Poster for the movie Flin Flon Flim Flam. Credit: Investigative MEDIA

By Jen Moore

Almost five years ago, while working as Latin America Program Coordinator for MiningWatch Canada, I was declared a threat to public order and security in Peru and barred indefinitely from the country. My crime, and that of similarly-accused U.S. documentary filmmaker John Dougherty, was working with Peruvian organizations to show a film critical of Canadian mining company Hudbay to communities affected by its open-pit copper Constancia mine. The film, Flin Flon Flim Flam, presents critical testimony on this company’s operations from Manitoba to southern Peru.

Our case needs to be understood in the context of social control, repression and criminalization¹MiningWatch Canada et al., “HudBay Operations in Peru and Guatemala: Violence and Repression Found to Result from Mining Company Contracts with State Security Forces,” MiningWatch Canada, November 28, 2019: https://miningwatch.ca/news/2019/11/28/hudbay-operations-peru-and-guatemala-violence-and-repression-found-result-mining that communities and organizations living and working around the Constancia mine face regularly. Hudbay’s mine has given rise to numerous protests over unfulfilled agreements with communities, as well as environmental and social impacts. Community demonstrators have faced police repression and legal persecution at the hands of the Peruvian National Police, who had a security services contract with Hudbay at the time of these events. Such contracts have been common in Peru and are hotly criticized²EarthRights International, the National Coordinator of Human Rights in Peru and the Legal Defense Institute, “Report reveals contracts between Peru’s National Police and Extractive Companies,” EarthRights International, February 19, 2019: https://earthrights.org/media_release/report-contracts-perus-police-extractive-companies/ for putting police at the service of private interests, contributing to the high incidence of violent repression of legitimate protest, causing injuries and deaths.

Our case is part of a “concerted attack” throughout the Americas on environment and land defenders, “aimed at disciplining and quashing individuals and groups in diverse countries in the hemisphere where considerable gains have been made to stop or slow the accelerated expansion of this industry and the serious social and environmental impacts which it entails,” as MiningWatch and ICLMG wrote in the 2015 report In the National Interest?.³ICLMG and MiningWatch Canada, “In the National Interest? Criminalization of land and environment defenders in the Americas,” ICLMG, August 2015: https://iclmg.ca/issues/in-the-national-interest-criminalization-of-land-and-environment-defenders-in-the-americas/ This report examines how the law has been progressively turned against defenders to impose a destructive and often unwanted model of mineral extraction on communities and even on whole

countries. Using examples from Peru, Mexico, Guatemala, Ecuador and Canada, the report also illustrates how the Canadian government has played a strategic role through aid, diplomacy and trade policy to facilitate the massive expansion of Canadian mining interests in the region. Canada is exporting abroad the same extractive industry dependence that the Canadian settler colonial state was founded on and continues to perpetuate.

Even before we arrived in Peru in April 2017, we were defamed in the press as trying to “sabotage” Hudbay’s operations. During community screenings, police and Hudbay representatives questioned local community members about our presence, while police surveilled our movements. Following a screening in the city of Cusco, we were detained for four hours by more than 15 migration officers and plain clothes police who claimed they needed to verify our travel documents, but who sought to interrogate us instead.

The next day, Saturday, the Ministry of Interior issued a public communiqué declaring us to be a threat to public order, accusing us of inciting communities to violent protest against Hudbay’s mine, and stating that the company’s permits were in order. On advice from our lawyers that we were in danger of the authorities cooking up false charges and that we could continue the legal process from afar, we left Peru. On Sunday, Migration Services banned us from the country indefinitely. We never had the opportunity to defend ourselves and only became aware of this decision months later.

Peruvian courts have since found that these actions constituted grave violations of my rights, and that the decision to ban my re-entry to Peru is illegal and arbitrary. A 2019 decision further found that police and the Ministry of the Interior acted with bias as a result of the security contract between Hudbay and national police.

Despite this, and despite being a Canadian citizen and human rights defender working at the time for an organization that enjoys generous support of prominent human rights and legal organizations in both countries, Canadian officials utterly failed to provide meaningful support, going as far as to make false and misleading statements to UN bodies.

