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PBI-Mexico and PBI-Spain visit Saltillo Migrant Shelter

By
Brent Patterson
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The Peace Brigades International-Mexico Project accompanies the Saltillo Migrant Shelter.

On October 1, PBI-Mexico posted, “Our visit is part of the concern for the different security incidents that have suffered in recent months for their legitimate work in defense of the rights of migrants in the state of Coahuila.”

And the Saltillo Migrant Shelter has tweeted, “We appreciate the visit of our companions of PBI-Mexico and PBI-Estado Español in the framework of the latest aggressions. Their presence and support strengthens our security and continues to open channels for dialogue and peace building.”

The Saltillo Migrant Shelter is situated in the state of Coahuila which shares a 512-kilometre border with Texas.

PBI-Mexico has noted, “The Saltillo Migrant Shelter offers daily humanitarian assistance — including clothes, medicines, food, rest, and medical and psychological care — to hundreds of migrants crossing Mexico to reach the United States.”

It adds, “[The shelter] also defends migrants’ rights through the documentation of cases of kidnapping, extortion, abuses and violations that they suffer during their journey through Mexico.”

Because of this migrant justice work, the staff and volunteers at the shelter have suffered harassment, surveillance and threats.

In terms of recent incidents:

On July 20, PBI-Mexico expressed its “concern about the visit this morning of the federal police to the Casa Del Migrante de Saltillo, for possible intervention and immigration verification at the hostel.”

On July 25, PBI-Mexico stated, “We express our concern about the recent acts of harassment [the Saltillo Migrant Shelter] has suffered.”

And on July 31, Coahuila state police officers killed Marco Tulio Perdomo Guzmán, a 29-year-old migrant from Honduras who was with his 8-year-old daughter.

The harassment of the Saltillo Migrant Shelter is happening in the context of the further militarization of the US-Mexico border.

Reuters has reported, “Mexico is trying to curb a surge of migrants from third countries crossing its territory in order to reach the United States, under the threat of tariffs on its exports by U.S. President Donald Trump.”

You can find out more about the work of the Saltillo Migrant Shelter via Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and their website.

PBI-Colombia welcomes new volunteers; next deadline for applications is Oct. 11!

By
Brent Patterson
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The Peace Brigades International-Colombia Project has welcomed nine new volunteers. They have travelled from the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, Germany, Switzerland and France to accompany at-risk human rights defenders.

New volunteers are currently being sought whose placement would begin in July/August 2020.

The deadline to apply is October 11.

Last year, twenty-seven PBI-Colombia volunteers accompanied members of thirteen organizations and two individual human rights defenders working on business and human rights and forced disappearances.

Earlier this year, Javier Ignacio Hoyos from Canada joined the PBI-Colombia team.

Javier says, “I applied to PBI Colombia because I value its principles, I believe in its mission and I admire its work over the last decades.”

He adds, “I sincerely believe that by accompanying these people and communities in their day to day work and protecting their spaces for action, I will in a small way be part of the collective construction of a more peaceful, fair and inclusive society.”

All of the information on how to apply can be found here.

Colombia’s top court rules that fracking pilot projects can proceed despite moratorium

By
Brent Patterson
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Reuters reports, “Colombia’s top administrative court on [September 17] clarified that a moratorium on fracking it upheld last week does not prevent ‘investigative’ pilot projects, surprising both oil companies and environmental activists.”

The President of the Council of State says, “The court advises that the reach of this decision does not impede the development of comprehensive investigative pilot projects … made by the expert commission convened by the national government.”

This comes despite a poll taken in February that found that more than 90 per cent of Colombians are opposed to fracking in their country,

Another Reuters article notes that the top administrative court has said that four pilot projects can proceed – “one run by coal company Drummond and the others by oil companies Ecopetrol, Exxon Mobil and Conoco Phillips” – and that “work on the pilots, or at least the infrastructure required for them, could begin next year.”

