detained (three are in prison, five are under house arrest).

Peace Brigades International has accompanied the CSPP since 1998 and COSPACC since 2009 and will continue to monitor this situation closely.

Photos: 1) A November 12, 2018 protest in San Luis de Palenque against Frontera Energy, about two weeks prior to the arrest of community leaders, published by the newspaper Las Chivas. 2) A December 14, 2018 protest in San Luis de Palenque demanding the release of the eight social leaders arrested on November 27, 2018.

PBI honoured to join the Kamloops Walk for Peace, the Environment & Social Justice

By
Brent Patterson
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Peace Brigades International-Canada was honoured to participate in the 45th annual Kamloops Walk for Peace, the Environment and Social Justice on May 9th.

More than 70 people gathered virtually to hear speeches, music, poetry, art instruction and reflections that highlighted the intersectionality between peace, Indigenous rights, environmental protection, disarmament and human rights.

We were glad to be able to join via Zoom from 4,000 kilometres away in Ottawa on unceded and unsurrendered Algonquin territory.

We took the opportunity to invite participants in this Peace Walk 2020 to join the World Beyond War online Divest, Disarm, Demilitarize conference on May 28-30.

This will also be an important moment to share information and discuss pressing issues including: the federal government’s intention to spend $19+ billion on new fighter jets, Canada’s increasing arms exports, and how the pandemic has reaffirmed that true peace and security does not come from spending public funds on armaments.

We also highlighted the Canadian government’s campaign to win a seat on the United Nations Security Council on June 17th.

We noted that while the federal government has spent $1.5 million to win this UN seat, it has not yet complied with the resolution from the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination to stop construction of the Coastal GasLink fracked gas pipeline on Wet’suwet’en territory until that nation has given its free, prior and informed consent for this extractive megaproject.

We then shared via the chat box on the Zoom call this Urgent Action weblink that enables people to send an email to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau calling on him to act immediately on that United Nations resolution.

We also quickly reflected that the virtual Peace walk fell on what would have been the 99th birthday of Sophie Scholl. We recalled her determination to challenge militarism through non-violence. You can read more about Sophie here.

And we noted that the virtual walk also fell the day before Mother’s Day. You can read more about the original message of the women who proclaimed in the 1870s that Mother’s Day is a day to challenge war and militarism here.

A special thank you to Michael Crawford and the Kamloops chapter of the Council of Canadians for convening this beautiful and memorable gathering!

PBI-Canada letter to the editor on arms exports published in the Toronto Star

By
Brent Patterson
-

On May 10, a letter to the editor submitted by Peace Brigades International-Canada was published by the Toronto Star, Canada’s largest circulation newspaper.

The letter submitted to the Toronto Star states:

Canada bans military-style firearms, but what about handguns?, May 1

I agree with the Editorial Board that “Banning a range of military-style firearms is an important first step for Canada.”

Along with the issue of handguns, there is also the “glaring problem” of Canada increasingly exporting weapons that are designed to kill the most people in the shortest amount of time. The federal government’s official figures also indicate that Canada’s arms exports doubled in 2018 to $2.069 billion, up from $1.031 billion in 2017.

It’s also troubling that Canada announced on April 10 that it “fully supports” the United Nations call for a global ceasefire so that nations can focus on fighting the pandemic, but that the day prior it announced that it was ending a temporary suspension of the approval of permits for new arms exports to Saudi Arabia.

Let us hope that a next step includes action on this.

Brent Patterson, Peace Brigades International-Canada, Ottawa

The circulation for the Sunday edition of the Toronto Star is 185,159 readers.

Indepaz reports that 95 social leaders have been killed in Colombia in the first few months of 2020

By
Brent Patterson
-

Human rights defender Marco Rivadeneira (in the photo above) was killed by armed men on March 19 of this year in Puerto Asis, Putumayo, Colombia. He is one of the 95 human rights defenders who have been killed in Colombia this year.

On May 9, La Republica reported, “According to the latest report from the Colombian Institute for Development and Peace Studies [Indepaz] 95 social leaders or human rights defenders have been assassinated in the country so far in 2020.”

“During the two months of the COVID-19 crisis in Colombia, 32 have died; and 19 since compulsory isolation began.”

The article notes, “At least 24 former members of the extinct guerrilla group of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), who were part of the peace process, as well as seven relatives of social leaders and an escort [have also been killed this year].”

On May 6, RCN Radio had reported, “The Attorney General of the Nation, Fernando Carrillo, said that the country cannot allow these deaths to continue and warned that strategies must be created to rethink protection schemes for social leaders and ex-combatants because, even, murders have occurred in the interior of the houses.”

Carrillo said, “Many of them are being killed in their homes or in their family environment, which means thinking about rethinking these security schemes in the midst of social confinement due to the COVID-19 pandemic.”

The article adds, “Carrillo said that the absence of public force in some territories gives rise to evaluate the strengthening of protection schemes by the National Protection Unit (UNP) and improve the lines of attention in the case of threats.”

The Foundation for Press Freedom has reported that the National Protection Unit’s Risk Assessment and Protection Measures Recommendation Committee suspended meetings to conduct risk assessments and respond to requests for protective measures on March 19 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In additon, this April 2019 report produced by several groups including PBI-Colombia notes, “The National Protection Unit … is failing to respond to the urgent needs of social leaders and human rights defenders.”

The National Protection Unit was established in 2011 to provide armed protection to union leaders, human rights activists, politicians, and journalists.

Indepaz has previously reported that between November 24, 2016 (when the final peace agreement between the state and FARC weas signed) and July 20, 2019, 627 social leaders and human rights defenders and 138 former FARC-EP guerrillas in the process of reincorporation  assassinated were killed.

Photo: On July 26, 2019, the Peace Brigades International-Colombia Project was present for the “march for life and the defence of social leaders” in Bogota, Barrancabermeja and Apartado, the three cities where PBI-Colombia volunteers are based.

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