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Translocal learning can improve protection strategies as the criminalization of defenders transcends borders

By
Brent Patterson
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Composite photo: United Kingdom, Colombia, Canada, Mexico.

UN Special Rapporteur on human rights defenders Mary Lawlor: “[Criminalization is] about maintaining the power structures in place. This is true regardless of whether it’s a dictatorship, democracy or a corrupt narco-state.”

On March 27, 2025, Metropolitan Police raided the Westminster Quaker meeting house in London and arrested six young women, including a journalist, at a Youth Demand “Welcome Talk” like the virtual forum below that had taken place the day before.

Image: Youth Demand

In response to this police action, Oliver Robertson, head of witness and worship for Quakers in Britain, comments: “This raid is not an isolated incident. It reflects a growing trend of excessive policing under new laws brought in by the previous government, which are now being enforced by the current administration.”

Paul Parker, their recording clerk, also stated: “This aggressive violation of our place of worship and the forceful removal of young people holding a protest group meeting clearly shows what happens when a society criminalises protest.”

Criminalization “the most common tactic”

Mary Lawlor, the Dublin, Ireland-based United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights defenders, has further commented: “Criminalisation is the most common tactic used against human rights defenders, because it’s so easy and has such a big impact.”

And Washington, DC-based Global Witness has also noted: “In addition to killings and physical violence, defenders face the growing risk of criminalization – legal methods to harass, threaten, and stop their work – used to silence and prevent them from speaking out.”

Criminalization patterns around the world

Almost two years ago, in October 2023, The Guardian’s environment correspondents Matthew Taylor and Damien Gayle along with senior reporter Nina Lakhani wrote: “The Guardian has found striking similarities in the way governments from Canada and the US to Guatemala and Chile, from India and Tanzania to the UK, Europe and Australia, are cracking down on activists trying to protect the planet.”

“States learn from each other”

Photo: Mary Lawlor in Toronto.

That article from 2023 in The Guardian further quoted Lawlor who said: “[Criminalization is] about maintaining the power structures in place. This is true regardless of whether it’s a dictatorship, democracy or a corrupt narco-state, and regardless of the state’s professed commitment to human rights, protecting the environment and combating climate change. What’s clear is that states learn from each other.”

Defenders are adapting to avoid criminalization

Now in 2025, Taylor and Gayle report: “In 2022, MPs [Members of Parliament] passed the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act, a direct response to [Extinction Rebellion/ XR’s] mass protests, giving police an armoury of new powers to impose conditions on demonstrations. The following year, in a direct response to the likes of [Just Stop Oil/ JSO], parliament passed the Public Order Act, creating a series of offences targeting direct action, as the government simultaneously lowered the threshold of disruption at which police could intervene in a protest from ‘serious’ to ‘more than minor’.”

They then note: “Some groups, such as Shut the System [STS], have departed from the model of accountability [willingly being arrested] espoused by JSO and XR in favour of a clandestine approach, inspired by counterparts in Europe and the writings of the radical social ecologist Andreas Malm.”

In a separate article about Shut the System, Gayle reports that STS says given the “new laws further criminalising disruptive protests [have] made traditional, accountable methods of activism increasingly unsustainable”, citing the example of “activists from JSO who received sentences of four and five years … for organising road blocks on the M25”, that makes “a clandestine approach increasingly attractive.”

The clear implication is that the increasing criminalization of non-violent disruptive protest in the UK has created a situation in which groups like Shut the System and the Citizens Arrest Network that have subsequently emerged.

Criminalization and escalating tactics against defenders

Gayle, Taylor and Lakhani have also highlighted: “Criminalisation does not happen in isolation. Experts say that deploying the legal system is part of a spectrum or playbook of escalating tactics deployed by corporations and their allies [that includes] online attacks, defamation, police surveillance, security deployments and violence.”

Translocal learning across borders

If criminalization is part of a common playbook used by states and if states learn from each other the spectrum of escalating ways to derail and repress social movements, it follows that it is important for activists in the Global North and defenders in the Global South to learn from each other how to navigate this assault.

Thus, as just one example in a rural context, learning could emerge from a translocal exchange between a campesina being threatened by the AGC paramilitary and a mining company in the Putumayo Amazon region of Colombia and an Indigenous land defender facing the likelihood of an RCMP CRU-BC militarized police raid and a pipeline company on Gitxsan territory in norther British Columbia, Canada.

