Activism not Terrorism, Land Defenders, 9/11 Truth and our dwindling Freedom

The phrase was coined way back when Margaret Thatcher was still in power, I remember seeing and hearing the words that the politicians and media came up with ´´Environmental Terrorists´´, a label for environmental campaigners, animal rights activists and conservationists that were now being seen as a threat to corporate enterprises, a media campaign was swiftly implemented to make people forget that we are not protesters but protectors of the environment.

In the mid-1980s, these corporations got together and created a new word “ecoterrorist” or ''eco-terrorism'' which is ironic if you think about the word itself, the true ecoterrorists are the oil barons that want to lay the North Dakota oil pipeline across Native American land and waters in North America, or the Fracking companies that have now been granted permission to Frack the North Yorkshire countryside in the UK, or the Chinese Mining companies displacing indigenous people and destroying rural Ecuador for minerals, its the corporations that are ecoterrorists not the people defending Mother Nature.

We are environmental protectors and land defenders, not ecoterrorists, not protestors, not extremists. These protest movements involving land defenders have been growing very quickly and effectively over the decades as corporate greed has risen beyond and above environmental laws, as corporations can now buy politicians through lobbying, the raping and pillaging of nature has been beyond the extent of the legal environmental conventions and laws. While people all over the world have stepped up against corporations taking advantage of resources in protected areas there has been concern from the governments and corporations that unless public opinion shifted, there’d be a really big problem on their hands which is one of the many malevolent reasons why the Trans Pacific Partnership was created, to protect these giant corporations and their agenda to exploit the Earth's natural resources beyond the environmental protection laws.

Politicians carefully foster and coin new phrases like extremists and ecoterrorist and domestic terrorist as a form of new speak and rhetoric that has been carefully used by politicians and their media vehicles for social engineering. Whistle-blowers and journalists can now risk imprisonment for speaking out, this was new legislation implemented in 2014, the very fact this has become a political measure indicates that we definitely do not live in a democracy. While any hope for improved transparency in governments globally is becoming less apparent, it is more like a global movement where special intelligence agencies, politicians, banks and corporations enjoy further protection and privacy as a result of new laws enforced to discourage any form of investigative journalism which has been valued in the past by people such as John Pilger, Edward Snowdon and Julian Assand to expose corruption, while we see our privacy and Human Rights and the Rights of Nature further eroded. If we lived in a truly free world, we would not have to adhere to a list of rights that are continually being taken away from us to serve corporate Imperialism.

We really need to be campaigning for further transparency on these government agencies that are not wholly operating for the good of all, this is clearly evident. The “war on terrorism” allows governments to treat everyone as an equally suspected terrorist, not just international, however domestic terrorists are now seen as equally threatening to governments, ecoterrorism is in the same category as domestic terrorism, they are usually local activists involved in some form of campaign or advocacy work, including environmentalists and journalists. If you are caught handing out leaflets perhaps to raise awareness of pollution in your local community, you could be accused of inciting terrorism.

2014 to 2015 was a good year for law reformers and politicians pulling the reigns in on free speech, in a meeting with the United Nations, David Cameron stated that people campaigning for the truth into the September 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and conspiracy theorists were to be considered in the same league as the ISIL or ISIS (even though the governments fund these ''terrorist organizations) as threats to society and labelled non-violent extremists. Peter Drew from The Center of Research on Globalization, submitted an open letter to David Cameron in response to his speech asking Mr Cameron if he was aware of the many members of US Congress demanding that President Obama release the 28 redacted pages of the 9/11 Commission Report, because there is information in those pages that would shock the nation, according to the two members of Congress who have been authorized to view the pages?

Or, if Mr Cameron was aware that more than the dozens of first-responder fire fighters who risked their lives on 9/11 and who lost 343 of their colleagues that day, including those who formed the organization ‘Fire Fighters for 9/11 Truth’ and that more than 2,200 professional architects, engineers, and demolition experts from the organisation ‘Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth’ in addition to 100,000 New York residents signed a petition calling for a new investigation into the collapse of World Trade Centre Building 7 through the ‘High Rise Safety Initiative?’’

Hasn’t this ‘war on terrorism’ greatly benefited governments and corporations alike to tighten the belt of their gain for more control and power over the average people and their freedom of speech, thought and expression, people who are simply trying to make the world a better place are deemed ecoterrorists or domestic terrorists? There are the rare extreme cases of animal activists or environmental activists damaging property in certain situations, but these are not common. For the most part, environmental conservation and social justice campaigning has, and continues to be, a peaceful work carried out by normal people, but which has now become dangerous work due to their being labelled “non-violent extremists, environmental terrorists, and conspiracy theorists”, while governments continue to encourage discrimination and condemnation of environmentalists, human and animal rights campaigners, investigative journalists and whistle-blowers, as a threat to society, all in the same league of extreme terrorism.

Now these reforming laws that are chipping away at our human rights and allowing the governments to spy on people are also progressing towards fascism that is becoming systematic in its rise from country to country. This includes internet-gagging and cyber-gagging laws in the name of anti-terrorism or to ‘protect copyright’ content which are really used to block or control the free flow of information or access to websites that are for researchers, journalism, environmental activism, truth and justice. This is a form of socially engineered persecution to protect the elite, corporate giants and prominent politicians from being further exposed. While our pursuit towards truth, justice, and defending the natural environment against exploitation is becoming a dangerous pursuit to us and our liberty so the elite and their corporate investments can enjoy corruption and greed above the law. Investigative Journalists, Whistle blowers, Activists are now considered the United States’ number-one domestic terrorism threat, and they can now be prosecuted as criminals and go to jail.

