by DGR Colorado Plateau | Dec 21, 2015 | Colonialism & Conquest, Mining & Drilling, Protests & Symbolic Acts
By Hannibal Rhoades / Intercontinental Cry
Last week, a 3,000 person-strong people’s caravan, or Lakbayan, formed on the island of Mindanao to protest the criminalization and murder of Indigenous Peoples and environmental defenders in the Philippines.
Uniting Indigenous Peoples, peasants, workers, faith groups, teachers and youth, the caravan marched for three days and over a hundred kilometers from Davao del Sur to Koronadal City under the banner ‘Resist imperialist plunder! Stop Lumad killings!’
Though the numbers reported vary, the organizers of the caravan say 144 indigenous people, environmental defenders and human rights activists have been the victims of extrajudicial killings during the reign of incumbent President Benigno Aquino.
In a statement released before the Lakbayan, the groups connected these killings and rights abuses to the increasing presence of the extractive industries in Mindanao and the Philippines.
“These human rights abuses glaringly persist in the ancestral domains where the big and foreign mining companies and agri-plantations operate,” they said.
These killings form part of a wider pattern. According to research by UK-based think tank Global Witness, two environmental defenders are killed every week as they work to protect their lands from being appropriated and exploited by mining companies and other industrial interests.
In recent years, the Philippines has become a hot spot for these killings. But, as is the case around the world, very few of those responsible for the murders of environmental defenders ever see a court of law. Around the world between 2002-2013, perpetrators of such killings were brought to justice in less than one percent of cases.
STOP LUMAD KILLINGS
On Sept. 1, 2015 educator Emerito Samarca and two Lumad leaders, Dionel Campos and Aurelio Sinzo, who opposed large scale mining, were brutally murdered in Lianga, Mindanao. According to local reports, the men were killed in the heart of the community by members of the Maghat/Bagani paramilitary group, attached to the 36th Infantry Battalion of the Philippine Army.
Speaking at COP21 in Paris, Clemente Bautista, National Coordinator for Kalikasan PNE, described how the Armed Forces of the Philippines and affiliated paramilitaries are implicated in the terrorization of Indigenous and peasant peoples.
“The government is using militarization to protect corporate mining in the Philippines. They use the state military forces including paramilitaries to secure mining projects, quell the people’s resistance, and sow fear among the people, particularly those in mining-affected communities. Mining corporations, military and paramilitary groups employ violence such as harassment, illegal arrest and assassination, targeting anti-mining leaders,” he said.
The killings of Samarca, Campos and Sinzo are the latest in a spate of murders that has seen 56 Lumad leaders assassinated for protecting their lands and communities.
The “Lianga Massacre,” as it has become known, sparked international outrage and a day of solidarity and action that called on the Philippine Government to Stop Lumad killings. But the more diffuse consequences of the terror these kinds of killings are designed to produce have been underreported outside of the Philippines.
The relentless persecution of the Lumad People is creating a climate of terror in Mindanao that is profoundly impacting the freedom of the Lumads to live their lives freely.
In their statement before the three-day Lakbayan, organizing group Soscskargends Agenda revealed how the rising tide of violence in Mindanao has contributed to the internal displacement of up to 40,000 Lumads. The Lianga Massacre alone forced over 3,000 local Lumads to flee their isolated villages in Surigao del Sur to nearby towns, fearing for their lives.
The constant threat of violence in Mindanao and the panic migrations that result are having a particularly negative impact on Indigenous children. According to Soscskargends Agenda, at present 9 out of 10 Lumad children have no access to formal education and 87 Lumad schools are suffering from “various forms of military violence”.
“The 36th IB Philippine Army-Magahat/Bagani rampage at the ALCADEV School shows that the Aquino government has dropped all pretenses of adhering to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and other international human rights instruments,” say the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines.
The Lakbayan gave the groups involved an opportunity to elevate these underrepresented issues and create a platform for several urgent demands.
The groups are calling upon the Philippine government, first and foremost, to stop the killing of Lumad people, protect indigenous and peasant schools in Mindanao, and pull the plug on the large scale multinational mining projects that they say are helping fuel poverty and violence in the Philippines.
