TITLE: The Death Squads Hunting Environmental Defenders
https://inthesetimes.com/article/brandon-lee-philippines-violence-environmental-activists
EXCERPT: In These Times tracked violence against environmental defenders from 2014 to 2024 in 10 hotspot countries. Using the same methodology as a State Department watchdog group, we collected data from public sources to conservatively identify 573 killings of environmental activists. Of that number, close to half involved the state.
In Brazil, 24 of 53 cases were connected to the police or military, including a 2017 massacre of activists participating in a land occupation. In India, police were involved in 40 out of 44 killings over the past decade, many during demonstrations against mining projects or land grabs. In Peru, police were responsible for 13 of 18 killings, most often activists protesting extractive industry projects.
In Guatemala, indigenous defenders protesting a mining company in 2021 faced attacks from police, military and intelligence officers. Tear gas was used, homes set ablaze. In Brazil, some police work for the government by day and as private security for extractive companies by night.
The Philippines is considered the most dangerous country for environmental defenders in Asia, with attacks dating back to the 1980 murder of Macli-ing Dulag, an indigenous Kalinga man from the Cordillera who was killed by the military while protesting a hydropower project. A very conservative assessment suggests evidence of state involvement in 109 of 210 such killings in the Philippines in the past decade — more than half.
In 2017, eight indigenous defenders from the Lumad people were killed by the 27th Infantry Battalion after protesting the expansion of a coffee plantation on their ancestral land. The violence was so brutal that one woman had to place part of her husband’s brain back into his skull to prepare him for burial.
In 2020, on Panay Island, nine indigenous Tumandok leaders, also fighting a hydropower project, were kidnapped, tortured and killed on the same night, in a synchronized military and police operation. The massacre silenced a community and cleared the path for a megadam.
In 2023, farmers Aimee and Jover Villegas were allegedly killed by members of the Civilian Armed Forces Geographical Unit, a paramilitary force trained and funded by the government. In a country where farmers and indigenous people are often automatically considered environmental activists — because subsistence farming inherently places them at odds with corporate or extractive interests — Aimee’s throat was slashed and breast stabbed, and Jover’s left eye was gouged: a map of the torture they endured before being killed.
The hidden nature of the killings and the entanglement of military, paramilitary and local police makes it hard enough to trace state complicity, let alone track them back to more powerful geopolitical actors — such as the neocolonial U.S. military apparatus that has long cleared the way for resource extraction, and the global corporate and financial interests that ultimately profit. Yet, in many states — including the Philippines and much of Latin America — the wars on terror and drugs under which these executions are carried out are extensions of U.S. hegemony and conducted with U.S. weapons and training.
TITLE: A Call to Protect Mexico’s Women Climate Leaders
https://msmagazine.com/2024/07/10/mexico-violence-women-femicide-climate-change-environmental-justice/
EXCERPT: Of the 67 women environmental defenders killed globally between 2020 and 2022, 11 were Mexican, and nearly half were Indigenous. This crisis stems from two realities.
· First, climate activism in Mexico is especially hazardous due to powerful vested interests in industries like mining, logging, avocado monoculture and berry farming. Corruption exacerbates this danger, leading to harassment, intimidation and murder of activists. Eighty percent of all environmental defender murders in the world occur in Latin America, with Mexico topping the list.
· Second, femicide rates in Mexico are among the highest globally. Over 3,000 women are murdered in Mexico each year, a crisis that is fueled by systemic gender disparities, pervasive domestic violence, deeply rooted machismo, and a justice system where police apathy, inadequate investigations and revictimization by prosecutors and judges are the norm.
Women environmental defenders face compounded risks from gendered, racial, ethnic discrimination and violence, yet they continue to step forward to answer the needs arising in their regions. Mexican women-led organizations are driving transformative change across sectors including ocean conservation, food sovereignty, indigenous lifeways, health equity, eco-entrepreneurship, and more.
TITLE: The ‘fearless young activists’ thrown in jail for climate campaigns in Cambodia
https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/06/asia/mother-nature-cambodia-climate-youth-activists-intl-hnk/index.html
EXCERPT: Cambodia, a kingdom of nearly 17 million people that is rich in natural resources, faces pressing threats to its environment, including deforestation from illegal logging and agricultural expansion, water pollution affecting inland and coastal areas, and a surge in plastic waste.
