A total of 109 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from 22 countries have expressed concern over the worsening human-rights situation in the Philippines—the third-deadliest country in the world and the deadliest in Asia in the 2017 Global Witness Report on Killings of Environmental and Land Defenders. The group released a statement condemning the attacks against environmental defenders in the Philippines.
Signatories include NGOs from Bangladesh, the United Kingdom, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Thailand, Finland, Nepal, Kenya, Ecuador, Vietnam, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Timor Leste, Kyrgyzstan, South Korea, Spain, the United States, Netherlands, Germany and Cameroon.
“In just more than a year under the current administration of President Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, at least 42 environmental defenders have been killed, 240 have been slapped with harassment lawsuits and at least 18,263 [people] have been forcibly displaced because of their resistance to destructive projects,” the group noted.
Clemente Bautista, national coordinator of Kalikasan-PNE said: “President Duterte is by far the worst human-rights violator to Filipino environmental defenders. Duterte is well on his way to making the Philippines the most dangerous country for environmental defenders by 2018.”
The group issued the statement in the wake of what it described as “increasingly atrocious” human-rights violations perpetrated against Filipino environmental defenders and other activists over the past two weeks.
It cited that on November 26, an exodus was begun by 1,688 indigenous Lumad people opposing coal mining in their ancestral lands in Lianga, Surigao del Sur.
“This was spurred by intensified military operations of the 75th Infantry Battalion of the Philippine Army. Later, the evacuation camp was food blockaded by the 75th IBPA [Infantry Battalion of the Philippine Army] to prevent the entry of humanitarian aid,” the group noted.
On December 3 elements of the 27th and 33rd IBPAs massacred eight indigenous T’boli and Dulangan Manobo tribe members opposing attempts by the DMCI company to establish a 3,000-hectare coal mine within their ancestral land in South Cotabato province.
The group reported that various other incidents of extrajudicial killings, illegal arrests, enforced disappearances and forced evacuations occurred in just the past week in the provinces of Mindoro Oriental, Batangas, Agusan del Sur, Compostela Valley and Surigao del Sur. Affected communities mainly confronted mining, plantation and coal issues.
They observed that, “civilians are systematically targeted by military operations under an increasingly aggressive ‘Oplan Kapayapaan’ counterinsurgency program and the dark shadow of martial law,” noting the recent systematic efforts of justifying killings and militarization by accusing environmental defenders as armed communist rebels or sympathizers.
The group further said that “big mining has much to do with the mayhem” with 55 percent of the monitored killings and 100 percent of the monitored harassment lawsuits involving anti-mining activists and community members.
They are demanding the Duterte administration to free all remaining 16 illegally detained environmental defenders from prison and drop all 225 trumped-up charges still lodged against environmental defenders. “Urgent and concrete actions must also be taken to stop the killings of environmental defenders and bring to justice its perpetrators,” the groups said.
The statement was initiated by Kalikasan-PNE, together with the Environmental Advocates against Repression and Tyranny in Defense of Human-Rights (EARTH), a recently established environment and human rights coalition united to oppose human-rights violations perpetrated against environmental defenders.
Kalikasan-PNE and EARTH announced their intention to mobilize their ranks in time for the December 10 Human Rights Day as planned by various movements opposing the worsening climate of impunity in the country.