[News] More Than 160 Environmental Defenders Were Killed in 2018, and Many Others Labeled Terrorists and Criminals

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://theintercept.com/2019/07/30/criminalization-environmental-activists-global-witness-report/ 



  More Than 160 Environmental Defenders Were Killed in 2018, and Many
  Others Labeled Terrorists and Criminals

Alleen Brown - July 30, 2019
------------------------------------------------------------------------

_Victoria Tauli-Corpuz,_ the United Nations special rapporteur on the 
rights of Indigenous peoples, was disturbed to learn that her name had 
been included on a list of “terrorists” allegedly affiliated with the 
Communist Party of the Philippines and its armed wing, the New People’s 
Army.

Authoritarian President Rodrigo Duterte had imposed martial law on the 
island of Mindanao in May 2017, when ISIS sympathizers attacked 
<https://www.rappler.com/newsbreak/in-depth/186075-marawi-series-rappler-timeline> 
the predominantly Muslim city Marawi. By October, ISIS had been ousted, 
but martial law remained in place. Tauli-Corpuz, who is Filipina and a 
member of the Indigenous Kankanaey Igorot people, saw the emergency 
suspension of rights transform into a tool to go after the Indigenous 
Lumad people, who have stood in the way of Duterte’s industrial 
priorities in the region, including agribusiness, coal extraction 
<http://philippinereporter.com/2018/08/10/coal-mining-behind-militarization-and-displacement-of-lumad-communities/>, 
and gold mining. In the two months after the ISIS conflict ended, the 
military’s harassment and violence reportedly 
<https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=22567&LangID=E> 
displaced 2,500 Lumad people.

Tauli-Corpuz and Cecilia Jimenez-Damary, the U.N. special rapporteur on 
the human rights of internally displaced people, released a statement 
<https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=22567&LangID=E> 
that December demanding that the Philippine government halt all human 
rights abuses against the Lumad, including killings and violent attacks 
carried out by members of the armed forces, and bring those responsible 
to account.

A few months later, the Duterte administration placed Tauli-Corpuz on a 
list of 600 so-called terrorists as part of a petition filed in court 
seeking <https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1057998> to declare the 
Communist Party and its armed wing as terrorist organizations. Human 
Rights Watch declared the petition a “virtual hit list 
<https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/03/08/philippines-terrorist-petition-virtual-hit-list>,” 
citing the “long history 
<https://www.hrw.org/report/2011/07/18/no-justice-just-adds-pain/killings-disappearances-and-impunity-philippines> in 
the Philippines of the state security forces and pro-government militias 
assassinating people labeled as NPA members or supporters.”

Fearing for her safety, Tauli-Corpuz left the country. As she saw it, 
Duterte was once again using anti-terrorism rhetoric to attack the Lumad 
people and obtain access to their territory — this time by undermining a 
key international protector.

Thirty land and environmental defenders were murdered in the Philippines 
last year — more than in any other country, according to a new report 
<https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/environmental-activists/enemies-state/> 
released by the nonprofit Global Witness. But murder only represents the 
extreme end of the spectrum of abuses faced by those fighting to protect 
their homes, forests, and rivers against the encroachment of destructive 
industries. For land defenders across the globe, a simple smear campaign 
— such as labeling an advocate a terrorist — can end with someone 
discredited, in prison, or dead. Any of the three results has the same 
effect: to eliminate a barrier to agribusiness, dam projects, or 
extractive industries.

For the first time since Global Witness began releasing its annual 
reports in 2012, the organization has included a section on 
criminalization, in which governments and private interests create, 
change, or reinterpret laws to transform once-legal activities into 
criminal acts.

“Criminalization is done to put fear into the hearts of people so they 
will stop protesting. For Indigenous people, this is a very serious 
action because when they criminalize a leader, then the whole community 
or organization gets paralyzed,” Tauli-Corpuz told The Intercept. 
“That’s what it’s intended to do — it’s intended to repress freedom of 
association and the freedom of people to express their own views.”


      Many Deaths Go Unrecorded

6612scr_b55a177f2a43c5d-1564423407

Image: Courtesy Global Witness

In 2018, Global Witness documented 164 killings worldwide of people 
fighting to protect their land and ecosystems from destructive 
industries. Nearly a quarter of those murdered were Indigenous. And more 
than a quarter of the killings were associated with opposition to mining 
and extractives industries.

