| From | Rights Action <[email protected]> |
| Subject | Now Magazine excerpts from TESTIMONIO |
| Date | November 4, 2021 12:14 PM |
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Civil lawsuits in Canada & TESTIMONIO reveal Canadian embassy role in creating “favourable climate for business” in Guatemala
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*******
Now Magazine excerpts from TESTIMONIO
[link removed]
Civil lawsuits in Canada & TESTIMONIO reveal Canadian embassy role in creating “favourable climate for business” in Guatemala
Embassy referred to Indigenous people as “invaders”
Now Magazine publishes this excerpt, as mining repression explodes again, against Maya Q’eqchi’ people in eastern Guatemala.
*******
Is Canada to blame for human rights abuses in Guatemala?
Ongoing civil suits against Canadian mining companies reveal embassy role in creating a favourable climate for business in the country
By Annie Hylton, Oct. 31, 2021, [link removed]
Rosa Elbira Coc Ich says she was cooking at home when the men with guns came on January 17, 2007. The women and children of her village were busy preparing food and tending to domestic tasks, while the men farmed in the fields.
Rosa Elbira Coc seated in remains of her home, burnt to ground January 9 & 17, 2007, the very spot where she was grabbed and sexually assaulted by company security guards, soldiers and police. Photo: Grahame Russell
In a signed affidavit, Coc Ich describes seeing the men with guns before: about a week prior, hundreds of them swept up the remote region of eastern Guatemala, burning homes down to charred rubble while evicting at least five Maya Q’eqchi’ communities.
Coc Ich’s community of Lote Ocho, a small farming village about a six-hour drive northeast of Guatemala City, had been targeted. The Guatemalan Nickel Company (CGN), a subsidiary of Canadian mining company Skye Resources, which amalgamated with Hudbay Minerals in 2008, claimed to own those lands.
Coc Ich, a Maya Q’eqchi’ woman, had spent all of her life on those ancestral lands before the mining company security guards, police, and military came to destroy close to 100 wood and thatch houses. She fled with her neighbours farther up in the mountains, to hide in the highlands. A few days after the eviction, when the armed men left, the villagers returned to rebuild. They collected plastic, nylon, string, and bamboo to repair their huts, and they tended to their fields of beans, corn, squash, and cardamom.
The armed men then paid the village a second visit, on January 17. As the vehicles approached, filled with hundreds of military, police, and mining company security guards, some villagers began to run while others tried to gather their belongings. Coc Ich, 22 at that time, says she stayed inside her home, the hut she had begun to rebuild.
Coc Ich describes how the men barged in, and a police officer pointed a gun at her head, asked where her husband was, and threatened to kill her. Coc Ich replied that she didn’t know.
The men began smashing things, including her bowls and cooking utensils. Then she was thrown to the ground, and her clothes, a traditional Maya blouse and skirt, were ripped off. She was held down; her mouth was covered. But she says she could see, affixed to some of their uniforms, chest patches that read “CGN” (though Hudbay argues that there were no CGN personnel or private security contractors at the scene that day); others were military men, dressed in fatigues, and national police officers, in black uniforms.
(Editor’s note: In previous court filings ([link removed]) and public relations materials, Hudbay has disputed the 11 women’s claims, arguing that prosecutor and police records show that no CGN or other private security guards were present at the eviction on January 17 — and in fact, that “no illegal occupiers were present.” Hudbay claims that none of the women were there that day).
“I thought only one of them would rape me, but instead all nine men raped me, one after the other, on the floor of my home,” she says in the affidavit.
Lawsuits against Hudbay Minerals
Coc Ich is one of 11 women in the community of LoteOcho who say they were gang-raped that day ([link removed]) , in similar circumstances, and are suing Hudbay Minerals. Two of the women were pregnant – one suffered a miscarriage, the other gave birth to a stillborn baby. Coc Ich had a number of miscarriages, after the rapes, until she was able to conceive a baby daughter in 2017.
Canadian government mining push
Coc Ich lives in the northeast of the country near the Fénix mine, but her story is not exceptional. Diodora Hernández, a woman who lives in the remote western highlands, near Goldcorp’s gold mine in San Miguel Ixtahuacán, was shot in the head. And seven men from the southwest, near Tahoe Resources’ silver mine, ([link removed]) also claim to have been injured when security personnel shot at them.
The year 1996 marked the formal end of three-and-a-half decades of state repression and genocides against the mainly Maya population and a small armed conflict in Guatemala. It also marked the beginning of a more aggressive neoliberal development agenda, partly through licenses with Canadian extractive companies. A year later, Guatemala amended its national mining law to encourage foreign investment, a decision that would fuel conflict between companies and communities for decades to come.
