The Dominion - David Parker

Three Weeks in the West Bank

hillarybain — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 05:48:24 +0000

Resistance, destruction, life in Palestine

WEST BANK—In the wake of the Conservative government funding cuts to NGOs critical of Israel, independent journalist David Parker travelled to the West Bank in April to learn more about the reality of life in Palestine.

Israel maintains a three-year long siege on Gaza, and continues to actively colonize the West Bank, displacing Palestinians, stealing land, and enforcing a matrix of control.

David Parker is Spoken Word Coordinator at CKDU 88.1 in Halifax.

Bil'in

Hebron

Sheikh Jarrah

Beit Hanoun

Al-Walaje

South Hebron Hills

Gilo

Silwan

Queer Country

hillarybain — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 06:00:34 +0000

Mapping queer liberation in rural Nova Scotia

HALIFAX—It all started with a bike trip. During a long distance cycle from Halifax to Pictou County in July, 2008, Sonia Edworthy and Lynne Hood discovered what they called “Queer Paradise” in rural Nova Scotia.

The Mermaid and the Cow campground is situated among beautiful rolling hills, red dirt roads, forests and farmland. It is a place dedicated to providing a safe and fun camping experience for members of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) communities and their queer-positive friends.

"I have lived on this farm for 31 years; it's a beautiful place, and it was time to share it," says Jane Morrigan, lesbian, owner of the campground and former dairy farmer, of her decision to open the campground eight years ago. Morrigan loves to explain her connection to the land and the farm: "It's been an intensely powerful force, giving inspiration, hope, sustenance and comfort. Being so close to nature, so close to the beauty of the universe, virtually on my doorstep, has made the difference between getting through things and not getting through things."

Edworthy and Hood, along with their friend Kelly Baker, who was writing her master’s thesis on the experience of rural queer in Nova Scotia, returned to the campground a few months later. In the midst of a snowstorm, they planned a summer event that would embrace the spirit of camp and camping, of coming out and being out.

"I think part of our motivation to organize Camp Out was to create a space outside of the more typically sanctioned spaces for queer people to get together,” says Edworthy. “To create a space that was real and open and safe for people."

"Having experienced a lot of homophobia while growing up, and continuing to face it at my workplace, I wanted to be able to talk about how homophobia and oppression hasn't stopped,” says Hood, of her reasons for organizing the event. "The pieces that are celebrated are there, like freedom, diversity and equality, but there's still so much work to be done."

Camp Out took place on a weekend in July 2009 to celebrate LGBTQ activism in the Maritimes. The event sought to connect and exchange, face-to-face, with rural and urban, older and younger queers; to hear the stories of how it used to be—and how it is; to get a sense of history in rural and urban contexts, and to link the past and present together in the ongoing struggle for human rights.

The Mermaid and the Cow was not the only inspiration for organizing the weekend. The organizers agree that Baker's master's thesis was a prominent inspiration for having the gathering. Baker had recently finished her thesis, and presented her findings at Camp Out.

Baker came out to her community at age 17, in grade 12 high school. She hails from Port Medway, a rural Nova Scotian community on the South Shore, population 200.

"It's important not to paint all small town places as homophobic, as the history books do," says Baker over a coffee in Halifax's North End. "Much of the academic literature traces gay and lesbian liberation back to the cities. If you presuppose that all queer people come out in the city, you leave out so many."

Baker found the academic literature on the subject of coming out in rural areas was mapped onto migration from rural to urban spaces. She discovered a gap in the theory that failed to explain those who didn't move to the city, and those with strong ties to home. People felt more acceptance in small towns than the literature portrayed.

In her thesis work, she interviewed 14 people who had either always lived in rural Nova Scotia, or were born and raised in rural Nova Scotia, moved to the city, then moved back to rural Nova Scotia, with some participants originating from outside the province.

"For many who went to the cities in the '80s, they felt alienated. Although the presence of other queers was satisfying, they didn't feel the sense of community they were looking for."

Baker's experience is the same: her family had lived in Port Medway for six generations. They were so established in the community that when she came out, she was generally accepted. Now Baker lives in Halifax's North End, but she still visits the small fishing town, with it's wooden fishing boats, lighthouses, and clapboard housing.