Colombia, India, and Brazil were also among the deadliest places for 
land defenders last year. And Guatemala, the origin country of a quarter 
of the migrants apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border in 2018, had the 
highest rate per capita of land defenders murdered. According to Global 
Witness’s count, the number of murders there rose from three in 2017 to 
16 in 2018. As The Intercept previously reported 
<https://theintercept.com/2019/06/23/guatemala-land-defender-san-rafael-mine/>, 
the victims were fighting to protect their territories from a range of 
industries, from agribusiness to hydropower to mining. The uptick in 
violence has been linked to a sharp turn away from democracy in the 
country and President Jimmy Morales’s abandonment of internationally 
lauded efforts to combat impunity and corruption.

In its report, Global Witness makes clear that its tally of land 
defenders murdered is almost certainly an undercount. Researchers rely 
heavily on in-country human rights organizations and journalists to 
record such attacks. In countries where press freedom is stymied or 
other conflicts complicate the ability of such groups to track violent 
incidents, land and environmental defender deaths go unrecorded.

Tauli-Corpuz’s experience underlines the risks undertaken by those who 
simply document violence and intimidation. In Guatemala, too, the 
leaders of the nonprofit Unit for the Protection of Human Rights 
Defenders, who meticulously track murders, arrests, and smear campaigns 
against people fighting destructive industries, have themselves faced 
some of the same threats as those for whom they advocate.


      Crackdown on Dissent

Alice Harrison, a spokesperson for Global Witness, said that a focus 
strictly on murders obscures the wider range of violence and persecution 
land defenders face. For example, last year was the first since 2012 
that Brazil did not have the highest number of deaths on the 
organization’s tally. But advocates for land defenders in Brazil, 
Harrison said, “have seen an uptick in really violent physical attacks, 
a lot of them just shy of murder.” It’s expected to get worse, she said. 
President Jair Bolsonaro has pledged to open up the Amazon and 
Indigenous territories 
<https://theintercept.com/2019/07/06/brazil-amazon-rainforest-indigenous-conservation-agribusiness-ranching/> 
to industry; budget and staffing have been slashed at Brazil’s 
environmental monitoring agency as well as the agency responsible for 
monitoring the rights of Indigenous people in areas with violent land 
conflicts.

And across Latin America, killings often occur only after individuals 
have been framed as criminals through the legal system. The Honduran 
environmental activist Berta Cáceres, for example, faced years of legal 
pressure before being assassinated by hit men hired by the dam she opposed.

“When you start looking at defenders through criminalization, you start 
to draw dots between global south and global north,” said Harrison. In 
countries like the U.S. and the U.K., murders of land defenders are 
rare, but arrests, lawsuits, and disproportionate penalties for crimes 
like trespassing are common. In countries across the globe, new laws 
have been passed that criminalize dissent under the guise of national 
security.

In 2018, according to Global Witness, Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, 
Nicaragua, and Vietnam passed laws that could be used to stifle 
political dissent or prosecute environmental activists.

The U.S. has also seen a spate of anti-protest laws passed. Since Donald 
Trump was elected, at least 17 states have introduced bills increasing 
penalties for anyone who interferes with “critical infrastructure,” 
including controversial oil and gas pipelines. The laws have passed in 
eight states. This past June, the Trump administration proposed 
<https://theintercept.com/2019/06/05/pipeline-protests-proposed-legislation-phmsa-alec/> 
federal legislation that would prescribe up to 20 years in prison for 
disrupting or conspiring to disrupt an oil or gas pipeline.

With supporters of unfettered development like Duterte, Trump, and 
Bolsonaro in positions of power across the globe, the risks for 
environmental defenders are only expected to increase, even as the 
accelerating climate and biodiversity crises enhance the urgency of 
their work.

Harrison would like to see a stronger regulatory environment for land 
defenders. As an example, she points to the Lacey Act 
<https://www.sierraclub.org/lacey-act> in the U.S., which requires wood 
importers to assure that their suppliers are not sourcing logs using 
illegal practices. Nothing equivalent exists in the U.S. for industries 
like agribusiness.

Tauli-Corpuz says organizing against laws that criminalize protest is 
essential. In the Philippines, a court ordered 
<https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=23466&LangID=E> 
that her name be removed from the terrorist list following sustained 
pressure from local and international organizations. Eventually, the 
list was thrown out entirely.

But martial law is still in place in Mindanao, and the label of 
“terrorist” or “Communist” is still used across the Philippines as an 
excuse to criminalize and attack the Lumad and other Indigenous land 
defenders.

“We cannot just take these kinds of actions quietly. We have to protest 
and get the support of the international community and other people who 
are concerned about this kind of fascism,” Tauli-Corpuz said. “It’s 
really important to wage a campaign any time such criminalization 
happens — that is one way of protecting people.”

-- 
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