enviromental activism

• GUATEMALA: ‘Judicial harassment and criminal prosecution have wearing effects’

  On World Press Freedom Day, CIVICUS speaks with Carlos Ernesto Choc, a Q’eqchi’ Mayan journalist with almost two decades of experience, about the criminalisation of journalism and the media in Guatemala.

  What are the conditions for journalists in Guatemala?

  The conditions for the practice of journalism in Guatemala are quite difficult. We face criminal prosecution by the Public Prosecutor’s Office and threats from various sources, including public officials that journalists are questioning or investigating. Defamation campaigns against journalists are also very concerning.

  The internet and social media are full of trolls who send threatening and defamatory messages. They discredit journalistic work and attacks naturally follow. These even come from the state, and particularly from public security agencies. The National Civil Police attack the media and journalists both in the context of demonstrations and at other times and places where they do not want coverage of events in order to preserve impunity for crimes or violations of rights perpetrated on the ground.

  Since 2015, aggressions against the press have only escalated. Now as well as being criminally prosecuted, judicially harassed, threatened, intimidated and vilified, you can be thrown into prison. To be able to do this, they accuse you of charges that are normally used to fight organised crime, such as illicit association, as in my case, or money laundering, as in the case of my colleague Rubén Zamora. In other words, we are accused of being criminals and prosecuted under accusations of having links to organised crime, leading land invasions or instigating crime. These are clearly fabricated accusations, so we are baselessly, illegally detained. They ultimately have no way of proving their accusations, but in the meantime you remain subject to lengthy criminal proceedings.

  While all journalists are vulnerable in this country right now, those of us who investigate environmental aggression, human rights violations and issues related to drug trafficking and corruption are particularly vulnerable. These are really complicated issues and some investigate them anonymously because many have been murdered, the most recent being Eduardo Mendizabal, just over a month ago.

  The situation is getting more complicated by the day and some community journalists have chosen to emigrate and quit journalism. It is sad to see colleagues leave, and under the current government there have been more and more of them. I don’t see myself in exile, but I view this as an option of last resort.

  What is your situation after the criminalisation you have experienced?

  Mine has been a case of judicial persecution that has been used to attempt to silence me. It started in 2017 when I was investigating the pollution of Lake Izabal. I was documenting protests by fishers against mining and I captured the exact moment when a protester was killed by shots fired by the National Civil Police. The accusation against me came from the mining company, Solway Investment Group – a Russian-owned company based in Switzerland. In August 2017, a warrant for my arrest was issued. One hearing after another was postponed so only in January 2019 could I finally give testimony before the court, as a result of which I was handed an alternative measure to prison.

  When you have an alternative measure to imprisonment you are free under certain conditions: you are forced to visit the Public Prosecutor’s Office every 30 days to sign in and forbidden to be in any place where alcoholic drinks are sold, among other things. The security forces, the police, the authorities are watching where you are and waiting for you to commit a breach to be able to prosecute you. I see these alternative measures as forms of punishment that imply restrictions and limitations on your right to inform and be informed.

  In January 2022, I was criminally prosecuted again, under accusations by the National Civil Police of instigating violence during a protest by Indigenous communities in Izabal against the country’s largest active open-pit mine, owned by Solway’s subsidiary Compañía Guatemalteca de Níquel. Thirteen police officers accused me of having physically assaulted them, when all I was doing was documenting the moment when security forces repressed people with teargas. Since then I could not continue doing my job as a journalist, nor move around freely, until my lawyers managed to prove to the judge that I really am a journalist and not a criminal. In September the charges against me were dropped. It has been very exhausting: judicial harassment and criminal prosecution have wearing effects.

  What strategies have journalists adopted to be able to continue working?

  Strategies to break through censorship are renewed every day and are often focused on both physical and digital security, particularly concerning the security of documents and files. Local, national and international networking among journalists and alternative and independent media is also very important.

