by Nina Lakhani
More than 300 human rights defenders working to protect the environment, free speech, LGBTQ+ rights and indigenous lands in 31 countries were killed in 2019, a new report reveals.
Two-thirds of the total killings took place in Latin America where impunity from prosecution is the norm.
Colombia, where targeted violence against community leaders opposing environmentally destructive mega-projects has spiraled since the 2016 peace accords, was the bloodiest nation with 106 murders in 2019. The Philippines was the second deadliest country with 43 killings, followed by Honduras, Brazil and Mexico.
2019 was characterized by waves of social uprisings demanding political and economic changes across the globe from Iraq and Lebanon in the Middle East to Hong Kong and India in Asia and Chile in the Americas. Read more via the Guardian
Global Overview
2019 WAS CHARACTERISED BY WAVES OF PUBLIC UPRISINGS OF REMARKABLE MAGNITUDE IN EACH OF THE WORLD REGIONS, demanding changes to how people were governed. The role human rights defenders (HRDs) played in these protests ranged from organising and mobilising to monitoring and documenting human rights violations, and to assisting those who were injured or arrested. The causes of street protests and social unrest differed, but tended to revolve around outright rejection of deep economic inequality, rampant corruption, and calls for greater civil and political rights. While the demonstrations were largely peaceful, the security forces in many countries used acts of violence carried out by a minority of protesters as an excuse to respond with excessive use of force against the majority. Even in contexts where there was no threat to them, security forces were often ruthless. This was highlighted in Sudan in June when three HRDs were among dozens shot dead by security forces while participating in a sit-in at the headquarters of the Transitional Military Council. The speed with which police and other forces were authorised to use tear gas, rubber bullets and live ammunition on non-violent protesters was extremely worrying, as governments around the world sought to remove the tactic of peaceful, on-street mobilisations from the tooklit of civil society.
In nearly all of the countries that experienced mass protests, HRDs were specifically targeted; in Iraq, where anticorruption protests saw over 300 people killed in October and November, woman human rights defender (WHRD) Saba Al Mahdawi was abducted and held for nearly two weeks by unidentified militants, likely as a result of her work providing food, water and medical aid to injured protesters; in Kazakhstan, election monitors highlighting irregularities in the presidential elections in June and journalists covering the subsequent demonstrations were detained and threatened; in Chile at least 22 people were killed and thousands of others injured, and in the Democratic Republic of Congo, at least five people were killed in protests demanding greater protection of the civilian population by the government and the UN’s MONUSCO peacekeeping force, after more than 3000 civilians were massacred by militias in Beni, Eastern DRC.