Hundreds of Environmental Activists Murdered in Recent Years

This is worldwide; not in the United States.  (Not yet anyway.)  According to Global Witness, more than seven hundred environmentalists have been murdered in the past ten years.  These killings have occurred in 34 countries.

Most of the murder victims were indigenous people — or environmental activists working on their behalf — who were trying to protect their land from loggers, mining companies, developers and poachers.  Three quarters of these murders took place in Peru, Brazil and Colombia.  Another fifty killings took place in the Philippines; twenty in Thailand.

A spokesperson for Global Witness said:

“It is a well-known paradox that many of the world's poorest countries are home to the resources that drive the global economy. Now, as the race to secure access to these resources intensifies, it is poor people and activists who increasingly find themselves in the firing line.”

A Human Rights Watch spokesman said:

“It's so easy to get someone killed in some of these countries. Decapitate the leader of the movement and then buy off everyone else — that's standard operating procedure.”

I guess we should be grateful that environmentalists aren’t being murdered in this country.  So far, it’s been easier and less messy for a few energy conglomerates to just purchase a few congressmen, and to keep orchestrating those phony “demonstrations” for their useful idiots to take part in.

If these sleazy tactics start becoming less effective, what new improved method will Exxon and the Koch Brothers come up with instead?