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Remembering JoLeigh Commandant, the first director of PBI’s Central America Project

By
Brent Patterson
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JoLeigh Commandant led an extraordinary life of commitment to social justice, Indigenous rights, peace and human rights.

Quaker.org has noted, “JoLeigh Commandant, a Toronto Quaker, became the first staffer of PBI’s Central American program.”

She would have been about 59 years of age at the time.

A Peace Brigades International-USA interview with Daniel N. Clark, one of the founders of Peace Brigades International in September 1981, further tells us:

“During the time of the [PBI international] office in Walla Walla, I organized the Central America Project Committee, which met in Philadelphia for the first time, face-to-face, in November 1982… Subsequently, PBI International contracted with PBI Canada (our first country group) to administer the Central America Project after we had appointed JoLeigh Commandant as Central America Project Director on George Willoughby’s recommendation.”

Clark has also noted, “JoLeigh had been heavily involved in Native Peoples’ rights, had traveled in Mexico and Peru, and had served as a representative to a UN conference on North and South American Indian rights in Geneva and as an election observer in Bolivia.”

A November 1983 Santa Cruz Friends Bulletin also includes a story told by Mary Duffield, who was with the Santa Cruz Peace Brigade, of a journey she, JoLeigh and two others made to Nicaragua with Peace Brigades International:

Mary wrote:

“As one of four Friends involved in a two-week nonviolent vigil for peace along the Nicaraguan-Honduran border, I truly believe we are nourishing a seed of enormous potential in this Peace Brigades International idea.”

“The vigils culminated usually in celebrations of song and laughter, the youngsters especially delighting in the Spanish version of ‘Old MacDonald had a Farm’, (as tracer bullets lit up the sky and automatic rifles sounded off in the distance).”

“The day before we left Jalapa, we attended the funeral of one of the young men killed by mercenaries blowing up a customs station. After the church ceremony (the revolution has not opposed the churches, and many religious officials are in total support of the Sandinistas), Antonio’s army companeros bore the coffin along.”

“The company commander also was the dead boy’s grandfather. He had lost his son only a little while before. The grandfather ordered the man’s youngsters and related children to scrape the first  dirt down over the coffin. The sobbing little ones could not do this.”

“So, the old man entreated them tearfully: ‘You must … we’re doing this for you, we’re doing this for the children…’”

“The villagers began to sing their hymns, and we joined in. Then JoLeigh Commandant, impulsively, moved to the woman calling to Antonio to stay, put her arms around her, saying: ‘Yes, we are all doing this for the children. That is why we must have peace, for all the world’s children.’”

“The old man and the woman turned toward JoLeigh and nodded, with a new awareness in their eyes, and somehow we were all uplifted for a moment of shared hope. We all clasped hands in that sacred awareness.”

“The morning we left Managua for home we heard the radio broadcasters: ‘This is the morning the Peace Brigadiers are leaving. These are the people who came all the way here to show us that many North Americans care about the people of Central America.’”

The Spring 2013 issue of Quaker Concern tells us more about JoLeigh’s life before joining with Peace Brigades International in 1982.

That article notes:

“JoLeigh was born in Texas, married and had three children (Daniel, Arleigh, and James), and achieved a Masters in Psychiatric Social Work. After her marriage ended in 1961, she became involved with Friends.”

“In 1963, she and her children participated in the March on Washington where Martin Luther King gave his iconic ‘I have a dream’ speech.”

“In 1968 JoLeigh immigrated to Canada, where she met and married Alex Commandant, a member of the Whata Nation (then known as the Gibson Reserve).”

“In 1973, while Canadian Yearly Meeting was in session, an armed standoff occurred at Anishinaabe Park in Kenora, Ontario, where Ojibwa occupied the park and were surrounded by police and racist vigilantes. JoLeigh brought this concern to Yearly Meeting and led a group of Friends there who camped between the police and the Aboriginal people.”

(The Canadian Quaker History Journal has noted: “Friends JoLeigh Commandant and Derek Day traveled from Winnipeg with the caravan; JoLeigh played an important and courageous role in diffusing tension between the First Nations and the police after its arrival.”)