One similarity she found among her subjects, predominantly women, was that Pictou was "a drawing card" for queer women. Twenty-five years ago, they had weekend campovers of mainly lesbian women, including workshops, communal meals, music and informal gatherings. The rural and the urban were not so separate, as lesbian conferences in the city drew rural dwellers, and vice versa.

"These camping get-togethers probably looked a lot like Camp Out," says Baker.

The theme of Camp Out, announced on the hand-drawn posters that were pasted around Halifax in the summer, read: "Exploring LGBTQ activism in the Maritimes PAST and PRESENT."

Although she recognizes that queer activism in Nova Scotia has always existed, Morrigan thinks the turning point for queer organizing in Nova Scotia was 1994— over the incident known as Skokewall.

In 1994, Roseanne Skoke, a homophobic Liberal MP representing Pictou County, stood up in Parliament and denounced homosexuals, declaring that natural law should deal with all deviants. It was the 25th anniversary of the Stonewall riots in New York City, largely credited as the first moment in American history when the homosexual community fought back against state policy that discriminated based on sexual orientation. Morrigan and her partner had just returned from the Gay Games in New York. They had a sense of being part of an unstoppable force that was going to win, even in Nova Scotia. They began to organize, protest, demanding Skoke's resignation, leading to a rally in New Glasgow, across the street from her office, with over 100 people in attendance.

Garnering national attention, it got the movement rolling. A group in Pictou formed, called the Homosexualist Agenda. Skoke had said, "These people have an agenda," so they turned the phrase on its head: their agenda was for freedom, equality, and pride.

In the spring of 2008, Pictou County witnessed a resurgence of queer mobilization when local municipalities voted to prevent the flying of rainbow flags on municipal flagpoles. Rallies were held in Pictou and Truro, where over 100 queer people and their allies gathered. This is where Morrigan first met Kelly Baker.

"In 2008, when Truro banned the flying of the rainbow flag, it was a reminder that there are rural queer communities, and that local non-queer residents are also motivated for justice," says Baker.

Older participants of Camp Out felt encouraged by meeting younger queer activists. Robin Metcalfe, former member of the Gay Alliance for Equality, active in gay rights struggle in the 1970's in Halifax, agreed. "For me, I saw that there is a new wave of queer activism."

David Parker is a freelance journalist and queer activist based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and a member of the Halifax Media Co-op. He was born and raised in southern Ontario.

This article was produced by the Halifax Media Co-op.

Camp Out

"You Will See..."

hillarybain — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 13:36:47 +0000

Bearing the scars of Canadian intelligence

HALIFAX – Abousfian Abdelrazik toured Canada this fall after six long years spent in forced exile in Sudan where he was detained and tortured. He has returned to Canada, despite the efforts of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), or as Abdelrazik calls them, the Canadian Muhkabarat. Mukhabarat is an Arabic word meaning "intelligence," and refers to state security intelligence agencies known for their brutality, torture, arbitrary detentions and human rights violations.

He related his story of the Canadian Muhkabarat at a public presentation in Halifax in September.

“Between 1997 and 2003, [CSIS] started to follow me everywhere. They started bothering my [sick] wife, they even went to her family and to her father at work. 'Give us information about your husband, and we will give you better treatment for your cancer,' they said.”

In 2003, On the eve of his departure from Canada to Sudan to see his mother who had fallen ill, Abdelrazik, a Canadian citizen who had never been charged with a crime, had an encounter with CSIS in Montreal.

“Two days before leaving for Sudan, two agents from CSIS came to my apartment and asked me about my travel. One of them said, 'We know you're planning on going to your country, Sudan.' I went back inside and called the police. The police arrived in the parking lot, and asked the CSIS agents to leave. While they walked away, one of them turned to me and said to me, 'You're going to Sudan, you will see.'”

While in Sudan in September of 2003, he was detained by Sudanese state security and initially held in prison in Khartoum. In Sudan, where he was being interrogated and tortured, the same CSIS agents visited him.

