Excerpts from the Associated Press:
>At least 200 land and environmental activists were slain in 2016 protecting forests, rivers and land from mining, logging and agricultural companies, the highest annual number on record, a watchdog group said Thursday.
>India had a threefold increase in such killings but Latin America remained the deadliest region with some 60 percent of the world’s deaths of activists protecting local resources, London-based Global Witness said in a report. The deaths, which rose from 185 the previous year, were reported in 24 countries compared to 16 in 2015.
>The group said the true number of killings is likely to be much higher, since collecting such data is difficult. And while murder is an extreme tactic of oppression, activists also routinely experienced death threats, assaults, arrests and costly legal battles, it said.
>The non-governmental Pastoral Land Commission, which tracks land conflicts in Brazil, blamed the high level of violence on agriculture, mining, energy and other companies moving into lands held by traditional and indigenous communities.
>Across Africa the people most at risk were rangers at national parks whose jobs pitted them against poachers.
https://www.apnews.com/0e65e2fd41e348f7bcee5d33b036afae/Watchdog:-At-least-200-environmental-activists-slain-in-2016
Excerpts from Reuters:
>"By the time I got here, (security forces) had already broken down the door and taken my things," Conceicao, 36, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, recalling his eviction from his home in the southwestern Amazonas State seven months ago.
>"Then they knocked down my house."
>Having security forces knock down houses without prior warning and not allowing residents to remove their possessions is unlawful, said federal prosecutor Fernando Soave.
>"We would never abuse our authority, I would never put my career at risk," Lieutenant Miqueias Mariano de Oliveira, who led operations in the area, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
>He said conflicts in the area are due to small farmers like Conceicao "invading" land that belongs to large operators.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-landrights-politics-idUSKBN19Y1NL
Excerpts from the BBC:
>Disputes over mining were the cause of the greatest number of killings, followed by logging and agribusiness.
>Global Witness has been publishing annual reports on the threats to activists since 2012, although it has data going back to 2002.
>The organisation compiles its analysis from media sources, information from other non-governmental organisations and from the UN. It also verifies the data with monitoring groups in priority countries, such as Brazil, Colombia, Honduras and the Philippines.
>"Indigenous people are massively over represented in the figures and that's because many of their lands overlap with lands rich in minerals and timber and also because they have less access to justice or communications."
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-40584139
The report itself is available at https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/environmental-activists/defenders-earth/.
killed by the dairy industry most likely
>>157151
>all deaths in second and third world countries
Not very surprising when you think about it.
>>157151
>>157152
that's fucked up. that other governments are willing to go as far as killing activists makes me realize that the strategies our governments use must just be a lot more insidious. I wonder what the general attitude towards these activists is in these countries. Are they regularly shit on in the media and made to look like whiners and spoiled brats?
>>157151
>At least 200 land and environmental activists were slain in 2016
We can do better!
>>157201
The report partially addresses it under the Criminalisation section, but it mostly focuses on protests in the U.S., Canada, and Australia. In particular, the Dakota Access Pipeline and Standing Rock protests.
Rather than whiners or spoiled brats, it asserts they're branded as criminals or terrorists sometimes but not exclusively after having false or exaggerated charges laid against them.
One example the report gives is security contractor TigerSwan likening Standing Rock protesters to militant jihadists. But this was in internal communications, not a public statement.
The only example in this section given from a territory that has experienced such extremes as murder is Berta Cáceres and the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras.
From the Wikipedia article about her:
>During the campaign against the dam, Cáceres and other organisers were frequently intimidated by the military; on one occasion they were stopped and their vehicle was searched while traveling to Rio Blanco. Cáceres claimed that during this search, a gun was planted in the vehicle; the organisers were subsequently arrested on weapons charges and detained overnight in jail. The court placed Cáceres under preventative measures, forcing her to sign in at the court every week and preventing her from leaving the country.
>Court records from 2014 publicized in May 2016 showed that "the government and DESA repeatedly sought to tar Caceres and her colleagues as violent anarchists bent on terrorizing the population through their protests, [...] usurpation, coercion and continued damage and even attempting to undermine the democratic order."
>>157151
>dying in Brazil and Africa
wow, I'm shocked.
>>157201
>governments are willing
And industry.
good old /pol/ always ready to blame third worlders for the results of US imperialism
>>157151
shoot back dammit
Probably the natives of those respective places.
>>159049
I actually was hoping they were all from first world countries trying to impose their extreme environmentalist views onto the second and third world.
>>157201
>Are they regularly shit on in the media and made to look like whiners and spoiled brats?
If environmentalists did not act and present themselves as such disgusting troglodytes, the media and corporations would have a much harder time trying to demonize them. Seriously, when the Dakota Access Pipeline came up, I struggled trying to figure out what the fuck was going on. All of the videos or reports of it were either:
>conservative sources idly dismissing it as whiny hippies
>shaky-cam leftie shit with everyone screaming incoherently, doing their stupid chants, and looking like a horde of unwashed heathens
For the life of me I could not get a straight story about it until HistoryBuffs did a video on Dances with Wolves where he also addressed the pipeline situation, how it violates a long upheld treaty made back in the 1800s. When the only unbiased summary I could find of it came out of a fucking MOVIE REVIEW, you know your image logistics is in the fucking crapper. And for the longest time that was all I could conclude from it; the workers standing around while the environmentalists and injuns chanted and bitched and harassed the fuck out of them. When that is what most everyone sees, no wonder the eco terrorists make so many enemies. You can take your body-positivity and fat acceptance as you want, but image and presentation are key to winning public support.
>>159138
DAPL runs on private land through that region except for a small stretch over the lake which is owned by the federal government. It is not located on recognized reservation land according to the federal government. Additionally, only the initial sale of the land would be in violation of the treaty in the 1800s so it would be interesting to investigate the circumstances through which that exchange occured.
>>157151
oh wow, a whole 200 of them.
Got what was coming