There may be additional examples found in an urban context, as well as with journalists, lawyers and union members who are at-risk.

How have criminalization and violence informed the tactics of defenders in different parts of the world? What do they see as effective resistance and protest strategies? What role has the state and corporations played in this situation? How have they coped with the mental stress that comes with risk and compounded trauma? How do issues of colonization, impunity and historical injustice contribute to this? What do they see as credible and effective protection strategies to enable them to continue their work?

These are issues and questions that Peace Brigades International-Canada will be delving into over the coming months through discussions, virtual and in-person exchanges, articles, podcasts and other forums.

Peace Brigades International remembers with the Mutual Support Group (GAM) the life of Maria del Rosario Godoy Aldana de Cuevas

By
Brent Patterson
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The Mutual Support Group (GAM) has posted on Facebook:

“We remember the painful loss of Maria del Rosario Godoy Aldana de Cuevas, co-founder of GAM in 1984, in times of the Internal Armed Conflict-CAI.

Like many other people at that time, she was looking for her husband Carlos Ernesto Cuevas Molina, who had disappeared. “… Either they bring me back Carlos alive or they take me too.. “I will never rest until I find my fat one.”

Maria del Rosario Godoy Aldana de Cuevas was killed on April 4, 1985 along with her son Augusto Rafael, two years old, and her brother Maynor René, 21 years old. The three bodies showed signs of polytraumatism.

On this day, we remember Rosario’s tireless struggle to find the missing persons forcibly and we keep the memory of Rosario alive.”

PBI and GAM

Liam Mahony and Luis Enrique Eguren, as well as PBI co-founder Daniel N. Clark, have told the story of how Peace Brigades International (PBI) was founded in Canada in September 1981, placed its first team in Guatemala on March 21, 1983, and subsequently first met the Mutual Support Group (GAM) in early 1984:

“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.

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. 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.

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

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.

Photo of Rosario Godoy de Cuevas addressing a GAM rally in February 1985. The day before her abduction she had attended the funeral of GAM leader Héctor Gómez whose tortured body had been found on March 30, 1985. Amnesty International found several indications that members of security forces had collaborated in her death.

On April 3, 1985, 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.

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?’”

This was the beginning of PBI ‘escorting’: providing the surviving GAM leadership with around the clock unarmed bodyguards.”

Photo: PBI volunteer in GAM office in 1993.

We remember Maria Rosario Godoy de Cuevas and our historic and longstanding relationship with the Mutual Support Group (GAM).

We also recently remembered along with the Mutual Support Group the life of David Hartsough who “was with Peace Brigades International, just walking along the street with a little camera, a notepad and some change so we could try to make a phone call” during a GAM march in Guatemala in 1985. Our article is here.

GAM post on Facebook.

Scheduling hearing set for April 25, sentencing of Wet’suwet’en land defenders delayed to September-November

By
Brent Patterson
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Photo: Wet’suwet’en land defender Molly Wickham, Gitxsan land defender Shay Lynn Sampson, Akwesasne Mohawk land defender Teka’tsihasere Corey Jocko.

The Prince George Citizen reports: “In January 2024, [BC Supreme Court Justice Michael] Tammen found Wet’suwet’en Nation’s Molly Wickham (aka Sleydo’), Gitxsan member Shaylynn Sampson and Corey Jocko, a Mohawk from Akwesasne guilty of contempt of court” for disobeying in November 2019 a court injunction that prohibited impeding the construction of the Coastal GasLink fracked gas pipeline on Wet’suwet’en territory.

“[Then] on February 18, Tammen decided they will face reduced sentences for disobeying an injunction, but dismissed their application to stay the charges [despite ruling that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Community-Industry Response Group had] breached the Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantee of life, liberty and security of person [during a militarized raid on November 18-19, 2019].”

“[Now after a Thursday] April 3 BC Supreme Court scheduling hearing in Smithers, Tammen said that his schedule and the time needed for pre-sentencing reports have delayed the three-day [sentencing] hearing until fall [at some point in the months of September, October or possibly as late as November].”

“[That’s because] one cannot proceed [with the sentencing of the three land defenders] prior to preparation of Gladue Reports, which analyze the history of an Indigenous defendant and how family and personal suffering contributed to their offence [and] those reports may not be done until July or August.”

The article further notes: “[Justice Tammen] adjourned the matter until April 25 for another scheduling hearing.”

