Fredericton Peace Coalition

Mariano Abarca Led a Growing Movement to Kick Canadian Mining Companies Out of Mexican Communities

Mariano Abarca Roblero, one of Mexico’s most prominent anti-mining organizers, was shot to death on the evening of November 27, 2009, in front of his house in Chicomuselo, Chiapas. He left behind a wife and four children. Another man was wounded in the shooting.

Jackie McVicar reporting from Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

Afghan refugees who fled the war-torn south have claimed they are so neglected by government in Kabul that their children are dying from hypothermia for want of the most basic supplies.

About 200 protesters gathered in a park outside an international military conference in Halifax today to demand that Canada withdraw from Afghanistan and from NATO, the trans-Atlantic alliance that is waging war in Afghanistan. One demonstrator carried a sign reading “60 years is 60 years Too Long” referring to Canada’s membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the U.S.-led military alliance formed in 1949.

Toronto Star: A usually sedate parliamentary hearing room was jolted with stories of alleged gang rape as MPs heard testimony about the operation of a Canadian-controlled gold mine in the South Pacific.

An attacker riding a motorcycle has shot and killed indigenous leader and anti-mining activist Mariano Abarca outside his home in southeastern Mexico. Abarca “was assassinated in a cowardly fashion outside his home” late on Friday, said Gustavo Castro, a spokesman for the Mexican Network of Communities Affected by Mining (REMA), adding that another member of the group was seriously wounded, AFP reported on Saturday. An unidentified individual riding a motorcycle opened fire on the indigenous leader, shooting him twice in the head and in the chest in Chicomuselo, a town in the mountains of Chiapas state, Castro said, citing relatives. In August 2009, Abarca was arrested for a week after he led highway blockades to prevent Canadian and Mexican-owned corporation Blackfire Exploration Ltd. from transporting minerals from a Mexican barite mine to processing facilities.

“In September, I helped a war-resister friend of mine take care of some paperwork. Unable to obtain his birth certificate, he needed a friend with a US passport to attest to certain facts. As I slid my passport under the window at the US Consulate, I thought to myself, I wonder what will happen the next time I use my passport…? I was aware I was taking a slight risk. I didn’t think it was a big deal. I still don’t….”

CBC: The University of New Brunswick’s College of Extended Learning is offering an explosive new course: Canada’s first training program in the field of unexploded explosive ordnance, known as UXO. The Fredericton-based program will train students to be Level 1 technicians who know how to find and safely detonate everything from bullets to artillery shells and 500-pound bombs, said lead instructor John Payne.

The Globe and Mail’s foreign correspondent Graeme Smith has written an opinion piece calling for Canadian troops to be pulled out of Afghanistan.