THE RESOURCE CURSE
Mindanao has become known as the “mining capital” of the Philippines. The island is peppered with 500,000 hectares of mining concessions, an area almost eight times larger than Metro Manila, the National Capital Region of the Philippines. These concessions have overwhelmingly been granted to multinational corporations, many of which are registered in Global North nations such as Canada.
Other islands in the Philippines, estimated to be the sixth richest nation in the world in terms of mineral and metals, have experienced a similar expansion of large scale mining since the Philippine Mining Act of 1995 (Republic Act 7942). The Act liberalized the country’s mining sector, promising economic growth and development through the exploitation of the country’s natural resources with the help of multinational corporations.
However, many Filipino civil society and indigenous groups argue that the liberalization of the mining sector has led to rising poverty, not prosperity, for Filipinos.
In a recent report,* Philippine people’s network Kalikasan PNE write that, based on data from the Philippine Bureau of Internal Revenue, between 1997 to 2013 less than 10% of mining revenues generated in the Philippines stayed in the country’s economy. According to their research, mining contributes only 0.7 percent to Philippine GDP and provides just 0.7% of employment.
The significance of these figures is emphasized when the costs mining corporations inflict on ecosystems and local communities are considered. The presence of multinational mining corporations in the Philippines has unleashed a tidal wave of environmental destruction on local indigenous and rural communities, costing thousands of livelihoods, devastating ecosystems and sustainable local economies.
The Marcopper disaster at a mine the owned by Canadian multinational Placer Dome on the island of Marinduque provides a good example.
On March 24, 1996 a sealed mine tunnel connected to a pit containing 23 million metric tons of mine waste fractured, leaking between 2-3 million tons of the waste into the Boac River. Residents of twenty local villages were forced to leave their homes, some of which were totally inundated by the flash flood of mine waste.
Agricultural fields were also flooded and the rapid destruction of all aquatic life in the Boac, a key source of livelihoods for local fishing communities, led the Philippine government to declare the river dead. Local peoples had already suffered decades of chronic environmental pollution, loss of livelihoods and ill health as the result of mining.
Dozens of other mining disasters have occurred in the period since the Mining Act of 1995 was passed. “Simply put,” write the authors of Kalikasan’s report, “we have experienced two decades of mining plunder.”
RESISTANCE AND MILITARIZATION
The two decades since Mining Act of 1995 was signed into existence have also been characterized by escalating resistance efforts from Indigenous Peoples, peasants and their supporters at the local, national and international levels.
Indigenous Peoples in particular have taken a stand to defend their territories, even taking up arms to protect their lands. In some cases this sustained resistance has been successful in preventing mining projects going ahead.
In June 2015, the Indigenous B’laan people and Philippine environmental groups celebrated mining giant Glencore Xstrata’s decision to pull out of the highly contested Tampakan copper-gold mining project. The company had been attempting to get mining under way since taking ownership of the project in 2001, but met powerful resistance from the B’laan.
The Philippine government’s response to such strong, sustained and well organized resistance has been to increasingly militarize areas where multinationals are operating, as seen in the case of Samarca, Campos and Sinzo.
The organizers of the recent Lakbayan say the current Aquino government’s “vicious internal security doctrine,” Oplan Bayanihan, is being used as a cover to to attack the schools, communities and leaders of those who actively resist mining.
The stated aim of Oplan Bayanihan, a government counter insurgency program, is to squash the New People’s Army (NPA), a communist guerrilla group that has been warring with the Philippine government for over two decades. However, the powers contained in the plan are also used to criminalize anti-mining activists who threaten the interests of multinationals in regions like Mindanao.
These activists are frequently accused, by the government, military and paramilitaries, of being connected with the NPA. Branded as anti-government rebels their intimidation, incarceration and/or murder is effectively excused.
But even this systematic state repression is not stopping people standing up for their rights, says Bautista.
“We say more oppression breeds stronger resistance. Surely the government and corporations will continue to trample the rights of the indigenous people and other sectors. This will make Indigenous Peoples and ordinary people more united and their collective struggle stronger.”
Holding cultural events, forums and symbolic actions along the way, the recent Lakbayan paid testimony to this theory, as people voted with their feet and raised their voices for justice.