  Such networks have made possible works such as Green Blood, published in 2019, and Mining Secrets, published in 2022. Both were led by Forbidden Stories, an organisation based in France that supports the publication of the work of journalists facing threats, criminalisation and violence in their countries. Green Blood was the result of research conducted in three countries on three continents: Guatemala, India and Tanzania, and looks into the mining industry’s tactics to hinder journalistic work and criminalise those who oppose its practices. Mining Secrets arose from the leak of a huge amount of Solway’s internal files concerning the operation of its Fénix mining project in Izabal. A consortium of 20 media outlets from 15 countries around the world carried out an investigation, with information corroborated by 65 journalists, including the Prensa Comunitaria team I was part of.

  It is all about finding a way to continue doing the work you are doing. Like many others, I do journalism out of passion and conviction. I don’t expect a prize or international recognition. I know that what I am doing is going to help my community and society in general. I believe that shedding light on environmental damage and human rights violations is very important.

  What kind of support do journalists and community media in Guatemala currently receive, and what additional support would they need?

  We receive support mainly in the form of accompaniment: legal accompaniment, accompaniment from human rights organisations and accompaniment from communities and community authorities who support our work.

  This is very important, but much more is needed. A difficulty that criminalised or at-risk journalists experience is that of surviving economically and supporting their families, which is why economic support is important. The same goes for health support, because there are times when, due to all you are going through, your body no longer responds. Finally, it is key to provide opportunities for exchange with other journalist colleagues. It helps a lot to learn about the experiences of others.

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  Civic space in Guatemala is rated ‘repressed’ by theCIVICUS Monitor.

  Follow@CarlosErnesto_C on Twitter.

• KAZAKHSTAN: ‘The quarantine became a sort of cover for the government to persecute civil society’

  CIVICUS speaks to Asya Tulesova, anenvironmental and civic rights defender from Kazakhstan. On 8 June 2020, Asya was arrested and detained after taking part in apeaceful rally in thecity of Almaty. She was released on 12 August 2020, but with restrictions on her freedom. Asya was profiled in CIVICUS’s#StandAsMyWitness campaign, launched on Nelson Mandela Day, 18 July, to call for the release of human rights defenders who areimprisoned, persecuted, or harassed for standing up for freedom, rights and democracy and calling out corrupt governments and multinational companies.

  

  Would you tell us about your background and your environmental activism?

  For the past few years, I have worked for a civil society organisation, the Common Sense Civic Foundation, that focuses on community development. We work on environmental and educational projects aimed at improving the quality of life of local communities. In 2015 we launched our air quality monitoring project in Almaty with the aim of giving give people access to free, up-to-date air quality information in the city. The project had a considerable effect on people's understanding of the importance of the issue.

  As I realised that air quality is a political issue, I tried running for the local council. However, my candidature was withdrawn due to minor discrepancies in my tax income declaration. This same reasoning was used to take down hundreds of independent self-nominated candidates all over Kazakhstan. We sued the central election commission but were unable to persuade the court to restore my candidacy regardless of the fact that we had all the evidence to support my case. My case is now being considered by the United Nations Human Rights Committee.

  We continued our environmental activism by publishing articles, doing research on air pollution, participating in public events and organising public talks on the issue. In April 2019 my companion, activist Beibarys Tolymbekov, and I were arrested for holding a banner at the annual Almaty marathon; our friends Aidos Nurbolatov, Aigul Nurbolatova and Suinbike Suleimenova were fined for filming us holding the banner. As a part of a young activist movement, we wanted to draw people’s attention to the unfairness of the upcoming presidential elections and the lack of independent candidates. Beibarys and I received 15 days of administrative arrest; while under arrest I went on a hunger strike to protest against the court’s decision, and at some point I was punched in the stomach by my cellmate for refusing to comply with her demands to end my hunger strike. Our detention resulted in a series of protests around the country and a rise of youth political engagement. We continue our work in the hope that our efforts will bring more independent candidates to the elections. 

  Being an activist in Kazakhstan is associated with a certain degree of constant pressure from the government and so-called law enforcement authorities. Many activists and human rights defenders, as well as journalists, live under intense scrutiny and are under constant surveillance and intimidation by or on behalf of law enforcement agencies.