At the time of the February 18 ruling, the Canadian Press reported: “Tammen says that criminal contempt carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison, but those convicted typically receive short sentences.”

Photo: The courthouse in Smithers, British Columbia.

Potential prisoners of conscience designation

Ana Piquer, the Mexico City-based Americas director at Amnesty International, has previously commented: “If the Canadian state decides to unjustly criminalize and confine Sleydo’, Shaylynn, and Corey, Amnesty International will not hesitate to designate them as prisoners of conscience. Canada is on the sadly long list of countries in the Americas where land defenders remain at risk for their essential work.”

UN Special Rapporteur following the proceedings

Mary Lawlor, the Dublin-based United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights defenders, has posted on social media that these “HRDs continue to be criminalised for the peaceful defence of human rights & the environment [and that she] will be closely following their sentencing.”

Peace Brigades International

Ottawa-based Peace Brigades International-Canada coordinator Brent Patterson was on Wet’suwet’en territory November 19-22, 2019 in response to this video appeal in which Sleydo’ stated: “Whatever clan you are, whatever background you are, we need people to come and witness what’s happening on the yintah.”

We could return to territory to observe and help draw international attention to the three-day sentencing hearing in Smithers, British Columbia when that takes place in September, October or November of this year.

We will be following the hearing on April 25 to set this date.

PBI-Canada continues to encourage contributions to the Wet’suwet’en Yintah Defence Legal Funds.

More militarism is not the answer

PBI-Canada is also collaborating with World BEYOND War on this upcoming webinar in which Cree land defender Clayton Thomas-Muller will discuss the ongoing militarization of Indigenous territories, professor Tyler Shipley will talk about the militarization of foreign policy including through weapons exports that can serve to repress land and water protectors around the world, and author-activist Harsha Walia will provide her analysis of the militarization of the border including by RCMP Black Hawk helicopters.

You can register for this online discussion here.

Understanding Peace Brigades International and unarmed civilian protection as a form of civilian-based defence

By
Brent Patterson
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PBI-Colombia “25 years of solidarity” video still: “The paramilitary took me off a vehicle and there was a moment if two PBI women hadn’t been with me, an Italian and a Norwegian, they probably would have made me disappear.”

The concept of “civilian-based defence” appears to be coming up in multiple spaces in this current political moment of increased tension and concern.

Last month, authors Peter MacLeod and Richard Johnson explained in The Tyee: “Civil defence is the ability of an entire society to withstand crisis.”

They further explain: “In Sweden and Finland, civil defence is built around training, community preparedness and personal responsibility. Every adult is expected to have the knowledge and basic skills to help in an emergency — whether that’s first aid, defending critical infrastructure or organizing local response teams.”

And they comment: “The shift from ally to adversary could happen overnight, as a protectionist United States looks at Canada’s vast energy reserves, fresh water… We must be strong enough to push back, resilient enough to survive cyberwarfare and economic coercion… We must be prepared to defend our sovereignty — not just with military spending, but with a population that is engaged, trained and ready.”

Civil defence not militarism

Then this week the Green Party of Canada pledged if elected later this month: “The provision of universal civil defence training, ensuring all Canadians—regardless of age or background—have access to basic emergency preparedness skills, including first aid, crisis response, and cybersecurity awareness.”

Green Party co-leader Elizabeth May further commented: “This is not a call to militarization [it is a call to] support one another in times of crisis.”

Active nonviolence

And yesterday the Canadian Friends Service of Canada (Quakers) stated: “We are disturbed by the voices we hear within Canada loudly proclaiming the need to strengthen the military as a means of defence against invasion. …As we’ve explained elsewhere, civilian-based defence and related techniques of active nonviolence are viable ways for nations to defend themselves… We urge Canadians to learn more about active nonviolence. …We urge Canada to engage in nonviolent resistance focused on justice and peace.”

Peace Brigades International (PBI) and civilian-based defence

“Work concretely to realize peace”

Shortly before her death in 1992, German ecofeminist peace activist Petra Kelly, a friend of Peace Brigades International co-founder Hans Sinn, wrote in Nonviolent Social Defense: “The ending of the cold war has brought little change in our militaristic outlook. Why not invest in peace studies and peace actions? 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.”

Unarmed civilian protection

The concept of “unarmed civilian protection” or UCP can be situated within the concept of civilian-based defence. It can also be connected to the Gandhian concept of “Shanti Sena” (peace army or peace brigade) that informed the formation of Peace Brigades International (PBI) and our teams of “unarmed bodyguards”.