Argus Media adds, “The first pilot projects are expected to take place in the Middle Magdalena Valley basin.” That’s a 34,000 square kilometre area in the departments of Santander, Boyacá, Cundinamarca and Tolima in north-central Colombia.

That article also notes, “Environmentalists grouped in an anti-fracturing alliance predicted a ‘long road’ to carrying out the pilot projects, as they are obligated to fulfill eight conditions, including access to information, strengthening of institutional capabilities and establishment of baseline social, environmental and health data.”

Both the Luis Carlos Perez Lawyers’ Collective (CCALCP) and the Regional Corporation for the Defence of Human Rights (CREDHOS) are members of the Alliance for a Colombia Free of Fracking, a coalition that includes a wide range of concerned groups.

On September 24, CCALCP and numerous other organizations signed this civil society statement expressing concern about the stigmatization of anti-fracking activists by former Colombian Vice-President Germán Vargas Lleras.

That statement highlights, “We demand that the Colombian government guarantee the rights of the people and organizations that are members of the Colombia Fracking Free Alliance to meet, express themselves and appeal for justice.”

Representatives from CCALCP and CREDHOS will be in Canada this coming November 2-10 to share their insights about environmental protection, fracking, human rights, the role of social leaders, and the peace process in Colombia.

For more, please see SPEAKING TOUR – Climate change, human rights and the struggle for peace in Colombia.

Photo by Gert Steenssens.

PBI-Guatemala accompanies UVOC to a court hearing on the La Primavera land conflict

By
Brent Patterson
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On September 26, the Peace Brigades International-Guatemala Project posted, “Yesterday we accompanied UVOC [the Verapaz Union of Peasant Organizations] to a hearing in Cobán for the presentation of evidence in the case of the La Primavera community.”

PBI-Guatemala adds, “The agrarian conflict between the owner of the farm and the inhabitants began in 2004 and has led to 3 evictions.”

In November 2013, PBI-Guatemala interviewed UVOC lawyer Jorge Luis Morales about La Primavera and it provides a helpful context to understand this week’s hearing.

Morales stated, “The case of La Primavera is emblematic of the issue of agrarian disputes in Guatemala: it is a situation that we have lived through time and time again.”

“The workers and their families’ land tenure rights are a legitimate result of a working relationship and were violated when this property changed hands. The new landowners do not recognize this land tenure right and try to evict communities from the land.”

“La Primavera extends over an area of 43 caballerias (1 caballeria = 45 hectares), housing at least 400 mayapocomchí families. The land is extremely fertile and especially sought after by companies that specialize in mono-cultivation.”

“The companies Maderas Filitz Diaz S.A. and Eco-Tierra have claimed joint ownership of La Primavera since 2011. The former is a logging company whose objective is to use the finca for growing and cutting down trees. For this reason, the communities’ presence on the finca that was established more than 200 years ago, is not in the company’s interest.”

“The inhabitants of La Primavera are under constant threat and intimidation by private security personnel hired by the two companies. They carry arms illegally in the community, arrive armed to community meetings and threaten the participants with violence in an attempt to disrupt their activities.”

More recently, on August 9 of this year, PBI-Guatemala accompanied Justino Xollim to an intermediate stage court hearing. PBI-Guatemala posted, “He was unjustly accused of illegal logging at Finca la Primavera in San Cristobál Verapaz, where he lives. On this occasion, the case was provisionally closed.”

UVOC is an indigenous and peasant organization dedicated to the defence and promotion of access to land in the context of historical dispossession and ongoing inequality in Guatemala. UVOC represents Q’eqchi’, Poqomchi, Achi and Mestizas peoples.

PBI-Guatemala has accompanied UVOC since 2005.

PBI-Mexico accompanies Consorcio Oaxaca at state legislature vote on reproductive choice

By
Brent Patterson
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On September 25, the Peace Brigades International-Mexico Project posted on its Facebook page, “#PBIaccompanies Consorcio Oaxaca in the State Congress for the debate on the decriminalization of abortion.”