  What happened during the protest in June 2020 that led to your arrest? 

  During the protest on 6 June 2020 I witnessed police brutality towards peaceful protesters. This wasn’t the first time; every ‘unauthorised’ peaceful rally we have had so far has been accompanied by the excessive use of force by the police. But this time, I decided to stand in front of one of the police vans filled with people unlawfully detained by the police in an attempt to prevent the van from leaving. I was attacked by several officers, who dragged me away from the van and, after I attempted to return, pushed me down to the ground. In such emotional state, I then knocked off a police officer’s cap in protest against the unlawful police actions and detention of peaceful protesters. It’s hard to articulate what was going through my head at that moment. I was definitely in a state of shock.

  This was captured on video, and I was charged with “publicly insulting a representative of the authorities” under Article 378, part 2 of the Criminal Code, and with “non-dangerous infliction of harm to a representative of the authorities” under Article 380, part 1.

  What was it like to be imprisoned? Were you afraid of contracting COVID-19?

  I was in prison for more than two months. The detention facility I was placed in was located on the northern edge of Almaty. I was brought in at night and first placed in a quarantine cell for newly arrived detainees, where I spent over 10 days getting acquainted with the internal rules of the facility. After that I was relocated to a different cell.

  Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, visits from family members and friends were forbidden. I was only able to speak to my mother twice a week for 10 minutes through a video call and receive visits from my lawyers every other week. The conditions in the facility were much better than those in the temporary detention facility at the police department where I spent two days prior to that. The cell was relatively clean and had two bunk beds for four people, a washbasin and a toilet. We would take turns cleaning the cell. Two of my cellmates smoked, in the toilet. We were fed three times a day, mostly porridge and soup. We were taken for ‘strolls’ five times a week in a specially designed facility, a cell with no windows and no roof. Our strolls would usually last 15 to 20 minutes so I had to write a complaint to the facility authorities so they would comply with their own internal regulations and allow a full hour for our strolls. We took showers once a week, 15 minutes per person.

  A few times a week I would receive care packages from family and friends. Their support was very helpful in keeping my spirits up. I received a radio from Marat Turymbetov, also an activist, whose friend, activist Alnur Ilyashev, had been detained in the same facility for his criticism of the ruling party, Nur Otan. We would spend a lot of time listening to the radio waiting for news, but most news was about COVID-19. We would also hear occasional rumours about COVID-19 cases in the facility but nothing certain, so I wasn’t particularly afraid of contracting the virus. My mother, however, was very concerned about it and would send medicine to me every now and then. The pandemic has been very tough on our country, taking the lives of many.

  This time around I personally haven’t experienced any major violations while in detention, apart from the non-observance of some internal rules by staff. I know other detainees spent months in the facility with no visits from their investigator, lawyer, or family members. I was suspicious at first when in the temporary detention facility, I was placed in a cell with the same woman who was with me in the special detention facility for administrative detainees a year earlier.

  I can’t say that I feel I have been detained for a long time, but it was long enough for me to grow appreciation and compassion for activists and other people who have spent months and years in prison. For instance, human rights defender Max Bokayev has been in prison for over four years for supporting a peaceful rally against an illegal land sale to Chinese companies. During the quarantine, many activists and politicians were subjected to searches and detention, so the quarantine became a sort of cover for the government to persecute civil society. Among the detained activists were Sanavar Zakirova, who has been persecuted for her attempts to register a political party, and activists Abay Begimbetov, Askar Ibraev, Serik Idyryshev, Askhat Jeksebaev, Kairat Klyshev and many others.

  What is your reaction to the outcome of your case?

  I do not agree with the sentence I received, which is why we are going to appeal. The court should take into account the degree of danger to society that the acts I committed pose, which hardly constitute a criminal offence. I am, however, sorry for the lack of self-control and rudeness I showed. I am a firm believer in non-violent protest and my case is a great opportunity for us and the government to condemn violence on both sides.

  What sort of support do activists like yourself need from the international community?