“JoLeigh was one of several Friends who spent considerable time living at Grassy Narrows, working with the residents to document the damage done by mercury and to draw the attention of the media, the public and governments to the issue.”

“In 1974, JoLeigh travelled with the Native Caravan that crossed Canada and occupied an empty building in Ottawa, declaring it a First Nations Embassy. …At one point [weeks later] JoLeigh staged a one-person sit-in at a Minister’s office, remaining until she was carried out, still on the chair, and deposited, gently, outside.”

The Canadian Quaker History Journal also notes:

“In 1973 Yonge Street Half-Yearly Meeting received a request from British Friends for support on their stand against capital punishment. …Shortly after [that], Richard Broughton and JoLeigh Commandant took part in a workshop on prison abolition at Powell House in New York State [that led] to the creation of a Prison Committee the very next year.”

JoLeigh passed way on January 15, 2013 at 90 years of age.

Peace Brigades International-Canada remembers her incredible spirit and commitment to peace, human rights and social justice.

Photos: JoLeigh at a United Nations Conference on Discrimination Against Indigenous Populations in the Americas in Geneva in September 1977. And JoLeigh in a photo posted on Facebook at the time of her passing in 2013.

Listen to PBI on Democracy Now! in May 1998 interview with Amy Goodman

By
Brent Patterson
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On May 4, 1998, Amy Goodman interviewed Liam Mahony of Peace Brigades International about our accompaniment work and the vision of the organization.

It’s a fascinating glimpse into our history.

Liam began working with Peace Brigades International in Guatemala in 1987 and co-founded PBI’s field presence in Haiti (that ran from 1992 to 2001).

He is also the coauthor of Unarmed Bodyguards: International Accompaniment for the Protection of Human Rights, a book that “presents the theory and practice of PBI’s pioneering methods of human rights protection through international accompaniment of those whose lives and work are threatened by violence.”

The Democracy Now! interview took place just days after the murder of Bishop Juan Gerardi.

Recollecting the early days of PBI, Daniel N. Clark, one of the founders of PBI in September 1981, writes about an exploratory meeting Bishop Gerardi in 1983.

GHRC has explained, “Before his death in 1998, Roman Catholic Archbishop and human rights defender Juan José Gerardi Conedera was one of the strongest voices speaking out against the atrocities committed during the internal armed conflict.”

“On April 24, 1998, Gerardi presented the findings of the REMHI project in a report entitled “Nunca Más” (Never Again). The report was particularly damning to the Guatemalan military… On April 26, 1998, two days after the release of the report, Bishop Gerardi was bludgeoned to death in his home in Guatemala City.”

Since 1999, the Juan Gerardi Human Rights Centre (CDHJG) has been working in the lake region of Torreón, Coahuila, Mexico promoting a culture of peace and respect for human rights. The Peace Brigades International-Mexico Project has accompanied the organization since February 2014 due to the ongoing risks it faces.

To listen to the 18-minute Democracy Now! interview, please click here.

The influence of Martin Luther King, Jr. on the founding of Peace Brigades International

By
Brent Patterson
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When a group of peace activists came together on Grindstone Island (on unceded Algonquin territory in Canada) in 1981, their reflections included readings of passages by Leo Tolstoy, Mohandas Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

That may be why their founding statement for Peace Brigades International notes, “We are building on a rich and extensive heritage of nonviolent action, which no longer can be ignored. This heritage tells us that peace is more than the absence of war.”

It’s possible that King’s writings on peace may have influenced that last sentence.

He said in a sermon in March 1956, “Peace is not merely to absence of tension, but the presence of justice.” And while in a Birmingham jail in April 1963, King wrote critically about “the white moderate [who] prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.”

King believed that nonviolent resistance and direct action should create tension in order to challenge injustice, or in his own words written while in a jail, “a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth.”

And it may be that King’s words can also be applied to PBI’s accompaniment work.

The Peace Brigades International-Mexico Project has explained, “International accompaniment is used as a tool for conflict transformation, fulfilling the dual role of both protecting victims of human rights violations as well as encouraging human rights defenders to continue their activities in the face of threat.”

