“Climate change is a human rights issue”, said our banner as we joined a number of Belgian human rights organisations last night to march through Brussels for the annual “Stop The Killings” awards, an annual solidarity action with human rights defenders across the world who are persecuted by their national governments.
Around 150 people gathered at the central station, where we lit torches in symbolic support of the four candidates for this year’s awards. Reuben Herrera from Guatemala, an activist supporting indigenous protests against huge energy and mining projects in Huehuetenago, was nominated. For very different reasons, Jovito Palparan from the Philippines was also nominated. A former General in the army, Palparan had been responsible for the assassinations of dozens of local activists, and was finally arrested by the army this year.
A delegation of syndicalists fighting for workers’ rights in the Philippines were nominated, as was the eventual ‘winner’, Huber Ballesteros from Colombia, a union leader who was one of hundreds imprisoned after a general strike in 2013.
But of course, human rights solidarity is not about promoting individual causes above others, and as we wound our way through the streets of Brussels, torches held aloft, we chanted in solidarity with those whose banners were held up that night, as well as all those who fight against, and are affected by, human rights abuses across the world.