*The report,
Kalibutan: Stories and lessons from the Filipino people’s struggle for the environment, is not yet available online. Visit
Kalikasan PNE’s website to make inquiries and find out more.
by DGR Colorado Plateau | Nov 7, 2015 | Colonialism & Conquest, Human Supremacy, Indigenous Autonomy, Indirect Action
In early October, news emerged that India’s Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change was blocking the implementation of a high-level government panel’s report on tribal rights that recommended the creation of stringent rules to safeguard indigenous people from displacement. Meanwhile, two state governments have begun implementing a much different set of guidelines — issued in August without any interference — that allow the private sector to manage 40 percent of forests for profit at the expense of indigenous forest dwellers. In addition, another ordinance passed this year will permit private corporations to easily acquire land and forests from indigenous communities and carry out ecologically harmful mining. These legislative and policy decisions are usually made without the knowledge of indigenous communities whose lives, livelihoods and ecosystems will be worsened by these irresponsible actions of the government. Hence, indigenous communities in Uttar Pradesh, a northern state and Odisha, in the east, are strengthening their organizing to protect their rivers, lands, forests and hills from “development” that would displace thousands of local residents and destroy the environment.“People from my community and I were beaten, detained or jailed unnecessarily for opposing tree felling in our forests, some years ago,” said Nivada Debi, a feisty 38-year-old woman from the Tharu Adivasi community in Uttar Pradesh. “We visited the police station multiple times for their release. The government did not assist the injured. Despite the police and government indifference, we will fight for our land and environment.”A mother of four children subsisting on the forests, Debi is active in grassroots resistance that started nearly 20 years ago and has grown into the All India Union of Forest Working People, or AIUFWP. The group is made up of many indigenous people who subsist on forests and are collectively protecting forests from poachers and encroachers.
Debi was among hundreds — from the AIUFWP, the allied Save Kanhar Movement and other resistance groups — who traveled to Lucknow in July 2015 for a rally protesting the continued incarceration of their comrades fighting land grabbing in other districts of Uttar Pradesh. Roma Malik, the AIUFWP deputy general secretary, and Sukalo Gond, an Adivasi, which means original inhabitant, were among those arrested on June 30, before they were to address a large public gathering about the illegal land acquisition for the Kanhar dam and the violent repression of its opponents by the state. Another member of AIUFWP, Rajkumari, who prefers to go by her first name, was jailed on April 21, after 39 Adivasis and Dalits, who are considered outside the caste hierarchy, were brutally shot at by the police during a peaceful protest on April 18. The demonstration, which began on April 14 — the birthday of B.R. Ambedkar, the architect of the Indian constitution and an icon for many Indians, particularly Dalits — was opposing the construction of a dam across the Kanhar river in the Sonbhadra district of southeastern Uttar Pradesh.
Rajkumari was released toward the end of July while Gond and Malik were freed in September. However, others are still imprisoned on fabricated charges. Courts are delaying hearing their cases or denying them bail.
AIUFWP members, some of whom were previously involved with other local resistance movements, have been actively opposing the construction of the Kanhar dam for years. It would submerge over 10,000 acres of land from more than 110 villages in Uttar Pradesh and the neighboring states of Chattisgarh and Jharkhand, displacing thousands of local people and disrupting their lives and livelihoods. The dam was approved by the Central Water Commission of India in 1976, but was abandoned in 1989 after facing fierce opposition, especially from the local people whose lives and ecosystem would be destroyed by the proposed dam. However, construction resumed in December 2014, violating orders to stop it from the National Green Tribunal — a government body that adjudicates on environmental protection, forest conservation and natural resource disputes. No social impact assessment was done, nor were the necessary environmental or forest clearances — mandated by the Forest Conservation Act — obtained by the state government.
“Since this dam can destroy our survival and also adversely impact the surroundings, we have been opposing its construction and related land acquisition for many years,” said Shobha, a determined 42-year-old Dalit. “On December 23, 2014, the police caned some of our comrades when we were peacefully protesting the revival of building the dam earlier that month. However, the police falsely accused some leaders of our struggle of attacking the sub-divisional magistrate.” Shobha, who also prefers to go only by her first name, is among the vocal leaders of a women’s agricultural laborers union, which has allied with AIUFWP, in the village of Bada.