PBI-Mexico adds, “The 42 deputies will vote on the initiative to reform the State Constitution and Criminal Code that would allow women in this state to voluntarily terminate their pregnancy before 12 weeks of gestation.”

And it notes, “Its approval would make Oaxaca the second entity in the country to make such a reform. Mexico City approved the change 12 years ago.”

Later that same day, Reuters reported, “The Mexican state of Oaxaca on Wednesday approved a bill to legalize abortion, making it only the second region of the predominantly Roman Catholic country after Mexico City to permit the procedure.”

That article adds, “Approval of the measure came just a few days after [Mexican President Andres Manuel] Lopez Obrador sent a bill to the federal Congress that would grant an amnesty to women serving jail terms for abortion.”

This Aljazeera article notes that 9,000 women each year undergo a clandestine abortion in Oaxaca, that 17 per cent of those are Indigenous women under the age of 20, and that it is the third leading cause of death among women in the region.

That news article also notes that 20 women have been imprisoned in Oaxaca for illegal abortions since 2016.

AFP reports, “The state legislature passed the measure in a 24-10 vote after an intense session often interrupted by shouts from activists on both sides of the debate.” And Aljazeera noted, “Campaigners on both sides of the debate took to the streets outside the congressional building during the contentious vote.”

PBI-Mexico has accompanied Consorcio Oaxaca (the Consortium for Parliamentary Dialogue and Equity Oaxaca) since March 2016.

PBI-Mexico explains, “Consortium Oaxaca was founded in 2003, with the objective of promoting a state-level legislative framework that supports women’s rights.”

That post adds, “Many Mexican human rights defenders who defend women’s rights and question traditional patriarchal structures and norms constitute one of the nation’s most vulnerable groups, according to the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, Michel Forst.”

PBI-Mexico further notes in that article that, “The risks faced by consortium members are high because of the cases that Consortium Oaxaca accompanies and its work promoting and defending women’s rights.”

The United Nations Human Rights Council Working group on the issue of discrimination against women in law and in practice has highlighted that 47,000 women die each year from unsafe abortions, a further five million women suffer from some form of temporary or permanent disability, and that the ability for a woman or girl to make her own decisions about pregnancy “is at the very core of [her] fundamental right to equality, privacy and physical and mental integrity and is a precondition for the enjoyment of other rights and freedoms”.

PBI-Canada attends Ottawa gathering for the 43 Ayotzinapa students disappeared in Mexico

By
Brent Patterson
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A still from a short PBI-Mexico video (with English subtitles) about the 43 disappeared Ayotzinapa students.

On September 26, Peace Brigades International-Canada attended an Amnesty International-organized gathering in Ottawa to mark the 5th anniversary of the disappearance of 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College in the state of Guerrero.

An 8-minute Facebook video of that gathering can be seen here.

The students were en route to Mexico City to observe the anniversary of the Tlatelolco Massacre in which the Mexican Army had killed hundreds of people at a large demonstration protesting against the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City.

In terms of what happened to the students, NACLA reports that an independent body from the Inter-American Human Rights Commission found that, “the events of September 26 and 27 were coordinated actions between several government agencies, with the direct participation of at least the federal, state, and municipal police, and organized crime.”

That report also established the involvement of the Mexican Army.

That said, five years later the whereabouts of the students is unknown, those responsible for their disappearance have not been sanctioned, and those who have obstructed justice in the investigation have not been held accountable.

Peace Brigades International has noted, “The families of the 43 students, the current students of the School of Ayotzinapa and the organisations that accompany them – among them the Tlachinollan Human Rights Centre whose members receive PBI accompaniment – have suffered intimidation and threats.”

This 10-minute PBI video interview with Maria Luisa Aguilar of the Tlachinollan Human Rights Centre tells of the calls the Centre received from some of the students on the day of the attack against them and highlights that the students were political activists.

Furthermore, WOLA has commented, “This tragic case has become emblematic of the broader disappearance crisis plaguing Mexico.”