“One evening, the same men who arrested me, came and took me. They said 'Your friends, the Canadian Mukhabarat, have come to talk to you.' They brought me to the office, where I found the same two guys who visited me my last night in Montreal, sitting at a table, with nice drinks, cakes, and coffee. One of them, the one who turned to me in Montreal and said 'you're gonna see', said to me, 'Remember what I said to you in Montreal? Now you're going to see! Sit down!' And they interrogated me for two days.”

“He said to me 'You're not Canadian, you're Sudanese. You're going to stay forever in Sudan, my country doesn't need you!'” said Abdelrazik, relating some of the verbal harassment.

Abdelrazik was released from his first detention in 2004, but was detained again in 2005 for nine months.

In 2006, he was added to the UN no-fly list, under regulation 1267, and all his assets were frozen.

The RCMP reviewed their files in 2007, and found there was “no substantive evidence to indicate that Abdelrazik is involved in any criminal activity.” Nonetheless, CSIS maintained “he is an important Islamic jihad activist.” In April 2008, Abdelrazik took refuge at the Canadian embassy for fear of continued detention, torture and possible death at the hands of Sudanese security.

In 2009, 116 Canadians broke federal law and purchased a plane ticket for Abdelrazik's return home. Mere hours before his flight, Lawrence Cannon, Minister of Foreign Affairs, used his discretionary powers to bar his return.

In his June 4 ruling, Federal Court Judge Russell Zinn ordered the Canadian government to repatriate Abdelrazik to Canada within 30 days, stating, "[Mr. Abdelrazik] is as much a victim of international terrorism as the innocent persons whose lives have been taken by recent barbaric acts of terrorists."

Judge Zinn found that CSIS was complicit in the original detention of Mr. Abdelrazik by Sudanese authorities; that by mid 2004 Canadian authorities had determined that they wouldn't seek to assist Abdelrazik's return to Canada, and would consider refusing him an emergency passport that was required to ensure he could return to Canada; that the UN Resolution (regulation 1267) does not impede Abdelrazik from returning to his own country, and Canada's assertions to the contrary was a way to ensure he would not return to Canada; and that the denial of an emergency passport on April 3, 2009, was a breach of his Charter right to enter Canada.

Due in part to Judge Zinn's ruling and partly to mounting pressure on the government, Mr. Abdelrazik finally touched Canadian soil again on June 27, 2009, and was heralded by his supporters.

On September 21, three days before launching a Canada-wide speaking tour with Abousfian Abdelrazik and Project Fly Home—an advocacy and campaign network—Mr. Abdelrazik's lawyers submitted a lawsuit against the Attorney General of Canada and Minister Cannon. Abdelrazik is claiming $24 million in damages from the Attorney General on the basis of false imprisonment, torture, negligence, intentional infliction of mental suffering, breach of fiduciary duty, and breaches of his Charter Rights. He is also claiming $3 million in damages from Lawrence Cannon for misfeasance in public office, intentional infliction of mental suffering, and breach of Charter Rights.

Abousfian Abdelrazik's case is similar to those of Maher Arar, Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad El Maati and Muayyed Nureddin, all of whom were jailed on the recommendation of CSIS. Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen jailed in Syria and later repatriated to Canada, described the situation in a Globe and Mail column.

"Canadians deserve to know why so many of this country's citizens, all of Muslim background, have been imprisoned and tortured abroad," he wrote. "Human-rights organizations, activists and national-security experts have been calling for the current government to establish the credible oversight agency that was recommended by Judge O'Connor several years ago."

Sarah Todd, a member of Project Fly Home, toured with Mr. Abdelrazik across Canada and helped in the public presentations. "You have to call into question the privilege, and the structures of class, race, religion, and highlight who is targeted," she told The Dominion. "This couldn't necessarily happen to any Canadian citizen, [and] it's important to highlight the two-tiered citizenship rights.”

Abdelrazik spoke of the fear among the Muslim community, in Montreal and across Canada. "I have so many friends in Montreal, who are Muslims, and they live in fear of CSIS, and wherever the Muslims are [in Canada], they are living the same thing.”