Canadian cooperation in the cover up for Hudbay

A new report from the Justice and Corporate Accountability Project (JCAP)⁴Charis Kamphuis, Charlotte Connolly, Isabel Dávila Pereira, Mariela Gutiérrez, Sarah Ewart, and Danielle Blanchard, “The Two Faces of Canadian Diplomacy: Undermining Human Rights and Environment Defenders to Support Canadian Mining,” Justice and Corporate Accountability Project, December 10, 2022: https://justice-project.org/2022/12/10/the-two-faces-of-canadian-diplomacy-undermining-human-rights-and-environment-defenders-to-support-canadian-mining/ analyzes hundreds of pages of government records obtained through access to information requests about Canada’s response before, during and after our detention. The report weighs up the response of Canadian officials to their own guidelines for supporting human rights defenders, Voices at Risk, and finds that the government failed miserably.

While MiningWatch’s appeals to Canadian officials – with support from many other organizations – received no reply, Canadian officials were obliged to reply to correspondence signed by four United Nations and three regional human rights bodies.

The UN letter expressed concern for my safety and sought information about Hudbay’s potential involvement in our criminalization. After a three-month delay, Canadian officials responded, avoiding the UN’s question about how it had implemented, or not, the Voices at Risk policy. Regarding the company’s role, they stated they were “not aware of any evidence that Hudbay Minerals was involved in the actions of Peruvian authorities in detaining and questioning Ms. Moore.” But this was both misleading and false.

In all of my communications with Canadian officials, including detailed letters endorsed by many other organizations, I provided information on how Hudbay personnel had questioned community members prior to our detention and on the company’s contract with police, which we believed – and which Peruvian courts have found since – led to biased police actions against John and I. Embassy officials also reviewed social media posts by Peruvian organizations making similar claims. On this basis and according to its own policies, Canadian officials should have exercised due diligence, but there is no evidence that they did. In addition, Duane McMullen, then Director General of Trade Operations and Trade Strategy for GAC, received an email from a Hudbay employee three days after our detention. This person expressed support for our criminalization by Peru, and this should have raised a red flag, but Canadian officials reported none of this in their response to the UN. JCAP concludes, “By protecting Hudbay and withholding the information referred to here, Canada not only failed to cooperate with the Special Rapporteur, it also undermined the Rapporteur’s ability to fulfill its mandate and take steps to protect a Canadian [human rights defender].”

Overall, the failures were numerous and systemic. They provide further evidence of how Canada’s clientelistic relationship with the mining industry corrupts its ability not only to fulfill its human rights obligations, but to hear the calls of environment and land defenders to abandon the extractivist economic model that causes so much harm and puts them in ever greater danger.

Jen Moore is now based in Mexico and an Associate Fellow with the Mining and Trade project at the Institute for Policy Studies.

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Footnotes

• 1
  MiningWatch Canada et al., “HudBay Operations in Peru and Guatemala: Violence and Repression Found to Result from Mining Company Contracts with State Security Forces,” MiningWatch Canada, November 28, 2019: https://miningwatch.ca/news/2019/11/28/hudbay-operations-peru-and-guatemala-violence-and-repression-found-result-mining
• 2
  EarthRights International, the National Coordinator of Human Rights in Peru and the Legal Defense Institute, “Report reveals contracts between Peru’s National Police and Extractive Companies,” EarthRights International, February 19, 2019: https://earthrights.org/media_release/report-contracts-perus-police-extractive-companies/
• 3
  ICLMG and MiningWatch Canada, “In the National Interest? Criminalization of land and environment defenders in the Americas,” ICLMG, August 2015: https://iclmg.ca/issues/in-the-national-interest-criminalization-of-land-and-environment-defenders-in-the-americas/
• 4
  Charis Kamphuis, Charlotte Connolly, Isabel Dávila Pereira, Mariela Gutiérrez, Sarah Ewart, and Danielle Blanchard, “The Two Faces of Canadian Diplomacy: Undermining Human Rights and Environment Defenders to Support Canadian Mining,” Justice and Corporate Accountability Project, December 10, 2022: https://justice-project.org/2022/12/10/the-two-faces-of-canadian-diplomacy-undermining-human-rights-and-environment-defenders-to-support-canadian-mining/