  I am very grateful that my case has received international attention and support. It was an honour to be represented in the CIVICUS #StandAsMyWitness campaign. I am also very grateful to my mother, my lawyers, my family, friends and supporters from Kazakhstan and around the world, who came up with a lot of creative ideas to raise public awareness and bring much-needed attention to my case and the issue of police brutality in Kazakhstan. I personally was very inspired by one of the initiatives launched by my good friends Kuat Abeshev, Aisha Jandosova, Irina Mednikova and Jeffrey Warren, Protest Körpe, a simple and visually beautiful way of showing one’s demand for justice and human rights in a very gentle, caring and loving way. It is easy to join. Most of Protest Körpe messages are universal and relevant to many countries. So let’s make our messages heard! I feel that we can learn new creative tactics from Protest Körpe and other initiatives and adapt them to our local context. Wouldn’t it be great if such campaigns and movements could establish a network to share and build on each other’s experience?

  Civic space inKazakhstan is rated as ‘obstructed’ by the CIVICUS Monitor.
  Get in touch with Asya throughFacebook.

   

• SUDAN: Young activists show climate solidarity through drought, floods and tears

  بالعربية
  

  CIVICUS speaks toNisreenAl Sayeem, Chair of the Sudan Youth Organization on Climate Change and Coordinator of Youth and Environment - Sudan (YES). Nisreen is a junior negotiator at United Nations (UN) Climate Talks for the African Group of Negotiators and a co-organiser of the UN Youth Climate Summit.Nisreen speaks about how young people in Sudan are organising to respond to the climate crisis using the traditional Sudanese concept of Nafeer – collective voluntary action – to provide solidarity and assistance to villages affected by floods, droughts and desertification, and about how young people from Sudan have successfully fought to havea seat at the negotiationtable at UN climate talks.

   

  How did youbecome a climate change activist?

  I’ve been doing climate change and environmental activism since 2012, which is seven years now, since my first year of university. Nowadays in Sudan, people's awareness of climate change is definitely different to when I started in 2012. Even policy-makers have a different perspective on climate change issues now, and all the agencies have climate change programmes. Unfortunately, not much has changed regarding UN climate negotiations. UN member states needed 21 years to reach the Paris Agreement, so you can imagine how slow things are still.

  I’m a physicist. I studied physics and I love science very much, but I have realised that unfortunately, without policy-makers, policy papers and policy-making processes, science doesn’t mean anything. I started working in the climate change field because I wanted to see the link between the science and the policy.

  How are young people in Sudan engaging with climate change?

  Young people in Sudan are taking three different paths for climate action: policy, activism – including advocacy, campaigning and work in civil society organisations – and community-based work. Community-based work is what the majority of young people in Sudan are doing, because they realise that policy-makers are not quick enough and civil society work is not inclusive enough, so they are doing the government’s job in many places and also doing the humanitarian’s job in other places.

  Our organisation works with young people. We give them the tools and help them organise their ideas for this community-based work. We are a civil society organisation but we are only a transitional platform for young people, so they can do their community-based work. We are a bridge.

  What does community organising in Sudan look like?

  There is an initiative called Nafeer, which has been a tradition in Sudan since forever. When there is a problem, people join together and try to solve it. Because of climate change, we started witnessing severe rainfall. This caused floods, which completely destroyed more than 18 villages, killed 68 people and left more than 184,000 people homeless. So young people decided to take action. They started delivering humanitarian aid, helping people who were hurt and providing food, shelter and medicines, because the water was contaminated and there was a diarrhoea outbreak.

  Young people also wanted to show solidarity, sharing their sadness and their tears with the people from the flooded villages, and showing them that they were not alone. Even if most of the people who participated in the initiative were not really affected by the floods, the youth of Sudan are still the same, brothers and sisters, and whatever happened to you also happened to me, and with this concept and this spirit, we did it after three months of flooding and tears.

  How else isthe climate crisis affectingSudan, and howhavepeopleprovided community support?

