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Earth Institute article says fracking a risk to peace in Colombia

By
Brent Patterson
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Alexander Rustler’s article for the New York-based Earth Institute highlights that fracking risks the already precarious peace process in Colombia and that fracking the Amazon would have a global impact felt far beyond Colombia’s borders.

Rustler, a researcher at the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment, writes, “Communities, impoverished and neglected by decades of conflict, are faced with an influx of heavy machinery, expropriation and looming environmental destruction.”

He further cautions, “Fracking’s expansion risks aggravating tensions, potentially causing demonstrations against oil and gas drilling to metamorphose into violent clashes between communities and companies.”

“The first fracking projects are intended to be carried out in Magdalena Medio, a region in the North of the country that was among the hardest hit by conflict.”

Rustler also notes, “The opportune combination of higher security in remote regions and the expected depletion of conventional oil reserves has led to the breakthrough that will bring fracking to the Amazon. The Amazon Basin is an ecological resource of global importance; fracking’s influence will be felt far beyond Colombia’s borders.”

Indigenous opposition

Contagio Radio has reported that representatives of seven Indigenous communities gathered in Mocoa, Colombia on October 6 to read their manifesto in defence of the Amazon rainforest that included the call “not to implement fracking.”

The National Indigenous Organization of Colombia (ONIC) is also opposed to fracking.

The latest from Colombia

On September 25, Reuters reported that “Colombia’s state-run oil company Ecopetrol will be ready to start fracking pilot projects in the second half of 2020.”

On October 2, Valora reported that the president of the National Hydrocarbons Agency (ANH) says regulations for fracking would be ready before the end of 2019.

And on October 9, Caracol reported that a member of the Commission of Experts for Fracking says that conditions still need to be met for the pilot projects to proceed and that “in order to meet these conditions it will take at least one year.”

Speaking tour in Canada

Julia Figueroa and Andrea Nocove from the Luis Carlos Perez Lawyers’ Collective (CCALCP) and Ivan Madero from the Regional Corporation for the Defence of Human Rights (CREDHOS) will be visiting Canada this November.

They will highlight their concerns about fracking and extractivism, climate breakdown, water pollution and violations of Indigenous rights.

Their public forums include:

OTTAWA – Monday November 4, 6:30 pm, Amnesty International building, 312 Laurier Avenue East

VANCOUVER – Wednesday November 6, 7 pm, SFU Morris J Wosk Centre for Dialogue, 580 West Hastings Street

NANAIMO – Friday November 8, 2 pm, Vancouver Island University, 900 Fifth Street

Along with these three public forums, Julia, Andrea and Ivan will be meeting with civil society allies in Toronto, government officials in Ottawa, as well as students, lawyers and activists at information/strategy meetings across the country.

For more information, please contact us at info@pbicanada.org

Colombian environmental defenders to visit Toronto, Ottawa, Vancouver and Nanaimo

By
Brent Patterson
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Julia Figueroa and Andrea Nocove from the Luis Carlos Perez Lawyers’ Collective (CCALCP) and Ivan Madero from the Regional Corporation for the Defence of Human Rights (CREDHOS) will be visiting Canada this November.

On the eve of fracking starting in Colombia, they will highlight their concerns about extractivism, climate breakdown, water pollution and violations of Indigenous rights.

Their public forums include:

OTTAWA – Monday November 4, 6:30 pm, Amnesty International building, 312 Laurier Avenue East

VANCOUVER – Wednesday November 6, 7 pm, SFU Morris J Wosk Centre for Dialogue, 580 West Hastings Street

NANAIMO – Friday November 8, 2 pm, Vancouver Island University, 900 Fifth Street

Along with these three public forums, Julia, Andrea and Ivan will be meeting with civil society allies in Toronto, government officials in Ottawa, as well as students, lawyers and activists at information/strategy meetings across the country.

The Peace Brigades International-Colombia Project accompanies both CCALCP and CREDHOS given the security risks they face due to their work.

For more on what’s happening in Colombia, please see our articles Regulations for fracking in Colombia to be ready this year, fracking to begin in 2020 and Indigenous communities in Colombia want to protect the Amazon rainforest from fracking.

This tour is being organized by Peace Brigades International-Canada in partnership with Amnesty International Canada, MiningWatch Canada and local allies.

For more details, contact us at info@pbicanada.org

To donate to help cover the costs of the tour, please click here.

Extinction Rebellion honours Earth Defenders killed for protecting the environment

By
Brent Patterson
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This Extinction Rebellion newsletter notes, “[On October 9], XR communities in Paris and London joined in a wave of solidarity for fallen Earth Defenders: those for whom standing up for life and for the natural world has meant death.”

