Key figures in global battle against illegal arms trade
lost in Air France crash
ARGENTINA: Argentine campaigner Pablo Dreyfus and Swiss
colleague Ronald Dreyer battled South American arms and drug trafficking
From Andrew McLeod
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.
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"
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.
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