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PBI-Honduras notes environmental network’s concern about the dispossession of territories during the COVID-19 pandemic

By
Brent Patterson
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On April 9, the Peace Brigades International-Honduras Project posted on its Facebook page a 4-page statement from the National Coalition of Environmental Networks and Organizations of Honduras (CONROA).

The Honduran Centre for the Promotion of Community Development (CEHPRODEC), which is accompanied by PBI-Honduras, coordinates the national coalition.

PBI-Honduras highlights that, “[CONROA] warns that the COVID crisis is being used to ‘continue the dispossession of the territories, since today employers can request and receive approval of environmental licenses for the virtual exploitation of natural assets’ and to ‘remove from circulation the social leaders who oppose’ these projects.”

On March 29, the digital newspaper Criterio reported, “Licensing and other procedures related to natural resource exploitation projects will not stop in Honduras in the context of the coronavirus emergency (Covid-19). For this purpose, the government announced the implementation of a digital platform.”

“The Hernández administration determined that the holders of projects, works or activities, who to date have expired their environmental license, may continue to operate and request the renewal of this, within a period of 60 days after the official declaration of completion of the national emergency.”

“The government’s decision especially favors owners of mining and hydroelectric projects and that, for the most part, are generating territorial conflicts due to the violation of ILO Convention 169 that establishes free, prior and informed consultation.”

In response to the decision, the Honduran Community and Environmental Claim Alternative (ARCAH) stated, “In the quarantine period, consultation processes could not be carried out, therefore the licenses will be granted in total violation of collective rights and in total impunity, once again protected by the regime.”

In Canada, construction on the Trans Mountain tar sands pipeline, the Coastal GasLink fracked gas pipeline, and the Site C hydroelectric dam also continues on Indigenous territories without their free, prior and informed consent despite the pandemic.

PBI-Honduras also recently posted, “Just as coronavirus is a very real and current threat, so too is environmental devastation.”

“We acknowledge the importance of recognising the role of key workers, such as doctors and nurses, to fight coronavirus and protect the most vulnerable.”

PBI-Honduras adds, “We extend this understanding to human rights defenders who are the key workers addressing the climate crisis. They must be protected to prevent further climate breakdown of our shared planet.”

PBI-Honduras has accompanied CEHPRODEC since May 2014.

PBI-Honduras notes CNTC’s opposition to new decree on food production approved during COVID-19 pandemic

By
Brent Patterson
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On April 13, the Peace Brigades International-Honduras Project posted photos by National Union of Rural Workers (CNTC) Secretary General Franklin Almendars.

PBI-Honduras notes, “[Almendars] denounces that with the decree PCM-030-2020 recently approved by the government, businessmen are empowered to take charge of food production, putting aside small producers and the peasant communities.”

It adds, “Likewise, he warns that with this regulation, peasant and indigenous struggles will intensify and evictions, criminalization, imprisonment and death of social leaders who defend the land, natural goods and food will also increase.”

The National Post in Canada has published a Reuters article that reports more favourably, “Honduras will spur planting of grains, vegetables and fruit on unoccupied land as it intervenes in the agroindustrial sector to ensure the food supply amid the spreading coronavirus pandemic, President Juan Orlando Hernandez said on Tuesday [April 7].”

But German Perez, the former Honduran minister of agriculture, has told La Prensa that, “The decree could be misused to favour friends and strong agro-industrial groups with agricultural and forestry properties.”

Honduran media also notes that this decree follows a measure that grants the Armed Forces 4,000 million lempiras (about CDN $215 million) for agricultural projects.

In November 2019, PBI-Honduras commented, “A measure that, for peasant organizations, is illegal and responds to a strategy to militarize the country.”

PBI-Honduras has previously noted, “The CNTC, created in 1985, is a small-scale farming and trade union organisation, which fights for the distribution of land. It is affiliated to the Unitary Confederation of Honduran Workers (Confederación Unitaria de Trabajadores de Honduras – CUTH) and is part of the Vía Campesina.”

“Its aim is to support affiliated small-scale farming families so that they have access to land and resources and can carry out productive agricultural, fishing, forestry and agro-industrial activities, contributing to their social and economic development.”

PBI-Honduras has accompanied the CNTC since May 2018.

Petra Kelly’s words in support of Peace Brigades International

By
Brent Patterson
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When Peace Brigades International was formed in September 1981, the peace and disarmament movement was arguably in its ascendancy.

The Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp in the United Kingdom had just been established that same month, within weeks 400,000 people would march in Bonn, West Germany in opposition to the NATO decision to deploy nuclear missiles in Western Europe, and on June 12, 1982, one million people marched in New York City’s Central Park against nuclear weapons and for an end to the cold war arms race.

By March 1983, Petra Kelly, who had won the prestigious Right Livelihood Award the previous year, secured a seat in the Bundestag, the West German Parliament.

Her vision united ecology, disarmament, social justice and human rights.

Kelly wrote in Nonviolent Social Defense, “We spend billions on weapons research and millions training our young people at military academies. Why not invest in peace studies and peace actions? We need training centers, public campaigns, and educational materials.”

She then highlighted, “We need to support groups like Peace Brigades International that intervene nonviolently in situations of conflict. We need to work concretely to realize peace and nonviolence in our time.”

Kelly was friends with Hans Sinn who co-founded Peace Brigades International and shortly thereafter Peace Brigades International-Canada.

Almost 28 years after Petra Kelly’s death, PBI-Canada continues to draw inspiration from her vision of the interrelationship between peace and non-violence, ecology, feminism and human rights and her wise caution that, “There can be no peace if there is social injustice and suppression of human rights.”

How can PBI-Canada’s peace education work help create the conditions for peace?

By
Brent Patterson
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Peace Brigades International was founded at the Peace Education Centre on Grindstone Island (on unceded Algonquin territory in Ontario, Canada) in September 1981.

Its first statement highlighted, “Peace brigades, fashioned to respond to specific needs and appeals, will undertake nonpartisan missions which may include peacemaking initiatives, peacekeeping under a discipline of nonviolence, and humanitarian service.”

PBI’s subsequent Principles and Mandate statement (first approved in 1992) also noted “the task of peace-keeping, peace-making and peace-building” and further recognized “peace education” as part of our work.

To think about peace education in the Canadian context, it may be instructive to explore the size, funding and role of the Canadian military. A few quick facts:

1- The Department of National Defence (DND) has noted that Canada has over 2,000 military personnel deployed on approximately 20 different missions. And Elliot Hughes, a former Director of Policy to the Minister of National Defence, has written, “On any given day, approximately 8,000 troops are involved in some form of deployment – preparing to ship out, actively engaged in theatre, or returning from mission.”

2- The largest Canadian military mission appears to be in Iraq where Canada is part of the Global Coalition against Daesh and NATO Mission Iraq (NMI). In March 2020, journalist Scott Taylor wrote that Canada has “850 military personnel” in Iraq (now temporarily reduced given a redeployment of approximately 400 personnel due to the COVID-19 pandemic).

3- On January 7, 2020, the Ottawa Citizen reported, “Iraq’s parliament voted on Sunday calling for the removal of all foreign troops from the country.” In Taylor’s recent opinion-piece on how the post-2003 invasion landscape has changed into an “inter-factional civil war in Iraq”, he comments, “Canada did not break Iraq. Bring our troops home now.”

4- In June 2017, the Government of Canada released a new defence policy document titled Strong, Secure, Engaged (SSE). DND notes, “SSE will grow annual cash defence spending from $18.9 billion in 2016-17 to $32.7 billion in 2026-27. Total defence spending over 20 years will be $553 billion on a cash basis.”

5- One major upcoming expenditure is the planned purchase of new fighter jets. In July 2019, the Canadian Press reported that Canada launched a procurement process to spend about $19 billion to purchase 88 new fighter jets. The winning bidder will be chosen in 2022 and the first fighters are scheduled to arrive “as early as 2025”.

With Canada set to spend half-a-trillion dollars on the military, expand the size of its regular forces and buy new fighter jets, how do we situate this within PBI’s founding statement and its appeal to “peoples of diverse cultures, religions and social systems ready to contribute in new ways to the nonviolent resolution of conflict”?

In April, Guardian columnist George Monbiot wrote an opinion piece titled, “What does ‘national defence’ mean in a pandemic?” In the context of the UK, Monbiot argues that this is no time to buy new fighter jets.

In Canada, defence analyst Elliot Hughes has already observed, “The soaring deficits [associated with COVID-19 spending] will place tremendous pressure on government to reduce its spending in non-COVID-19 areas in favour of healthcare and related priorities.” The suggestion is that the military could see its budget cut.

