Evidence of meeting #79 for Subcommittee on International Human Rights in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was guatemala.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
David Sweet Conservative Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON
I think my time's overwhelmed, Mr. Craig.
Conservative
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Scott Reid
Everybody has gone over by about a minute and a half each, but always because we've had very fulsome answers.
Monsieur Dion, you are next.
Liberal
Stéphane Dion Liberal Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC
Thank You, Mr. Chair.
Thank you so much, Mr. Craig, for offering us your expertise.
This is quite an adjustment for me. I was at another committee, where we were arguing about whether a village should be part of one riding or another one. What we are discussing here is much more heavy as a topic. I'm only replacing Mr. Cotler, so I'll need to adjust myself to the situation.
The motion that brought this subcommittee to study the situation in Honduras begins as follows:
Whereas, two prominent lawyers and human rights defenders, Antonio Trejo-Cabrera and Manuel Díaz-Mazariegos, have been assassinated in Honduras in recent days;
Did you know these two people?
Executive Director, Justice Education Society of BC
No. I haven't worked with them.
Liberal
Stéphane Dion Liberal Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC
The motion continues:
Whereas, in Honduras 76 lawyers have been murdered over the past three years;
Do you know what happened to these people?
Executive Director, Justice Education Society of BC
Do you mean in terms of their cases?
Liberal
Stéphane Dion Liberal Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC
Yes. What explains this amount of murders of lawyers in Honduras?
Executive Director, Justice Education Society of BC
Well, one of the things you have to realize is that they're not the only ones, right? There are journalists, a lot of journalists, being killed.
Liberal
Stéphane Dion Liberal Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC
I understand. But I'm speaking about these lawyers.
Executive Director, Justice Education Society of BC
You know, we haven't analyzed that. We haven't tried to figure it out. Who are these lawyers? What are their connections? What are they involved in? Are they involved in activities that are related to human rights and that are causing a reaction? Or are they involved in activities that maybe are questionable? Some of those dynamics happen down there too.
We haven't done that. We have not gone into....
You see, one of the things that is a problem in a country like Honduras, as well as in the other countries, is their ability to do what we call criminal intelligence analysis. It's almost non-existent in terms of their whole ability to analyze, to pull the data together.
If there's a pattern, if we're talking about a pattern—
Liberal
Executive Director, Justice Education Society of BC
—then you need to have the technical capacity to start to take the cases, put them in one place, and start to link them. That doesn't exist in Honduras. It's only now that it's starting to exist in Guatemala.
If you're going to take down the gangs—and we're talking maybe 10,000, 15,000, 20,000 gang members—if you're going to take down the clicas, you have to do it systematically.
We had a case in Guatemala that you might find interesting.
Finally we got them on the criminal intelligence analysis. We trained them and they started, but there were 28 people killed in one zone of Guatemala in two months. They were all killed by the same gang. It was a gang that was extorting the impuesto de guerra, which is the local tax. One was the woman who sold chicken in the market. One was a taxi driver. One was....
But we said they can't process each of these murders independently. They have to start to get the linkages. They have to do this on that in Honduras.
Liberal
Executive Director, Justice Education Society of BC
They don't have the capacity.
Liberal
Stéphane Dion Liberal Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC
The end of the motion said that the subcommittee is to study the deteriorating human rights situation in Honduras.
I have a report here by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. On March 15, 2013, they held a hearing on the human rights situation in Honduras. According to the brief that they produced, the participants at the hearing enumerated various ongoing violations of rights in Honduras. Namely, women's rights, political rights, judicial remedies, generalized violence, and militarization.
Departments argue that the human rights situation in Honduras has worsened since the 2009 coup. Would you agree that it's worsening, and not improving, since 2009?
Executive Director, Justice Education Society of BC
I'll give an example.
Our latest statistics say that in Honduras, there are 18 rapes per day. We know that in terms of sexual abuse of children, there are 12 children per day that are being killed in that country. I would say that the situation is deteriorating.
Liberal
Stéphane Dion Liberal Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC
What would your advice to Canada be? How can we help?
As you know, there are different views about that. There are views that we should be more involved in working with the authorities and the government, and so on. Others would say that the government itself is a liability, and that we should be sanctioning this government and certainly not trying to conduct free trade with them, and so on.
Executive Director, Justice Education Society of BC
Obviously, because I do the work, I would argue for engagement.
I don't know what other route there is for it other than creating functional justice systems. I think to do that you have to operate on different levels. You need to operate on our level, which means that we're actually in the trenches, trying to do the day-to-day. You need to have political pressure from our government, which is actually speaking out at certain moments and putting pressure. I think that's really important. You need a number of approaches.
There are two parts to my concern.
One is, do you leave a country like that? You can say that maybe Canada is only one player, and others will help so we don't have to worry about it. But you know, it's a region. The northern triangle is a region. The gang problem is the same in all three countries. The problem with the narcos and the transfer of drugs through Guatemala and Honduras is that they're shifting it around. If they have trouble in Guatemala, they move it to Honduras. It's a region.
You can't just say that because of x and y, we're going to abandon that piece because I don't know that it helps. The solution to the problems of Honduras is not just Honduras. It's all three countries. All three countries are in trouble.
Liberal
Stéphane Dion Liberal Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC
Is there some involvement that we should avoid?
Executive Director, Justice Education Society of BC
I'm trying to think of what we should avoid.
Liberal
Stéphane Dion Liberal Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC
Some said that the Canadian companies that are there are sometimes not helpful.