SPEAKER FORUMS
Jeff Guntzel | Jorge de Paz | Felipe de Jesus
Note: Pedro Sarduy's presentation has been cancelled.
Frank Dawson ADAMS Auditorium | Monday 25th | 18:30 - 20:30 | See Map
IRAQ & INTERNATIONAL LAW
JEFF GUNTZEL | VOICES IN THE WILDERNESS
Jeff Guntzel, 27, has been a co-coordinator for Voices in the Wilderness since 1998.He has led seven delegations to Iraq, including a delegation of religious leaders in 2000 and a delegation of five congressional aides in 1999. He has been a volunteer and a coordinator for the Illinois Coalition Against the Death Penalty, visiting prisoners and advocating for their rights. In 2001, Jeff worked with teachers at Prologue High School in Uptown and Mundelein High School in Mundelein to develop and teach a five-week high school class on the criminal justice system in the United States. Jeff's writings on the death penalty, Iraq, foreign policy, and food politics have been published in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Punk Planet, National Catholic Reporter, El Otro, and the Utne Reader. He is currently working on an oral history of the Gulf War.
Frank Dawson ADAMS Auditorium | Tuesday 26th | 18:00 - 19:30 | See Map
POLITICS, IDENTITY & CONFLICT
JORGE DE PAZ
Jorge de Paz was born in Guatemala City in 1948. For the first 30 years of his life, he confronted the repressive forces of the government on a number of occasions, while protesting against the country's political regime.
In 1982, under one of the many military governments in Guatemala's recent history, Jorge de Paz was kidnapped and tortured by members of the presidential guard under the orders of the General Efrain Rios Montt. However, the heavy pressure from international organisations such as Amnesty International, American Watch and Corps of Peace and many more, forced Jorge de Paz's release. Following a short period of refuge in Mexico, Jorge de Paz tried to form a Guatemalan Chapter of Amnesty International in 1989. The resultant threat to his life forced him to return to Mexico with his family, and later immigrate in Canada.
Today, Jorge de Paz lives in Alberta and continues his struggle against the abuse of power, discrimination, impunity and social inequality by giving numerous conferences, organising international events, and writing books (The Kidnap and the Torture, and Imprisoned in Hell). On March 26th, 2002, McGill University will host a conference given by Mr. de Paz, in which he will discuss his experience in prison, and the unsuccessful attempts to establish a Guatemalan Chapter of Amnesty International.
Frank Dawson ADAMS Auditorium | Wednesday 27th | 18:30 - 20:00| See Map
INDIGENOUS PEOPLES IN MEXICO: A TERRORIZED COMMUNITY
FELIPE DE JESUS ANTONIO
Click here | Keynote Speaker Site | http://loxicha.tripod.com
Felipe de Jesús Antonio is a young Zapotec from the Loxicha region of Oaxaca state in southern Mexico. Since 1996, on suspicions that Loxicha was a bastion of the EPR (Popular Revolutionary Army, an insurgent army with no relation to the EZLN in Chiapas), Mexican army and police agents have occupied the region, carrying out a violent campaign of terror and destruction.
Felipe de Jesús was arrested in July of 1997 by state Judicial Police, and then disappeared for the next nine months, during which time he was moved between several clandestine prisons and subject to physical and mental torture, and believed he would never survive. After over three and a half years in prison, Felipe was freed in 2001 after no evidence was found to support the case fabricated against him. Along with other ex-prisoners and their families, he now campaigns to secure the freedom of the 28 Loxicha men, all of them Zapotecs, who remain unjustly incarcerated in Oaxaca.
The Loxicha case is an extreme example of the Mexican government's alarming treatment of indigenous communities in Oaxaca and elsewhere in Mexico, where impunity reigns, and militarization and grotesque violations of human rights continue unchecked. Especially since September 11th, 2001, military cooperation among the member countries of NAFTA- including Canada- is being scaled up. Does Art Eggelton, Canada's Minister of Defense, who last January visited Mexico to hold private meetings with representatives of the Mexican Army in the interests of deepening bilateral "defense" relations, really know who he's bedding down with?
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