September 10, 2024. Colombian campesina activist and community leader Jani Silva receives a phone call threatening to blow her up, “car and all.” This car is an armoured vehicle provided by the Colombian National Protection Unit (UNP). Later that same day, three men on motorcycles are reported patrolling Silva’s house in Puerto Asís and the office of a community organization she leads.
Silva is a member of the Perla Amazónica small-scale farming reserve in the Amazonian region of Bajo Putumayo. She has long been a voice for her community as president of Association for the Integral and Sustainable Development of the Amazonian Pearl (ADISPA), defending the rights of at least 700 families and close to 1,700 people living on the reserve.
In this part of Colombia’s department of Putumayo, extractivism and militarism go hand in hand. Silva’s story is just one of many that remain in silence as human rights and land defenders face deadly risks. For Canadians, her story shines a light on the lack of accountability with which Canadian mining companies operate in conflict-affected regions.
Following the threat, Amnesty launched a public campaign appealing to Colombian embassies and the Attorney General of Colombia and to conduct a full investigation.
The Colombian embassy in Ottawa confirmed with rabble.ca that a criminal investigation is underway. No new information has been made public.
Brent Patterson, director of Peace Brigades International—Canada, said the Comandos de la Frontera and the Carolina Ramírez Front, non-state armed groups active in the region, are suspected by human rights monitors.
Why would criminal organizations and paramilitaries be so threatened by an outspoken campesina?
The industries of mining and war have long carved into Putumayo. The Perla Amazónica reserve is on the border with Ecuador, near the frontiers of the untouched Amazon where armed groups fight over territory and control of drug trafficking routes. Communities in the reserve are regularly caught in crossfire when warring groups enter the area.
Silva has long campaigned for rainforest conservation and the protection of water and biodiversity in the Bajo Putumayo, resisting mining and oil exploitation, deforestation, illicit coca cultivation, and militarization.
In short, Silva’s activism threatens a panoply of powerful interests in the region.
“Jani has denounced the environmental impact of the oil exploitation in the Amazon region, particularly in the area of her peasant community,” said Camilo Vargas Betancourt, Amnesty’s Colombia campaigner. He explained that campesinxs* are demanding respect for their way of life, their right to self-governance and “their right to practice sustainable methods that protect the Amazon ecosystem—a right recognized under Colombian law.”
“Unfortunately, they receive little support from the authorities and are instead perceived as obstacles by armed groups,” Betancourt added.
Among the oil companies that have made their riches here is Calgary-based Gran Tierra, active around Puerto Asis since 2019. In the years since, local civil society organizations like the Inter-Church Commission for Justice and Peace (Justicia y Paz), have named Gran Tierra among the companies responsible for polluting rivers, violating Indigenous peoples’ territorial sovereignty, shirking community consultation, and exacerbating social conflict.
Investigations have revealed widespread impunity in Putumayo for the harassment and murder of activists opposing extractivism. Silva herself has recently stated, “We can’t deny the evident complicity between armed groups and oil companies, through the company’s sub-contractors.”
Javier Gárate, U.S. Policy Advisor at Global Witness explained that oil companies in Putumayo have long collaborated with armed groups who control territories, transport corridors, and charge extortion fees. “The oil companies wouldn’t be able to function in Putumayo,” he said.
According to Gárate, the municipality and local authorities in Putumayo have denied links between oil companies and armed groups.
Not the first time
Those who know Silva have called her a strong woman. It’s not the first time she has been threatened. An investigation has been ongoing since 2017.
“In July 2021, she was forced to move from Puerto Asis after learning of a plan by the Border Commandos to kill her,” Patterson explained. An anonymous whistleblower alerted of an assassination plot by the armed group who, since 2020, have threatened to use all means to dissolve the Perla Amazónica.
Displaced to Puerto Asis from the reserve because of fear for her security, Silva has been accompanied for years by Justicia y Paz and volunteer, unarmed bodyguards with the Peace Brigades.
Colombia’s National Protection Unit (UNP) has provided her with security measures including an armoured vehicle. According to Justicia y Paz, the vehicle is also used by community leaders in 18 villages within the Perla Amazónica reserve, including others who receive protection from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
Between bodyguards, state security and UN accompaniment, Silva can never be truly alone. “She cannot be on her land where she used to grow her crops,” Gárate explained, emphasizing the rupture to Silva’s way of life as a campesina forced to live in Puerto Asis.
Betancourt stressed the severity of the threat against Silva amid militarized security by the Colombian state, “giving the message that she would be attacked despite having this protection.”
But is the answer more bodyguards and bulletproof cars?
“This is useful, but not enough. The protection effort must go deeper,” Betancourt said, calling for greater collective support for human rights and land defenders, and direct engagement by state officials with the affected social organizations and communities.
“Jani and ADISPA are asking the authorities to enhance their protection, including the design of a collective protection scheme,” said Betancourt.
The current model of individual and material protections for human rights and land defenders has serious flaws that perpetuate cycles of violence within institutional responses to activists at risk. In a report surveying changes between former President Iván Duque’s tenure and the start of Gustavo Petro’s term, Amnesty has also found that state response tends to “[ignore] the continuing reports of possible active involvement of state actors in attacks and threats against human rights defenders in different regions of the country.”
These are life or death conditions. A bullet-proof vest offered to Silva was made for a man’s body. An old armoured vehicle initially provided, struggled over the rural roads. Sub-contracted bodyguards may also be former combatants who may have been directly involved in violence against Putumayo’s most vulnerable communities.
Falling through the cracks
As of January, Amnesty told rabble.ca that Jani’s security situation remains concerning.
Since the campaign closed in December, the Colombian Embassy in Ottawa received around 3,000 letters from Canadians, according to First Secretary Pável Ernesto Romero Plaza. A global outpouring of support was also sent to Colombia from the Netherlands, Australia, Austria, the U.K., France, and the UN mission in New York City.
Speaking with rabble.ca on behalf of Ambassador Carlos Arturo Morales Lopez, Romero acknowledged the duty of the Colombian government to protect land defenders. Referring to Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s directive 07 of 2023, he emphasized that Colombian authorities have to fully respect the rights of activists and mobilize across departments to guarantee their safety.
Asked about whether it was concerning that Silva was threatened without regard for the contracted state security around her, Romero responded that the issue is in the hands of investigators.
For Canadians, Silva’s story and the legacy of impunity in Putumayo show an urgent need for more robust accountability and diplomatic engagement over Canadian corporate citizenship abroad, particularly in conflict-affected regions. Colombia remains the deadliest country in the world for land defenders, with Global Witness most recently recording 79 murders in 2023. These are only the documented cases.
In December, Geneva hosted negotiations over the International Treaty on Business and Human Rights, which is intended to strengthen accountability and mandate corporations to prevent human rights abuses. Canada has been criticized for undermining the development of this international law by lobbying for it to be turned into another impotent guideline.
Canadian embassies are currently advised to follow the Voices at Risk guidelines for diplomats when human rights and land defenders are threatened. These guidelines encourage relationship-building with human rights defenders under threat, engagement with local authorities, and cooperation with key regional and international actors.
But, Canadian human rights organizations have criticized the Voices at Risk guidelines as not strong enough to compel Canadian diplomats toward proactive engagement on protecting the lives of human rights and land defenders abroad.
Human rights organizations in Canada, Colombia and the U.S. interviewed by rabble.ca were not aware of Canadian diplomatic engagement with Jani Silva’s case or activists opposing extractivism in Putumayo.
rabble.ca reached out to ADISPA but did not receive a response by the time of publication.
*campesinx is the gender inclusive term for campesina and campesino, or smallholder farmers.
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