indegenous peoples
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Brazil: Ensure justice for Bruno Pereira and Dom Phillips and act to protect Indigenous rights defenders
Authorities in Brazil must thoroughly investigate the brutal murders of Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira and journalist Dom Phillips in the Javari Valley (Amazonas state) and act to protect Indigenous territories and defenders, global civil society alliance, CIVICUS said today.
Pereira and Phillips went missing on 5th June as they returned from a reporting trip on the Itaquaí River, in the northern Amazonas state. The response of the Brazilian authorities to their disappearance was slow, and initial search efforts were largely led by Indigenous defenders of the União dos Povos Indígenas do Vale do Javari (UNIJAVA). Late last week, authorities confirmed that Pereira and Phillips’ bodies were found after a suspect confessed his involvement in the crime. The pair were ambushed by members of an illegal fishing operation in protected areas of the Javari Valley, which Phillips had reportedly photographed a day earlier.
These devastating killings are not an isolated event as Brazil is one of the most dangerous countries for land and environmental defenders. At least 20 environmental defenders were killed in 2020, according to Global Witness. These attacks reflect the Bolsonaro government neglect toward Indigenous territories and his administration’s active effort to dismantle Brazil’s environmental governance institutions. Shortly before his killing, Pereira had spoken to a journalist about Bolsonaro’s efforts to undermine Brazil’s Indigenous affairs agency (FUNAI), of which he had taken unpaid leave after being sidelined for leading a successful operation against illegal mining inside Yanomami territory. Maxciel dos Santos, another Indigenous protection agent, was shot and killed in the Amazonas state in September 2019. The murder remains unsolved three years on.
Bruno Pereira was a civil servant who formerly headed the effort to protect Indigenous peoples who live in voluntary isolation. He had recently been working directly with Indigenous peoples of the Javari Valley on the protection of their territories through UNIVAJA. Dom Phillips was a British journalist who lived in Brazil for over a decade, and whose reporting increasingly focused on the Amazon rainforest and environmental issues. He was conducting interviews and research for a book about the rainforest’s protection.
We stand in solidarity with Indigenous rights defenders and the families of Pereira and Phillips as they demand justice. Today, environmental groups, Indigenous organisations and civil servants have scheduled protests in front of FUNAI buildings. CIVICUS joins their calls for a thorough investigation to hold all perpetrators accountable. Inquiries must also be made into the role of the Brazilian State in allowing criminal networks to operate with impunity, enabling attacks on Indigenous territories and human rights defenders. We call on the international community to express their support for environmental and Indigenous rights defenders in Brazil, and the journalists’ whose important work shines a light on the risks they face.
The CIVICUS Monitor, an online platform that tracks threats to civil society in countries across the globe, rates civic space – the space for civil society – in Brazil as obstructed.
Background
In his electoral campaign, President Jair Bolsonaro vowed to “end all activism in Brazil.” Since he took office in 2019, Indigenous communities and environmental and land rights defenders have become increasingly vulnerable to attacks, as the government emboldens criminal groups that engage in illegal logging, mining, land grabbing and other activities. Other widely documented attacks include public vilification of CSOs, criminalisation of activists and attempts to monitor critics and discredit the media.
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Demands to release Mexican land rights campaigner on Indigenous Peoples’ Day
On Indigenous Peoples’ Day, 9 August, global civil society alliance CIVICUS urges the Mexican authorities to immediately and unconditionally release Indigenous land rights campaigner Kenia Hernandez, and to free all Indigenous activists behind bars for their work protecting and promoting human rights.
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MEXICO: ‘Human rights defenders constantly put their freedom and their lives at risk’
CIVICUS speaks with Antonio Lara Duque, a human rights lawyer with the Zeferino Ladrillero Human Rights Centre (CDHZL), about the situation of Indigenous rights defenders in Mexico, and specifically about the situation of Kenia Hernández, a criminalised and unjustly imprisoned woman Indigenous leader.CDHZL is a civil society organisation in the state of Mexico that accompanies the struggles of Indigenous communities, native peoples and collectives who are seeking a dignified life by claiming and exercising their human rights.
Who is Kenia Hernández, and why is she detained?