How do we navigate this moment, as PBI’s founding statement implores, “to preserve human life with dignity, to promote human rights, social justice and self-determination, and to create the conditions of peace.”

These are questions that PBI-Canada’s peace education work hopes to begin to explore. To share your thoughts, please leave a reply in the comment section below this article. You can also write me directly at brent@pbicanada.org.

Top photo: The Peace Education Centre on Grindstone Island in 1984. PBI was founded in this building just three years prior to this photo. Below: An ad for a PBI-Canada “practical nonviolence orientation weekend” in Toronto in June 2001.

 

PBI-Kenya notes toolkit organizer Victor’s work distributing water containers during the pandemic

By
Brent Patterson
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On April 13, the Peace Brigades International-Kenya Project posted, “WHRD Toolkit Organizers are supporting their communities to stay safe during the Covid-19 outbreak.”

They then introduce us to Victor, popularly known as V-slim, and note: “He goes door to door distributing water containers, food items. He also talks with the community on importance of maintaining high standards of hygiene and social distancing.”

Water is a human right and especially essential during the pandemic.

The United Nations has posted an article titled Water access critical to beating back COVID-19 spread in slum areas.

It quotes Anna Nyokabi, a resident of the Kibera settlement in Nairobi, who says, “We don’t have enough water to drink and cook our food, so where will we get water to wash our hands frequently?”

That article also notes that 10 independent experts appointed by the UN Human Rights Council say that, “People living in informal settlements … and all other groups vulnerable to the effects of the pandemic need to have continuous access to sufficient and affordable water.”

That illustrates how essential V-slim’s work is.

PBI-Kenya also highlights, “V-slim started his activism in 2012, driven by the desire to eradicate violations that were happening in his neighbourhood including GBV, corruption and bad governance. He envisions a community where everyone enjoys equal rights.”

PBI-Canada joins PBI-Kenya is saying “Keep up the good work V-slim!”

PBI-Kenya thanks Jecinter Agunja for distributing food and water in Mathare during the Covid-19 pandemic

By
Brent Patterson
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On April 10, the Peace Brigades International-Kenya Project posted, “Jecinter Agunja is a Women Human Rights Defenders Toolkit Organizer from Mathare and a member of the Coalition of Grassroots Human Rights Defenders (CGHRD Kenya).”

“Jecinter has been instrumental in defending the rights of women and girls in the Mathare settlement. She works tirelessly to ensure that girls go to school, child marriages and unplanned pregnancies are reduced and women are economically empowered.”

“Now, she is supporting her community by helping them with basic necessities during the Covid-19 outbreak.”

“She has been actively involved in distributing food and water jerrycans in Mathare. The restricted movement and ongoing curfew has led to unemployment and lack of income, which in turn has caused hunger in the area.”

PBI-Kenya further highlights, “Human rights defenders are playing fundamental roles in ensuring that vulnerable communities have access to healthcare and information about the virus and its impacts in the absence of adequate State protections.”

“They are holding States to account, pushing for better access to information, organising water and sanitation campaigns amongst other fundamental activities.”

PBI-Canada joins PBI-Kenya in saying, “Thank you Jecinter!”

For more about Jecinter in her own words, please click on this Toolkit Organizer link.

Indigenous land defenders monitored by Canadian government owned pipeline company security officials

By
Brent Patterson
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On November 25, 2019, CBC reported, “The federally owned Trans Mountain Corporation is monitoring pipeline opponents and designating some as persons of interest who warrant closer scrutiny, according to internal records provided to CBC News.”

“The Trans Mountain documents show its security officials recorded the names of individuals who posted anti-pipeline videos and statements on social media, along with the names of those tagged in the posts or who shared the content. “

“The activity reports primarily contain social media information, along with short commentaries on anti-pipeline social media chatter on Facebook and Twitter, planned demonstrations, along with analysis and descriptions of the situation on the ground. “

“The documents detailed the movements of [a ‘person of interest’, their] past activist history and their relationship with other protest and Indigenous groups.”

“The corporation would not say what it does with the names it gathers in its reports or how it determines someone to be a person of interest. Nor would it answer questions on whether it shares this information with other federal departments or the RCMP.”

Not long after this news article, the Canadian Press reported about a similar monitoring of mining justice activist Rachel Small.

“An analyst with the RCMP’s Tactical Internet Intelligence Unit combed through online sources about Rachel Small to assemble the report detailing her age, address, education, language fluency, work experience and Facebook friends in the activist community, newly released documents show.”