“Some sectors of the state in Mexico use the conditions of impunity and corruption to protect and perpetuate their sphere of power.”

“When social and human rights movements question and denounce the consequences of this form of governance, the movements are stigmatized and neutralized in order to protect the interests of those in power.”

PBI-Mexico concludes, “An international presence can contribute to the construction of a new discourse that recognizes the legitimacy of these human rights concerns.”

King was arrested 29 times challenging, as he described in May 1967, “the triple evils of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism.”

The human rights defenders that PBI accompanies face multiple risks for challenging those same issues in the form of violations of Indigenous rights, destructive megaprojects, the denial of territorial and land rights, and paramilitary and state violence.

The heritage and commitment to nonviolent action noted in PBI’s founding statement is also reflected in its Principles and Mandate, first adopted in June 1992 at a Quaker camp near Waubaushene, Ontario (on the ancestral lands of the Wendat, Anishnaabeg and Haudenosaunee peoples).

That document states, “PBI believes the philosophy and politics of nonviolence are dynamic and develop historically by those who resist different forms and structures of violence, such as gender and other identity based discriminations, and socio-economic exploitation. Therefore, PBI, with its experience and international presence, endeavours to overcome injustice and violence in order to build a humane society.”

That statement also explains the PBI position on non-partisanship and the approach of not becoming directly involved in the work of those we accompany.

It notes, “Non-partisanship does not mean indifference, neutrality or passivity towards injustice or towards violation of human rights, personal dignity and individual freedom. On the contrary: PBI is fully committed to these values and struggles against violence – physical or structural – as a means of establishing enduring peace.”

The founders of Peace Brigades International were inspired by “a rich and extensive heritage of nonviolent action” and as the global organization approaches its 40th anniversary (on September 4, 2021), it too now offers its own inspiring stories of nonviolent direct action through the accompaniment of at-risk human rights defenders.

Photos of George Willoughby and Steve Kaal at Camp NeeKauNis (about 130 kilometres north of Toronto, Ontario, Canada) where a General Assembly first adopted PBI’s Principles and Mandate statement in June 1992.

Willoughby was a crew member of the Golden Rule, the first peace vessel that sailed into the South Pacific in 1958 to protest atomic testing by the United States. The crew of that boat was arrested 9 kilometres from Honolulu and sentenced to 60 days in jail. That nonviolent action inspired similar actions by members of the Vancouver-based Don’t Make a Wave Committee (which later became Greenpeace in 1971) and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (founded by Canadian Paul Watson in Vancouver in 1977).

Top photo: Martin Luther King Jr. being arrested for loitering on September 3, 1958 in Montgomery, Alabama. Photo by Charles Moore.

Petition the Prime Minister to strengthen protections for environmental human rights defenders

By
Brent Patterson
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On April 22, Michel Forst, the United Nations special rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, co-authored an article that highlighted:

“This Earth Day, more than any other, it’s time to shine a spotlight on the everyday guardians of our planet, land and environment defenders, who stand at the front line to defend their land and territories from corporate or state abuse and unsustainable exploitation.

They protect lands, forests and water sources, which provide their communities with good and healthy food, shelter and medicine.

By protecting such resources for the common good, they find themselves directly in the way of others who want to profit from these natural resources.

More than three people were murdered each week in 2019 for defending their land and environment. Countless more were attacked or threatened.

Only a year ago, the United Nations Human Rights Council adopted a landmark resolution, recognizing the importance of environmental human rights defenders and urging States to ensure their protection.”

Peace Brigades International-Canada is asking its supporters to email Prime Minister Justin Trudeau through this Urgent Action to support initiatives and measures to better protect at-risk human rights defenders.

To send your message of support for these defenders, please click here.

PBI-Canada to participate in online Kamloops Walk for Peace, the Environment & Social Justice

By
Brent Patterson
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The 2020 Peace Walk Webinar takes place Saturday, May 9, 2020, starting at 10am PDT. Peace Brigades International-Canada is delighted to be joining this webinar and making a short presentation at 10:50 am PDT.