Kenia is an Indigenous Amuzga young woman. She is 32 years old. She is the coordinator of the Zapata Vive Libertarian Collective, which promotes peaceful resistance against the neoliberal development model. She is a lawyer by training, a self-identified feminist and is dedicated to defending human rights, and specifically to defending people imprisoned for political reasons, looking for missing people with the goal of finding them alive and giving legal support to female victims of violence.
Kenia was arrested on 18 October 2020 under accusations of attacks on a public thoroughfare and robbery with violence. She was charged with serious crimes to ensure she could be kept in the most terrible maximum-security prison for women in all of Mexico.
On 15 March 2022 the trial court in Ecatepec, in the state of Mexico, will determine whether she is guilty or innocent in one of the five criminal cases against her. All these cases were fabricated with the sole purpose of isolating her and preventing her from continuing mobilising, as well as to send a signal of exemplary punishment to all those people she managed to bring together into a nationwide movement that questioned the private management of highways.
Is Kenia’s case part of a broader trend of criminalisation of Indigenous defenders in Mexico?
Indeed, Kenia’s case reveals that the Mexican state has a clear policy of a ‘pedagogy of punishment’, for two reasons.
First, it sends a signal to the people who protest, and particularly to those who protest against the privatisation of highways, that they should no longer resort to public demonstrations as a form of social mobilisation, because if they do, they will bring upon themselves an unjust and cruel imprisonment such as the one experienced by Kenia.
Second, Mexican state officials are trying to subdue and bend the will of Kenia, to punish her for protesting, but also to weaken her convictions, to subdue the energy and strength she puts into protest, to let her know who is in charge and who must obey. As she has not submitted to them, they continue to keep her in prison. They know that if she is released she will go back to her activism.
Both situations are seriously worrying, because they seek to reverse decades of social struggles and opening of democratic spaces.
What is civil society, and specifically CDHZL, doing to secure her release?
CDHZL is dedicated to disseminating, promoting and defending the human rights of peoples, organisations and human rights defenders. We defend the environment, land and territory, the human right to water and Indigenous culture. And we focus particularly on the protection of human rights defenders, since in Mexico these are people who constantly put their freedom and their lives at risk.
Part of our work consists in providing legal defence to human rights defenders who are unjustly criminalised and imprisoned for the peaceful defence of their rights. In its 10 years of existence, CDHZL has helped around 250 people regain their freedom.
We hope that soon Kenia will be another of them. Mexican civil society has given a lot of visibility to her case, putting her criminalisation on the public agenda and involving key people, in particular Mexican senators, to convince relevant decision-makers to stop criminalising Kenia. We have also tried to bring her case to the international arena, pointing out the punitive policy of the Mexican federal government.
Through its large team of lawyers, CDHZL has sustained a legal defence in the five legal processes against Kenia, with all that they entail: dozens of hearings, challenges and trials of guarantees, some of which we won. But clearly this is much more than a legal struggle, as high-ranking officials are determined to keep Kenia in prison at all costs.
Has there been any improvement in the situation of Indigenous defenders under the current leftist government?
We expected improvements in the situation of Indigenous peoples and human rights defenders and collective rights more generally, but unfortunately there continues to be a generalised disdain among the federal government, regardless of its leftist leanings.
The government has been unable or unwilling to tune in to the most heartfelt demands of Indigenous peoples. Aggressions against human rights defenders have continued, including disappearances, murders and imprisonments. When it comes to imprisonment, Kenia’s case is one of the most shocking examples of the misuse of the criminal justice system against a human rights defender under a government that claims to be the architect of a ‘fourth transformation’ – a process of profound change supposedly comparable to those of independence (1810-1821), reform (1858-1861) and revolution (1910-1917).
What kind of regional and international support does Mexican civil society need in its struggle for human rights and civic space?
Undoubtedly, international observation, very poorly accepted by the current government, would help recover democratic spaces for social protest and the free expression of ideas.
Appeals to the Mexican government can help sensitise the authorities to the importance of respecting human rights and those who defend them beyond political party affiliations.
International mediation and good offices will undoubtedly be a key tool to strengthen civil society in the defence of human rights, particularly in processes where the life and freedom of human rights defenders and Indigenous peoples’ rights are at stake.
Civic space in Mexico is rated ‘repressed’ by the CIVICUS Monitor.