It notes, “In addition to the 43 Ayotzinapa students, the vast majority of the more than 47,000 registered disappearance cases currently active in Mexico remain unresolved, leaving families across the country desperately searching for answers about the fate of their missing loved ones.”

PBI-Mexico has posted, “PBI accompanies organisations from the Movement for our Disappeared People as well as the National Campaign against Forced Disappearance in Mexico who fight for the recognition of the problem of forced disappearance in Mexico and so that the voices of the victims are heard and included in the designing of public policies which address the topic.”

PBI-Canada extends its solidarity to all those families who are seeking justice and the return of their disappeared loved ones.

Fighting climate change: A global priority

By
Brent Patterson
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This statement was originally posted on the Peace Brigades International global website:

This week, the United Nations General Assembly meets in New York to discuss the current state of affairs in climate change. The UN has organised the Climate Action Summit this year to bring world leaders together to discuss the emergency crisis affecting millions on our planet.

Prior to the summit, activists around the world have begun to come out in droves to have their voices heard. Last Friday, climate marches took place in over 163 countries where more than 4 million people protested in streets demanding active solutions for climate change. It is said to be the largest world demonstration recorded in history.

The face of the fight against climate change has been Greta Thunberg, who has urged leaders time and time again over the past year, to act as if “our house is on fire”. Her words and passion for our planet has inspired the youth to take it to the streets. She began her activism in Sweden, where she stood outside the Swedish parliament for days on end demanding something to be done.

In 2015, world leaders signed the Paris Agreement to commit actions towards limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius. 197 countries signed the Paris Agreement where 185 have ratified the agreement. However, many of these countries have only paid lip service to the agreement. National Geographic has published a Climate Change report card that highlights the countries who have kept their commitments as well as those who have barely tried.

The most recent report published in 2018 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN body that carries out research on climate change, discuss the impacts of a 2 degrees Celsius change against a 1.5 degrees Celsius change. The IPCC report is a clear message to world leaders and policy makers that by aiming for 1.5 degrees Celsius, more significant damages to our planet can be reduced. It is also important to remember that the IPCC has reported that in less than 12 years, our actions against the climate will be irreversible.

Currently, PBI provides support for defenders of land rights, culture and natural resources in countries across the world.  These are individuals and organisations who defend their land and territory against the imposition of economic projects that will damage nature and contribute to climate change.  These human rights defenders deserve the platform Greta Thunberg has, however, in the contexts PBI works in, these people are at huge risk and speaking out often brings with it threats, attacks, stigmatization and criminalization.  We must stand in solidarity with these people to ensure they can continue fighting to protect our climate and planet.

Peace Brigades International, September 25, 2019

The story of how PBI accompaniment of human rights defenders began

By
Brent Patterson
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Photo of Rosario Godoy de Cuevas addressing a GAM rally two months before she was assassinated on April 4, 1985.

Peace Brigades International was founded on September 4, 1981 in Canada and placed its first team in Guatemala on March 21, 1983.

In Unarmed Bodyguards, Liam Mahony and Luis Enrique Eguren tell the story of how that first team shaped the mission of PBI that would define its work for years to come.

That first team, for a short while at least, consisted of Hazel Tulecke. One of her teammates had changed his mind at the last moment and didn’t come, while the other, Alvaro Diaz, was denied a visa because he had explained in detail the purpose of his trip.

PBI activist Dan Clark called Alain Richard, a French Franciscan worker-priest in Panama, and Pablo Stanfield, a non-violence activist in Seattle, and before long a three-person PBI team was set up in the home of an exiled Guatemalan professor.

By the end of their first month in Guatemala, the team had worked out a plan that included “serving continually as an international presence”, “direct action with regard to disappearances” and “creative nonviolent action in a crisis period”.

Mahony and Eguren write, “During their first year, PBI team members traveled throughout the highlands, visiting rural farmers, clandestine contacts, and government and military officials, introducing themselves and feeling things out.”