Around 400 miles from Sonbhadra, in the Kalahandi and Rayagada districts of southern Odisha, live the Dongria Kondhs, an indigenous community of over 8,000 people. They have been fighting tirelessly to protect their sacred mountain, the nearly 5,000-foot high Niyamgiri, from large private corporations — like Vedanta Limited — that are trying to mine bauxite in the area to produce aluminum. Supporters of the Dongria Kondhs were arrested in Delhi on August 9 outside the Reserve Bank of India, as they peacefully highlighted Vedanta’s illegitimate and harmful mining in the Niyamgiri. Vedanta’s mining would violate the Forest Rights Act, which states that indigenous communities are entitled to remain in the forests — and utilize the produce, land and water in the forests — while conserving and protecting them.
“The Niyamgiri symbolizes a parent to our community,” said Sadai Huika, a steadfast 45-year-old Dongria Kondh woman from Tikoripada village. “While the streams that originate from it help our farming, the plants and grass that grows on it feed our cattle and goats. We cannot exist without it and will safeguard it from anyone trying to harm it.”
Huika and people from hundreds of villages near the Niyamgiri are active members of the Niyamgiri Protection Forum, which originated around 2003 to resist attempts by Vedanta to begin mining where the Kondhs live, with the support of the Odisha state government. At every one of the 12 village council meetings with government officers held in 2013 atop the Niyamgari, community members stated that they would not allow mining nearby.
Kumuti Majhi, an elderly Dongria Kondh man and one of the forum’s leaders, is among the few people who have traveled within and outside Odisha to advocate against mining and garner vital support for their struggle. He has met ministers to explain how significant the Niyamgiri is to his community and their reasons for safeguarding it.
By organizing protests locally and with allies around the world — and meetings with Vedanta’s shareholders and empathetic government officials, who the forum has enlightened about the need to protect the Niyamgiri — the group has stalled the mining.
“We know that extracting bauxite from the Niyamgiri will pollute our environment and also affect all living beings here,” Majhi said. “Hence, we will stop anyone coming to plunder the Niyamgiri, despite police harassment and false charges against us and our families.”
Pushpa Achanta is a Bangalore-based freelance journalist, blogger and writer on development and human interest issues. She is the lead author of a book titled Ripples: The Right to Water and Sanitation for Whom, published in July 2013 by the Indian Social Institute in Bangalore. Her articles have appeared in collections of essays and features on different subjects. She also enjoys penning verse, taking nature photography and mentoring youth.
by DGR Colorado Plateau | Oct 30, 2015 | Indigenous Autonomy, Obstruction & Occupation
By SAVE Rivers, JOAS, The Borneo Project, BMF and BRIMAS / Intercontinental Cry
Indigenous resistance against the proposed Baram Dam receives international support for the celebration of the second year anniversary of the Baram Dam blockades: indigenous anti-dam activists from many parts of the world adopt declaration at the banks of the Baram River in Sarawak, Malaysia.
(BARAM / SARAWAK / MALAYSIA) On October 23rd 2015, indigenous communities from around the world gathered on the banks of the Baram River in Sarawak, Malaysia in the context of the second year anniversary of the indigenous-led blockades against the proposed Baram Dam. Two years ago indigenous communities set up two blockades and chased workers and researchers from the site. The works on the dam have come to a standstill and last month the government of Sarawak announced a moratorium.
Indigenous anti-dam activists from Indonesia, the Philippines, Cambodia, Brazil, the US, Honduras, and from around Malaysia united at the blockades to stand in solidarity with the resistance against the Baram Dam and to strengthen ties between their communities. The week-long event is called the World Indigenous Summit on Environment and Rivers, WISER Baram 2015, and was hosted by the grassroots network SAVE Rivers.
During celebrations at the two blockades, the proposed dam site, as well as at a conference in the town of Miri, the participants were united by the similarities between their struggles. “I have gained a lot of experience from all of the delegates. And with such information, I am confident enough such experiences will be fundamental to us – the Baram People – and our strategies to continue to fight and stop the proposed Baram Dam,” said James Nyurang, who hosted the delegates at his village.
According to Berta Cáceres, 2015 Goldman Prize winner from Honduras, “this summit on indigenous peoples and rivers has a special value in that its actions give strength to the historic resistance of our peoples and makes visible the grave aggressions and conflict generated by the privatization of rivers and the construction of dams within Indigenous communities and regions.”
The declaration also calls on governments and institutions to stop presenting dams as climate neutral, and recognize that dams emit large amounts of greenhouse gases, including methane.
