Alright, so picture this: one chilly evening in January 2023, Indigenous leader Antonio Díaz Valencia and human rights lawyer Ricardo Arturo Lagunes Gasca decided to pull a vanishing act. Yep, they straight up disappeared into thin air.
Earlier that same day, these two fellas attended a community powwow to chat about the environmental mess caused by a massive iron-ore mine that had folks in nearby towns all riled up for ages. Post meeting, they jumped into a white pick-up truck near Aquila, Mexico, and set off for Lagunes Gasca’s pad in the neighboring state. But guess what? The dynamic duo never made it. The next day, their abandoned truck was discovered roadside, looking like Swiss cheese thanks to the bullet holes.
Their mysterious disappearance—spoiler alert: they were never found, and no one got called out for it—is just one of over 6,400 attacks on human rights defenders that went down from January 2015 to December 2024, according to a fancy new report from the U.K.-based watchdog group Business & Human Rights Resource Centre.
Christen Dobson, co-head of the civic freedoms and human rights defenders program at the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, spilled the tea that it’s basically been an attack a day for the past decade on defenders who are sticking their necks out about business-related risks and harms.
Human rights defenders are the real heroes who stand up for human rights in a peaceful way. The attacks tracked in the report range from forced disappearances, killings, assaults, threats, judicial harassment, and other nasty stuff. Oh, and by the way, Dobson mentioned that the numbers in the report are probably a lowball ’cause lots of attacks fly under the radar due to restrictions on civil society and the press.
The Business & Human Rights Resource Centre counts attacks on defenders that are reported by governments, news outlets, NGOs, and other public sources. And get this, the folks who keep tabs on these attacks are getting attacked themselves. It’s like a double whammy situation.
For instance, not long ago, sneaky military officers nabbed Cambodian environmental journalist Ouk Mao in his crib. Mao, who’s been roughed up and threatened before for spilling the beans on illegal logging and other eco-crimes, is now sitting pretty in custody on some shady charges.
The report clocked 279 attacks in Cambodia, but that doesn’t even include Mao’s little disappearing act, which happened outside the study period. The media landscape in Cambodia is in the dumps these days, with most news outlets being puppets of the government. When the U.S. prez cut off funding to Voice of America, a news outlet covering Cambodia, the Cambodian government couldn’t stop clapping its hands.
Indigenous peeps and environmental defenders are taking the brunt of these attacks worldwide, especially when it comes to the mining, agribusiness, and fossil fuel industries. They’re the ones with targets on their backs.
But hey, let’s be real here. We’re talking about protecting our planet with wisdom, bravery, and mad respect for Mother Earth. Heather O’Watch, a Nakota and Cree woman from the Okanese First Nation in Canada, is all about that life. She’s slamming the shady business practices that put Indigenous environmental defenders in harm’s way.
In Peru, Indigenous folks made up half of all the defenders who got attacked. Miguel Guimaraes Vasquez, a Shipibo-Konibo leader and VP of an Indigenous rights group, got hit with a death threat via WhatsApp in 2020. Then, in 2024, goons broke into his crib, torched the place, and swiped his stuff. They even left a nice little message on the wall saying he won’t be around for long.
The report links most of these attacks to big business projects like oil extraction in Uganda, iron ore mining in Honduras, and oil pipelines in the U.S. and Canada. The companies mentioned in the report are like, “Not our problem, bro.”
Enbridge, a player in the Dakota Access Pipeline drama and owner of Line 3, swears up and down that they support folks expressing their views and protesting. Oh, and they’ve chatted it up with the UN big shots about Indigenous rights and human rights defenders.
The connection between businesses and attacks on defenders is super sketchy. Most of the defenders in the report got targeted for standing in the way of mines and other business ventures. And guess what? The bad guys behind these attacks almost never get caught. Shocker, right?
The report points fingers at government peeps like cops, military, local officials, and judges as the usual suspects. They’re the ones most likely to be pulling the strings behind the scenes.
But seriously, one of the common themes here is that these companies just steamroll ahead with their projects without even asking the affected communities nicely or getting the OK from Indigenous folks. It’s like they missed the memo on proper manners.
Dobson and her partner in crime, Lady Nancy Zuluaga Jaramillo, are calling out these attacks on defenders and the crackdown on free speech as trouble for investors. When these peeps speaking out get silenced, companies and investors miss out on crucial info about human rights abuses. And that’s a recipe for disaster, financially and reputation-wise.
Legal harassment was front and center in more than half of the 6,400 attacks documented. Think strategic lawsuits to shut folks up or scare them off. The report found over 530 of these bad boys. The rest of the legal shenanigans involved stuff like random detentions and whatnot.
Women defenders have it rough, too. They’re dealing with all sorts of threats, especially online harassment. The report shared a story about a female journo who got harassed by company goons who even went after her family. It’s like a soap opera, but way more sketchy.
And let’s not forget the kiddos of these women defenders. They’re getting dragged into the mess to pressure and scare their moms. It’s a dirty game, folks.
Down in Mexico, the majority of the “buscadoras,” who search for missing defenders, are women. These fierce ladies are on a mission to find justice for their loved ones, all while dodging attacks left and right.
Impunity is the name of the game, especially in Mexico. The report listed 455 attacks in Mexico, with the mining sector leading the charge. Forced disappearances are a common tactic to shut up environmental defenders. It’s like a sick joke, with folks in Mexico calling it “disappearing the disappeared.”
The report throws some shade at corporate bigwigs, telling them to step up and protect human rights defenders. They’re being called out to adopt zero-tolerance policies for attacks and be real with Indigenous peeps and local communities affected by their projects.
“Companies need to own up to the mess,” says Gonza. And you know what? She’s got a point.
