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<div class="header reader-header reader-show-element"> <font
size="-2"><a class="domain reader-domain"
href="https://theintercept.com/2019/07/30/criminalization-environmental-activists-global-witness-report/">https://theintercept.com/2019/07/30/criminalization-environmental-activists-global-witness-report/</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">More Than 160 Environmental Defenders
Were Killed in 2018, and Many Others Labeled Terrorists and
Criminals</h1>
<div class="credits reader-credits">Alleen Brown - July 30, 2019</div>
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<p><u>Victoria Tauli-Corpuz,</u> 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.</p>
<p>Authoritarian President Rodrigo Duterte had imposed
martial law on the island of Mindanao in May 2017, when
ISIS sympathizers <a
href="https://www.rappler.com/newsbreak/in-depth/186075-marawi-series-rappler-timeline">attacked</a>
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, <a
href="http://philippinereporter.com/2018/08/10/coal-mining-behind-militarization-and-displacement-of-lumad-communities/">coal
extraction</a>, and gold mining. In the two months
after the ISIS conflict ended, the military’s harassment
and violence <a
href="https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=22567&LangID=E">reportedly</a>
displaced 2,500 Lumad people.</p>
<p>Tauli-Corpuz and Cecilia Jimenez-Damary, the U.N.
special rapporteur on the human rights of internally
displaced people, released a <a
href="https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=22567&LangID=E">statement</a>
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.</p>
<p>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 <a
href="https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1057998">seeking</a>
to declare the Communist Party and its armed wing as
terrorist organizations. Human Rights Watch declared the
petition a “<a
href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/03/08/philippines-terrorist-petition-virtual-hit-list">virtual
hit list</a>,” citing the “<a
href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2011/07/18/no-justice-just-adds-pain/killings-disappearances-and-impunity-philippines">long
history</a> in the Philippines of the state security
forces and pro-government militias assassinating people
labeled as NPA members or supporters.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Thirty land and environmental defenders were murdered
in the Philippines last year — more than in any other
country, according to a new <a
href="https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/environmental-activists/enemies-state/">report</a>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<h3>Many Deaths Go Unrecorded</h3>
<div>
<p><img
src="https://theintercept.imgix.net/wp-uploads/sites/1/2019/07/6612scr_b55a177f2a43c5d-1564423407.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&q=90&w=540&h=506"
alt="6612scr_b55a177f2a43c5d-1564423407"></p>
<p class="caption">Image: Courtesy Global Witness</p>
</div>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <a
href="https://theintercept.com/2019/06/23/guatemala-land-defender-san-rafael-mine/">reported</a>,
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<h3>Crackdown on Dissent</h3>
<p>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 <a
href="https://theintercept.com/2019/07/06/brazil-amazon-rainforest-indigenous-conservation-agribusiness-ranching/">Amazon
and Indigenous territories</a> 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <a
href="https://theintercept.com/2019/06/05/pipeline-protests-proposed-legislation-phmsa-alec/">proposed</a>
federal legislation that would prescribe up to 20 years
in prison for disrupting or conspiring to disrupt an oil
or gas pipeline.</p>
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<p>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.</p>
<p>Harrison would like to see a stronger regulatory
environment for land defenders. As an example, she
points to the <a
href="https://www.sierraclub.org/lacey-act">Lacey Act</a>
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.</p>
<p>Tauli-Corpuz says organizing against laws that
criminalize protest is essential. In the Philippines, a
court <a
href="https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=23466&LangID=E">ordered</a>
that her name be removed from the terrorist list
following sustained pressure from local and
international organizations. Eventually, the list was
thrown out entirely.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
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