‘’Environmentalists question at the core, what it is to be a human being, we ask to re-evaluate the whole economic system, how we produce our food, our clothing, industry and transportation, and there is a lot of vested political interest in all of those things’’ – Will Potter

Due to this progressive persecution of any form of activism for truth and justice, there is an increase in the murders of environmental and truth defenders, as now laws and selected judges seem to be more in favour of politicians and their corporate investments rather than truth and justice, which becomes a subconscious affirmation in the corporate and political arena, making it easier for those that do the killing to literally get away with murder.

Let us look at some very recent examples:

In May 2013, Jairo Mora Sandoval, a Sea Turtle Conservationist was found naked beaten and murdered on a beach after being dragged behind a car. The seven defendants allegedly from a well-known poaching gang were put on trial till several years later and due to lost and botched evidence, they walked free from the court room.

On the 1st of September 2014, Edwin Chota, a prominent Peruvian anti-logging activist was shot dead along with three of his colleagues in front of other villages by illegal loggers. He had previously asked the authorities for protection following death threats, he had dedicated his life to defending the ancestral land of the Alto Tamaya-Saweto community to gain titles to their land and defend them against illegal loggers. He had previously given interviews with National Geographic and the New York Times. Despite his pleas for protection the authorities did nothing to help.

In Ecuador in December 2014, just before the Peru Climate talks were to take place, a Shuar environmental activist called José Tendetza was bound up by rope, tortured, murdered and dumped in a river, he was planning on going to the Peru climate talks at the beginning of December to discuss the mining oil exploitation in his community by a Chinese Mining company EcuaCorrientes, though it is suspected officials were involved. The Yasunidos activist group, were also stopped by government officials from going to the Peru Climate talks in their bus in 2014, the vehicle was confiscated by police and they were arrested on false claims that they did not have the right papers to drive the vehicle. In Peru more activists were murdered just before the climate talks, at least 57 activists had been killed in Peru and more than 60 percent of activists murdered in the last few years.

The deaths or persecution of environmentalists has been increasing rapidly over the last 5 years, especially in Latin and Central America where more than 80 percent of deaths of environmental defenders are reported according to a survey done by Global Witness. Brazil, is the world’s worst country for environmental defenders being killed with 448 deaths between 2002 and 2013, all of those are indigenous people defending their land against dam building, oil, mining or deforestation.

‘’Never has it been more important to protect the environment, and never before has participating in defending Mother Earth that been more deadly. Competition for access to natural resources is intensifying against a backdrop of extreme global inequality, while humanity has already crossed several vital planetary environmental boundaries. At the same time, more and more ordinary people are finding themselves on the frontline of the battle to defend their environment from corporate or state abuse, and from unsustainable exploitation, its not just a fight in developing countries anymore, it is a fight that has creeped into Western Countries as Corporate greed has spiraled out of control. This rapidly worsening crisis appears to be hidden in plain sight. A lack of systematic monitoring or awareness of the global picture: the growing threat to environmental and land activists is enabling killings and a wide range of other abuses, while national governments and judicial systems are regularly failing to protect their citizens from harm.

Despite this deteriorating situation, there are some positive measures being taken by concerned and prominent people in environmental and the human rights sector. There have been several public tribunals organized by a group defending the Rights of Nature, the second tribunal for the Rights of Nature was held in Peru in 2014, thirteen distinguished judges heard twelve prominent cases, The Tribunal proceedings were intense and deeply moving as witness after witness gave intimate testimony reinforced by scientific evidence of experts. Indigenous activists such as Casey Camp-Horinek, Ponca Nation, USA and Patricia Gualinga, Sarayaku, were all representing environmental threats to their communities and discussed Indigenous cosmo-vision to lay the foundation for understanding Mother Earth and living in harmony with nature.

Although the tribunal does not have direct legal authority its aim is ´´to provide a framework for educating civil society and governments on the fundamental tenets of Rights of Nature and an instrument for legal experts to examine constructs needed to more fully integrate Rights of Nature.´´

Polly Higgins is a UK based lawyer whom has dedicated her life’s work to making Ecocide an acknowledged international crime, like genocide. She submitted a draft of the law in 2010. She brings public attention to the Rome Statute, a statute of countries that make up an International Criminal Court with the aim for a peace treaty against genocide, human rights violations and ecocide was on the list until it was removed in 1996. However, thanks to the work of Polly Higgins and her campaign to add Ecocide back to the Rome Statute to make it the 5th crime against peace, we hope this can be achieved, the more people that are aware of this possibility, the more people can support and push for it to become a reality to stop corporate greed destroying nature. Environmental protection should not be a crime, it's a human necessity.

by

Carlita Shaw

Author and Ecologist

Meme slides authors own creations.

Further references and reading –

Green is the New Red a book by Will Potter

Paul Farrell (26th September, 2014) Journalists and whistleblowers will go to jail under new national security laws. The Guardian News.

David Cameron Speech at the UN (September, 2014) Non Violent Conspiracy Theorists and Whistle-blowers are Just As Dangerous as ISIS

Peter Drew Open Letter to David Cameron. The Centre of Research on Globalisation, you can find it online.

Jeremy Hance (Jan, 27, 2015) Suspects acquitted in shocking murder of sea turtle conservationist.

Scott Wallace (Sept, 2014) Quadruple Homicide in Peruvian Amazon Puts Criminal Logging in Spotlight. National Geographic.

Juan Falconi Puig (December, 2014) Ecuador has set up independent inquiry into the death of the indigenous leader José Tendetza.

Global Witness Press release (Jan 1st 2014) Deadly Environment Report. globalwitness.org