“The idea of this supportive wave came from XR Argentina, but was taken up as far away as Dublin, Cape Town and Islamabad.”

“Last year, 164 activists were killed in the Global South for trying to defend their lands from corporate extractivism. Yesterday [October 9], rebels all over the world held vigils to honour them, coming together in a global solidarity action.”

“The figure of 164 deaths is only an estimate. The real figure is likely to be much higher. Two indigenous activists are murdered every week for defending their lands from Western extractivist corporations, and their names are rarely known widely around the world.”

That newsletter adds that in Paris, “We had a visit from two indigenous activists from Cauca in Colombia, María and Samuel.”

“They thanked French rebels for joining the struggle for Mother Nature and encouraged them to continue but reminded us that their activist struggle back home is not only for Nature but for their communities and lives.”

“According to Samuel, in the past month, 47 indigenous representatives or guards have been killed in the Cauca region alone. Every day there is a rebellion, and the question of life or death is an ever-present concern. Our day ended with a tribute and silent procession.”

In 2018, 84 Peace Brigades International volunteers accompanied, observed, and made office rounds on 1,334 occasions to support human rights defenders.

The impact of that accompaniment is tangible.

Ivan Madero from the Colombian group CREDHOS has stated, “The political deterrence that PBI creates is fundamental.” Lorena Cabnal, an Indigenous feminist in Guatemala, says, “I believe that without PBI’s accompaniment I would not be here today.”

And yet the need for greater protection remains clear.

In 2018, in the countries where PBI has field projects that accompany at-risk defenders, 24 land and environment defenders were killed in Colombia, 16 in Guatemala, 14 in Mexico, 4 in Honduras, 2 in Kenya, and 1 in Indonesia.

 

PBI-Guatemala accompanies Community Feminism Network at reinstallation of monument to girls killed at state home

By
Brent Patterson
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On October 9, the Peace Brigades International-Guatemala Project posted on its Facebook page, “Yesterday we accompanied the Network of Healers in the ceremony for the 41 girls burned in a state home on March 8, 2017.”

The PBI-Guatemala post further explains that, “After the removal of the crosses by the government, the National Union of Guatemalan Women installed a new circle of crosses as a monument to the girls.”

Forty-one girls, who were 14 to 17 years of age, died in a fire at the Hogar Seguro Virgen de la Asuncion shelter south-east of Guatemala City on March 8, 2017.

The Guardian has reported, “It has emerged that 56 girls had been locked inside a room measuring 6.8 metres by 7 metres as punishment for organising a protest the day before against cramped conditions and abuse by staff. More than 700 children lived at the home, which had capacity for 400-500.”

“The fire, which began in the early hours, sparked angry demonstrations in the capital over the government’s failure to protect young people in its care. Complaints about abuse at the centre had been made, but not followed up. A month before the fire, Guatemala’s human rights commission had asked for it to be closed.”

In March 2019, Al Jazeera reported, “Several government employees, including police, are now on trial for their role in the fire. The girls were locked in a room and shelter officials waited for nine minutes as the girls burned before they unlocked the door.”

“Some of the victims of the March 8, 2017 fire in the Hogar Seguro Virgen de la Asuncion shelter had run away from home, fleeing abuse and sexual assault by relatives. But many faced more of the same inside the shelter.”

That article adds, “For years, girls reported being raped and forced into prostitution inside the state-run facility, but their protests were ignored.”

Further background on this can be read in The Irish Times at Deaths of 41 girls in Guatemalan care home fire reveal terrible cruelty.

To read more about the TZ’KAT Network of Ancestral Healers of Community Feminism from Ixmulew, please go to PBI-Guatemala accompanies TZ’KAT who seek an end to violence against the land and women.

#NiUnaMenos #NosFaltan41

PBI-Guatemala observes University of San Carlos student association elections

By
Brent Patterson
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On October 5, the Peace Brigades International-Guatemala Project posted, “From today until Monday, October 7, the elections of the board of directors and work commissions of the AEU ‘Oliverio Castañeda de León’ will be held. PBI observes this important democratic act of the Guatemalan student movement.”

There has already been some controversy with respect to this election.

El Periodico has reported, “This year, prior to the electoral process, a complaint was filed against an FCN [Frente de Convergencia Nacional] militant professor who would have influenced the classrooms where he teaches.”

The FCN (National Convergence Front) was formed in 2008 by a group of retired army officers whose candidates reportedly include a commander of counter-insurgency operations in the early 1980s during which massacres against the Ixil Mayas took place.

