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Peru: indigenous leaders murdered for protecting their forests Updated for 2026

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A new report by Global Witness sheds light on what’s driving the high number of killings of environmental defenders in Peru, less than a month before the country hosts the UN climate talks in Lima.

Peru’s Deadly Environment calls into question the commitments of Peru to protect its carbon-rich forests and the people who live in them, in light of unfettered illegal logging, disregard for indigenous land claims, and new laws that favour industrial exploitation over environmental protection.

The report comes on the heels of the killings of four indigenous leaders in Ucayali in September, including prominent anti-logging activist Edwin Chota and three of his fellow Ashéninka leaders from the Peruvian Amazon.

“The murders of Edwin Chota and his colleagues are tragic reminders of a paradox at work in the climate negotiations”, said Patrick Alley, Co-Founder of Global Witness. “While Peru’s government chairs negotiations on how to solve our climate crisis, it is failing to protect the people on the frontline of environmental protection.

Environmental defenders embody the resolve we need to halt global warming. The message is clear, if you want to save the environment, then stop people killing environmental defenders.”

Since 2002, 57 eco-defenders killed

Peru is the fourth most dangerous country to be an environmental defender, behind Brazil, Honduras and the Philippines. At least 57 environmental and land defenders were killed in Peru between 2002 and the present day, more than 60% of them in the last four years, according to new Global Witness data.

Most of these deaths involved disputes over land rights, mining and logging. 72% of Peru’s indigenous communities still have no way of demonstrating their land tenure rights, and over 20 million hectares of land claims have not yet been processed.

Peru’s Deadly Environment was being launched yesterday at an award ceremony in which the Alexander Soros Foundation honoures Chota and his colleagues with its annual Award for Environmental Activism.

Diana Rios Rengifo, daughter of one of the murdered men, will accept the award on behalf of her father and their Ashéninka community, which has been fighting for more than a decade for the right to gain titles to its land.

“They may have killed my father and his friends, but I am still here”, said Diana, daughter of Jorge Rios. “And I will continue to fight for the rights to our territories and for the rights of the other indigenous peoples of Peru.”

Deforestation is rampant

Peru presides over an area of rainforest roughly the size of the US state of Texas, and recently committed to reduce net deforestation to zero by 2021 as part of a $300 million deal with Norway.

In 2012 deforestation rates in Peru doubled from the previous year and forest loss now accounts for nearly half the country’s annual greenhouse gas emissions.

Illegal logging is worth 1.5 times the value of legal timber exports in Peru, and allegations contained in Peru’s Deadly Environment hint at collusion between loggers and government officials.

Edwin Chota had received numerous death threats for his resistance to the loggers who were gutting his community’s forests, but his appeals to the authorities were ignored.

Before he died, Chota sent local police photographs of the illegal loggers who are now charged with his murder and the locations of their logging sites.

Peru shamed – but hosting December UN climate conference

Across Latin America, strengthening indigenous rights to their land has proven links to healthier forests and lower carbon emissions – evidence that will take centre stage at the upcoming Lima climate conference.

Meanwhile hosts Peru invoked a new law in July 2014 that grants extended land use rights to investors for the expansion of large-scale agriculture, mining, logging and infrastructure projects.

“Peru’s credibility as a forest protector hinges upon providing land and resource rights to the country’s indigenous and rural populations”, said David Salisbury, a University of Richmond professor who has spent time with Edwin Chota’s community of Saweto.

“If you want to keep forests standing, you have to invest in people who live in them, as they have the most at stake in the sustainable development of those areas. Saweto is a perfect example. The government should recognize there are people in the forests, and give them rights to them.

“How can you maintain standing forest, and mitigate climate change, if the defenders of the forest are being assassinated?”

 

 

The report: Peru’s deadly environment is by Global Witness.

 




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Russia: officials block indigenous leaders from UN Assembly Updated for 2026

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Russian indigenous representatives scheduled to speak at the UN World Conference on Indigenous Peoples on 22nd and 23rd September 2014, in New York, were blocked from leaving the country.