PBI’s current practice of “accompaniment” of threatened organizations, defenders and communities grew out of and evolved from our founding statement: “We are forming an organization with the capability to mobilize and provide trained units of volunteers.  These units may be assigned to areas of high tension to avert violent outbreaks. If hostile clashes occur, a brigade may establish and monitor a cease-fire, offer mediatory services, or carry on works of reconstruction and reconciliation.”

Just as MacLeod and Johnson wrote last month in The Tyee about civil defence in Sweden and Finland involving “organizing local response teams”, PBI’s founding statement in September 1981 references “individuals and groups enlisting their services in the work of local, regional and international peace brigades.”

For instance, PBI co-founder Daniel N. Clark has written that in late 1981 another PBI co-founder Lee Stern was “working to establish a local brigade in New York City to respond to Ku Klux Klan activities.”

How to fight fascism

While PBI thought about how to respond to the KKK in 1981 with a New York City-based brigade, this week Guardian columnist Zoe Williams wrote a column titled: How to fight a fascist state – what I learned from a second world war briefing for secret agents that references the arrests last weekend of Youth Demand activists at the Westminster Quaker Meeting House in London, United Kingdom.

On “non-state actions” by movements and Youth Demand’s self-description as a “non-violent civil resistance campaign”, Williams comments in her Guardian column: “There’s no point in a narrative that yields nothing concrete, no point in a protest that doesn’t disrupt, no point in disruption without a plan.”

Civilian-based defence defending civilians

The organizations, defenders and communities who Peace Brigades International accompanies fundamentally challenge power. The power of a transnational corporation to impose a megaproject on a territory without consent. The power of an illegal armed group to derive profit from the extraction of resources. The power of the state to impose an order that benefits the few and immiserates the many.

That challenging of power is why more than 2,106 land and environmental defenders have been killed over the past ten years. That is why PBI is in countries including Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico, where most of these defenders were killed.

Our form of civilian-based defence is to defend civilians who are challenging the power of transnationals, paramilitaries and the state to enable a vision of a just and sustainable world rooted in rights rather than impunity.

You can stay in touch with us through our daily articles about unarmed accompaniments of defenders here.

More militarism is not the answer: World BEYOND War and PBI-Canada webinar on April 8 at 7 pm ET

By
Brent Patterson
-

Webinar speakers: Harsha Walia, Tyler Shipley, Clayton Thomas-Muller.

The militarization of borders, Indigenous territories, and foreign policy through weapons exports has led to human rights abuses and repression. More border militarism, colonial dispossession and weapons exports are not the answer.

Join this critical and timely discussion on Tuesday April 8 with South Asian activist and writer Harsha Walia, professor and author Tyler Shipley, and Cree author, filmmaker, and land-defender Clayton Thomas-Müller.

Click “Register” here to sign up and get the Zoom link for this online discussion.

This webinar takes place in the context of Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Black Hawk helicopters now patrolling the 49th parallel, impunity for the RCMP Community-Industry Response Group (C-IRG) following militarized raids on Wet’suwet’en territory to push through the Coastal GasLink fracked gas pipeline, and the CANSEC arms show in Ottawa on May 28-29 that promotes the export of weapons and surveillance technologies that threaten the lives of human rights defenders and communities.  

Hosted by World BEYOND War and Peace Brigades International-Canada.

World BEYOND War is a global nonviolent movement to end war and establish a just and sustainable peace. The founding statement of Peace Brigades International highlights: “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.”

Join us on Tuesday April 8 at 7 pm ET by clicking here.

#MakingSpaceForPeace

Additional reading: “We are not resigned to rearmament and war in Europe”: PBI-Spanish State and nearly 850 organizations (March 28, 2025).

PBI-Colombia accompanies the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó at installation of Justice Evaluation Commission

By
Brent Patterson
-

Photo: PBI-Colombia stands with Ombudsman Iris Marin Ortiz at the installation ceremony at the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó on April 1.

On April 1, the Ombudsman’s Office posted on Instagram:

“Peace is built from the territories!

The Ombudsman @irismarinortiz installed the ‘Justice Evaluation Commission’ in Apartadó, Antioquia, in the framework of the ‘Friendly Settlement Agreement’ with the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó, victim of human rights violations since 1997.