According to geographers Catherine Nolin and Jacqui Stephens, who studied the work of Canadian mining companies in Guatemala from 2004 to 2008, Canada’s “pro-business, pro-mining stance, through its embassy’s activities,” has shaped Guatemala’s development model and, in turn, has helped plunder the resources of Indigenous and local communities.
Documents received through Access to Information requests show that the embassy was active in creating a favourable environment for the operation of Canadian companies.* This included forming ties with Otto Pérez Molina, Guatemala’s president from January 2012 to September 2015, who was imprisoned in 2015 for his alleged involvement in a multi-million-dollar customs corruption scandal ([link removed]) .
Canadian embassy plays pivotal role
In 2011, a couple of weeks after Pérez Molina was elected president, an embassy attaché sent an email to then-Canadian ambassador Hugues Rousseau about a meeting with the future Guatemalan mining minister, which included: “The recently elected government and the current conjuncture is being seen by the mining sector as a good momentum to move forward on the discussions about the mining law and its implications. Apparently, the extractive sector ... is showing genuine interest to initiate dialogue with the government.”
Rousseau responded: “I spoke with opm [Otto Pérez Molina] tonight about a request [redacted]. I also told him we were eating with his chosen mining minister. Very happy with our approach.”
About a year later, in February 2012, the vice president of corporate affairs of Canadian mining giant Goldcorp – one of the first Canadian companies to operate a mine in Guatemala’s post-conflict period – went before a Canadian parliamentary committee and described what appeared to be the expectation of a close level of co-operation between the Canadian and the Guatemalan governments.
“In Guatemala, I would like to see them modernize their mining regulations. That would add to the stability of the environment within which we deal in Guatemala. Can I go as Goldcorp and start training the Ministry of Energy and Mines? I can’t do that. The credibility behind that is not right. However, I think it makes a lot of sense to have a government institution come in to take our experience here in Canada – Natural Resources Canada in terms of their experience – and bring that experience to Guatemala.”
Canadian embassy referred to Indigenous people as “invaders”
Documents shared by Shin Imai, an emeritus law professor at York University and director of the Justice and Corporate Accountability Project, suggest that the embassy played a key role in these industry gatherings. At one point, over the issue of land confrontations between Maya communities and Canadian companies, the embassy, in its internal communications, even referred to the Indigenous people as “invaders.”
At least four security groups hired at Canadian-owned mining sites ([link removed]) in Guatemala have been accused of having questionable human rights records. Some of their members are said to have trained in counter-terrorism, to be operating without weapons licenses or registration with the state, or to have ties to the Guatemalan military ([link removed]) during the country’s war.
The UN-backed Commission for Historical Clarification, set up after the war to investigate human rights violations, found that state forces and related paramilitary groups committed 93 percent of documented violations during the state-sponsored terror and genocide; now, some of these same forces are working privately in the mining industry.
@ ([link removed]) nowtoronto ([link removed])
Excerpted from Testimonio, Canadian Mining In the Aftermath of Genocides in Guatemala, with permission from Between The Lines. This excerpt has been slightly edited for length.
There are three civil lawsuits against Hudbay Minerals ongoing in Canada. The lawsuit by 11 Maya Q’eqchi’ women; a lawsuit by Angelica Choc, widow of community leader Adolfo Ich who was shot and killed in 2009; and by German Chub, who was shot and left paralyzed in 2009 by Hudbay’s former head of security. The cases are proceeding in Canada. In January 2021, Mynor Padilla, former Hudbay head of security for Hudbay, pled guilty in Guatemalan court to having shot and killed Adolfo Ich and shot and left paralyzed German Chub.
* As part of the author’s ongoing investigations into mining and governance in Guatemala, she submitted a request to Guatemala’s Ministry of the Interior on May 26, 2017 under the country’s Public Information Access Law, and on June 23, 2017 she received documents from several units and offices within the Ministry of the Interior in response to the request. The author has kept copies of all relevant documents.