"With Stephen Harper, [exporting torture has] become a reality that people accept, and it violates human rights and creates a climate of fear that is totally unacceptable," Project Fly Home member Emilie Breton told The Dominion. "[It] has also made people believe that arbitrary measures should be used in the name of national security. This is a slow move towards a police state, where rights don't exist for citizens. It's important to denounce this and resist it."

Project Fly Home is an initiative of The People's Commission on Immigration and “Security” Measures. The Project came together under the increased harassment of immigrant and racialized communities, Indigenous people, radical groups and political organizations. Its goal is to monitor this harassment, to oppose it, and to challenge the whole idea of the national security agenda.

In an interview with The Dominion, Mr. Abdelrazik stated that the mobilization of Canadian civil society was an instrumental factor in pressuring the government to repatriate him. One hundred and sixteen Canadians broke federal law to purchase the April 3 plane ticket for Mr. Abdelrazik's return, despite UN regulation 1267, which makes it an offence to donate or give any financial aid to the listed person.

"I want to thank them a lot, for what they have done for me," he said. "I think if they hadn't stood up for me, and without the pressure on the government, I would have been forgotten in Sudan for so long. And I would tell them to continue, as there are many cases just like mine. Let us all continue doing the same thing, and bring justice for them.”

Lawrence Cannon, Federal Minister of Foreign Affairs, was contacted by phone and email to request an interview for this article, but his press secretary declined to comment due to the current lawsuit.

-----

David Parker is an independent journalist and Spoken Word Coordinator at CKDU 88.1 fm in Halifax.

Abousfian Abdelrazik

Justice Served Cold

hillarybain — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 06:00:00 +0000

Four Atlantica arrestees declare police and prison mistreatment

HALIFAX–It was a cold winter's day nearing Christmas, and not much was stirring on the streets of Halifax. In front of the Provincial Court on Spring Garden Road, a group of people huddled together, entering the court for a long-awaited trial date. On December 22, 2008, four Haligonians took the stand and testified in front of a judge to a courtroom packed with supporters.

The defendants had been charged a year and a half earlier after hundreds took to the streets of downtown Halifax on June 15, 2007, to oppose a regional integration proposal known as Atlantica. Charges included carrying weapons, wearing masks with intent, unlawful assembly, and resisting arrest.

The Atlantica demonstrations numbered 400 protesters and included a militant tactic known as a black bloc that intended to shut down the conference.

Demonstrators were targeted by police and reported extreme police brutality, including being choked until unconscious, shocked with taser guns, and beaten by batons.

George Dalli was one of the defendants on trial. "I saw police hitting other people, pepper spraying, tasers were drawn: it was an intense and intimidating situation before the arrest. I told the officers, 'I'm not resisting arrest, not trying to be violent.' I was rolled onto my stomach, hands behind my back. I was choked, fingers were jabbed into my neck, I said, 'Don't do this to me, I'm losing consciousness, don't do this to me,' and I continued saying this until I lost consciousness."

The 21 individuals arrested that day spent the next three days in jail, the first 48 hours in lockdown.

Leading up to June 2007, the Maritime provinces of Canada and the American New England states saw growing popular resistance to the Atlantica project (also known as the Atlantic Gateway) from multiple sectors of the left, including labour unions, workers, environmentalists, NGOs such as the Council of Canadians, anti-capitalists, anarchists, anti-poverty organizations, families, and concerned citizens.

This was the first time anyone had served time or faced charges for an action against the Atlantica proposal. It marked a breaking point. For those braving the cold to gather in court in December 2008, the story was far from over.

Atlantica is a proposed free trade agreement that would bring goods from Asia into larger markets in the US, lowering environmental and labour standards and increasing the transportation and energy industries. The region comprised of the Atlantic provinces, the Gaspé Peninsula of Québec, Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire and upstate New York has been identified as Altantica by the largest corporations operating in the area, such as Irving Oil and Emera Inc. Irving Oil controls regional oil and gas, and has many holdings in New Brunswick. Emera Inc. owns energy infrastructure in North East USA and the Atlantic provinces and is the parent corporation of Nova Scotia Power.

The proponents of Atlantica hope to create a free trade zone that would harmonize regulations between Canada and the US. Environmental standards, minimum wage and trade unions are all considered barriers to increased trade according to some proponents of Atlantica.