“When necessary, they helped people flee the country. In one case, PBI learned of a man who was about to be sentenced to death by Rios Montt’s Special Tribunals. PBI and other groups outside the country put together an overnight campaign, using confidential diplomatic channels of pressure, and they got a stay of sentencing and execution.”

“PBI later helped hustle the man out of the country.”

“By the end of the first year, the team had made many contacts and tested several program ideas, but none of them had developed into a clear mission.”

Then on March 11, 1984, Nineth Montenegro de Garcia wrote them: “I am pleading for your aid in my anguish. My husband, Edgar Fernando Garcia, was kidnapped, or more accurately, illegally captured on Saturday February 18 this year.” She further explained that it was the Police Special Operations Brigade who had taken him.

Nineth was a young schoolteacher, Fernando was a 25-year-old worker at a glass factory who had become involved in a union.

At this point, Edith Cole, a 57-year old psychologist from California, had joined the PBI team of Hazel, Alain and Pablo.

The PBI team asked Nineth if she knew of other people in the same situation and before long the Mutual Support Group (GAM) was formed.

Given the number of people whose loved ones had been disappeared, GAM grew quickly. It met weekly (at the PBI house in Guatemala City), organized memorial masses, published advertisements in the newspapers, listed disappearances and asked for support and investigations, met with the Guatemalan president, organized a silent march for peace, held a sit-in at the congress building, and announced their intention to charge elements of the security forces with the disappearances.

They even called on the international community to cut off aid to Guatemala. It was that last action that led to a siege on GAM.

Nineth writes, “In December [1984] we began to receive the first threats.”

Mahony and Eguren write, “On Saturday, March 30, 1985, Hector Gomez left a GAM meeting at the PBI house. He was found dead the next day with his hands tied behind his back, no tongue, and signs of beating and burns.”

And Clark has written, “On April 3, PBI’s Alain Richard warned founder and secretary of GAM Maria Rosario Godoy de Cuevas not to leave her home for any reason because she was also in danger of being killed. The next day she was found dead in her car in a ravine with her brother and her two-year-old son, who had been ill. The cause of their deaths was strangulation, and the child’s fingernails had been pulled out.”

Mahony and Eguren comment, “According to Alain, the idea of personal accompaniment did not arise until after her death.”

Alain notes, “The night before I had to leave [the country to renew my visa], a close diplomatic contact visited me, along with Jean-Marie Simon of Americas Watch, and they told me, ‘Listen, you’ve started to be with these women. That has to continue. How can you make sure you have enough people to do that?’”

Mahony and Eguren highlight, “This was the beginning of PBI ‘escorting’: providing the surviving GAM leadership with around the clock unarmed bodyguards.”

“The pressure on the Guatemalan state after the two killings was immediate. Peace Brigades International made sure that high-level authorities knew about the escorting and the political costs that further attacks would carry.”

Though the situation remained intense and difficult for the group and some fled the country, “no other GAM leaders were killed.”

Hazel Tulecke died on September 5, 2019 in Yellow Springs, Ohio at 95 years of age. A memorial service is planned for her on November 16.

The photo above is of Hazel Tulecke, Alain Richard and Pablo Stanfield.

The photo below is a family snapshot of Nineth de García, daughter Alejandra and husband Fernando before his abduction on February 18, 1984. His disappearance remains unresolved.

The photo below is of Hector Gomez, who was murdered on March 30, 1985, after leaving a GAM meeting at the PBI house in Guatemala City, is held aloft at a protest.

Make a donation for human rights!

By
Brent Patterson
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The work of Peace Brigades International-Canada is sustained by individual donors like yourself. When you donate to PBI-Canada you support:

1- The writing of daily updates on the human rights defenders that PBI accompanies. PBI works on the principle that the higher profile the human rights defender the less likely it is that their opponents can do harm to them.

2- The sharing of those stories with thousands of people via PBI-Canada’s social media channels. Visibility means protection for at-risk human rights defenders and the making of space for them to do their vital work in the public interest.