* Order books: [link removed]
* Bulk purchases: Karina Palmitesta, [email protected] (mailto:[email protected])
* Watch book launch, Oct. 25, 2021: [link removed]
Mining repression explodes against Maya Q’eqchi’ people
* “Fenix" mining operation in Guatemala is ILLEGAL (Oct. 20, 2021), [link removed]
* Urgent Action: Mining repression against Angelica Choc, German Chub and 100s of Maya Q’eqchi’ land / human rights defenders (Oct. 27, 2021), [link removed]
* Angelica Choc and Lote 8 women speak out (Oct. 28, 2021), [link removed]
* Canadian lawyers for Angelica Choc & German Chub speak out about repressive raids against their clients in Guatemala (Oct. 28, 2021), [link removed]
Rights Action archives (Hudbay Minerals, INCO, Skye Resources, Solway Investment Group): [link removed]
Send urgent letters to
* Solway Investment Group: Baarerstrasse 8, 6300 Zug Switzerland, +41417400400, [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) , [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) , www.solwaygroup.com ([link removed])
* Embassy of Switzerland, Guatemala: +502 2367 5520, [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) , [email protected] (mailto:[email protected])
* Embassy of Switzerland, Canada: +1 613 235 1837, [email protected] (mailto:[email protected])
* Embassy of Switzerland, US: +1 202 745 7900, [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) , [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) , [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) , [email protected] (mailto:[email protected])
* European Union Human Rights in Guatemala: [email protected] (mailto:[email protected])
*******
Emergency Response Fund
Rights Action is sending emergency human rights funds to people we have long worked with in the region, including German Chub, Angelica Choc and Ich-Choc family, Gremial de Pescadores y Campesinos;Ancestral Council of Q’eqchi’ people. Funds are used to:
* Help people flee El Estor, some by land into the mountains
* Replace iphones and communication devices
* Get funds to families whose bank accounts are frozen or family members were forced to flee military crackdown
* Provide food and shelter for people forced to leave El Estor
* Help mobilize human rights activists to try and reach El Estor to bear witness
* Prepare for legal defense costs related to abusive-trumped up criminal charges
Make checks payable to "Rights Action" and mail to:
* U.S.: Box 50887, Washington DC, 20091-0887
* Canada: (Box 552) 351 Queen St. E, Toronto ON, M5A-1T8
Credit-Card Donations: [link removed]
Donations of securities in Canada and U.S., write to: [email protected] (mailto:[email protected])
E-transfers and wires, write to: [email protected] (mailto:[email protected])
Please share and repost this information
Subscribe to Newsblasts: [link removed]
www.facebook.com/RightsAction.org
Tw: @RightsAction
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[link removed] Twitter ([link removed])
[link removed] Website ([link removed])
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[link removed]: https%3A%2F%2Fmailchi.mp%2Frightsaction%2Fnow-magazine-excerpts-from-testimonio Tweet ([link removed]: https%3A%2F%2Fmailchi.mp%2Frightsaction%2Fnow-magazine-excerpts-from-testimonio)
[link removed] Forward ([link removed])
November 3, 2021
*******
Now Magazine excerpts from TESTIMONIO
[link removed]
Civil lawsuits in Canada & TESTIMONIO reveal Canadian embassy role in creating “favourable climate for business” in Guatemala
Embassy referred to Indigenous people as “invaders”
Now Magazine publishes this excerpt, as mining repression explodes again, against Maya Q’eqchi’ people in eastern Guatemala.
*******
Is Canada to blame for human rights abuses in Guatemala?
Ongoing civil suits against Canadian mining companies reveal embassy role in creating a favourable climate for business in the country
By Annie Hylton, Oct. 31, 2021, [link removed]
Rosa Elbira Coc Ich says she was cooking at home when the men with guns came on January 17, 2007. The women and children of her village were busy preparing food and tending to domestic tasks, while the men farmed in the fields.
Rosa Elbira Coc seated in remains of her home, burnt to ground January 9 & 17, 2007, the very spot where she was grabbed and sexually assaulted by company security guards, soldiers and police. Photo: Grahame Russell
In a signed affidavit, Coc Ich describes seeing the men with guns before: about a week prior, hundreds of them swept up the remote region of eastern Guatemala, burning homes down to charred rubble while evicting at least five Maya Q’eqchi’ communities.
Coc Ich’s community of Lote Ocho, a small farming village about a six-hour drive northeast of Guatemala City, had been targeted. The Guatemalan Nickel Company (CGN), a subsidiary of Canadian mining company Skye Resources, which amalgamated with Hudbay Minerals in 2008, claimed to own those lands.
Coc Ich, a Maya Q’eqchi’ woman, had spent all of her life on those ancestral lands before the mining company security guards, police, and military came to destroy close to 100 wood and thatch houses. She fled with her neighbours farther up in the mountains, to hide in the highlands. A few days after the eviction, when the armed men left, the villagers returned to rebuild. They collected plastic, nylon, string, and bamboo to repair their huts, and they tended to their fields of beans, corn, squash, and cardamom.
The armed men then paid the village a second visit, on January 17. As the vehicles approached, filled with hundreds of military, police, and mining company security guards, some villagers began to run while others tried to gather their belongings. Coc Ich, 22 at that time, says she stayed inside her home, the hut she had begun to rebuild.