Kamloops This Week reports, “The 45th annual event — officially known as the Kamloops Walk for Peace, Social Justice and Environment — will be held online this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.”

“In past years, hundreds of people would meet at the downtown Kamloops Regional Farmers’ Market on a Saturday in May and march through the streets before returning to the marker and takin part in a festival in the schoolyard of the former Stuart Wood elementary.”

Now, given the pandemic, “Kamloops Peace Walk organizer Anita Strong plans to make the most of an unfortunate scenario.”

Strong says, “We’ll raise the issues like we do every year, of peace and the environment and social justice and all the issues people have in those regards. There are lots of groups in town that have the same sorts of ideas. We like to give them the opportunity to all come together and get as many people on there as we can.”

Instead of a walk this year, there will be speakers, poetry readings and musical performances via the Zoom platform.

The organizers have further explained on Facebook, “We have been planning the annual walk for months and don’t want to abandon the event entirely.”

“We are committed to stopping the spread of COVID-19 through physical distancing so we had to come up with another way to hold the event. This Zoom Webinar is, we believe, a novel way of continuing our tradition and keeping this Walk as the longest running uninterrupted Peace Walk in Canada.”

“We will have speakers and music as usual and there will be an opportunity for attendees to interact.”

They add, “You can register online to virtually attend the Walk” by clicking here.

PBI-Colombia volunteer speaks about the continued accompaniment of human rights defenders during the COVID-19 pandemic

By
Brent Patterson
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On April 14, Peace Brigades International-Switzerland published this interview with PBI volunteer Manuel Müller who has been accompanying at-risk human rights defenders in Colombia since September 2019.

Müller highlights, “PBI has adapted its work to the new circumstances and we are mobilizing all available resources to ensure that the human rights situation does not deteriorate.”

“We are all the more active by telephone in order to stay in contact with organizations and communities, as well as at the political level.”

“Awareness and advocacy work are extremely important at this time and contributes greatly to the protection of human rights.”

Müller also notes, “The Coronavirus crisis has, so to speak, led to lower guard over violations, both in the media and in state institutions. This is another reason why it is extremely important that PBI continues to work rigorously.”

To read the full interview with Müller, please click here.

To read more about ongoing accompaniment by PBI field projects during the COVID-19 pandemic, please also see:

– PBI-Honduras continues to accompany defenders and monitor human rights violations during COVID-19 pandemic

– PBI-Guatemala provides vital contextual updates and telephone accompaniment during the COVID-19 pandemic

– PBI-Guatemala strengthens telephone contact with human rights defenders during the COVID-19 pandemic

– PBI-Mexico provides remote accompaniment and monitoring during COVID-19 pandemic

Please also see the Peace Brigades International global statement Now more than ever, we must all defend human rights.

Photo by PBI-Colombia.

PBI-Honduras continues to accompany defenders and monitor human rights violations during COVID-19 pandemic

By
Brent Patterson
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The Peace Brigades International-Honduras Project has affirmed on its Facebook page that despite the COVID-19 pandemic: “We continue with our work of accompanying national organizations and monitoring violations of human rights.”

PBI-Honduras highlights, “This exceptional situation demonstrates just how necessary the people who work towards human rights, land activism, and food sovereignty and security are.”

The National Union of Rural Workers (CNTC) works on all these issues and has been accompanied by PBI-Honduras since May 2018.

PBI-Honduras explains, “The difficulties faced by rural communities prior to the COVID-19 health crisis were already alarming.”

“However, with the arrival of this global pandemic, smallholder farmers have seen their problems multiply. Under a state of emergency, where basic rights like access to health and food are limited, the helplessness of many families is concerning.”

For instance, “Smallholders who work the land and rely on their crops to feed their families are forced to leave their homes but are not permitted to do so by government decrees.”

Nora Ramírez of the CNTC says, “The lands we farm are far away, and when we go out to work or harvest our crops we are stopped by roadblocks, where they force us to go home or even threaten us with arrest.”