The Commission has the mandate to evaluate the judicial processes related to the crimes against the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó and to present a public report with its findings and recommendations.

We ratify the commitment to life, dignity and justice for a #GoodFutureToday.”

The Office of the Ombudsman

The Ombudsman’s Office is a “Colombian State institution responsible for promoting human rights for a #Good Future Today.” As formally explained on their website: “It is the entity in charge of defending, promoting, protecting and disseminating the human rights, guarantees and freedoms of the inhabitants of the national territory and of Colombians residing abroad, against illegal, unjust, unreasonable, negligent or arbitrary acts, threats or actions of any authority or individuals.”

In August 2024, constitutional lawyer Iris Marín Ortiz was elected by the House of Representatives to be the Ombudsman of Colombia for the period 2024-2028.

Photo: PBI-Colombia with Ombudsman Iris Marin at the installation ceremony for the Commission. Photo by El Tiempo.

Justice Evaluation Commission to review 54 cases

W Radio explains: “After decades marked by murders, displacements and threats, the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó sees one of its historic demands advance: the creation of a Justice Evaluation Commission that will be in charge of reviewing 54 cases documented between 1997 and 2007. These facts, according to the community, remain unpunished despite the protection measures granted by international organizations.”

“The installation ceremony took place on April 1 in the municipality of Apartadó, Antioquia, with the presence of the Ombudsman, Iris Marín Ortiz. ‘Starting today, we will walk that path together,’ said Marín, who recognized that this commission represents an ‘unprecedented’ act of trust on the part of the community.”

That article adds: “The peace community of San José de Apartadó was founded in 1997 by peasants who decided to declare themselves neutral in the face of the armed conflict. Since then, it has been the target of crimes committed by paramilitary groups, guerrillas, and state agents. Although the Constitutional Court acknowledged in 2007 the absence of justice in his case, the orders issued then were not complied with and a similar commission, created in 2012, did not produce concrete results.”

Photo: PBI-Colombia at the ceremony.

The Commission and the IACHR ruling

Alerta Paisa further explains: “This Commission will be responsible for reviewing criminal investigations, processes, and judicial decisions in relation to serious human rights violations, constituting crimes, committed against members of the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó and persons linked to it.”

That article also notes: “This Commission responds to the agreement reached in December 2024 [the ‘Friendly Settlement Agreement’] in the framework of case 12.325 before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), a milestone in the fight against impunity and reparation for victims.”

El Colombiano further explains: “The precautionary measures of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) issued in 1997 and the provisional measures of the Inter-American Court since 2000, did not prevent its members from continuing to be victimized through massacres, forced displacements and threats, among other violations of Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law.”

It adds: “This mechanism was defined in December 2024 as part of the Friendly Settlement Agreement between the Peace Community and the Colombian State, with which both parties agreed to put an end to the international lawsuit for the systematic violations of human rights and breaches of International Humanitarian Law that have fallen on the aforementioned organization for more than two decades.”

Report within a year

The El Colombiano article also reports: “Within a year, at the end of their term, they [the commission] will present a public report with their findings, conclusions and recommendations.”

Accompaniment

Peace Community leader María Brígida González told the Commission: “In the midst of paramilitarism, with the complicity of the State and business sectors, we were preparing to live in the middle of the war without being part of it. In the midst of the massacres, on March 23, 1997, we made the decision to sign the public declaration [and establish] the Peace Community.”

The Peace Brigades International-Colombia Project has accompanied the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó since 1999.

Photo: Ombudsman Iris Marin with Father Javier Giraldo at the ceremony. Father Giraldo learned about PBI in the 1980s and thought it would be an appropriate protection model for human rights defenders in Colombia. He was the person who made the formal request for PBI to open a project in Colombia.

PBI-Honduras accompanies the CNTC rural workers union and 17 de junio community at trial date on land “usurpation”

By
Brent Patterson
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PBI-Honduras has posted:

“Yesterday [March 27], we accompanied the June 17 base together with the CNTC [National Union of Rural Workers] El Progreso [a city in the department of Yoro] in the trial for usurpation that was going to take place. However, due to various reasons, the hearing could not be held and was pending rescheduling.

From PBI, we express our deep concern about the criminalization process involving the peasant base advocates. It is critical to ensure the protection of the rights of those in pursuit of social justice and the defense of the land.