Coc Ich describes how the men barged in, and a police officer pointed a gun at her head, asked where her husband was, and threatened to kill her. Coc Ich replied that she didn’t know.
The men began smashing things, including her bowls and cooking utensils. Then she was thrown to the ground, and her clothes, a traditional Maya blouse and skirt, were ripped off. She was held down; her mouth was covered. But she says she could see, affixed to some of their uniforms, chest patches that read “CGN” (though Hudbay argues that there were no CGN personnel or private security contractors at the scene that day); others were military men, dressed in fatigues, and national police officers, in black uniforms.
(Editor’s note: In previous court filings ([link removed]) and public relations materials, Hudbay has disputed the 11 women’s claims, arguing that prosecutor and police records show that no CGN or other private security guards were present at the eviction on January 17 — and in fact, that “no illegal occupiers were present.” Hudbay claims that none of the women were there that day).
“I thought only one of them would rape me, but instead all nine men raped me, one after the other, on the floor of my home,” she says in the affidavit.
Lawsuits against Hudbay Minerals
Coc Ich is one of 11 women in the community of LoteOcho who say they were gang-raped that day ([link removed]) , in similar circumstances, and are suing Hudbay Minerals. Two of the women were pregnant – one suffered a miscarriage, the other gave birth to a stillborn baby. Coc Ich had a number of miscarriages, after the rapes, until she was able to conceive a baby daughter in 2017.
Canadian government mining push
Coc Ich lives in the northeast of the country near the Fénix mine, but her story is not exceptional. Diodora Hernández, a woman who lives in the remote western highlands, near Goldcorp’s gold mine in San Miguel Ixtahuacán, was shot in the head. And seven men from the southwest, near Tahoe Resources’ silver mine, ([link removed]) also claim to have been injured when security personnel shot at them.
The year 1996 marked the formal end of three-and-a-half decades of state repression and genocides against the mainly Maya population and a small armed conflict in Guatemala. It also marked the beginning of a more aggressive neoliberal development agenda, partly through licenses with Canadian extractive companies. A year later, Guatemala amended its national mining law to encourage foreign investment, a decision that would fuel conflict between companies and communities for decades to come.
According to geographers Catherine Nolin and Jacqui Stephens, who studied the work of Canadian mining companies in Guatemala from 2004 to 2008, Canada’s “pro-business, pro-mining stance, through its embassy’s activities,” has shaped Guatemala’s development model and, in turn, has helped plunder the resources of Indigenous and local communities.
Documents received through Access to Information requests show that the embassy was active in creating a favourable environment for the operation of Canadian companies.* This included forming ties with Otto Pérez Molina, Guatemala’s president from January 2012 to September 2015, who was imprisoned in 2015 for his alleged involvement in a multi-million-dollar customs corruption scandal ([link removed]) .
Canadian embassy plays pivotal role
In 2011, a couple of weeks after Pérez Molina was elected president, an embassy attaché sent an email to then-Canadian ambassador Hugues Rousseau about a meeting with the future Guatemalan mining minister, which included: “The recently elected government and the current conjuncture is being seen by the mining sector as a good momentum to move forward on the discussions about the mining law and its implications. Apparently, the extractive sector ... is showing genuine interest to initiate dialogue with the government.”
Rousseau responded: “I spoke with opm [Otto Pérez Molina] tonight about a request [redacted]. I also told him we were eating with his chosen mining minister. Very happy with our approach.”
About a year later, in February 2012, the vice president of corporate affairs of Canadian mining giant Goldcorp – one of the first Canadian companies to operate a mine in Guatemala’s post-conflict period – went before a Canadian parliamentary committee and described what appeared to be the expectation of a close level of co-operation between the Canadian and the Guatemalan governments.
“In Guatemala, I would like to see them modernize their mining regulations. That would add to the stability of the environment within which we deal in Guatemala. Can I go as Goldcorp and start training the Ministry of Energy and Mines? I can’t do that. The credibility behind that is not right. However, I think it makes a lot of sense to have a government institution come in to take our experience here in Canada – Natural Resources Canada in terms of their experience – and bring that experience to Guatemala.”
Canadian embassy referred to Indigenous people as “invaders”
Documents shared by Shin Imai, an emeritus law professor at York University and director of the Justice and Corporate Accountability Project, suggest that the embassy played a key role in these industry gatherings. At one point, over the issue of land confrontations between Maya communities and Canadian companies, the embassy, in its internal communications, even referred to the Indigenous people as “invaders.”
