MORE THAN 160 ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENDERS WERE KILLED IN 2018, AND MANY OTHERS LABELED TERRORISTS AND CRIMINALS

This The Intercept article discusses how activists fighting global warming are being targeted and killed.

VICTORIA TAULI-CORPUZ, 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.

Authoritarian President Rodrigo Duterte had imposed martial law on the island of Mindanao in May 2017, when ISIS sympathizers attacked 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, coal extraction, and gold mining. In the two months after the ISIS conflict ended, the military’s harassment and violence reportedly displaced 2,500 Lumad people.

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