Asaf Rashid, a protester arrested at the Atlantica demonstrations, fears that one result of Atlantica might be lowered environmental standards for the creation of proposed Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) terminals. One terminal in Saint John, New Brunswick is close to completion, and three more are proposed on the Passamaquoddy coast of Maine.

Other proposed projects include a second nuclear reactor in New Brunswick, and pipelines transmitting natural gas from New Brunswick to Maine and New York State, moving straight through properties, agricultural areas and wildlife habitats.

"Atlantica will lead to further environmental degradation by lowering environmental standards and increasing energy consumption, production and export in the region,” says Aaron Doncaster, also arrested at the demonstrations in 2007. “We as citizens are subsidizing this destructive activity. Atlantica needs to be shut down."

Out of the 21 demonstrators arrested, most were let off with “diversion,” where in exchange for some restitution the defendants do not retain a criminal record. However, four among them still must abide by restrictive conditions while they await their verdict.

"Right now, they can only associate with each other to prepare for the trial, and all of them are not allowed to participate in any protest," says Vaughn Barnett, the legal defense for the defendants. "That's what they've been putting up with for 1.5 years. [It's a] serious infringement of their freedom of expression. They had to agree to those conditions, they were coerced into it during their mistreatment during custody. They suffered brutal treatment by police, plus denial of their rights while in jail.

"[The] defendants shouldn't be punished by police and authorities. That's something that a judge should decide after a fair trial."

In court, Barnett presented his constitutional challenge, a defence strategy that has been front and centre in all of his defendants' cases from the Atlantica demonstration. His challenge argues that it would be unfair to make the defendants go to the trial proper, based on the way they were mistreated, which he considers extra-judicial punishment by police and jail authorities.

All four defendants had the opportunity, through Barnett's examination, to detail the extent of their mistreatment by police and jail authorities from the time of their arrest until their release from prison three days later.

Dalli recounted the three days in jail. For the first 24 hours he had only one power bar and one bottle of water given to him, the same as all the others. Despite jail policy being fully described in a handbook that prisoners are supposed to see, including how to successfully make a complaint to the jail authorities, none of the arrestees knew where the handbook was, nor that it existed, until the court date in December.

"We're not going to find it or ask for it if we don't know it exists," said Dalli.

In December, the defence presented evidence of mistreatment by police and prison authorities. On the next trial date in August 2009, the Crown will respond with its own evidence. Barnett assumes the Crown will be calling police and jail officials. At that point the judge will decide whether Barnett’s constitutional challenge will succeed.

If it succeeds, the charges will be dropped on the basis that it would be unfair to make the defendants go to the trial proper. If not, it might succeed partially, which could mean certain charges are dropped or sentences are reduced.

The Judge might decide to continue with the trial and consider the constitutional breaches at the sentencing stage.

Rashid is unsure of what the future of the case holds. According to him, the Crown was unprepared for the constitutional challenge. However, the Judge did decide to postpone the proceedings until August, and did not drop the restrictive conditions of the defendants. "It's hard to say where the Judge is leaning right now. He's not making it obvious."

David Parker is an independent journalist and Spoken Word Coordinator at CKDU 88.1 fm in Halifax.

Atlantica

The Nuclear Push

dawn — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 10:24:40 +0000

Mining lobby wants uranium ban lifted

HANTS COUNTY, NOVA SCOTIA–As the global demand for energy increases and resources dwindle, a collusion of provincial government and extractive industry officials are pushing to establish a uranium mining industry in rural Nova Scotia through a "voluntary planning” process.

The Mining Association of Nova Scotia (TMANS), whose board of directors represents a variety of mining companies, has been promoting an end to the 1982 moratorium on uranium mining in the province.

"By having a moratorium in place, we are blind," Gordon Dickie, then-President of TMANS, said in April. "We are blinded in terms of not being able to acquire information that would be useful to where we build our houses and where we draw our water."

Dickie's comment assumes that eventually the moratorium will be lifted and the uranium will be mined, something that environmental groups are fighting against due to safety concerns about mining radioactive ore.