3- The recruiting of volunteers to accompany human rights defenders in Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and Kenya. In 2018, 84 PBI volunteers accompanied 48 organizations and 35 individual human rights defenders.

4- The organizing of speaking tours featuring human rights defenders. This November, PBI-Canada will bring three human rights defenders from Colombia to this country to talk with government officials, allies and the broader public to build support for their work to stop fracking and global climate change.

5- The rapid circulation of emergency response network alerts. When Indigenous human rights defenders Obtilia Eugenio Manuel and Hilario Cornelio Castro were disappeared in Mexico this past February, we helped to get word out quickly. Thankfully, they were both freed after four days in captivity.

To make a one-time or monthly donation to PBI-Canada, please click here. A donation of just $5 a month helps protect front-line human rights defenders and their struggles in defence of land and water, Indigenous rights, migrant justice, LGBTQI+ rights, press freedom, and peace and social justice that we accompany.

Peace Brigades International is a leading global human rights organization that was founded just south of Ottawa in 1981. We are a registered charitable organization and can provide a tax receipt for your donation to our work.

Colombians to speak in Canada as fracking threatens human rights in their country

By
Brent Patterson
-

Three Colombian environmental activists will be speaking in Canada at a critical moment with respect to fracking, human rights and the peace process in their country.

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 speaking and attending meetings in Toronto (November 3), Ottawa (November 4-5), Vancouver (November 6-7) and Nanaimo (November 8).

What’s the latest from Colombia?

On September 17, Colombia’s top administrative court, the Council of State, clarified that the moratorium on fracking that it upheld in its ruling on September 10 does not prevent pilot projects from proceeding.

The pilot projects could move forward quickly. Colombia’s state-run oil company Ecopetrol says it will be ready to start fracking in the second half of 2020.

The locations and the corporations involved in those pilot projects have not been confirmed though two Canadian companies have been mentioned in media reports. Another Canadian company has been named as a minority owner of a Ecopetrol pipeline that would transport fracked oil as production ramps up.

Industry leaders say that the pilot projects would bring $5 billion in investments annually once they are in production. And the Colombian oil minister has stated that without fracking the country’s oil reserves could be depleted within six years which would have severe consequences for the economy.

And yet, there is strong community opposition. Earlier this year a poll found that 90 per cent of Colombians are opposed to fracking.

Further complicating the situation, a group of former commanders from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) announced in late August that it will launch a new armed offensive and noted that it will fight fracking.

Environmental activists are concerned about what this will mean for communities, the land and water, Indigenous rights, climate change and human rights.

Already, anti-fracking groups have spoken about their concern about being stigmatized in a newspaper opinion piece by the former vice-president of Colombia. They have voiced concerns about their safety in the context of the murder of 24 land and environment defenders in Colombia in 2018 alone.

The speaking tour also takes place just weeks prior to the United Nations COP25 climate summit that begins on December 2 in Santiago, Chile.

The UN Development Programme has highlighted that, “Colombia is at high risk from climate change impacts.”

And The Bogota Post has reported, “It is Colombia’s campesinos, who have already borne the brunt of a long conflict, who are likely to be hit hardest.”

That article adds, “The Amazon and Caribbean regions can expect 10-30% less rainfall, while the Andean region can expect 10-30% more. That is going to mean sea levels rise and glaciers and nevados [snowfall] thaw, while páramos [wetland ecosystems] and other fresh water sources dwindle. We can expect desertification, droughts, landslides and flooding – all of which will cause damage to infrastructure and a loss of agricultural productivity.”

The clock is ticking in this critical situation. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says that there are only 11 years left to take unprecedented action to keep global warming to a maximum of 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Last week, a global campaign backed by 450 activist groups and celebrities called on UN Secretary General António Guterres to endorse a global ban because fracking “torpedoes our global efforts to tackle climate change and violates basic human rights”.

Check this website, our Facebook page and our Twitter feed for more details as the specific itinerary of the tour is further confirmed.

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