Father Restrepo opposed the Toronto-based Gran Colombia Gold Corp. mine in Colombia.
Postmedia News reports in newspapers across the country, “Canada’s free trade deal with Colombia is again threatening to explode into controversy after the Conservative government released a report this week that was supposed to detail the agreement’s impact on Colombia’s human rights situation — but didn’t. Trade Minister Ed Fast told the House of Commons on Wednesday that the government did not have enough information to conduct a full assessment by the time it was required to submit the report to Parliament.”
“The Canada-Colombia free trade agreement came into force in August 2011 following years of polarized debate and political gridlock. The Conservative government, which considers Colombia a key ally in the region, has insisted the deal would promote economic prosperity in both countries and lead to a strengthening of the rule of law and improved human rights. But civil society groups and the NDP fear the deal will exacerbate the country’s poor human- and labour-rights record by rewarding companies and politicians involved in violations and undermining the protections afforded for indigenous communities.”
“Last September, a number of civil society groups sent a letter to the Canadian Embassy in Bogota concerning the murder of a Catholic priest who had previously spoken out against a Canadian mining operation in his community.
Jennifer Moore, Latin American program co-ordinator for the Ottawa-based industry monitor MiningWatch Canada, said she has received reports of other incidents involving Canadian mining companies in Colombia, particularly on indigenous rights. Moore described the government’s report as shameful. ‘There’s nothing in this report about human rights at all,’ she said.”
Shout Out Against Mining Injustice, June 1-2 in Vancouver
In mid-September 2011, the Council of Canadians joined with MiningWatch Canada, the Steelworkers Humanity Fund, the Public Service Alliance of Canada, the Canadian Union of Public Employees and other groups to urge the Canadian Embassy in Colombia to support investigations surrounding the death of Fr. José Reinel Restrepo in Marmato, Colombia.
Earlier this year, the National Catholic Reporter reported, “The basic details surrounding the assassination of Restrepo are by now well-known in Colombia. On the afternoon of Sept. 2, Restrepo shuttered the church, mounted his small motorcycle and puttered down the unpaved, tortuously steep mountain road past the numerous small gold mines that employ most of the villagers. His plan was to visit family members in a nearby city — something he was known to do with predictable frequency every week or so. But about an hour into the journey, he was ambushed and shot to death on a lonely stretch of road. His motorcycle was not stolen, nor was the cash in his wallet.”
“In the village, people remain studiously neutral when discussing the murder. But they all agree that Restrepo’s death possibly resulted from his very vocal stance against a bitterly divisive proposal to modernize gold extraction in the village. According to this proposal — now in preparation for government review by a company based in Canada called Gran Colombia Gold Corp. — Marmato would be obliterated in order to make way for a vast open-pit mine that would allow the company maximum access to what it calls ‘a world-class ore body’ that would be completely mined within a few decades.”
“Under new mining laws crafted with heavy involvement by the government of Canada, the Colombian government is licensing vast swaths of the country to foreign and domestic mining companies. Between 2002 and 2010 areas with mining titles boomed from 2.8 million acres to 21 million acres, and about 40 percent of the country is under consideration for mining projects. …But even though the Colombian government has identified mining development as a primary ‘economic locomotive’, it has largely failed to acknowledge that thousands of small-scale mines employing hundreds of thousands of workers have long been mining the very same deposits that foreign corporations are being promised.”
Jamie Kneen, the Communications and Outreach Coordinator for MiningWatch Canada, will moderate the concluding plenary session at the ‘Shout Out Against Mining Injustice’ conference titled ‘Next Steps: Tools and strategies for community resistance and solidarity’. To register for Shout Out, please go to http://canadians.org/shoutout. The conference is dedicated to the memory of all those who have been killed in the struggle against mining injustice.
To read Council of Canadians trade campaigner Stuart Trew’s blog – Harper government ignores Canada’s obligation to perform human rights impact assessment of Canada-Colombia FTA – please go to http://canadians.org/blog/?p=15118.
