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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:#1F497D"></span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/05/risks-women-take-defend-environment-indigenous-people/"><span style="color:blue">https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/05/risks-women-take-defend-environment-indigenous-people/</span></a><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14.0pt">RISKS INDIGENOUS WOMEN TAKE TO DEFEND THE ENVIRONMENT<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><img border="0" width="624" height="264" id="Picture_x0020_1" src="cid:image002.jpg@01D51D50.35ACE490" alt="4a20d08e55b653cb9baba5874345cefadab30228"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">By
<b>Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director at Amnesty International</b> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">1 May 2019 - Margoth Escobar was at a friend’s birthday party in the town of Puyo in the Ecuadorian Amazon last September when a neighbour called to say her house
was on fire. The blaze destroyed her home and more than $50,000 worth of artisanry that she and other women planned to sell over Christmas. The local fire department said it was an act of arson against Escobar, who belongs to Mujeres Amazonicas, a collective
of mostly indigenous women who have banded together to defend their land and the environment against oil extraction and mining.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">The current government is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, because its pro-extraction policies advance without mercy, without compassion and, above all, without respect
for the self-determination of indigenous peoples. Margoth Escobar <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">It was one of
<a href="https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/AMR2892042018ENGLISH.pdf"><span style="color:blue">several alarming attacks</span></a> against members of the collective in Ecuador last year, amid a broader trend of threats, smear campaigns and physical
violence against women human rights defenders across South America.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Putting aside her distrust of Ecuador’s police and justice system, Escobar filed a criminal complaint
at the regional Attorney General’s Office in October. She has not been granted protective measures, despite the risk her activism brings and the attack already suffered.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">“The current government is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, because its pro-extraction policies advance without
mercy, without compassion and, above all, without respect for the self-determination of indigenous peoples,” the grey-haired activist said of Ecuador’s Lenin Moreno administration in a recent interview with Amnesty International.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Similarly, in Bolivia, officials at the highest levels of government have tried to destroy the reputation
of the human rights defender Amparo Carvajal, after she denounced state security forces for arbitrary detentions and excessive use of force against agricultural workers.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">The situation came to a head last August when two farmers and one policeman were shot dead in a raid
on a coca plantation in the rural Andean community of La Asunta, an area where indigenous peoples have grown the crop for millennia.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">In an
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PD7QZEMx20w&feature=youtu.be"><span style="color:blue">interview with a state news channel</span></a>, Government Minister Carlos Romero blamed Carvajal, the 80-year-old president of Bolivia’s Permanent Assembly for
Human Rights, for the killings, calling her “an irresponsible person” and a “sponsor of criminal organisations”.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Days later, Bolivian President Evo Morales
<a href="https://twitter.com/evoespueblo/status/1036221941030551552"><span style="color:blue">tweeted</span></a> that the Permanent Assembly was a “right-wing pro-imperialist” organization responsible for a “campaign of lies and false denouncements” against
his government.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">These unsubstantiated accusations represent a crude and transparent attempt to undermine Carvajal’s
widely respected work (Página Siete, one of Bolivia’s leading newspapers, named her 2018
<a href="https://www.paginasiete.bo/gente/2018/12/30/amparo-carvajal-es-el-personaje-del-ano-de-pagina-siete-204564.html">
<span style="color:blue">Person of the Year</span></a>) and evade scrutiny of the state’s responsibility for human rights violations.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">“The government must give Mother Earth her rights back, and give indigenous peoples the recognition
they deserve,” Carvajal told Amnesty International in January. “Nature is screaming at us that we must love and care for this planet, for we all depend on it.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">In another typical case, armed men threatened Amada Martínez, an indigenous Avá Guaraní activist from
the Tekoha Sauce community in south-east Paraguay last August. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Martínez was leaving the community in a taxi with her seven-year-old son, her sister and two young nephews
when they were intercepted by a truck bearing the logo of the nearby Itaipú Binacional hydroelectric plant.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">The government must give Mother Earth her rights back, and give indigenous peoples the recognition they deserve. Nature is screaming at us that we must love and
care for this planet, for we all depend on it. Amparo Carvajal <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Martínez
<a href="https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/AMR4589312018ENGLISH.pdf"><span style="color:blue">told Amnesty International</span></a> that three men wearing balaclavas and Itaipú Binacional uniforms got out, armed with shotguns and a revolver. One pointed
a shotgun at her face while another threatened her, saying she was a “loudmouth woman” and that they would find her alone on the road one day.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Martínez believes she was threatened because of her work defending indigenous rights. Days before, she
had met with the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders to denounce the grave impact of the hydroelectric plant displacing the Tekoha Sauce community.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Indigenous women like Martínez and Escobar are particularly at risk when they stand up for the environment
and human rights, as they face additional discrimination due to their gender and identity.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Instead of permitting or even contributing to the violence against women human rights defenders, South
America’s leaders must recognise the importance of their work and take immediate and effective gender-sensitive and culturally appropriate measures to protect them.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">For these brave women will not be deterred, despite the grave dangers they face.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">“I act according to my own conviction. Whatever happens to me or my material things is of secondary
importance,” Escobar said. “They’re not going to stop us.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto"><span lang="EN" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><a href="https://elpais.com/internacional/2019/05/01/america/1556667197_371785.html"><i><span style="color:blue">______________________________________________</span></i></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
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