Environmental Activists, Tribal Peoples Killed In Record Numbers, Report Says

At least 116 people were killed last year while campaigning to protect the environment and oppose land grabs, according to a report by UK-based Global Witness.

On October 7, 19-year-old Daniel Humberto, a staunch critic of the environmental damage caused by Colombia’s gold mines, was found dead in his province of Cajamarca. Four days later, prominent activist and radio anchor Atilano Romano Tirado, who led the campaign against a dam that destroyed the livelihoods of hundreds of farmers, was shot dead in Mexico’s Sinaloa state during a live broadcast of his show. The next month, police in Brazil found the body of Marinalva Manoel, a leader of Brazil’s Guarani Indians, who fought for the return of their ancestral lands grabbed by cattle ranchers. She had been raped and stabbed to death.

The list of harrowing murders goes on and on. Environmental activists are being killed in record numbers, according to the British-based NGO Global Witness, which campaigns against the plunder of the world’s resources fuelled by conflict and corruption. Its report, titled “How many more?” and released earlier this week, lists 116 known murders, a 20% increase on 2013.

Global Witness warns that many more assassinations in remote or secretive areas may have gone unreported. “We were unable to collect information on the murder of activists in Russia, China, the Middle East and a large part of Africa,” said the group’s researcher Chris Moye, in a telephone interview with FRANCE 24.

Latin American countries (Brazil, Colombia, Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico) account for the lion’s share of known fatalities, followed by South-East Asia (Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia). The victims include journalists, activists and – in 40% of cases – members of indigenous communities fighting to hold on to their shrinking lands.

Indigenous groups on the frontline

While the figures are hard to verify due to the remoteness of certain communities, they are consistent with reports by activist group Survival International, which monitors the harassment, abductions, land grabs and murders that target indigenous groups battling to protect the primary sources on which they depend.

“Industrialized societies subject tribal peoples to genocidal violence, slavery and racism so they can steal their lands, resources and labour in the name of ‘progress’ and ‘civilization’,” Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said last year, lamenting “one of the most urgent and tragic crises of our time”.

Survival has given particular attention to the plight of Brazil’s Guaranis, whose lands are routinely grabbed by violent ranchers. Guaranis once occupied a homeland of forests and plains covering some 350,000 square kilometres. Historians estimate their population before the arrival of European colonizers at around half a million. Today, they number barely 51,000 and are crammed into ever dwindling patches of land, surrounded by cattle farms and sugar cane plantations used to produce biofuels.

Ranchers hire private security companies to protect their farms and expel indigenous communities. In April 2014, Brazilian police dismantled an armed militia known as Gaspem. Its members were accused of murdering at least two Guarani leaders and assaulting hundreds more.

Impunity

Crackdowns like the one on Gaspem are all too rare. In most cases, those who order or carry out the killings do so with total impunity, benefiting from rampant corruption or the complicity of powerful lobbies. “Countries like Honduras, Colombia, Brazil and the Philippines lack efficient mechanisms to enforce the law, and this encourages impunity and corruption,” says Global Witness’s Chris Moye.

In its report, the advocacy group laments the lack of publically available information on the perpetrators of such crimes. Among the well-documented cases, Global Witness found that 10 murders in Colombia and the Philippines can be attributed to paramilitary groups, eight to the police, five to private security companies and three to the military. “Available information suggests that large landowners, business interests, political actors and agents of organized crime are often behind the violence,” the report says.

As Paris prepares to host a crucial UN summit on the environment in December, Global Witness says the international community must step up the protection of green campaigners. “Environmental and land defenders are often on the frontlines of efforts to address the climate crisis and are critical to success,” the reports reads. “Unless governments do more to protect these activists, any words agreed in Paris will ultimately ring hollow.”