Protest to denounce mining violence in Mexico

On International Human Rights Day, Thursday December 10th, a gathering will be held in front of the Mexican Consulate in Montreal to denounce the assassination of environmental activist Mariano Abarca and the violence generated by the presence of mining companies in Mexico. Three workers of Canadian mining company Blackfire Exploration Ltd. were arrested today in connection with the killing.

Meeting time: noon
Address: 2005 Peel St. (corner de Maisonneuve)

Bits & Peaces #35

The December edition of Bits & Peaces is here! You can read the issue online, or download the pdf.

In this issue:

• Mennonite Church Canada is encouraging congregations to proclaim peace "in the public square" and has launched
  www.liveforpeace.org as a resource.
• Advent prayer for peace in Afghanistan by Carol Penner
• KAIROS invites churches across Canada to show support for a bold action to address climate change at upcoming UN talks in Copenhagen. How? By ringing your church bells 350 times at 3:00 pm on December 13. Read more at the KAIROS website.
• Update on the Canadian Department of Peace initiative
• The Mining Justice campaign is in full swing! Visit the Mining Justice website for case studies, fact sheets, policies and suggestions of what can be done to promote mining justice. A recent news release highlights the visit to Canada of Francisco Machado, a Honduran Mennonite pastor and advocate for mining reform.
• The schedule of this summer's Canadian School of Peacebuilding.

Feel free to pass it along, and send any comments or feedback to peace@mennonitecc.ca,

Women of Zimbabwe Arise

By LLEWELLYN KING, Montreal Gazette

Of all those who have been hurt and died terrible deaths in the time of Robert Mugabe as prime thug in Zimbabwe, none have been hurt more than the women. They have been beaten, imprisoned, raped and starved. They have watched the bulldozing of their shacks. They have watched the slow, terrible deaths of their children from malnutrition and untreated disease. Maybe one of the worst of the hurts suffered by the women is the fear that they will die ahead of their young children, leaving them to die alone of starvation.

Such a tale was told in Washington last week by two of Zimbabwe's most remarkable women. A mother of three went out to forage for food but collapsed and died. The starving children found some fertilizer she had hidden against the day when she could get some corn to plant. The children thought the fertilizer pellets were grain and made porridge with them. All three were poisoned and died.

Yet Magadonga Mahlangu and Jenni Williams, principles in the non-violent, grassroots movement WOZA, talked not about privation and murder, but hope. Hope for enough food; hope for an end to violence to themselves; hope for their children; and hope for a free, productive and stable homeland. Although both women have each been arrested more than 30 times, imprisoned and held without bail for a long period ("on remand," in the English common-law language of the tattered Zimbabwe legal system), they remain optimistic. In hell, they dream of heaven.

WOZA, which stands for Women of Zimbabwe Arise, was formed in 2002 as a non- violent, non-political group, committed to the protection of women and their families by teaching them to protest for their human rights and by teaching them some basic skills, such as how to avoid violence and rape, whether it is domestic or state-sponsored.

Both Mahlangu and Williams are from the nation's second city, Bulawayo, in Matabeland, where the predominant people are the Ndebele, an offshoot of the Zulus of South Africa. Mugabe might have reason enough to hate the women because of their activism, but the Ndebele have known his loathing since the first days of his rule in the early 1980s, when he sent his best troops, known as the Fifth Brigade, to effect a genocidal massacre that is believed to have cost as many as 25,000 Ndebele their lives. Mugabe is a Shona, the largest tribal grouping in Zimbabwe - which is slightly smaller than Saskatchewan - and the traditional rivals of the Ndebele. Mahlangu is a pure-bred Ndebele, with a regal bearing that belies her long suffering at the hands of the police and military in Zimbabwe. Williams is of mixed race -with European as well as African ancestry - and therefore easily accused by the state paranoiacs of treason and crimes against the state. She says she is the subject of racial slurs from the police and security forces. They accuse her of being "white, English and a colonialist" even though she has the same colouring as President Barack Obama.

Although the two women have been frequently arrested and detained without trial, they have never been convicted. The charges most levelled are for threatening public order. Mostly, they have been held in police cells. Once one of them was taken to a men's prison, where the arresting officer warned her that she needed a strong stomach. When she got there she found 500 men without sanitation, adequate water or food. Some had died, and others were dying of dysentery and starvation.

The women were brought to Washington on a low-key visit, organized by the Robert F. Kennedy Centre for Justice and Human Rights to receive its human rights award for 2009. The prize money, $30,000, will go to a program to prevent violence and rape.

Extraordinarily, WOZA is not looking for money. Instead, they want the world community to bombard the police commissioner and the judiciary with faxes and e-mails to protest what Williams calls "persecution by prosecution." Both women go on trial again Dec. 7. "If they know the world is watching, it helps," says Mahlangu.

WOZA, now 60,000-strong, can be found on the Web at wozazimbabwe.org.