The AEU (Association of University Students) is a politically engaged group.

This summer, Waging Nonviolence reported, “On July 29, students from Guatemala’s only public university, the University of San Carlos, took control of the university’s museum in Guatemala City’s historic center. Their goal was to block the country’s congress from holding sessions there, as the congressional building undergoes remodeling.”

That article explains, “The occupation was launched in part due to fears that the Guatemalan Congress could hear debates and possibly pass the controversial ‘safe third country’ agreement with the Trump administration…”

Furthermore, “The AEU and other student organizations have called on other students to join in the protest against the privatization of the country’s only public university. The student groups have built off the occupation of the museum and organized a national movement for access to public higher education.”

“Upon taking control of the museum, students accused officials of attempting to ‘privatize the university’ through cost increases — which have steadily risen — and transforming the university’s culture by signing agreements that students argue cede more space to private companies.”

In terms of historical background, the report Organization and Repression in the University of San Carlos, Guatemala, 1944 to 1996 documents the “cases of 492 students, professors and university employees [of the University of San Carlos], all of them extra-judicially killed or disappeared” between 1944 and 1996.”

“1956 marked the beginning of a series of attacks on activist members of the University of San Carlos. But it was not until over two decades later, with the June 1977 murder of professor and labor adviser Mario López Larrave, that the State began a systematic campaign of violence against the University.”

“The terror against the university community continued until the return to civilian rule in 1986. However, even with a civilian in the National Palace the student movement continued to suffer a series of extra-judicial killings, notably the massacre of most of the AEU leadership in 1989.”

In terms of further understanding the context of this election, Karin Slowing recently commented in La Prensa, “USAC went from being seen as an ‘enemy entity’ to attractive financial loot and strategic clientele political control, because of its role in defining critical issues of national interest.”

She adds, “We must vote to ensure that students arrive at the AEU that are not at the service of the privatizing interests of the USAC; of interests that will veto access to public education to you and to those who come behind seeking to realize your dreams.”

As noted above, the election is taking place October 5-7.

PBI-Mexico accompanies the Fray Juan de Larios Centre for Human Rights at exhumations

By
Brent Patterson
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On October 4, the Peace Brigades International-Mexico Project tweeted, “PBI accompanies the Fray Juan de Larios Centre for Human Rights in Piedras Negras, Coahuila.”

That post adds, “We observe the days of exhumation within the framework of the State Plan of Exhumations.”

PBI-Mexico has previously noted, “In the State of Coahuila in the North of Mexico, for years hundreds of families have organised themselves in order to search for their loved ones who have been forcefully disappeared.”

On August 23, 2019, Reuters reported that 2,144 people reported missing in Coahuila have never been found. That news report adds, “The state has identified the remains of 235 missing people through digs…”

In 2017 a state law was adopted with the aim of identifying “each and every disappeared person as well as remains localized in open fields.”

In turn, that law led to an Exhumation Plan that facilitates coordination between authorities and civil society in the search for and identification of bodies.

PBI is an international observer in the Exhumation Plan.

PBI-Mexico has noted some challenges with the Exhumation Plan but has commented that it “at least [offers] a glimmer of hope within the bleak panorama of forced disappearance in Mexico.”

The Fray Juan de Larios Centre for Human Rights provides legal aid, psychological assistance and organizational support for the families of the disappeared.

PBI-Mexico has accompanied them since February 2014.

PBI-Honduras accompanies ASOPODEHU at Independence Day protest march

By
Brent Patterson
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The Peace Brigades International-Honduras Project has posted, “On the 15th of September, PBI-Honduras Project accompanied ASOPODEHU to the observation of a protest march commemorating 198 years since the independence of Honduras.”

On September 16, the BBC reported, “Riot police and anti-government protesters clashed in Honduras on Sunday, as the country marked its independence from Spain, declared in 1821.”

“President Juan Orlando Hernández presided over an official parade at the national stadium in the capital, Tegucigalpa, while ex-President Manuel Zelaya led the opposition’s march in another part of the city.”

“The protesters demand the resignation of the president, who has been accused by prosecutors in the US of accepting money from drug cartels in his 2013 campaign. He denies the allegation.”

That BBC news report concludes, “Mr Hernández was re-elected to a second term in 2017 in polls which his opponents said were fraudulent.”

The group PBI-Honduras accompanied, ASOPODEHU, is the Association for Democracy and Human Rights in Honduras, an organization headed by journalist Dina Meza.