Furthermore, smallholder farmers are impacted by the intensified militarization of the countryside under Decree PCM-052-2019.

The Honduran digital newspaper Criterio has reported that peasant organizations have challenged the decree because it “usurps the functions of the institutions of the agricultural public sector and puts under the command of the Armed Forces, the direction, administration and execution of agricultural policies, functions that have neither a constitutional mandate nor secondary laws.”

PBI-Honduras comments, “[This measure] adds to issues related to land ownership, the expansion of the extractivist model in the country, and the proliferation of criminalisation that smallholders across Honduras face every day.”

Smallholder farmers are also impacted by another decree, PCM-030-2020.

Franklin Almendares of the CNTC says, “With the new food production law approved by the government through PCM-030-2020, businesspeople will be the ones in charge of food production, not small producers or peasant farmers.”

Almendares adds, “The most serious element is the inventory and registry of all national lands to bring them under this scheme. In other words, this will deliver these lands into the hands of businesspeople. This will lead to the escalation of indigenous and smallholder activism, and an increase in evictions and criminalisation.”

Given the ongoing challenges faced by smallholder farmers, the concern about increased militarization, and the new challenges related to the COVID-19 pandemic, PBI-Honduras affirms: “Now is the time when we must be most vigilant and present with those who defend fundamental rights.”

Source: Las tierras y cosechas de las familias campesinas peligran con el COVID and Smallholders’ lands and harvests at risk due to COVID.

PBI-Guatemala provides vital contextual updates and telephone accompaniment during the COVID-19 pandemic

By
Brent Patterson
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The Peace Brigades International-Guatemala Project has posted numerous articles on its Facebook page about the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on Guatemala.

Those articles that provide context include: The Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Food (MAGA) continues to ignore peasant demands and has zero execution in chronic malnutrition, The hardest part of the food crisis is yet to come to the Dry Corridor and In Patzún they cannot follow the advice of the WHO, there is no water.

Now, Al Jazeera reports, “In normal circumstances, Guatemala’s healthcare system in rural areas is ‘appalling’, said a doctor in the Guatemalan Department of Alta Verapaz, but in the time of the coronavirus pandemic, it is even worse.”

“Rural and Indigenous communities across Guatemala are increasingly concerned about the spread of coronavirus, questioning whether the country’s already fragile healthcare system could adequately respond.”

“Guatemala remains a largely rural country, with 46 percent of the population living in rural communities, according to the 2018 census. The majority of these rural residents are members of the Indigenous Xinca, Garifuna and 22 different Maya groups.”

That article adds, “Indigenous populations have historically faced discrimination in Guatemala. More than 80 percent of the victims of human rights abuses during the country’s 36-year-long internal armed conflict were Indigenous.”

“Indigenous residents also suffer from high rates of the factors that are considered by the World Health Organization to increase vulnerability to the novel coronavirus.”

PBI-Guatemala has also posted on its Facebook page an article titled: Interview with Lolita Chávez. Human Rights and Life in Times of Crisis.

In that article, Chávez says, “Racisms generate other oppressions so we demand that also those comforts that millionaires have that can also be redistributed, from the banks, in the towns, in the territories to recover the lands to recover food sovereignty, health sovereignty also from our cosmogony, that they do not see us only as a landscape we are not part of the landscape, we are defenders of the territories.”

Chávez is with the K’iche Peoples Council (CPK) who PBI-Guatemala has accompanied since September 2013. PBI-Guatemala explains this is because “CPK members have received threats and attacks, in particular their leader Lolita Chávez.”

Earlier this month, PBI-Guatemala stated: “The PBI team remains present in the country and has adapted its work according to the restrictions declared by the Guatemalan government in response to the COVID19 pandemic.”

In its most recent Monthly Information Package, PBI-Guatemala highlights it has either strengthened or maintained telephone contact with the human rights defenders it accompanies including those with: the Community Council of the Highlands (CCDA) – Las Verapaces Region, the Union of Peasant Organizations (UVOC), the New Day Chorti Campesino Central Coordinator (CCCND), the Peaceful Resistance of La Puya, the Peaceful Resistance of La Laguna, and the Peaceful Resistance Cahabón (Alta Verapaz).

