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Southeast Asia, an unfriendly region for environmental defenders
Defending the environment is a precarious occupation in Southeast Asia, where kidnapping and abuse against human rights activists across all fields is as commonplace as businesses flouting environmental protections, often in cahoots with law enforcement.
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Muted voices: A pair of activists from the People’s Movement for Agrarian Sovereignty and Natural Resources Advocacy Team (Tekad Garuda) takes part in a hunger strike on Feb. 20, 2023 outside the Agrarian and Spatial Planning Ministry in Jakarta. The movement, which is part of the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi), demanded the police to release three farmers who had been arrested for defending their land in Pakel village, Banyuwangi, East Java. (Antara/Muhammad Adimaja)
As I write this piece, the whereabouts of Muhriyono, a farmer from Pakel village, Banyuwangi, East Java, remains unknown.
What is crystal clear instead is the fact that he was abducted by the police after community protests against an agrarian project of the PT Bumisari Maju Sukses.
The local people are still protesting peacefully until Muhriyono is released.
At the same time, environmentalist Rowena Dasig has been arbitrarily detained since July 2023 in the Philippines, where she was on duty to protect local farmers feeling threatened by a power plant owned by Atimonan One Energy, Inc. in Atimonan, Quezon province.
Southeast Asia remains a land of staggering dichotomy.
On the one hand, it is home to hyper-economic growth rates, ambitious infrastructure projects and millions of jobs created through top-down policies. On the other hand, overarching disregard of human rights amid timid practices of democracy remains a constant feature of the region.
However, learning from the recently published Defenders Annual Report 2023-2024 of Global Witness, an international NGO, other regions like Central and South America are doing even worse.
