Key figures in global battle against illegal arms trade lost in Air France crash
Pastor Dale Morgan
Key figures in global battle against illegal arms trade lost in Air
France crash
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The Sunday Herald*
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ARGENTINA: Argentine campaigner Pablo Dreyfus and Swiss colleague Ronald
Dreyer battled South American arms and drug traffickingFrom Andrew McLeod
AMID THE media frenzy and speculation over the disappearance of Air
France's ill-fated Flight 447, the loss of two of the world's most
prominent figures in the war on the illegal arms trade and international
drug trafficking has been virtually overlooked.
Pablo Dreyfus, a 39-year-old Argentine who was travelling with his wife
Ana Carolina Rodrigues aboard the doomed flight from Rio de Janeiro to
Paris, had worked tirelessly with the Brazilian authorities to stem the
flow of arms and ammunition that for years has fuelled the bloody turf
wars waged by drug gangs in Rio's sprawling favelas.
Also travelling with Dreyfus on the doomed flight was his friend and
colleague Ronald Dreyer, a Swiss diplomat and co-ordinator of the Geneva
Declaration on Armed Violence who had worked with UN missions in El
Salvador, Mozambique, Azerbaijan, Kosovo and Angola. Both men were
consultants at the Small Arms Survey, an independent think tank based at
Geneva's Graduate Institute of International Studies. The Survey said on
its website that Dryer had helped mobilise the support of more than 100
countries to the cause of disarmament and development.
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Buenos Aires-born Dreyfus had been living in Rio since 2002, where he
and his sociologist wife worked with the Brazilian NGO Viva Rio.
"Pablo will be remembered as a gentle and sensitive man with an upbeat
sense of humour," said the Small Arms Survey. "He displayed an
intellectual curiosity and a determined work ethic that excited and
enthused all who worked with him."
According to the International Action Network on Small Arms Control
(IANSA), Dreyfus's work was instrumental in the introduction of landmark
small arms legislation in Brazil in 2003. Under this legislation, an
online link was created between army and police databases listing
production, imports and exports of arms and ammunition in Brazil.
Dreyfus was an advocate of the stringent labelling of ammunition by
weapons firms, arguing that by clearly identifying ammunition not only
by its producer but also its purchaser, the likelihood of weapons being
sourced by criminals from corrupt police or armed forces personnel is
greatly reduced.
Though a Brazilian referendum on the right to bear arms was rejected in
2005, Viva Rio says the campaign should be considered a success because
half a million weapons were voluntarily handed in to the authorities.
Anti-gun activists put the referendum defeat down to fears criminals
would circumvent the law and continue to gain access to small arms the
usual way - through Paraguay and other bordering countries. This was not
an irrational fear: until 2004, when Paraguay bowed to Brazilian
pressure, even foreign tourists were allowed to purchase small arms
simply by presenting a photocopy of their identity card. Dreyfus knew
that many of the weapons from the so-called tri-border area between
Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina were reaching Rio drug gangs.
When unidentified gunmen made off with a stash of hand grenades from an
Argentine military garrison in 2006, Dreyfus deplored what he said was
lax security at military depots across the world. "If a supermarket can
keep control of the amount of peas it has in stock, surely a military
organisation could and should be able to do the same with equal if not
greater efficiency with its weapons," he said. "The key words are
logisitics, control, security."
When Rio agents smashed a cell of drug traffickers who had sourced their
weapons from the tri-border area, Dreyfus noted its leaders were
prominent businessmen living in apartments in the plush Rio suburbs of
Ipanema and São Corrado, "not in the favelas".
In a recent report posted on the Brazilian website Comunidade Segura
(Safe Community), Dreyfus noted that the Brazilian arms firm CBC
(Companhia Brasileira de Cartuchos) had become one of the world's
biggest ammunition producers by purchasing Germany's Metallwerk
Elisenhutte Nassau (MEN) in 2007, and Sellier & Bellot (S&B) of the
Czech Republic in March. This would not be particularly noteworthy but
for the fact that CBC's exports had tapered off in recent years due to
legislation restricting exports to Paraguay, arms that often found their
way back into Brazil and on to the Rio drug gangs - the "boomerang
effect", as Dreyfus called it. "The commercial export of weapons and
ammunition from Brazil to the bordering countries stopped in 2001,"
wrote Dreyfus. "CBC lost commercial markets in Latin America, but Brazil
won in public security."
However, manufacturers from other countries had moved in to fill the
void, and before its purchase by CBC, S&B was already "one of the marks
most currently apprehended" by Brazilian police. Dreyfus said that, in
view of the fact the Czech Republic was bound by the EU Code of Conduct
on weapons exports - which states that EU countries must "evaluate the
existence of the risk that the armament can be diverted to undesirable
final destinations", CBC should "consider the risk that some of these
exports end up, via diversions, feeding violence in Brazil".
Though his focus was on Latin America, Dreyfus also advised the
government of Mozambique and at the time of his death was preparing to
do the same for the government of Angola, where stockpiles of weapons
left over from the civil war continue to pose a security problem.
Dreyfus and Dreyer were on their way to Geneva to present the latest
edition of the Small Arms Survey handbook, of which Dreyfus was a joint
editor. It was to have been their latest step in their relentless fight
against evil.