Get in touch with CDHZL through itswebsite or itsFacebook andInstagram pages, and follow @cdhzloficial on Twitter.
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MEXICO: ‘The criminalisation of human rights defenders threatens the whole collective in order to deactivate it’
CIVICUS speaks with members of the Collective for the Freedom of Kenia Hernández about the criminalisation of activism in Mexico.Kenia Hernández is an Amuzga Indigenous woman, defender of Indigenous peoples’ rights to land and territory. She coordinates the Zapata Lives Libertarian Collective, which promotes peaceful resistance to the extractivist development model imposed by the Mexican state. There are currently nine open legal cases against Kenia on fabricated charges linked to her activism, and she has been unjustly imprisoned since October 2020. She is part of the CIVICUSStand as My Witness campaign seeking her release.
What’s the situation of Kenia Hernandez and the struggle for her release?
Kenia’s work has always focused on denouncing and mobilising against serious human rights violations. Now she is experiencing firsthand the criminalisation of human rights and Indigenous rights activism that so many other activists in Mexico have gone through. The system seeks to keep her behind bars for as long as possible to prevent her continuing to do her work, and to this end prolongs the deprivation of her liberty by repeatedly opening new criminal cases against her.
The campaign for Kenia’s release has two components: a legal struggle, led by a legal team that monitors the proceedings against her, and a political struggle, focused on raising the profile of her case. It is important that the whole country knows what is happening and that people continue to talk about Kenia’s case, and the injustice and impunity she is suffering. We cannot look the other way because her reality is the reality of many other criminalised activists.
How many cases similar to Kenia’s do you estimate there are today?
Kenia’s case is part of a pattern of criminalisation aimed at hindering the work of those defending human rights and the rights of Indigenous peoples in Mexico. The fact that Kenia is an Indigenous woman, a mother, a lawyer and a human rights defender is no coincidence: it is the very reason for her imprisonment.
Other activists have suffered worse fates than prosecution and jail: they have been victims of assassinations, attempts on their lives and enforced disappearances.
It is difficult to estimate how many criminalised activists and political prisoners there are in Mexico because there is no official body tracking them exhaustively. But it is a reality that we corroborate constantly. The main targets of this persecution are racialised activists, usually in a situation of poverty and vulnerability, who fight for a cause the government finds inconvenient. What those causes are depends on the context; each state is different. But they all fall victim to the same criminal system and are equally subjected to the violation of their rights and exposed to injustice and impunity.
To what extent has Kenia’s criminalisation succeeded in silencing demands?
Whenever a situation of criminalisation occurs, the group of activists accompanying or supporting the criminalised defender also fears for their own freedom. After all, what the criminalisation of defenders seeks to do is threaten the whole collective in order to deactivate it.
Perhaps there was a moment when the group supporting Kenia was afraid to raise its voice. The mere fact of working to make Kenia’s situation visible and make demands on her behalf puts us all in a situation of vulnerability. But we have overcome this fear and have continued to put forward our demands and make visible the situation of this particular criminalised defender and the perverse functioning of a criminal justice system that is profoundly racist and classist.
What are your demands to the Mexican state?
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, in his ‘Mañanera’ – a daily morning meeting with media – on 30 December 2022, instructed the Secretary for Security and Citizen Protection, Rosa Isela Rodríguez, to follow up on the case of Kenia Hernandez, which was our request. We demand that Ms Rodríguez meet jointly with Kenia’s legal team and with Federal Roads and Bridges (CAPUFE) so that they can have a dialogue and reach an agreement for her prompt release with reparations. CAPUFE is the federal agency that brought charges against Kenia in eight federal criminal cases for the alleged crime of attacks on general communication routes.
In view of the appeal made by United Nations rapporteurs and the fact that Kenia’s case was highlighted by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights as an example of the criminalisation of protest in Mexico, we hope that all the documentation and support gathered will be taken into account and will result in Kenia’s prompt release, and the recognition that she has been criminalised for her work as a defender of human rights and Indigenous peoples.
Civic space in Mexico is rated ‘repressed’ by theCIVICUS Monitor.
Get in touch with the Collective for the Freedom of Kenia Hernández through itsFacebook page and follow@ParaKenia on Twitter andlibertad_para_kenia on Instagram.