On the other hand, we applaud and support the work of the CNTC El Progreso, whose tireless work to ensure access to land, promote agricultural reform and guarantee food sovereignty is essential for the well-being of peasant communities.”

A “campesino” (male) or “campesina” (female) translates as “peasant” or “country person”, coming from the Spanish word “campo” meaning “field” or “country”. The term campesino/campesina refers to a farmer or agricultural workers with a strong cultural connection to the land and community.

A “base campesina” can be understood as a “peasant base” or perhaps as a self-managed agricultural cooperative.

“Usurpation” can be understood as a criminal charge that enables evictions and that criminalizes the occupation/presence of campesinas on land in the context of land ownership inequalities and through the political prism of the prioritization of private property rights and the rights of large landowners and agribusiness.

“La base campesina 17 de junio”

On June 17, 2024, PBI-Honduras visited “la base campesina 17 de junio” and noted their concern “about the criminalization of the peasant population, whose work is fundamental to guarantee food security.”

On March 13, 2023, PBI-Honduras also visited the community “which is in the process of recovering land and developing community projects.” PBI-Honduras added: “For 2 years, the base has been in the process of reclaiming land and is developing community projects, which include the expansion and recovery of crops, collective gardens, fish farms and irrigation systems, among others.”

June 17, 2009

Rebelion has noted: “On 17 June 2009, at a meeting with a thousand peasants from Bajo Aguán [Honduran president Manuel] Zelaya promised to remediate the lands of landowners and hand over any surpluses that were outside the law, along with other idle land, to some 100,000 peasants claiming arable land. Eleven days after that promise, on Sunday 28 June [the president was ousted in a coup].”

Inequality surrounded by millions in profits

Reuters has reported: “Less than 5% of Honduras’ landowners, government figures show, control 60% of the fertile terrain, including many monocultures of palm and other export crops.” And anthropologist Andrés León has noted: “The Aguán is a region of rampant poverty and misery surrounded by a crop that makes millions in profits.”

Peasants criminalized, murdered

In October 2023, Criterio.hn reported:

“Defending the right of access to land for peasants is a deadly task in the fertile – and coveted by agro-industrialists – Valle del Aguán, located between the departments of Colón and Yoro, in northeastern Honduras.

According to estimates by the Agrarian Platform and the Coordinator of Popular Organizations of the Aguán (COPA), since 2009 it has been the scene of more than 200 murders of peasants. The murders are preceded by the criminalization of their leaders as a form of generalized intimidation of those who decide to raise their voices against land grabbing whose destiny was agrarian reform in favor of peasant groups, but ended up in the hands of agro-industrialists and politicians.

The lawyer of the law firm Estudios para la Dignidad, Lestter Castro [warns] that, although criminalization has been the constant figure over time, this does not imply that more violent forms of repression are not applied against peasant groups such as persecution, surveillance, threats and murders carried out by murderous groups and state security forces, in alliance with agro-industrial companies.”

Accompaniment

The Peace Brigades International-Honduras Project has accompanied the National Union of Rural Workers (CNTC) since May 2018.

The CNTC is affiliated with the Unified Confederation of Honduran Workers (CUTH) which in turn is affiliated with the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), along with 150+ labour organizations including the Canadian Labour Congress.

Photo: PBI-Honduras with Franklin Almendares, General Secretary, National Union of Rural Workers (CNTC).

PBI-Colombia accompanies the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó on the 28th anniversary of its formation

By
Brent Patterson
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PBI-Colombia has posted on Instagram:

“We congratulate the Peace Community for their anniversary, they have been 28 years of Resistance and Peace Building in the territory of Urabá. We were able to accompany them on March 23, on these special dates and always remembering Nalleli and Edinson whose case remains in complete impunity.”

The founding of the Peace Community

Yes! Magazine has reported: “On March 23, 1997, Brígida Gonzáles, 69, along with the others who decided to stay, founded the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó. This ‘Peace Community’ declared itself neutral in the conflict, pledging not to get involved in any way and asked to be left in peace.”

For Peace Presence has explained: “In the middle of the 1990s, as violence escalated and peasant farmers suffered from extrajudicial deaths at the hands of armed actors as well as forced displacements, the people began to organize themselves in order to return to their land and to escape from the spiral of violence.”

