Colombia third deadliest for environmental activists

By Richard McColl

BOGOTA, Colombia (AA) – Colombia remains one of the deadliest places for environmental activists, according to a new report released Monday.

With 26 deaths in 2015, the country is the third most dangerous, UK-based Global Witness said.

Colombia ranks behind only Brazil and the Philippines with 50 and 33 deaths, respectively.

Last year marked the highest worldwide annual death toll on record with 185 fatalities, marking a 59 percent increase compared to 2014.

The report, On Dangerous Ground, sheds light on the particular vulnerabilities of indigenous people, whose weak land rights and geographic isolation make them frequent targets of land and resource grabbing.

In 2015, almost 40 percent of victims were from indigenous groups.

“As demand for products like minerals, timber and palm oil continues, governments, companies and criminal gangs are seizing land in defiance of the people who live on it,” Global Witness campaign leader Billy Kyte said in a statement. “Communities that take a stand are increasingly finding themselves in the firing line of companies’ private security, state forces and a thriving market for contract killers. For every killing we document, many others go unreported. Governments must urgently intervene to stop this spiraling violence.”

The Embera Chami indigenous group have been practicing small-scale, environmentally responsible, gold mining in their ancestral lands of the Canamomo Lomaprieta Indigenous Reserve for hundreds of years. But despite traditional authorities declaring the land off-limits to exploitation, the Colombian government has approved mining concessions in the area.

That has paved the way for prospecting by multinational mining companies such as AngloGold Ashanti and, for illegal mining by armed groups that have also moved in.

“We have serious conflicts with the state about their mining vision. They say that the subsoil is theirs; we say that the land is one with the subsoil; you cannot separate it from a spiritual point of view. This is the war we are waging ... to have the air, the land, the subsoil together,” the chief governor of the Canamomo Lomaprieta Indigenous Reserve in central Colombia said in the report.

Global Witness investigates and advocates for change by exposing economic networks behind conflicts, corruption and environmental destruction and has urged the Colombian government to increase protection for land and environmental activists at risk of violence, intimidation or threats.

More than three victims were killed per week in 2015 while defending land, forests and rivers against destructive industries, according to Global Witness.