MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines remains the “most dangerous country” in Asia for environmental activists, having the highest number of advocates killed in the region between 2012 and 2023, according to the international watchdog Global Witness.
In a report dated Sept. 9 and titled “Missing Voices,” the group recorded the death of 17 land and environmental rights defenders in the Philippines in 2023 alone.
Worldwide, the Philippines ranked fifth in the list that is topped by Colombia (79 deaths) and followed by Brazil (25), and Honduras and Mexico (18 each).
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In its section on the Philippines, the report noted that eight of the 17 slain activists were small-scale farmers. They were identified as Antonio Diwayan, Lee Sudario, Roly Fausto, Danny Malinao, Crispin Tingal Jr., Emelda Fausto, Jose Gonzales and Norman Ortiz
Global Witness said a total of 468 environmental defenders were killed across Asia between 2012 and 2023, and that 64 percent of them—or 248— were in the Philippines.
‘Nonlethal attacks’
“Nonlethal attacks are also increasingly used as tactics to suppress activism across the region,” the report added.
It also quoted a report by the Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (Forum Asia) citing judicial harassment as the “most recorded violation” against human rights defenders in general.
In Asia, a total 1,033 violations of this kind were reported in 2021 and 2022.
Seven enforced disappearances were also reported in the Philippines, two of which included activists Jhed Tamano and Jonila Castro.
Tamano and Castro were reported missing in September 2023, when they were working with fisherfolk communities. The report said they were “violently abducted” by armed men.
After 17 days, two activists appeared at a press conference arranged by the government’s anticommunist task force in Bulacan, where they were expected to deny being abducted by the military.
But they instead maintained they were indeed abducted by soldiers, which the government continued to deny.
In the Global Witness report, the two activists recounted their experience during their disappearance, saying the press conference organized by the military was a “setup.”
‘Official story’
“The government, our kidnappers, had organized it so we could publicly confess to being communist rebels—even though we were not,” the two said, as quoted in the report.
“We had been given a couple of pages with the ‘official’ story we were expected to tell and the answers we were expected to give,” they added. “Instead, we told the truth.”
Tamano and Castro were later charged by the government with oral defamation for “embarrassing and putting the Armed Forces of the Philippines in bad light.”
In October 2023, the Supreme Court granted the temporary protection order sought by Tamano and Castro.
Global Witness also said several activists had been abducted since President Marcos assumed office in mid-2022.
“This trend is part of the tactics used by authorities to intimidate people into silence,” the report stressed.
‘Disturbing pattern’
“While abductions are a common method of trying to silence environmental activists across the world, it is a lot less common for abducted activists to live to tell their stories, as Jhed and Jonila did,” it added.
Their case was “just one example among a disturbing pattern of intimidatory tactics used” against the defenders of land and environmental rights.
“Criminalization has become a key strategy to disempower and disrupt land and environmental movements, and is now the most common tactic used to silence defenders globally,” it said.