Its mission (translated from Spanish) is “to accompany victims of violations of their fundamental human rights, with emphasis on vulnerable groups: journalists, social communicators, women, youth, indigenous people, blacks and the community of sexual diversity.”

PBI-Honduras has accompanied Meza since May 2014.

Petra Kelly on Peace Brigades International, disarmament and a way forward

By
Brent Patterson
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“There can be no peace if there is social injustice and suppression of human rights. Peace is not just the absence of mass destruction.” – Petra Kelly

“Peace is more than the absence of war.” – Peace Brigades International, founding statement, September 4, 1981

When Peace Brigades International was formed in September 1981, Ronald Reagan had just become the President of the United States, the killing of indigenous Maya by the Guatemalan armed forces was entering its most violent period, the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp in the United Kingdom had just been established, and within weeks 400,000 people would march in Bonn, West Germany in opposition to the NATO decision to deploy 572 nuclear missiles in Western Europe.

33-year-old Petra Kelly, who had helped form the German Green Party in January 1980, was at that massive protest in Bonn on October 10, 1981.

By December 1982, Kelly had won the prestigious Right Livelihood Award for her work “forging and implementing a new vision uniting ecological concerns with disarmament, social justice and human rights.”

And by March 1983, Kelly was one of 27 Greens elected to the Bundestag, the West German federal parliament.

That same year, Kelly stated, “Two military Germanies unified? Thank God never, because they would be frightening. We want reunification only if there is demilitarization.”

On November 9, 1989, an East German government official announced that the Berlin Wall had been opened and people began dismantling it with hammers and chisels. The reunification of East and West Germany was made official on October 3, 1990.

In her essay titled Nonviolent Social Defense, Kelly lamented, “The ending of the cold war has brought little change in our militaristic outlook. As old weapons systems are dismantled, they are replaced by new, more sophisticated ones.”

She then highlighted, “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. 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.”

In October 1992, the bodies of Kelly and her partner Gert Bastian, a former Major General in the German Army who had helped form Generals for Peace in 1981, were found in their home in Bonn. Kelly was 44 years old.

Twenty-seven years after her death, Kelly’s words still offer inspiration.

Earlier this year, Phyllis Bennis of the Washington, DC-based Institute for Policy Studies, wrote, “The Green New Deal must have anti-militarism at its core. Wars and the military render impossible the aspirations contained in the Green New Deal. And slashing the out-of-control military budget is crucial to provide the billions of dollars we need to create a sustainable and egalitarian economy.”

The annual budget of the US military now stands at $716 billion. The German military has a budget of €47.32 billion. Canada now spends $25 billion a year on the military and plans to increase that to $32.7 billion a year by 2026.

Kelly, who called for both nuclear disarmament and full demilitarization, wrote, “Even in Western democracies, the state seems invincible, and as individuals, we often feel powerless, unable to have much effect. We must remind ourselves that the power of the state derives solely from the consent of the governed.”

In line with Extinction Rebellion of our present day, Kelly highlighted, “Noncooperation, civil disobedience, education, and organization are the means of change, and we must learn the ways to use them. Direct democracies will come into being only when we demand from our leaders that they listen to us.”

Environmental protection, human rights and transarmament – shifting spending from the military to the public good – were key in Kelly’s vision of a better world.

We would do well to listen to her.

Heidi Mitton, PBI-Colombia volunteer

By
Brent Patterson
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Peace Brigades international-Canada is helping to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Peace Brigades International-Colombia Project by sharing stories of volunteers from Canada who have accompanied human rights defenders through PBI in Colombia.

In this December 2015 Facebook post, PBI-Canada published an interview with Heidi Mitton who began 18 months of accompaniment in June 2015.

That post highlights, “Heidi is a Nova Scotian who has previously been an accompaniment volunteer in Guatemala; along with her background in counseling and education, this makes her a great addition to the Colombia team!”

In the interview, Mitton comments:

“[Accompaniment is] a different approach to issues that have their root in international inequality and in our economic and social systems.”

“Over the years I’ve been exposed to a variety of work in communities that’s a helping model. A lot of that work can be very valuable, but what I like about accompaniment is that it’s more of a solidarity approach.”

“I think the relationship building that comes with international accompaniment allows us to promote human rights globally while building networks across borders.”

“Humanitarian work is very valuable and it’s definitely a piece of things, but it depends on the relationship. Protective accompaniment promotes an equitable relationship with countries across borders.”

Several years prior to Colombia, the Truro Daly News reports that Mitton participated in a six-month internship in Cochabamba, Bolivia in 2007-08. Not long before that, major ‘water war’ demonstrations had taken place in Cochabamba between December 1999 and April 2000 in response to the privatization of the city’s water supply company.