  In Sudan, livelihoods depend on natural resources, and because of climate change seasons are mixed now. Autumn is late, winter is early and summer is early. Now we have a lot of conflicts between farmers and pastoralists over land, resources and crops. We have had very unfortunate events in the east of Sudan where two tribes, one of farmers and one of pastoralists, fought between each other. In 20 days we lost about 180 people in this conflict. We have many conflicts over natural resources but in this case people from both tribes who were educated enough to see that fighting was not a solution made a 15-mile wall to separate the tribes.

  Desertification is killing their land, so they are not able to do any agriculture activities or even pasture their cattle and you know how frustrated you are as a parent at home if you have kids and you cannot bring food to the table. In some villages you find animals and people drinking from the same sources. More and more people are moving to the capital and leaving rural areas deserted. As you can see, things are very complicated: climate change is no joke or a way to push the government to do something; even the government is affected by climate change in a country like Sudan.

  What do you think about the climate strike movement?

  Although it is a very progressive thing to hold strikes in global north countries, in a country like Sudan, going to school is a privilege for a lot of students, and it doesn’t make any sense for people to strike from a school they got into after a huge struggle. So I haven’t been focusing much on the strikes. But I really think it’s affecting the global north countries and I think it’s impressive. For us we have other different ways of taking action.

  You are now a climate negotiator and havesecured places for Sudanese young peoplein the government delegation at UN climate talks. How did you achieve this?

  We began by forming a network of environmental organisations in Sudan. We coordinated with the Environment Conservation Society, the oldest organisation working on the environment in Sudan, and maybe even in Africa, established in 1975. We coordinated between them and other organisations and formed a network that we called Sudan Climate Change Network.

  This network advocated very hard with the Ministry of Environment and its minister. After a huge advocacy campaign to include civil society in the delegation to climate change negotiations at the Conference of the Parties (COP) and the inter-sessions in Bonn, the minister agreed to give each organisation two badges out of a total of 24. We then started a small campaign within the Climate Change Network to give young people at least half of the 24 badges. We didn’t get 12 but we got seven.

  And then with other young people from Africa we pushed towards having a young negotiator programme within the African Group of Negotiators (AGN). We discovered that the AGN had already established a programme because they needed junior negotiators. A lot of the older negotiators are passing away and to guarantee the sustainability of both the negotiation processes and the AGN itself, there was a need to replace this capacity by bringing in more young people, since the climate change fight will not end any time soon. Now I am one of the negotiators for the AGN, and my friend Lena Hussein is the Middle East and North Africa region negotiator for Climate Tracker. So, in total we now have nine young people from Sudan. Our number is increasing because we have proven ourselves, so now they know that we have the capability they are giving us more space.

  You helped organise the first UN Youth Climate Summit in September 2019. What are your thoughts about theSummit, and whatcomes next?

  When you organise the first edition of any huge summit like the Youth Climate Summit, some things might not go as planned. In this case, the general atmosphere was very promising. From my point of view, the only issue was the output: what were the actual conclusions and recommendations of this summit, and how are we going to take these forward? These recommendations need to be taken forward. As one of a group of 30 young organisers, I have many plans for many other forms of engagement, including with the UN Youth Envoy’s Office.

  What do you think will be the big issues for you at COP 25 in Chile this December?

  Regarding negotiation topics at COP 25, we have a huge issue with loss and damage. After I saw what happened here in Sudan, and after I saw how massive the destruction has been in many other African countries, I think that loss and damage is a huge theme for us. For example, in the USA you can have a disaster and because the country can handle this, they can repopulate the area in a month, whereas in Sudan it takes at least two or three years to recover because we really don’t have the capacity to predict or prepare, and after it’s happened, to rehabilitate the affected areas. So loss and damage is a key area for us. I will also follow the Agriculture Agreement, and Climate Finance is and always will be a big deal at negotiations. Every plan, everything that we want to do, is very much linked to the finance issue. Without funding you can’t do anything, and it doesn’t make any sense to plan for something that is not going to happen because there is no money.

  Civic space in Sudan is rated as ‘closed’ by theCIVICUS Monitor.

  Get in touch with Nisreen through herFacebook page.