A short film discussing the nature of the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement and its impact on Te Tiriti o Waitangi, the treaty representing the bicultural relationship in Aotearoa New Zealand. Jane Kelsey, Hone Harawira, Marama Davidson and Margaret Mutu provide their insight on the matter and call on this generation to stand up for our rights.
For more on the threat of the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement, see:
A tribe in eastern India are facing a new threat from mining on their ancestral land, despite having won a major “David & Goliath” legal battle in 2014.
The Dongria Kondh were originally threatened by international mining corporation Vedanta Resources, who tried to open a bauxite mine in their sacred Niyamgiri hills, but were prevented by the Indian Supreme Court, which ruled that the Dongria should decide whether to allow the mine to go ahead.
The tribe unanimously rejected Vedanta’s plans to mine their hills during a historic referendum in which all twelve villages that were consulted voted against the mine.
Now, however, the Odisha state is trying to re-open the issue, petitioning for the right to hold another referendum for the Dongria to pave the way for a large-scale mining operation, this time by state-run Odisha Mining Corporation.
British-owned Vedanta opened a bauxite refinery close to the Dongria’s hills without having secured permission to mine in the area. Even though the mine itself was quashed, the refinery has continued to operate at a loss.
Despite strong resistance to the project from the Dongria, who have lived in the Niyamgiri hills for generations, the state authorities are keen to keep the refinery open and expand mining operations in the region.
Last year Mukuna Sikaka, a Dongria tribesperson, said: “We are not going to allow mining over Niyamgiri at any cost – not for all the developmental efforts of the government.”
Survival International led a successful global campaign against Vedanta’s plans, and is now calling for the Odisha state authorities to respect the Dongria’s decision to reject the mine.
Survival Director Stephen Corry said: “It is bitterly disappointing to see that the Odisha state authorities have still not learned to respect the wishes of the Dongria Kondh. Tribal peoples have a right under Indian and international law to determine what happens on their lands, yet still governments and corporations insist on putting profits before people’s wishes. Attempts to resume this project after international outcry and stern resistance from the Dongria themselves are not only un-democratic and illegal, but also deeply immoral.”
The Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, if approved, would be the largest trade agreement in history involving 11 countries including the United States, Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam.
Vicky Tauli-Corpuz explains that the TPP agreement is about liberalizing the trade and investment regime in order to allow for more fluidity when trading among countries. However, she shared her concern that in this agreement investor’s rights may be more protected than the rights of the Indigenous Peoples; the investment clause would trump social and environmental rights, including human rights.
“You cannot have a situation where investor’s rights are more protected than Indigenous rights,” she explained.
Ms. Tauli-Corpuz also used the example of Bolivia, where the government had listened and acted upon Indigenous protests against a Canadian mine on their lands, by attempting to cancel the concession. Bolivia was then sued by the Canadian corporation that owned the mine. The mining corporation won and the Bolivian government was left to pay millions of dollars to the company for lost profits. She noted that most developing countries lose in arbitration with corporations because they simply do not have the lawyers to support them. Corpuz warned, these are the types of situations that occur when investors are prioritized over the local and Indigenous citizens.
The TPP was negotiated in secret, and its text was only released via Wikileaks until it was already negotiated by trade ministers of the respective countries. According to Tauli Corpuz, this secrecy is a violation of Indigenous Peoples right to Free, Prior, Informed Consent on policies that may affect them.
“In situations where Indigenous Peoples have the right to Free, Prior, Informed Consent before any company comes to their community to invest, that kind of right has to be respected and that has to be stated and pursued by the countries who are hosting this investment,” she warned.
She urges for deeper transparency in trade deals like the TPP, so that Indigenous Peoples can be aware of the content of these trade agreements so that they can participate and decide whether or not to consent. In order to achieve this there must be a call to action to create a more participatory negotiation process rather than the exclusive and secretive one that has occurred. If the TPP is passed within each country’s legislature, it would deregulate social standards that are put in place and can take states themselves to court for attempting to protect social conducts such as protecting the rights of Indigenous Peoples.
The Special Rapporteur also recommends that extra attention be made to Exceptions section of the trade agreement. For example, specifically naming FPIC and Indigenous Peoples rights in the stipulations of how the the trade agreement would play out within each country. It is the responsibility of each country to identify and present exceptions so that they can be held accountable during arbitration panels. For example, New Zealand did manage to include an exception in TPP article 29.6 that references the rights of the Maori people, however activists have argued that the wording of the exception allows too many loopholes to provide legitimate protection.
