A woman and a man stand in a cemetery in Colombia. Three people have died and there are 277 cases in Colombia on 23 March 2020, as the local authorities impose restrictions. Death squads in Colombia are taking advantage of coronavirus lockdowns to murder rural activists, local NGOs have warned. Photo: Luis Robayo / AFP / Getty Images

Colombian death squads exploiting coronavirus lockdown to kill activists – “We are being killed, like always”

By Joe Parkin Daniels 23 March 2020 BOGOTÁ (The Guardian) – Death squads in Colombia are taking advantage of coronavirus lockdowns to murder rural activists, local NGOs have warned. When cities across the country introduced local quarantine measures last week, three social leaders were killed, and as the country prepares to impose a national lockdown […]

Activists light candles during a vigil on 25 February 2020 for Yehry Rivera, an indigenous leader from Costa Rica who was killed on Monday night, on 24 February 2020, in San Jose, Costa Rica. Photo: Juan Carlos Ulate / REUTERS

Costa Rican indigenous land activist killed by armed mob – “The government either can’t or won’t protect the Bribri and Brörán from violence”

By Nina Lakhani 25 February 2020 MEXICO CITY (The Guardian) – A Costa Rican indigenous defender has been killed by an armed mob while trying to reclaim ancestral land – the latest in a spate of violence targeting native communities in Central America’s safest country. Yehry Rivera, 45, from the Brörán community in Térraba, was […]

Satellite images taken one month apart, on 25 December 2019 and 26 January 2020, show a big recent jump in clearing activity (indicated by yellow circles) in the Bosawás Biosphere Reserve around the indigenous community of Alal, Nicaragua. Source: Sentinel-2 and Landsat 8, accessed through Global Forest Watch. Graphic: Mongabay

Massacre in Nicaragua: Four indigenous community members killed for their land

By Taran Volckhausen 14 February 2020 (Mongabay) – An illegal armed group connected to land grabbers killed four members of the indigenous Mayangna people, left two injured and burned 16 houses in northern Nicaragua on 29 January 2020, according to the UN Human Rights Office. The UN Human Rights Office condemned the Nicaraguan government for allowing […]

Minor Ortíz Delgado, a leader of the Bribri indigenous people in Salitre, Puntarenas province, Costa Rica, describes an attack on the indigenous community on 4 January 2013. He was shot for a third time in February 2020. Photo: Jeffery López / YouTube

Costa Rica indigenous leader shot amid tensions over land rights – “The state has relinquished its duty and has abandoned these indigenous people to seek justice in the court system, which also fails them”

By Nina Lakhani 17 February 2020 (The Guardian) – An indigenous leader leading his people’s effort to reclaim ancestral land in Costa Rica has been wounded in a gun attack – the latest in a spate of targeted violence which has gone unpunished by authorities. Mainor Ortiz Delgado, 29, a leader of the Bribri indigenous […]

Environmental activist Homero Gomez Gonzalez stands in front of a monarch butterfly mural, 28 December 2019. He was murdered by an illegal logging criminal syndicate, and his body was found in a well on 29 January 2020. Photo: Homero Gomez Gonzalez / Facebook

Second Mexico monarch butterfly activist murdered

3 February 2020 (BBC News) – A second activist campaigning for the conservation of monarch butterflies and the woods in which they hibernate has been found dead in Mexico. Raúl Hernández worked as a tour guide at a butterfly sanctuary in Michoacán state. His body, which bore signs of beatings and a head injury, was […]

Indigenous leader of the Celia Xakriaba tribe walks next to the Xingu River during a four-day pow wow in Piaracu village, in Xingu Indigenous Park, near Sao Jose do Xingu, Mato Grosso state, Brazil, 15 January 2020. Photo: Ricardo Moraes / REUTERS

Brazil tribes back manifesto to save Amazon rainforest and its indigenous people from the “genocide, ethnocide, and ecocide” planned by far-right President Jair Bolsonaro

By Ricardo Moraes 18 January 2020 XINGU INDIGENOUS PARK, Brazil (Reuters) – Leaders of native tribes in Brazil issued a rallying call to protect the Amazon rainforest and its indigenous people from what they called the “genocide, ethnocide and ecocide” planned by the country’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro. A manifesto signed on Friday at the […]

Camels in Australia. Photo: Imago Images / blickwinkel

Snipers to cull up to 10,000 camels in drought-stricken South Australia

8 January 2020 (AFP) – Snipers took to helicopters in Australia on Wednesday to begin a mass cull of up to 10,000 camels as drought drives big herds of the feral animals to search for water closer to remote towns, endangering indigenous communities. Local officials in South Australia state said “extremely large” herds have been […]

Satellite views of Uyghur cemeteries in Xinjiang, Western China before and after they were destroyed by Chinese authorities in 2018 and 2019. Photo: CNN

More than 100 Uyghur graveyards demolished by Chinese authorities, satellite images show – “This is absolutely a massive effort to eradicate Uyghur culture as we know it and replace it with a Chinese communist party approved culture”

By Matt Rivers, Lily Lee, and Yong Xiong 2 January 2020 BEIJING (CNN) – Uyghur poet Aziz Isa Elkun fled China’s far western Xinjiang region nearly 30 years ago. He’s not welcome in the country. He can’t even phone his mother. She said it was better if he didn’t, because every time he did, police […]

Climate activist Greta Thunberg speaks at the United Nations Climate Change Conference COP25 in Madrid, Spain on 11 December 2019. Photo: Cristina Quicler

Five reasons the COP25 climate talks failed – “The world is screaming out for climate action but this summit has responded with a whisper”

25 December 2019 (AFP) – The climate summit in Madrid earlier this month did not collapse — but by almost any measure it certainly failed. Five years after the fragile UN process yielded the world’s first universal climate treaty, COP25 was billed as a mopping-up session to finish guidelines for carbon markets, thus completing the […]

Aerial view of the Kasulo neighborhood of Kolwezi, DRC. In the first picture, taken May 2016, there are just residential houses. By May 2019, Congo DongFang International Mining (a subsidiary of chinese company Huayou Cobalt) have built a mining site, with a walled perimeter and processing buildings (in blue). The pink tarps cover tunnels used for mining. Photo: CNES / Airbus DS / Earthrise / The Guardian

Apple and Google named in U.S. lawsuit over Congolese child cobalt mining deaths

By Annie Kelly 16 December 2019 (The Guardian) – A landmark legal case has been launched against the world’s largest tech companies by Congolese families who say their children were killed or maimed while mining for cobalt used to power smartphones, laptops and electric cars, the Guardian can reveal. Apple, Google, Dell, Microsoft, and Tesla […]

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