“The Oct. 1, 2015, report, which includes photos and other material culled from Small’s social-media accounts, was prepared by the internet intelligence unit under the auspices of the criminal intelligence program of the RCMP’s Ontario division.”

Small is with the Mining Injustice Solidarity Network (MISN), “a grassroots group concerned about the harms that mining companies, many of them Canadian, can do to communities, the environment and human rights [including in Latin America].”

Earlier this year, the Canadian Press reported, “Sgt. Penny Hermann, an RCMP spokeswoman, said the force acknowledges the constitutional right to protest peacefully, but adds the police must do due diligence to ensure there are no threats or concerns for public safety.”

Cara Zwibel with the Canadian Civil Liberties Association has stated, “The fact that someone’s an activist should not be enough to render them the subject of suspicion by law enforcement. That, to me, is a problem in a democratic society.”

And Carleton University professor Jeffrey Monaghan has commented, “It raises all kinds of questions about what it means to have rights of expression in a democracy.”

This past February, PBI-Spanish State co-organized a “theoretical and practical workshop on digital privacy and security for activists” and PBI-Netherlands has supported digital security training through the Shelter City Network in partnership with Justice and Peace Netherlands.

The Justice and Peace webpage on Digital Security is here. Front Line Defenders also provides various Digital Security Resources here.

UN Secretary-General reiterates appeal for global ceasefire, Canada lifts moratorium on new weapons exports

By
Brent Patterson
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United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has reiterated his call for an immediate global ceasefire given the COVID-19 pandemic.

He noted, “The global ceasefire appeal is resonating across the world.  The call has been endorsed by an ever-growing number of Member States” along civil society networks and organizations and many others.

Guterres also highlighted, “But, there is a huge distance between declarations and deeds — between translating words into peace on the ground and in the lives of people.”

While Canada has quietly joined with other countries in endorsing the Secretary-General’s call for a ceasefire, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has not spoken to the issue at any of his daily media briefings since Guterres’ first plea on March 23.

Furthermore, the Canadian government has just lifted its moratorium on the approval of new export permits for weapon sales to Saudi Arabia. This announcement was made on April 9, the same day that Saudi Arabia declared a 2-week ceasefire in its war with Yemen that has killed more than 100,000 people over the past five years.

And while people are being asked to stay at home and many businesses have closed to contain the spread of the coronavirus, the arms industry has noted the Canadian government has recognized “defence and security in its definition of essential services and functions.”

That means that despite Canada’s endorsement of the UN Secretary-General’s call for a global ceasefire, and a 2-week ceasefire being called in the Saudi Arabia-Yemen war, that the Canadian factory that builds armoured vehicles that may be being used in that war remains open during the pandemic.

The UN Secretary-General highlights, “To silence the guns, we must raise the voices for peace.” The principles and mandate of Peace Brigades International affirms, “Enduring peace and lasting solutions of conflicts between and within nations cannot be achieved by violent means.”

To send an email to the Prime Minister asking him to endorse the global ceasefire and state that the arms industry is not an essential service, please click here. 

United Nations Secretary-General calls for global ceasefire during pandemic, Canada continues to manufacture arms

By
Brent Patterson
-

On March 23, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, recognizing the urgency of the pandemic, stated, “The fury of the virus illustrates the folly of war. That is why I am calling for an immediate global ceasefire in all corners of the world. It is time to put armed conflict on lockdown and focus together on the true fight of our lives.”

The UN Secretary-General further pleaded, “[Let us] end the sickness of war and fight the disease that is ravaging our world.”

Peace Brigades International-Canada is encouraging people to send an email to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau through this Urgent Action that asks him “to make a public statement – either through his Twitter account or ideally in his daily public address – that he supports the call for a global ceasefire and affirm that the arms industry need not be declared an essential service during the pandemic.”

The Prime Minister has not yet made such a statement, but Canada did quietly join a group of 59 countries backing Guterres’ call for a global ceasefire.

That said, Foreign Affairs Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne and Finance Minister Bill Morneau have now announced Canada has ended its brief moratorium on the approval of new permits for the export of military equipment to Saudi Arabia.

With the lifting of the moratorium, there are now 48 export permits for “controlled goods” ready to be signed by the government.

