The price of caring for the earth

Environmentalists: An Endangered Species

By Marwaan Macan-Markar *

Ken Saro-Wiwa of Nigeria and Chico Mendes of Brazil were assassinated because of their efforts to protect the environment. Like them, dozens of activists in Latin America, Africa and Asia suffer abuse and harassment from governments and corporations, charges the watchdog group Amnesty International.

MEXICO CITY - Consider the suffering of Ka Hsaw Wa. He has been arrested and tortured by the ruling military junta in Myanmar (formerly Burma) for documenting the manner in which a natural gas pipeline project is being constructed in his country.

Of particular concern to this activist from the Karen community, one of the ethnic minorities in that Southeast Asian nation, are the human rights violations and environmental abuses associated with a project which has the backing of foreign investors, including multinational companies from the United States and France.

Evidence he unearthed included how the army in Myanmar, formerly Burma, - which has been ''contracted to provide security for the project'' - has indulged in a spree of rights abuse among the indigenous villagers living near the project.

According to the Sierra Club, a US-based environmental organization, such abuse included arbitrary detention, intimidation, torture, rape and summary executions.

In addition, states the Sierra Club, Ka Hsaw Wa and his team have also documented the environmental costs of the project, which include increased logging, hunting of elephants and tigers, and illegal wildlife trade.

''Anyone caught investigating the pipeline or even in the pipeline region without authorization faces torture, violent retaliation and death,'' says Katie Redford, director of Earthrights International, a US-based environmental group.

Such abuse of environmental activists, however, has not been limited to Myanmar. As the US branch of the human rights non-governmental organization (NGO) Amnesty International reveals, it is a disturbing pattern that has become more evident in varying forms in a number of other countries.

''In many parts of the world, corporations and governments are colluding to violate the rights of environmental activists in the name of profit and economic development,'' asserts Folabi Olagbaju, director of the human rights and environmental program at Amnesty in the United States.

What is more, such violations have persisted even after the international outpouring of rage that followed the death of Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other environmental activists in Nigeria in 1995.

Saro-Wiwa, who was the leader of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), and the eight Ogoni leaders, were hanged by the Sani Abacha government of Nigeria for staging peaceful protests against the destruction of their environment stemming from the work of Nigeria's largest oil exporter, Royal-Dutch Shell.

Adds Olagbaju, ''Shell failed to use its substantial influence with the Nigerian government to stop the execution.

' And before Saro-Wiwa, there was Chico Mendes, the Brazilian land activist who was murdered in 1988 by ''timber and logging'' interests, according to Amnesty.

Consequently for the rights group, it has come down to this: environmental activists from Asia, Africa and Latin America have become a species in need of protection.

And in an effort to raise the profile of such victims, two of whom Amnesty declared ''prisoners of conscience,'' a campaign is underway to highlight 10 cases in Ecuador, Mexico, Nigeria, Kenya, Chad, Cameroon, Russia, India, Burma and China.

Launched on Nov 10, this campaign, which also includes the Sierra Club and the Earth Day Network, in addition to Amnesty International, intends to ''shine a light in the places where human rights abuses are being committed against environmental activists, and to immediately take action to stop the abuses''.

This drive will run for five months, ending Apr 22, 2001 - Earth Day, says Amnesty. During its run, the campaign's focus will shift periodically to highlight the plight of environmentalists under fire in the 10 countries.

Among those identified include Ka Hsaw Wa, Rodolfo Montiel and Teodoro Cabrera of Mexico, Aleksandr Niktin of Russia and the Organization of the Indigenous Peoples of the Pastaza (known by its Spanish acronym OPIP) of Ecuador.

Furthermore, the activism of women such as Medha Patkar of India will also be taken up. She has endured arrests and physical attacks at the hands of the police for 15 years in her effort to lead a people's movement against the construction of a dam across the Narmada river.

Also to be recognized is Professor Wangari Maathai of Kenya, who has been repeatedly beaten and imprisoned for her fight to save Kenya's forests from being parceled out for ''development.''

For Maathai, in fact, the distinction between environmental issues and human rights has ceased to exist during the struggle she has been waging. ''When you start working with the environment seriously, the whole arena becomes human rights, women's rights, environmental rights, children's rights, you know, everybody's rights,'' she is quoted as having told the Sierra Club.

''Once you start making these linkages, you can no longer do just tree planting,'' she adds.

According to Alejandro Queral, director of the human rights and environment program at the Sierra Club, there is sufficient evidence to implicate the security forces in countries where such abuse occurs as the leading perpetrators.

''The police and the army have been directly responsible for human rights violations. Such is the case in Burma, Nigeria, Mexico, India and most of the other cases we are working on,'' he says.

There is also proof of corporate complicity in such abuse. ''Sometimes, these security forces are paid by corporations working in the area to protect their facilities, leading to human rights abuse. The most obvious example of this was the case of Shell in Nigeria,'' he adds.

For Queral, such corporate complicity stems from the prevailing global economic climate. In this era of economic globalization, he argues, free trade agreements have granted corporations ''sweeping rights while making it more difficult to hold them accountable''.

The activities of the earth's defenders, he adds, ''can have much greater impact on the profit-making plans of corporations, and consequently (they) are often seen as threats''.

And for Redford, the situation in Myanmar illustrates the direction that multinational companies have chosen to take with the help of government backing. This path, she says, has resulted ''environmental degradation'' and ''brutal human rights abuses'' of people like Ka Hsaw Wa who challenge such enterprises being conducted under the guise of ''development.''


* Marwaan Macan-Markar is an IPS correspondent

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