During uranium exploration, toxins are released, posing serious risks to local ecosystems and communities. According to MiningWatch Canada, uranium is generally mined in open pits or through "in situ" leaching, a process that pumps an acidic or alkaline solution into the ground. These processes' ramifications include the contamination of groundwater, the dispersal of radioactive dust, and the release of radioactive gas.

Despite the health and environmental risks, however, skyrocketing oil prices have made nuclear power – and thus, uranium mining – increasingly attractive. The World Nuclear Association website shows that Canada is the number one exporter of uranium in the world. In 2004, Canada’s uranium production was about 30 per cent of total world figures, a value of approximately $800 million.

Companies such as Capella Resources are banking on a lift of the moratorium while conducting explorations in areas of Nova Scotia with known uranium deposits.

Exploration Underway

Millet Brook lies in the central rocky interior that runs the length of mainland Nova Scotia, in Hants County. It is here that the province's highest amount of uranium was discovered three decades ago, and also where popular resistance helped precipitate movement towards the 1982 moratorium.

The moratorium stipulates that mineral exploration must cease when uranium is detected in concentrations higher than 100 parts per million (ppm), in order to protect those areas from any mineral development that would release the uranium deposits. Millet Brook has the highest concentration of uranium in Nova Scotia, well over 100 ppm. But Capella Resources has a special permit from the Nova Scotia government that allows it to explore without releasing the results of their sampling. This enables them to continue to do bulk sampling in West Hants, all around Millet Brook.

Bulk sampling entails the removal of large amounts of overburden – the earth and rock that lie above the uranium. In this case, the mining takes place in an ecosystem that supports endangered species such as the mainland moose and the common nighthawk.

Some citizens see the permit as a breach of the moratorium. Donna Smyth and Gillian Thomas, anti-uranium activists with Citizen Action to Protect the Environment (CAPE) based in Wolfville, NS, see this breach as a threat to local ecosystems, including the watershed in West Hants.

The watershed in West Hants is not categorized as a municipal watershed and thus is not protected by provincial regulations. "In provincial regulations, 'watershed' means water supply area in a business sense, for municipal populations, not in the ecological sense of 'everywhere the water flows,'" says Smyth. Development in West Hants would mean diverting the Avon River watershed from its natural flow to instead be used for the development.

The Future of Natural Resources

Voluntary Planning (VP), an arms-length agency of the Nova Scotia government, was formed to gather public input and influence government decision-making concerning natural resources in the province. However, its website also states that the government is "in no way beholden to act on all or any of Voluntary Planning's recommendations.”

In turn, VP created the Natural Resources Citizen Engagement Committee. The Committee is made up of eight members, appointed by the Board of Voluntary Planning. Amongst the eight, three have an affiliation with nuclear power or uranium mining. One of them, David Duncan, was the person who, decades ago, discovered the uranium deposit in Millet Brook. Between May 12 and June 17, the Committee held "citizen engagement" events throughout the province.

According to Angela Giles of the Atlantic Chapter of the Council of Canadians, "There were several problems with the Voluntary Planning sessions themselves. Many people complained that there was little public advertising and most seemed to have heard about the sessions through word of mouth.

"The outline of the session was that the first half was dedicated for a 'go-around' for each person around the circle to introduce themselves and comment about one or all of the four topics [biodiversity, parks, forests, and mining] ... The second half was to break away into smaller groups based on the four topics. These issues should have had separate meetings. Many people (myself included) felt unfulfilled by the opportunity Voluntary Planning provided, given that I had only two minutes to express my concerns during the three-hour session.”

Jamie Simpson, who works with Halifax’s Ecology Action Centre, said that at the meeting in Pugwash there was a strong presence of industry representatives among the crowd of 55 people, making it appear that industry's opinions on mining – as well as forestry – were the opinions of the community. Simpson said that at the break-out session on mining, all the attendees were mining industry representatives, skewing the discussion.

As the meetings progressed, concerned participants began to develop an understanding of how to take control of the process and spread the word themselves to create a strong presence at the sessions.