Murray Thomson, who helped to found Peace Brigades International in 1981, also co-founded the disarmament group Project Ploughshares in 1976.

Its executive director Cesar Jaramillo comments, “It is utterly disappointing that only days after Canada endorsed the UN Secretary-General’s call for a global ceasefire in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, Canada decides to continue arming one of the world’s worst human-rights pariahs, who is also the chief instigator of the catastrophic humanitarian crisis in neighbouring Yemen – now in its fifth year.”

Arms production an essential service in Canada during the pandemic

Furthermore, Doug Wilson-Hodge, Manager Corporate Affairs, General Dynamics Land Systems-Canada, has stated, “Following critical infrastructure and essential service guidelines of the governments of Canada and Ontario we remain open and operational.”

The General Dynamics factory in London, Ontario is where the light armoured vehicles (LAVs) for export to Saudi Arabia are being manufactured.

In April 2018, the London Free Press reported, “The agreement [with Saudi Arabia], according to some reports, includes 928 LAV 6 vehicles in total. Of those, 354 are standard troop carriers, 119 are assault vehicles with 105-millimetre canons, another 119 are anti-tank vehicles and a further 119 have a 30-millimetre gun.”

By September 2018, CBC reported that the order had been reduced to 742 LAV 6s, but that, “delivery of the vehicles is already underway and has been for months.”

On December 22, 2018, peace activists in Saint John, New Brunswick successfully blocked for a full day the loading of 16 LAVs onto the Saudi-flagged ship Bahri Yanbu.

On April 9 of this year, Foreign Minister Champagne stated that the shipment of LAVs to Saudi Arabia is now about 50 per cent complete.

Canadian arms exports and human rights

Official figures show that Canada exported $2.069 billion in military goods and technology in 2018. While Global Affairs Canada does not collect data on most military exports to the United States, it acknowledges “an estimated half of all Canadian exports are to the U.S.”

That would suggest a total of $4 billion in arms exports in 2018.

Over the five-year period of 2013 to 2018, Canada has exported military goods to countries including Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and Kenya (where Peace Brigades International volunteers accompany at-risk human rights defenders).

Canada is now a signatory to the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) which means that an export permit cannot be granted if there is a “substantial risk” that exporting “the goods or technology” could be “used to commit or facilitate a serious violation of international humanitarian or human rights law.”

In practice, that appears to mean proof of Canadian weapons being used to violate human rights, rather than evidence of human rights violations.

For instance, The Globe and Mail reports, “In a Sept. 17, 2019, memo published on Global Affairs’ website, public servants told the government that while Saudi Arabia’s human-rights record ‘remains problematic’, with unlawful killings, forced disappearances and torture, Ottawa has no information or evidence linking Canadian military exports to unlawful conduct.”

Peace Brigades International

The founding statement of Peace Brigades International made an appeal to “all who work to preserve human life with dignity, to promote human rights, social justice and self-determination, and to create the conditions of peace.” PBI’s principles and mandate further highlights, “Enduring peace and lasting solutions of conflicts between and within nations cannot be achieved by violent means.”

To sign the PBI-Canada Urgent Action that sends a letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau asking him to make a public statement in support of the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ call for a global ceasefire, please click here.

Please sign our petition calling on Prime Minister Trudeau to endorse a global ceasefire

By
Brent Patterson
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Please sign the petition by clicking here!

On April 7, Peace Brigades International-Canada launched an Urgent Action function on our website that allows individuals to send messages to Canadian political leaders on issues related to human rights, peace and nonviolence, and social justice.

It is also a tool that can be utilized when a human rights defender is in imminent danger and a public mobilization is needed as a protection strategy.

Our first Urgent Action asks Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to make a public expression of support for United Nations Secretary-General Guterres’ call “for an immediate global ceasefire in all corners of the world.”

The emails sent to the Prime Minister highlight the plea made by the Secretary-General: “The fury of the virus illustrates the folly of war. End the sickness of war and fight the disease that is ravaging our world.”

This message to the Prime Minister concludes: “I encourage you to make a public statement – either through your Twitter account or ideally in your daily public address – that you support the call for a global ceasefire and affirm that the arms industry need not be declared an essential service during the pandemic.”

To send this message to the Prime Minister, please click here.

Look for more PBI-Canada Urgent Action alerts in the coming weeks. If you do respond to an Urgent Action appeal from us, please also click on the “I’d like updates from PBI-Canada” option so that we can stay in touch!

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