The country maintains about 46% forest cover and is home to 2,300 plant species and 14 endangered animals, according to the United States Agency for International Development. “Deforestation and wildlife crimes continue to threaten Cambodia’s forests and biodiversity,” USAID says on its website.
Critics and environmental groups say those threats have heightened under the nearly four-decade-long rule of strongman Hun Sen – who has quashed dissent and jailed opponents in recent years, forcing many to flee overseas.
Though his eldest son, Hun Manet, succeeded him as prime minister last year, Hun Sen is still widely seen as the ruling party’s center of power.
“Like what we are seeing with dictators in other countries, Cambodia is becoming more repressed,” said Alejandro Gonzalez-Davidson, a Spaniard who co-founded Mother Nature Cambodia over a decade ago, alongside local Cambodian activists.
Climate activism in the country is at a “rougher, grassroots level,” he added, with the conversation centering more on “extremely rich and powerful tycoons and corrupt government officials trying to exploit and privatize,” the environment.
“This is Cambodia now – logging, poaching, mineral extraction, turning lakes into land and destroying rivers, as well as exporting massive amounts of sands. There are systems in place where (officials) exploit the environment for profit and our group has been doing as much as we can to stop these unethical projects and protect the environment – and that is why we are a threat in the regime’s eyes.”
Outside the court ahead of Tuesday’s [sentencing of 10 activists from the group Mother Nature Cambodia of up to six years in prison each on charges of conspiring against the state for fighting against a plan for a hydroelectric dam they claim would have damaged a pristine rainforest valley], a government spokesperson denied that the charges against the activists were politically motivated.
“The government has never taken action against those who criticize. We only take action against those who commit crimes,” spokesperson Pen Bona told Reuters.
Founded in 2012, Mother Nature Cambodia has campaigned against environmental destruction and exposed alleged corruption in state management of precious mineral resources, and their savvy use of social media has resonated with young Cambodians.
In 2023, the group was awarded the Right Livelihood Award, often called the “alternative Nobel Prize.”
“Mother Nature Cambodia is a group of fearless young activists fighting for environmental rights and democracy in the face of repression by the Cambodian regime,” the jury said in a speech at the time, describing them as “a powerful voice for environmental preservation and democracy in Cambodia.”
Several activists were unable to receive the award in person as Cambodian courts denied their requests to travel to Sweden to collect the prize.
“They have successfully helped local communities stop environmental violations,” Right Livelihood’s executive director Ole von Uexkuell said last year. “Through innovative and often humorous protests, their activism defends nature and livelihoods while upholding communities’ voices against corrupt and damaging products.”
The group has strongly leveraged social media, saying it helps get their message across to young supporters. They have more than 450,000 followers on Facebook, the most widely used social platform in the country.
But it’s on TikTok that their videos really make an impression on young Cambodian users like Run Bunry, a high-school student from the capital Phnom Penh and his friends. “They are positive and lighthearted and also teach us a lot about the environment,” he said.
One video, highlighting an investigation into the alleged illegal export of rare silica sand, showed three members buried up to their heads in sand and was shared more than 1,000 times. Another viral video taken along a beach in the coastal city Sihanoukville showed the extent of alleged illegal construction by hotels and casinos on the shore.
“Follower numbers have grown especially in the last five years and a lot of our old content regularly resurfaces on TikTok and goes viral,” said founding member Gonzalez-Davidson, who was expelled from Cambodia in 2015 after the group’s successful campaign to stop a Chinese-funded hydropower dam from being built over the Areng Valley, an area of pristine rainforest in southwest Cambodia.
Members of the group say they have faced increasing threats, harassment and criminal charges for years.
SEE ALSO:
'Arrest of Anti-Dam Activists in Arunachal a Violation of Rights of Indigenous Communities'
https://thewire.in/rights/arrest-of-anti-dam-activists-in-arunachal-a-violation-of-rights-of-indigenous-communities