On February 4th, 2016, the TPP was signed by trade ministers of 11 countries, in a formal ceremony in New Zealand. But the deal must still be approved within the legislatures of each country for it to be put in place: The TPP will not come into effect until a requisite number of original signatories ratify the agreement.
Maori leaders in New Zealand held massive protests against the signing ceremony, saying that they do not give their consent to the deal and that the it violates the Treaty of Waitangi and the 1835 Declaration of Independence of New Zealand. Kingi Taurua, a prominent Nga Puhi elder at Waitangi’s Te Tii Marae, has sent a formal notice of veto of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement to the embassies and trade departments of its proposed partner countries. They argued that the New Zealand government does not have “due authority” to sign the TPP without the agreement of Maori elders, “which [agreement] has not been given.”
In the United States, the next step is the drafting and consideration of a bill in Congress to implement the agreement, which will also serve as U.S. ratification of the international trade deal. Some anticipate this vote to take place after the 2016 elections in November.
Featured Image: Like Cheran, Michoacán, and the Zapatista Caracoles of Chiapas, the Ñätho community of Huitzizilapan have exercised their sovereignty and voted to form their own communal assembly. Photo: Más de 131.
Huitzizilapan, whose old name is N’dete, which means “big town”, currently encompasses 12 indigenous Otomí-Ñätho communities living in the area between the two large cities of Mexico City and Toluca.
A year ago, its people organized themselves to defend their forests, a movement that ultimately led them to elect their own representatives free from the influence of any political party on 7 December 2015.
That day, the indigenous people waited for the arrival of the Agrarian Ombudsman, the authority which can give power to assemblies formed on communally owned lands in Mexico.
However, the ombudsman never arrived, citing an accident as the reason.
Meanwhile, members of the National Human Rights Commission, who were invited by the comuneros (a Mexican term for members of an agrarian community) to document the assembly, left without warning.
This did not stop the indigenous community members from exercising their rights in line with convention 169 of the International Labour Organization, the Mexican Constitution and agrarian legislation.
During the assembly, by a show of hands, they unanimously choose the “candidates of the people.”
The Ñätho, however, say that they were forced to confront a new assembly convened by the Agrarian Ombudsman without legal grounds on 18 January 2016.
The Ñätho worried that the local government and the pro-government Institutional Revolutionary Party would impose another parallel authority instead of the authority which the people already had elected.
They therefore decided to make efforts to reinforce their vote.
“We are getting organised and visiting all the comuneros so we can win again,” said Abundio Rivera, one of the local leaders.
In a statement released on 12 January, the comuneros criticised the town’s former authorities, who had links to the Institutional Revolutionary Party, for handing out 2,000 Mexican pesos to each person to persuade them not to support the chosen “candidates of the people.”
“We are working on increasing awareness,” stressed Rivera. And they did, on 18 January 2016 they won again.
Since 2003, the federal government has set up registers of comuneros in agrarian and communal centres around the country.
In Huitzizilapan, there are 904 comuneros who make decisions involving the land. Since then, all kinds of projects have been imposed by the communal authorities, without any prior consultation with the people.
The idea behind the 2014 movement and the formation of a group of candidates from open assemblies held in the town was to reverse the environmental destruction and protect the integrity of the Huitzizilapan people’s lands.
Once elected on 7 December, the first words of the new commissariat were:
We all know the great difficulties facing the community, we must care for our land, our water and our forest as well as deal with other issues. To me it seems we must keep those citizens of San Lorenzo whether they be at home or away, in mind. Let us give them the chance to voice their vote.
Another comunero went even further in saying:
I will fight for the autonomy of the people, not just the chance to vote. I will open the doors to the people and recover the autonomy we had 15 years ago, because our children have the right to decide what happens to their land and forest, independent of the Agrarian Ombudsman.
The president’s order
Along with its neighbours, Xochicuautla and Ayotuxco, Huitzizilapan faces the construction of the Toluca-Naucalpan highway, which was contracted to a corporation owned by Juan Armando Hinojosa, one of the businessmen most favored by Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto’s government.
At the beginning of 2015, the former town commissioner and member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, Luis Enrique Dorantes, passed a supposed “forest exploitation plan” without notifying the people.
A few months later, on the morning of 5 July, young men and women from Huitzizilapan set themselves up at the community council offices, lighting campfires to watch an assembly in which Dorantes had planned to hand over part of the peoples’ land to the local government of Lerma, though a process called “disincorporation”.