And in May 2012, Mitton wrote in the Halifax Media Co-op about growing up in rural Nova Scotia and the Westray mine disaster (that killed 26 miners) and reflecting on those memories while accompanying a demonstration in Guatemala City by campesino and indigenous groups opposed to big development projects on their lands.

That article concluded, “It is crucial that we continue resisting the ideological hold that neo-liberal capitalism has on public discourse. Not only because of our responsibilities to humanity and to nature, but also because if we don’t, the number of casualties will grow, and the tragic crimes of corporate hegemony will continue to come home.”

In November 2018, the Nova Scotia Advocate noted, “Heidi Mitton is a mental health therapist originally from Truro. She has been living and working abroad over the last few years with humanitarian and human rights organizations in Jordan, Colombia, and Guatemala.”

That article featured a poem titled Vision by Mitton.

She notes: “The inspiration for this poem is hard to explain, but the attempted focus of most of my writing is perhaps best summed up by this quote from Alice Walker recently sent to me by my grandmother, who has been encouraging my writing since I was seven years old.”

Walker’s quote reads, “Poetry is the lifeblood of rebellion, revolution and the raising of consciousness.”

Indigenous communities in Colombia want to protect the Amazon rainforest from fracking

By
Brent Patterson
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Photo by Ficamazonia.

Contagio Radio reports, “Grandparents and grandmothers from seven indigenous communities of Putumayo, Caquetá, Amazonas, Boyacá and Venezuela met to discuss the importance of preserving the largest tropical forest on the planet.”

Putumayo and Caquetá are departments in southern Colombia mostly covered by tropical rainforest that is part of the Amazon rainforest. Amazonas is also a department in southern Colombia that derives its name from the Amazon River.

Putumayo and Caquetá are close to the Colombian border with Ecuador and Peru, Amazonas borders Peru and Brazil.

The Boyacá Department is in eastern Colombia and borders Venezuela.

Semana Sostenible reports that members of the Siona, Cofan, Kamentsa and Inga communities of the departments of Putumayo, Caquetá and Amazonas, as well as the U’wa, of Boyacá, and Huottojas, of Venezuela were present.

The Contagio Radio article highlights, “The meeting of ancestral wisdom [in Putumayo was] very significant since the Councils of the Elderly of the Indigenous Peoples of Latin America had not been carried out for more than 50 years.”

The article refers to their “manifesto for the Amazon” which includes a call for the “cancellation of licences for the exploration and exploitation of the natural resources of Mother Earth”, notably an end to “mining-energy concessions”, the protection of forests, and “not to implement fracking” as is planned in the coming months.

Contagio Radio adds, “They also reiterated the importance of not pursuing or stigmatizing their social leaders.”

Hanna Wallis comments in 2018 was the deadliest year in decades for Indigenous leaders in Colombia, “Indigenous communities in Colombia are continuing to suffer an accelerating wave of violence as murders against social leaders carry on un-checked.”

And El Espectador published this commentary by Armando Valbuena that notes, “From November 2016 to June 2019, 1,029 leaders of the indigenous peoples have been threatened, 330 have been killed and 166 have suffered attacks by armed actors such as the Black Eagles, dissidents of the FARC and the ELN.”

That article by Valbuena, the former president of the National Indigenous Organization of Colombia (ONIC), concludes, “The current situation comes from the folly to exploit the land and the use of violence as a framework that allows it.”

ONIC is similarly opposed to fracking in Colombia, notably in the north-central Middle Magdalena region that includes the city of Barrancabermeja.

Valora has reported that regulations on fracking will be ready by the end of this year and Ecopetrol says it will be ready to start fracking pilot projects in the second half of 2020.

But Caracol Radio now reports Juan Pablo Ruiz , a member of the Commission of Experts for Fracking, saying that baseline conditions must be met and that in order to meet these conditions it will take at least one year.

It has not yet been specified where the pilot projects will take place.

Furthermore, the Luis Carlos Perez Lawyers’ Collective (CCALCP) has long sought the implementation of Judgment T-880/2006 of the Constitutional Court of Colombia that relates to “the right to free prior and informed consent, and the rights related to demarcation of land, as well as exploitation of natural resources.”

An article in Petroleum Economist this past July titled Colombian fracking edges closer to reality concludes with the sentence, “Unconventional assets are also often near indigenous lands, which could pose further headaches.”

For information on the Peace Brigades International-Canada organized speaking tour in Canada featuring Colombian human rights defenders from CCALCP and CREDHOS speaking on fracking, please click here.

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