On both September 18 and 20, they reported to Human Rights Watch, Russian border officials damaged their passports as they sought to board their plane in Moscow and prevented them from leaving the country.

Other activists were delayed from departing by multiple unnecessary checks, and by apparent ‘dirty tricks’ such as glueing apartment doors.

“Preventing indigenous rights experts from speaking at a UN conference goes way beyond official intolerance toward civic activism”, said Tanya Cooper, HRW’s Russia researcher.

“Keeping indigenous activists from getting on the plane to New York is exhibit A for the Kremlin’s heavy-handed crackdown on activists since Vladimir Putin’s return to the presidency.”

“Russian authorities should immediately investigate the actions of officials who prevented Russian activists for indigenous peoples’ rights from traveling to a United Nations event.”

‘Damaged’ passports lead to charges

On September 18, border officials at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport told Rodion Sulyandziga, a member of the Indigenous Peoples’ Global Coordinating Group for the World Conference and director of the Centre for the Support of the Indigenous Peoples of the North, that he could not leave Russia because his passport was damaged.

Sulyandziga told HRW that he checked in for his flight at 1 p.m. and proceeded to passport control at 1:30 p.m. After he handed over his passport, the border control officer left the booth with Sulyandziga’s passport.

Fifteen minutes later, border officials took him to a private room, where they told him that his passport was missing a page. He said his passport had been intact when he gave it to passport control officials but that when he looked, he saw that a page had been sliced out.

Sulyandziga said the officials told him that his passport was invalid and asked him to sign an explanatory note acknowledging that his passport was missing a page. He refused.

An hour later, the border officials brought a protocol, signed by two Federal Security Services officials, stating that his passport had been confiscated and that Sulyandziga was charged under paragraph 1 of article 18.1, “Violating the regime of state borders” of the Russian Code of Administrative Offenses.

About to denounce Russia’s exploitation of Arctic oil

On 20th September, another Russian delegate to the UN conference, Anna Naikanchina, was stopped at Sheremetyevo passport control under similar circumstances.

Naikanchina told Human Rights Watch that although she handed over an intact passport, the border guard told her that her passport was cut in four places and is therefore void.

Naikanchina alleges that the official cut her passport while she was looking through her documents to find her child’s birth certificate.

Officials held Naikanchina, who was traveling with her infant, for three hours in a waiting room. Finally, she was told that the authorities had confiscated her ‘damaged’ passport and charged her with the same administrative offense as Sulyandziga. They also wanted her to sign a court summons, but she refused.

Sulyandziga and Naikanchina both face fines of up to 5,000 rubles (about US$135) and have to apply for new passports.

Sulyandziga noted that one of the issues he was supposed to discuss at the UN conference was relations between Russia’s indigenous peoples and oil companies exploring oil reserves in the Arctic region.

Naikanchina was supposed to speak at the conference about the issue of respect for the rights of indigenous peoples at the national and local levels.

Slashed tires, glued apartment door

Three other advocates for the rights of indigenous peoples also experienced interference and delay on the way to various airports as they were leaving for New York.

Nadir Bekir, director of the International Foundation for Research and Support of Indigenous Peoples of Crimea, was traveling from Crimea to the Kiev airport when his passport was stolen, Sulyandziga said.

Bekir was in a taxi on territory occupied by Russia when a minibus blocked his car and several men he did not recognize stole his passport and left. He missed his flight to New York.

Sulyandziga also said that on September 20, Valentina Sovkina, chairwoman of the Saami Parliament of the Kola Peninsula, discovered the morning of her departure that her tires had been slashed. She took a taxi to the airport, but traffic police stopped her three times, asking to see her travel documents.

She missed her flight but managed to get on a later flight. The Moscow Times reported that a fifth person missed her flight to the UN conference after finding her apartment door glued shut while she was out.

A clear breach of international human rights obligations

Russia is a party to both the European Convention on Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which guarantee the freedoms of expression and association, as well as freedom of movement.