That morning the church bells rang next to the council offices, and hundreds of residents answered the call to expel around a thousand police from their town.
Women, young people and children of Huitzizilapan have met with indigenous people from all over the country, as well as with some of the families of the 43 students from the Ayotzinapa teachers’ college in the state of Guerrero who remain missing.
Their case has led them to file protection orders against an expropriation decree on their land ordered by Peña Nieto in March 2014, as well as to create a community newspaper and paint messages such as: “We are all comuneros” and “Here the people are in charge” on walls around the town.
Precious forest
The forests defended by Xochicuautla and Huitzizilapan are recognised by Mexico’s government as the Tributary Sub-basin Forestry and Water Sanctuary.
The 105,844 hectare area is classified as the Zempoala La Bufa Ecological, Recreational Tourist Park, and is known as the Otomí-Mexica Park.
Peña Nieto and Governor Eruviel Ávila insist on constructing a highway for 39 kilometres through this forest, which would practically divide it in two. Avila declared in December that the project will be completed in 2016.
When elected on 7 December, the new commissariat of the people asked, “Why do we care for the forest?”
He then answered the question saying, “Because it is the lungs of both the Valley of Toluca and the Valley of Mexico. It is a matter of preserving it for future generations, let’s raise awareness.”
Featured image: Members of the the Ayoreo community of Cuyabia. Photo: Iniciativa Amotocodie
“We don’t care if our struggle involves going to prison or even dying. Our struggle is about justice because the land is ours and our children’s.”
—Alejandro Servín
When Alejandro Servin and five others members of the Enxet Sur indigenous community Kelyenmagategma returned home after two days in the woods hunting and collecting honey, little did they expect to be showered with bullets.
“Three of us were walking ahead when we heard the shots, a bullet just missed me. We ran back into the forest to seek refuge but the employees of the estate managed to catch the youngest member of our group, Francisco, who was 14 years old at the time,” says Servín. “As a result all of us came out. Three hours later a contingent of police arrived, arrested us without a warrant and brought us – in the estate owner’s truck – to the nearest police station.”
Following their arrest, the six indigenous men were transferred to the capital Asuncion where they were held incommunicado for 48 hours without access to a lawyer or contact with their families. They were eventually charged with “theft of cattle” – a crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison under the Paraguayan Constitution. TierraViva – a human rights NGO that provides legal support and advocates for the land rights of indigenous communities in the Chaco region of Paraguay – eventually managed to get the charges dropped due to lack of evidence and the serious legal inconsistencies surrounding the arrest.
It is these as well as an array of other cases documented during more than 20 years of work in the Paraguayan Chaco that lead TierraViva to publish the first ever report on the situation of Human Rights Defenders. The report, released in December of last year, features case studies of illegitimate criminal charges, threats and acts of violence against 19 indigenous leaders and human rights lawyers working on land rights in the Chaco.
Paraguay is divided into strikingly different eastern and western regions by the Rio Paraguay. The southeastern Paranena region can be generally described as consisting of an area of highlands that slopes toward the Rio Paraguay. The Chaco in the nothwestern region is predominantly lowlands, also inclined toward the Rio Paraguay, that are alternately flooded and parched. Image by freeworldmaps.net.
This arid forested region represents just over 60 percent of Paraguayan territory. It is inhabited by indigenous communities who know it as their ancestral land and private landowners who began to purchase estates from the 1940s onwards, denying the existence of those indigenous communities. This was the case for Kelyenmagategma: the company El Algarrobal SA bought land in 2002 that was inhabited by this Enxet Sur community.
In the past decade, land in the more populated eastern part of the country has become scarce leading to an expansion of the agricultural frontier into the Chaco. The rate of deforestation over the past five years has averaged 500 hectares (equivalent to 500 football fields) per day. In response to this alarming trend, indigenous communities have begun to organize and unite to secure legal title to parts of their ancestral lands to protect what remains of the unique Chaco ecosystem.
Despite the fact that the constitution of Paraguay recognizes the rights of Indigenous Peoples to their ancestral lands, according to Rodrigo Villagra Carron of TierraViva:
“What we see is an undeniable pattern of Government support for the interests of private landowners and the repression of those who defend human rights and national and international legislation related to the rights of Indigenous People.”
This was echoed by Cristina Coronel at the launch of the report in Asuncion in December:
“What this report reveals is [a] world where things are upside down… where indigenous communities and lawyers are defending universal human rights, but instead of protecting them, the police, public prosecutors and other representatives of the government protect the cattle ranchers and agro-industrial companies responsible for illegal deforestation and evictions of Indigenous People from their ancestral lands.”