It adds: “Conscientiously objecting to the war and demanding their rights as civilians not to be involved in a conflict, the community denounced the use of arms within their territories and committed to a variety of principles in the process (including cooperative communal work, prohibition of alcohol, the non-use of illicit drugs, the no-entry of armed actors, non-use of weapons and the refusal to provide information to armed actors).”

The Peace Community is located more than 700 kilometres northwest of Bogota in the mountainous northern region in the department of Antioquia.

Nallely and Edinson

Last year, the El Colombiano newspaper reported: “Nallely and Edinson were murdered on Tuesday, March 19 at noon, the news reached Apartadó around 6 p.m. and the bodies were collected 24 hours later.”

Infobae also reported: “The region where this crime was perpetrated is mainly operated by the paramilitary Gaitanista Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AGC), also known as Clan del Golfo, the country’s largest criminal gang.”

On March 20, 2024, Colombian president Gustavo Petro posted: “Four hundred members of the community of Paz de San José de Apartadó have been murdered [since its founding], two days ago, the whole government was there in Apartadó and we met with members of the community in the Popular Assembly. On our return they assassinated two more community members. Dark forces want to reissue paramilitarism in the northwest of the country.”

Accompaniment

The Peace Brigades International-Colombia Project has accompanied the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó since 1999.

Corporations calling for energy projects to be declared in the “national interest” could put land defenders at risk

By
Brent Patterson
-

Photo: In April 2015, Public Safety Canada’s Government Operations Centre (GOC) reportedly saw Unist’ot’en opposition to the Coastal GasLink pipeline as a risk to Canada’s “national interest”. By January 2019, “Canadian police were prepared to shoot Indigenous land defenders blockading construction of  [the Coastal GasLink pipeline] in northern British Columbia, according to documents seen by the Guardian.”

The chief executive officers of eight Canadian energy companies, including the CEOs of Calgary-based TC Energy Corp. and Enbridge Inc., have sent this open letter on “how Canadian energy can help strengthen Canada’s economic sovereignty” to the leaders of the four major political parties in Canada.

The letter from these CEOs highlights: “By declaring a Canadian energy crisis and key projects in the ‘national interest’, the federal government will be able to use all its available emergency powers to ensure that the dramatic regulatory restructuring required to expand the oil and natural gas sector is rapidly achieved.”

This “national interest” framing could lead to the criminalization of Indigenous land defenders who seek to uphold their right to free, prior and informed consent and their sovereignty over unceded territories against extractive megaprojects.

In January 2019, Justin Brake wrote in The Narwhal about a report (titled “Strategic Incapacitation of Indigenous Dissent: Crowd Theories, Risk Management, and Settler Colonial Policing”) by Jeffrey Monaghan of Carleton University and Miles Howe of Queen’s University that “paint[s] a picture of how government departments, police, intelligence agencies and private sector interests work together to compile intelligence on activists — including Indigenous land defenders — and rate them according to the risk they pose to ’critical infrastructure’ such as pipelines, and to Canada’s ‘national interest’.”

C-IRG raids on Wet’suwet’en territory

The article by Brake was published in the days following the first Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Community-Industry Response Group (C-IRG) raid on Wet’suwet’en territory on January 8, 2019, that resulted in the arrest of 14 people.

Brake writes: “As part of their research Monaghan and Crosby uncovered previously classified documents on the Unist’ot’en clan of the Wet’suwet’en Nation … including a Government Operations Centre (GOC) report … [that] included revealing language, including reference to the pipeline as ‘critical infrastructure’ and ‘risk to the national interest resulting from a blockade or protest against the proposed TransCanada Coastal Gaslink liquefied natural gas (LNG) pipeline’ (which at the time they determined was ‘medium-low’).”

The proposed PRGT pipeline

The letter from the CEOs to the political party leaders highlights: “There is increasing public support to urgently grow our energy sector and build energy infrastructure, including new oil and natural gas pipelines and LNG terminals, to expand Canada’s energy exports.”

This could include the Prince Rupert Gas Transmission (PRGT) pipeline, a proposed 800-kilometre pipeline from northeastern British Columbia that would move between 2 billion and 3.6 billion cubic feet of fracked gas per day to a floating liquified natural gas (LNG) terminal on Nisga’a land on Pearse Island.

Gitanyow resistance

We are following the resistance of Indigenous land defenders to the PRGT pipeline, including the blockade on unceded Gitanyow lax’yip (territory) in northern British Columbia.