Participants in the summit collectively produced a declaration that acknowledges the widespread suffering and destruction caused by dams, and stresses the importance of obtaining Free, Prior, and Informed Consent from communities impacted by dam building. It urges all stakeholders to act in full accountability, transparency, and compliance of all human rights principals and values.
The indigenous defense of the Baram river stands united with other communities’ struggles for land, livelihood, spirituality, identity, and community cohesion.
by DGR Colorado Plateau | Oct 11, 2015 | Climate Change, Lobbying, Protests & Symbolic Acts, Women & Radical Feminism
SAN FRANCISCO– On Tuesday, September 29th, 2015 women from fifty countries around the world took action for climate justice, gender equality, bold climate policies and transformative solutions as part of the Global Women’s Climate Justice Day of Action organized by the Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN International).
From Sudan to the Philippines, from Ecuador to France, women raised their voices collectively to show resistance to social and environmental injustice and to present their solutions and demands for a healthy, livable planet.
In Port Harcourt, Nigeria women organized the ‘African Women Uniting for Energy, Food, & Climate Justice Exchange’, during which they shared struggles and solutions around oil extraction in the Niger delta and led a march through the city. In Swaziland, women united to sign the Women’s Climate Declaration and dialogue about why women experience disproportionate climate impacts and what can be done to address this injustice.
In Scotland, women collected trash from the beach and ocean to create an art installation highlighting the plight of threatened Arctic ecosystems. In Odisha, India, women united to speak out against deforestation fueled by the mining industry, taking direct action by planting trees and writing a memorandum to local government officials calling for communitywide reforestation programs led by women. Many worldwide participants voiced their demands for their governments to keep fossil fuels in the ground and immediately finance a just transition to 100% renewable energy.
Action recaps, photos, and statements from worldwide participants have been compiled on a central Day of Action gallery, from which they are being shared and amplified across the globe.
While women held decentralized actions in their communities, WECAN International convened a September 29th hub event, ‘Women Speak: Climate Justice on the Road to Paris & Beyond’ at the United Nations Church Center in New York City, directly across the street from where world leaders gathered for the annual United Nations General Assembly.
The event featured presentations and declarations of action by outstanding leaders including Indigenous activist and Greenpeace Canada campaigner Melina Laboucan-Massismo, May Boeve of 350.org, Jacqui Patterson of the NAACP, Patricia Gualinga, Kichwa leader of Sarayaku Ecuador, Thilmeeza Hussein of Voice of Women Maldives, and a special video message from Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland and President of the Mary Robinson Foundation-Climate Justice. The event concluded with a historic announcement and presentation of the ‘Indigenous Women of the North and South – Defend Mother Earth Treaty Compact 2015’.
As the day drew to a close, WECAN International and allies united for a direct action outside of the United Nations Headquarters.
“Women around the world are well aware that what is happening in the ‘halls of power’ is not nearly enough given the degree of climate crisis that we face and the injustices and impacts felt by women on the frontlines across the globe,” explained Osprey Orielle Lake, Founder and Executive Director of the Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network, “On September 29th, women across the world mobilized for bold, transformative climate change solutions and demonstrated the strength, diversity, and vitality of the women’s movement for climate justice. Women have always been on the frontlines of climate change, and now we are taking action to make sure that our voices and decision-making power are at the forefront as well. The stories, struggles, and solutions shared as part of the Global Women’s Climate Justice Day of Action will be carried forward to COP21 in Paris and beyond.”
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The Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN International) is a solutions-based, multi-faceted effort established to engage women worldwide as powerful stakeholders in climate change, climate justice, and sustainability solutions. Recent work includes the 2013 International Women’s Earth and Climate Summit, Women’s Climate Declaration, and WECAN Women’s Climate Action Agenda. International climate advocacy is complemented with on-the-ground programs such as the Women’s for Forests and Fossil Fuel/Mining/Mega Dam Resistance, US Women’s Climate Justice Initiative, and Regional Climate Solutions Trainings in the Middle East North Africa region, Latin America, and Democratic Republic of Congo. WECAN International was founded in 2013 as a project of the 501(c)3Women’s Earth and Climate Caucus (WECC) organization and its partner eraGlobal Alliance.
www.wecaninternational.org
@WECAN_INTL