This can clearly be seen in the case of Unine Cutamurajna from the Ayoreo community of Cuyabia who denounced illegal deforestation by Brandenstein Agro-Forest Investment (BAFI). Cuyabia acquired legal title to 25,000 hectares of land in 1996; but since then it is estimated the community has lost at least 6000 hectares due to land grabs by cattle ranchers. On one occasion, in 2015, the community hijacked a bulldozer that had been clearing vast tracts of forest on land belonging to them. Instead of investigating the illegal actions of BAFI, the Government of Paraguay sent a contingent of police to recover the bulldozer.he community has subsequently suffered threats from heavily armed private security guards working for the company.
“The Government sides with the cattle ranchers because they have money. We Indigenous People don’t have money,” says Unine. “But we will keep defending our land, it doesn’t matter if they continue to threaten us. We will not give up one more single piece of our ancestral land.”
Other cases in the report include:
Government employee Irma Torales who, while working at the Public Registrar’s Office, refused to become involved in a case of embezzlement of funds destined for the purchase of land for indigenous communities. Her actions lead to the arrest and imprisonment of the former Director of the National Indigenous Institute of Paraguay. Despite this, Irma was subsequently demoted to a more junior role with a significant reduction in her salary.
Human Rights Lawyer and Director of TierraViva Julia Cabello who faced a possible one-year suspension from practicing law or disqualification from the Paraguay Bar Association for a criticism she made of a Supreme Court Decision to review the constitutionality of a law allowing the return of more than 14,404 hectares of traditional land to the Sawhoyamaxa indigenous community.
TierraViva intends to use the report to carry out continued advocacy and raise awareness of the grave situation of human rights defenders in the Chaco.
According to Villagra Carron:
“This report is a condemnation of the structural inequality in Paraguay and a call to action. The cases documented in it are by no means exhaustive but just a few examples of what is happening in a broader context of rights deprivation. We urgently need to bring this situation and the government’s complicity and/or role in perpetuating it to public attention or the situation risks becoming even more dangerous, serious and unjust.”
The report received support from the Gran Chaco Ecumenical Small Projects Fund which works to strengthen the capacity of civil society organizations, groups and communities in the South American Chaco to transform the conditions of poverty and inequality and promote human rights.
Featured image: Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff visits the construction site of the Belo Monte Dam, 2014. Photo by Ichiro Guerra/Sala de Imprensa licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic license
The gigantic Belo Monte hydroelectric dam, located on the Xingu River in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon, stood just weeks away from beginning operation this week — but the controversial mega-dam, the third largest on earth, has now been blocked from generating electricity by the Brazilian court system until its builders and the government meet previous commitments made to the region’s indigenous people.
Federal court judge Maria Carolina Valente do Carmoin the city of Altamira, in the state of Pará where the dam is located, has suspended the dam’s operating license. It will not be reinstated, she decided, until the dam’s owner Norte Energia SA, along with Brazil’s government, meet a 2014 court-ordered licensing requirement to reorganize the regional office of Funai, the national agency that protects Brazil’s indigenous groups.
Judge Valente do Carmo has fined the government and company R$900,000 (US$225,000) for non-compliance with the Funai requirement, a provision included in the rules governing Belo Monte when the project was given its preliminary license in 2010.
This is the latest in a series of snafus that have plagued the dam’s construction. Licensing of the project was delayed last September by Brazil’s environmental agency IBAMA, due to a failure to complete agreed to provisions to mitigate the impacts of inundating thousands of acres of Amazon rain forest — flooding that could displace 20,000 people.
Indigenous village near the Xingu River in the Amazon. Indigenous lands could soon be flooded by the Belo Monte dam. Photo by Pedro Biondi/ABr licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Brazil license.
Earlier in 2015, federal prosecutors found that Norte Energia violated 55 different obligations it had agreed to in order to guarantee the survival of indigenous groups, farmers and fishermen whose homes and lands will be lost.In December, Brazil’s Public Federal Ministry, an independent state body started legal proceedings to have it recognized that the crime of “ethnocide” was committed against seven indigenous groups during the building of the Belo Monte dam.
Indigenous groups have fought the dam since its inception, saying that it will severely impair their water supply and impact fishing and hunting. They especially contend that it will reduce the river’s flow by 80 percent at the Volta Grande (“Big Bend”), where indigenous Juruna and Arara people and sixteen other ethnic groups live, according to the teleSUR television network.