“Did Russian officials hope that putting obstacles in the way of activists leaving the country would keep them silent – whether about Arctic drilling, indigenous rights, or anything else?” asked Cooper.

“They will not succeed, but they should be immediately held accountable for their arbitrary interference with the activists’ right to freedom of speech.”

The conference has the status of a high-level plenary meeting of the UN General Assembly – making the restrictions on Russia’s indigenous activists a direct affron to the UN itself.

 

 

Source: Human Rights Watch.

 




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Climate March and Summit: world leaders’ ‘flimsy pledges’ denounced Updated for 2026

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This Sunday 21st September hundreds of thousands of people have pledged to march in New York, London, Amsterdam and many other cities around the world to demand climate justice, standing with climate and dirty energy-affected communities worldwide.

They are hoping to influence world leaders gathering in New York for their one-day Climate Summit taking place on 23rd September to exceed the poor expectations vested in them.

“Our demand is for action, not words”, the organizers explain. “We must take the action necessary to create a world with an economy that works for people and the planet – now. In short, we want a world safe from the ravages of climate change.”

Friends of the Earth International (FOEI) is among those warning that little progress is likely. “A parade of leaders trying to make themselves look good does not bring us any closer to the real action we need to address the climate crisis”, said Dipti Bhatnagar, FOEI’s Climate Justice and Energy coordinator.

“World leaders are falling far short of delivering what we need to truly tackle climate change in a just way. Their flimsy non-binding pledges in New York will do little to improve their track record.

“What we urgently need are equitable and binding carbon reductions, not flimsy voluntary ones. This one-day Summit will not deliver any substantial action in the fight against climate change.”

Record levels, record increases, of greenhouse gases

Last week the World Meteorological Organization warned that atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases hit a record in 2013 as carbon dioxide concentrations grew at the fastest rate since global records began.

The impact of increasingly common extreme weather events, such as flooding, droughts and hurricanes, are devastating the lives and livelihoods of many millions of people.

Climate change is directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people per year, most of whom live in poorer countries. Without immediate and decisive action, climate change will certainly get worse and could pass a dangerous tipping point where it becomes both catastrophic and irreversible.

The 195 States that signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) recognise that rich, industrialised countries have done the most to cause climate change and must take the lead in solving it, and provide funds to poorer countries.

Both rich and poor countries are failing their people

But developed countries’ leaders are neglecting their responsibilities to prevent climate catastrophe, as their positions are increasingly driven by the financial interests of fossil fuel industries and multinational corporations.

The same interests are also opposing renewable energy and have succeeded in undermining support regimes in the UK and elsewhere, limiting the funds available and getting the bulk of the ‘low carbon’ finance available in the UK diverted to nuclear power – an expensive and ineffective way to tackle climate change.

Bill McKibben and the 350.org campaign he founded have highlighted the need to return to 350 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide (CO2) – and then lower still – to preserve the planet and its people.

The sharing of this burden, they say, must be based on historical responsibility, capacity to act and access to sustainable development in order to enable a just global transition.

A Peoples’ March to end carbon emissions

A total phase out of carbon emissions by 2050 is necessary, says FOEI, in order to reverse current warming trends and minimize the chance of irreversible damage and possible runaway climate change, with reductions agreed through a legally-binding agreement at the UNFCCC.

“Funds are urgently needed for clean, sustainable community energy and adaptation to climate change in developing countries”, the group adds, explaining its support for a ‘Financial Transactions Tax‘ as a source of climate finance.

The People’s Climate March has been endorsed by over 1,200 organizations representing 100 million people worldwide.

“We know that no single meeting or summit will ‘solve climate change’ and in many ways this moment will not even really be about the summit”, say organizers.

“We want this moment to be about us – the people who are standing up in our communities, to organise, to build power, to confront the power of fossil fuels, and to shift power to a just, safe, peaceful world. To do that, we need to act – together.”

 

 




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