For more, please be sure to visit the PBI-Guatemala Facebook page.

PBI-Guatemala seeks field volunteers to accompany human right defenders after the pandemic

By
Brent Patterson
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The Peace Brigades International-Guatemala Project has posted, “The next process of training and selection of volunteers is starting.”

“The deadline to receive applications will be May 6th of 2020. The training week will be realized in Belgium in the week of September 6th to 12th of 2020.”

PBI-Guatemala adds, “You are welcome to send us your application and reference forms from now on.” All of the application materials can be found here.

It also highlights, “Please do no hesitate to contact the representative of the formation team for any enquires or information: formacion@pbi-guatemala.org.”

PBI-Guatemala has additionally posted on its website, “Due to the international crisis over Covid-19, these dates could be modified. In that case, we will inform all people who send your request through our website and email.”

PBI-Mexico accompanied organizations express concern about Mayan Train megaproject

By
Brent Patterson
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In January 2019, the Peace Brigades International-Mexico Project commented, “The organisations that we accompany continue to be concerned about [Mexican president] AMLO’s position on the rights of indigenous populations, given that his public discourse seems to respect their autonomy, but he continues to propose initiatives of megaprojects such as the Mayan Train or new mining investments.”

The Mayan Train (Tren Maya) refers to a megaproject that would link Mayan archaeological sites in five states (Campeche, Chiapas, Quintana Roo, Tabasco and the Yucatán) by rail. The multibillion-dollar project would involve the building of 1,500 kilometres of railroad track, with nearly one-third of it through tropical forests.

Now, IJG Global reports, “Mexico’s ministry of communications and transport (SCT) has awarded a 30-year contract to the state-owned Fonatur Tren Maya to build, operate and exploit the Maya Train.”

El Financerio explains, “Fonatur Tren Maya is a company created in August 2019 and with a majority state participation by sector in the Ministry of Tourism.”

Educa Oaxaca has now posted, “More than 190 civil groups, collectives and communities, as well as fifty academics and environmental defenders expressed their rejection of the continued construction of the Maya Train in the midst of the health crisis caused by Covid-19.”

Their post adds, “In a letter they also called on the government to respect the self-determination of the communities, since they consider that the consultation of indigenous peoples did not meet international criteria.”

Among the 190 groups that signed the letter of concern were: Frente de Pueblos en Defensa de la Tierra y Agua Morelos, Puebla y Tlaxcala; Casa del Migrante Saltillo; Centro Diocesano para los Derechos Humanos “Fray Juan de Larios”, A.C.; Proyecto de Derechos Económicos, Sociales y Culturales (ProDESC); Familia Pasta de Conchos; Centro de Derechos Humanos de la Montaña, Tlachinollan, A. C.; and Comité Cerezo.

Canadian interest in the megaproject

In January of this year, Milenio had an article with the headline, “Companies from Spain, Canada, Portugal, Brazil and China have shown interest in the project, assured the director of Fonatur [the National Fund for the Promotion of Tourism], Rogelio Jiménez Pons.”

In February, EFE reported, “Jiménez Pons explained in late January the details of the tenders and indicated that there was interest from 85 companies. There were 65 nationals and 20 internationals from Spain, Canada, Portugal, Brazil and China.”

Milenio has also reported, “Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said that there are various Canadian companies interested in investing in the Maya Train.”

According to that article, those entities included: the Montreal-based manufacturer Bombardier Inc. and the Quebec City-based pension fund La Caisse dé depot et placement du Québec (la Caisse). EFE has also reported Bombardier’s interest in the project.

Last summer, the Toronto-based Canadian bank Scotiabank denied a media report that it had withdrawn from the project and stated, “[Scotiabank] carefully analyzes the opportunities in public and private projects that are presented exclusively according to business criteria. This process in the project in question continues its course.”

To read the full letter of concern from Mexican civil society organizations and environmental defenders, please click here.

In terms of a timeline, the International Railway Journal now reports, “The project is expected to be completed in 2022.”

Image from PorEsto!

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