On a PBI-Canada webinar held on March 5, 2024, Tara Marsden, Wilp sustainability director for Gitanyow Hereditary Chiefs, commented: “Our learning is that consent only works when we say yes, if we say no, even if we say no with science behind us, and our knowledge and our laws behind us, then we will be met with force from the C-IRG, from militarized invasion and occupation and intimidation and harassment.”

We continue to follow this.

Further reading: When “national interest” and “national security” militarize the response to an environmental struggle (PBI-Canada, January 18, 2022).

Lockheed Martin Board of Directors rejects stockholder proposal from Sisters to align its political activities with Human Rights Policy

By
Brent Patterson
-

Photo: Protests at the CANSEC arms at the EY Centre in Ottawa have drawn attention to Lockheed Martin, a sponsor of CANSEC 2025.

The Lockheed Martin “2025 Annual Meeting of Stockholders” is a virtual gathering happening on May 9, less than three weeks before the U.S. based transnational exhibits at the CANSEC arms show in Ottawa, May 28-29.

The Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia, the Sisters of Charity of Saint Elizabeth, the School Sisters of Notre Dame and the Benedictine Sisters of Mount St. Scholastica have made a “stockholder proposal” (on page 82) to Lockheed Martin that resolves that “shareholders request the Board of Directors to annually conduct an evaluation and issue a public report, at reasonable cost and omitting proprietary information, describing the alignment of its political activities (including direct and indirect lobbying and political and electioneering expenditures) with it Human Rights Policy.”

The “whereas” section of the proposal notes: “The UN has criticized the ‘symbiotic relationship’ between governments and defense contractors, ‘which can cause States to approve arms exports despite genuine human rights risks that should prevent them’.”

It further highlights: “F-35s have been used repeatedly by Israeli forces to target Palestinian civilians in Gaza and are connected to apparent war crimes. Despite this, in June 2024, Israel sign a $3 billion deal with Lockheed to sell 25 F-35s to Israel.”

Lockheed Martin has responded (on pages 83-84 of this circular): “The Board of Directors Recommends a vote AGAINST Proposal 5 because Lockheed Martin’s lobbying practices already align with our Human Rights Policy, and our stockholders overwhelmingly rejected the same proposal last year with no indication of change in their views. Thus, Proposal 5 is redundant and unnecessary.”

The response from Lockheed Martin continues: “Proposal 5 also asserts that our work to sell F-35s to international customers causes us to be complicit in war crimes, suggesting we should not sell F-35s to certain allies of the U.S. Government despite the government’s review, approval and facilitation of our sales of the planes to those allies. Proposal 5’s assertions misstate the F-35 program’s role in strengthening global alliances and partnerships through connected deterrence capabilities, thus strengthening human rights and the ability to defend human rights. Ultimately, our work is closely aligned with our customers and is subject to rigorous government oversight to ensure that our business complies with legal requirements and furthers the interest of the U.S. Government and its allies to support human rights including by helping to deter conflict around the world.”

The Lockheed Martin Board of Directors response concludes: “We received a similar proposal from the same proponents in 2024, and 87% of our stockholders rejected that proposal at the 2024 Annual Meeting.”

Weapons sales and human rights defenders

Peace Brigades International-Canada focuses on the protection and security needs of human rights defenders.

We uphold and affirm the statement by Amnesty International that: “Legal concepts of ‘corporate complicity’ in and the ‘aiding and abetting’ of international crimes continue to evolve and could in the future apply to arms companies that continue supplying weapons in the knowledge that they may be used to commit or facilitate serious violations of international human rights or humanitarian law.”

On January 16, 2025, Ihab Marwan Kamal Faisal of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) and his family were killed by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City. In February 2024, in two separate incidents, two of PCHR’s lawyers, Nour Abu Al-Nour and Dana Yaghi, were also killed along with their families by Israeli airstrikes.

In its Global Analysis 2023/24 released in May 2024, Dublin-based Front Line Defenders stated: “Those defending the right to health and the right to life as doctors, nurses, or ambulance workers, those exposing and documenting war crimes as journalists, and those providing humanitarian support as volunteers or employees of aid agencies were all specifically targeted by Israeli bombs or guns.”

In a joint statement calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, Washington, DC-based Global Witness, that reports annually on killings of land and environmental defenders, has also supported the demand for halting the transfer of weapons, parts, and ammunition that may be used to commit violations of international humanitarian law.

We continue to follow this and take note of this “Shut Down CANSEC” mobilization.

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