Now that the Citizen Engagement sessions have been completed and the written submissions are in, the next step is for the Citizen Engagement Committee to work with Volunteer Planning staff to produce a final report on the process. The report will then be passed on to an "independent" expert panel that will produce their own report for the provincial government. Finally, the department will write its strategy based on the submissions from the first two phases, projected for 2010.

David Parker is the News Coordinator at CKDU 88.1 fm campus-community radio in Halifax.

Asaf Rashid is Campaigns Coordinator at the Nova Scotia Public Interest Research Group (NSPIRG) and a Halifax-based organizer against the Atlantica free trade zone.

Angela Day is a writer, gardener and youth worker, currently pursuing a Masters degree in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Warning Sign

Fear, Impunity and State Power

dru — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 22:53:01 +0000

Colombia's paramilitary regime and social movements

MONTREAL -- In August of 2007, Paola, a mother, university student and teacher, received a written death threat. She is a member of the Committee for Solidarity for Political Prisoners, a group that struggles for the rights of political prisoners in Colombia. It is a country where state repression has broken the social fabric, where being a human rights defender can have dangerous consequences; since 2002, there have been 955 assassinations committed by the Armed Forces, the highest level of politically motivated homicide in the Western hemisphere.

In a country where repression of social organizations involves selective and collective assassinations, disappearances, detentions and massacres, fear of death is part of daily life. On the bus on the way to the Industrial University of Santander in Bucaramanga, Paola handed me a note sent by the paramilitary organization known as “Aguilas Negras” to 11 student organizers, accusing them of being linked to networks of the FARC and ELN, Colombia’s two largest guerrilla groups. The death threat assured their recipients that their actions were being monitored and their days numbered. "You and the organizations you represent are a problem for Colombia... The plan to annihilate you all will begin with the very next student strike."

The death threat is a common tactic from this nationwide right-wing paramilitary group. Weeks ago, the local office of SINALTRAINAL, a national union of food workers, received a written death threat under the front door. Fear courses in the veins of the country; a legitimate fear, a well-sanctioned and reasonable fear for the safety of human rights defenders, unionists, peasant leaders, Afro-Colombians, indigenous leaders and community members.

Paramilitary and military forces have honed a method of instilling fear and producing forced displacement throughout the country. Jose Antonio knows this tactic well. An Afro-Colombian peasant, a subsistence farmer until his forced displacement and the theft of his lands in 1997, he and his family have lived it first-hand. As we walked through the African Palm plantations in Choco, Jose Antonio showed me the former location of his community. Ten years ago, under Operation Genesis, the whole region was attacked by air, water and land, a concerted military and paramilitary operation that massacred, tortured, assassinated and forcibly displaced over 4,000 traditional communities living ancestral lifestyles. He showed me the former location of his brother's small farm, which is now rows of African Palm trees.

Jose Antonio pointed to where there used to be a river and said, "Over there, my brother used to fish."

"He was fishing one day with his four children, when the paramilitaries came to him. They tied his hands behind his back, cut open his chest and removed his innards with their hands. They told his children to leave and not to come back to this land."

The statistics of systematic violence in Colombia show the endemic nature of the problem. The Union Patriotica, a political party seeking a humanitarian accord between the FARC and the government since the 1990s, have suffered the assassination of over 5,000 members. The highest rates of homicide of indigenous people have been among the Embera Katio, the Wayuu and the Kankuamo peoples, who have suffered 234 homicides since 1999. From 1986 to 2006, there have been 2,515 union leaders assassinated. The National Federation of Municipal Councils (FENACOM) reports 251 council members assassinated since 1985. According to the Colombian Commission of Jurists, between 1996 and June 2006, 31,656 people were either killed or disappeared. Of these massacres, 83.07% are attributed to State forces.

The Consultation of Human Rights and Forced Displacement (CODHES) has stated that between 1985 and 2005, there were 3,720,428 citizens registered as forcibly displaced. According to the Ideas for Peace Foundation, members of the AUC--a former paramilitary organization--have invested in three million hectares of land, while drug traffickers have bought one million hectares. Seventy per cent of landowners are small-scale farmers who possess only five per cent of total land area. The reality of forced displacement by State forces and the subsequent purchasing of large quantities of land by paramilitary members are facts that demonstrate the illegal appropriation of land through violent means. Meanwhile, most small-scale farmers are forced either to find smaller parcels of land to cultivate, or join the growing waves of urbanization. In either case, they continue to face the threat of violence.

