Mourning the loss of 18 environmental activists

11/05/2006 09:36:00 PM

ENVIRONMENTALISTS are still mourning the violent deaths of 18 “green” activists in different parts of the country, saying the victims’ collective demand for justice has remained unmet. Seven of the victims, who were killed under the Arroyo administration from January 2001 to September this year, came from Southern Tagalog. Most of the slain environmental workers were farmers, indigenous people, and leaders of local community campaigns against a large dam, commercial logging, and large-scale mining. Read more.

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    Democracy, according to the late Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, is "a question of human dignity, [a]nd human dignity is political freedom, the right to freely express opinion and the right to be allowed to criticise and form opinions."

    But exercising political freedom in the Philippines, which purports itself to be a democracy, can lead to death. Since Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo assumed the presidency of the country in 2001, more than 800 Filipinos murdered in politically-motivated, extra-judicial, targeted killings. Since the 4th quarter of July 2005, one person has been killed every two days. The victims of these brazen acts of violence were all unarmed citizens: lawyers, judges, journalists, medical practitioners, members of cause-oriented groups, priests, church-workers, human rights advocates, laborers and farmers.

    It is widely believed—and the United Nations support this belief—that state security forces are complicit in these crimes.