AFP – More than three-quarters of the globe’s murders of environmental activists took place in Latin America last year, an annual review by Global Witness showed yesterday.
The group said a total of 200 land and environmental defenders – whom it named individually – were killed in 2021, down from a record 227 in 2020.
These killings came “in the context of a wider range of threats against defenders who are being targetted by government, business and other non-state actors with violence, intimidation, smear campaigns and criminalisation”, the London-based group said.
“Over three-quarters of the attacks recorded took place in Latin America,” said Global Witness, which has issued such reports since 2012.
Mexico had the highest recorded number of killings, 54, in 2021, Global Witness found. That figure was up from 30 the previous year, and more than 40 per cent of the victims were indigenous people, it said.
While in most cases the killings could not be connected to a specific industry, the report identified 27 tied to mining and extractive industries.
Among the Mexican victims identified by Global Witness was Jose Santos Isaac Chavez, an indigenous leader and lawyer in Jalisco state who opposed the local Pena Colorada mine.