A traveller passing through the cities of Colombia might see a moderately developed country, an urbanized population and a burgeoning middle class. Liberal economic journals describe Colombia’s economy as a prosperous, growing market, rich in natural resources and ready for investment. But many Colombians understand the situation as an ongoing civil war. The State apparatus of control and repression--legitimated through impunity and maintained through the consolidation of executive military power in all branches of government and a broken social fabric with violence being a continual threat in all levels of society--has maintained a state of siege and atomized the Colombian countryside. Informants and military and paramilitary forces create local fiefdoms, regional strongholds of ultra-right-wing power. Urban centres are infiltrated by networks of informants and surveyed by police and military.

“The most preoccupying factor of the situation is the appearance of normality which this military and political project has acquired”, says Soraya Gutierrez Arguello, president of the Jose Alvear Restrepo Lawyers' Collective. Specific elements of social control, such as paramilitarism, impunity and State power, have kept much of the country's population in a state of terror.

Paramilitarism: Infiltrating Civil Society and Rending the Social Fabric

Most socio-political studies agree that the origins of contemporary violence in Colombia began in the mid-1940s. Institutional and rural violence, stimulated by the Conservative Party, left 300,000 dead without investigation and left thousands without homes. The resulting armed uprising from rural sectors precipitated an internal conflict that to this day continues to spill blood. The State doctrine since the 1960s has been one of counterinsurgency and has authored systematic, generalized violations of human rights and crimes against humanity. A key element of the counterinsurgent strategy has been paramilitarism, which uses terrorist tactics and benefits from state support.

Paramilitarism has worked to annihilate social resistance and democratic opposition of civil society, creating new agents of capitalist accumulation while generating forced displacement.

According to Arguello, paramilitarism has united the anti-insurgent struggle with drug trafficking and State support under one apparatus of "irregular right-wing war, constructing paramilitary corridors, owned territorialities, zones of consolidation, eruption of local para-states, interlinked into a national phenomenon of power."

Armed right-wing paramilitary groups have had ample support from corporate sectors, large scale farmers, merchants, State security institutions, Armed Forces, police and regional government. They have even benefited from significant representation in Colombian parliament and share a profound affinity with the current administration of President Uribe Velez. The Colombian Office of the United Nations' High Commission of Human Rights has signalled the ongoing connections between paramilitary groups and the State.

The paramilitary strategy is excused with claims that victims are suspected guerrillas or guerrilla collaborators. In reality, the victims are systematically targeted members of the civilian population. According to a follow-up mission conducted by the Organization of American States in July 2007, paramilitaries maintain and exercise an authoritarian criminal control, which inhibits the possibility of citizen action without coercion, making municipal and departmental elections very problematic. Relying on a network of informants, paramilitary infiltration into communities and authorities at all levels of society has broken the social fabric, creating suspicion and mistrust among communities, neighbours and even family.

According to Leonardo Jaimes M, a lawyer with the Committee for Solidarity with Political Prisoners (FCSPP), it is common in penal processes to observe lists created by militaries that include many people (students, small farmers, unionists, civilians) accused of being guerrillas.

"No one knows how these lists are formed, what criteria are held, or what proof exists to conclude guerrilla participation. The majority of these listed people are later assassinated or disappeared by State agents or paramilitary groups."

Canadian and other foreign companies certainly figure prominently in the paradigm of State violence for economic development. According to Maria Jimenez of The Globe and Mail, Canadian investments in Colombia are an estimated $1 billion from 17 corporations, making Canada the 10th largest investor in the world. The investments are concentrated in the sectors where repression of unionists is greatest: oil, gas and mining.

While scandal erupts in Colombia over President Uribe’s ties to narco-traffickers and paramilitaries, Canada is putting trade negotiations with Colombia in overdrive by signing a new Free Trade Agreement. The FTA will open up Colombia for more foreign development and resource extraction for the profit of Canadian companies at the expense of the basic civil rights of Colombians.

Three Soldiers