At least four security groups hired at Canadian-owned mining sites ([link removed]) in Guatemala have been accused of having questionable human rights records. Some of their members are said to have trained in counter-terrorism, to be operating without weapons licenses or registration with the state, or to have ties to the Guatemalan military ([link removed]) during the country’s war.
The UN-backed Commission for Historical Clarification, set up after the war to investigate human rights violations, found that state forces and related paramilitary groups committed 93 percent of documented violations during the state-sponsored terror and genocide; now, some of these same forces are working privately in the mining industry.
@ ([link removed]) nowtoronto ([link removed])
Excerpted from Testimonio, Canadian Mining In the Aftermath of Genocides in Guatemala, with permission from Between The Lines. This excerpt has been slightly edited for length.
There are three civil lawsuits against Hudbay Minerals ongoing in Canada. The lawsuit by 11 Maya Q’eqchi’ women; a lawsuit by Angelica Choc, widow of community leader Adolfo Ich who was shot and killed in 2009; and by German Chub, who was shot and left paralyzed in 2009 by Hudbay’s former head of security. The cases are proceeding in Canada. In January 2021, Mynor Padilla, former Hudbay head of security for Hudbay, pled guilty in Guatemalan court to having shot and killed Adolfo Ich and shot and left paralyzed German Chub.
* As part of the author’s ongoing investigations into mining and governance in Guatemala, she submitted a request to Guatemala’s Ministry of the Interior on May 26, 2017 under the country’s Public Information Access Law, and on June 23, 2017 she received documents from several units and offices within the Ministry of the Interior in response to the request. The author has kept copies of all relevant documents.
* Order books: [link removed]
* Bulk purchases: Karina Palmitesta, [email protected] (mailto:[email protected])
* Watch book launch, Oct. 25, 2021: [link removed]
Mining repression explodes against Maya Q’eqchi’ people
* “Fenix" mining operation in Guatemala is ILLEGAL (Oct. 20, 2021), [link removed]
* Urgent Action: Mining repression against Angelica Choc, German Chub and 100s of Maya Q’eqchi’ land / human rights defenders (Oct. 27, 2021), [link removed]
* Angelica Choc and Lote 8 women speak out (Oct. 28, 2021), [link removed]
* Canadian lawyers for Angelica Choc & German Chub speak out about repressive raids against their clients in Guatemala (Oct. 28, 2021), [link removed]
Rights Action archives (Hudbay Minerals, INCO, Skye Resources, Solway Investment Group): [link removed]
Send urgent letters to
* Solway Investment Group: Baarerstrasse 8, 6300 Zug Switzerland, +41417400400, [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) , [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) , www.solwaygroup.com ([link removed])
* Embassy of Switzerland, Guatemala: +502 2367 5520, [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) , [email protected] (mailto:[email protected])
* Embassy of Switzerland, Canada: +1 613 235 1837, [email protected] (mailto:[email protected])
* Embassy of Switzerland, US: +1 202 745 7900, [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) , [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) , [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) , [email protected] (mailto:[email protected])
* European Union Human Rights in Guatemala: [email protected] (mailto:[email protected])
*******
Emergency Response Fund
Rights Action is sending emergency human rights funds to people we have long worked with in the region, including German Chub, Angelica Choc and Ich-Choc family, Gremial de Pescadores y Campesinos;Ancestral Council of Q’eqchi’ people. Funds are used to:
* Help people flee El Estor, some by land into the mountains
* Replace iphones and communication devices
* Get funds to families whose bank accounts are frozen or family members were forced to flee military crackdown
* Provide food and shelter for people forced to leave El Estor
* Help mobilize human rights activists to try and reach El Estor to bear witness
* Prepare for legal defense costs related to abusive-trumped up criminal charges
Make checks payable to "Rights Action" and mail to:
* U.S.: Box 50887, Washington DC, 20091-0887
* Canada: (Box 552) 351 Queen St. E, Toronto ON, M5A-1T8
Credit-Card Donations: [link removed]
Donations of securities in Canada and U.S., write to: [email protected] (mailto:[email protected])
E-transfers and wires, write to: [email protected] (mailto:[email protected])
Please share and repost this information
Subscribe to Newsblasts: [link removed]
www.facebook.com/RightsAction.org
Tw: @RightsAction
[link removed] ([link removed])
[link removed]
[link removed] Facebook ([link removed])
[link removed] Twitter ([link removed])
[link removed] Website ([link removed])
============================================================
Copyright © 2021 Rights Action, All rights reserved.
You are receiving this email because you are one of our subscriptor
Our mailing address is:
Rights Action
Box 50887
20091-0887
Washington, DC 0
USA
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