CORAL is an initiative that spans the continent and seeks to share tools to strengthen community communication, with emphasis on the use of audiovisuals for the defense of the territory and the telling of their own  narratives. From September to December 2022, CORAL held the 1st Latin American School of Communication for Land Defense, in which the closing modules took place in Paraty, Brazil and Mexico city, Mexico. After the gatherings CORAL network has grown significantly to include the participants of this first school. Find more about this initiative in https://redcoral.la 

After seeing the violent response of the Peruvian government to the mobilizations that started on December 7th, the CORAL network released the following statement. Laboratorio Popular de Medios Libres and WITNESS have also joined forces in an open call for video evidence of human rights violations using an autonomous server, and working together with other members of CORAL, such as Maizal and Radio Kurruf, to create an archive that can preserve multimedia coming from Peru. More about this initiative here.

Read this statement in Portuguese and in Spanish.

To the independent, free, community, alternative media at Abya Yala  and beyond,

To international civil society,

To the governments and international organizations that are meant to protect and guarantee human rights,

We the undersigned, as representatives of community and alternative media, members of Indigenous and afro-descendant peoples, communities, and organizations of our Abya Yala continent, denounce the serious social and political situation that the Republic of Peru is experiencing, as a result of the legislative coup that has broken the rule of law in that sister nation.

We strongly reject the repressive use of the police and military forces that have murdered 39 protesters in 35 days, since December 7th, 2022, with direct shots to the body during the demonstrations and/or using snipers. In total, the number of deaths from the current social protests amounts to 47 people and hundreds of people injured.

Despite reaching office democratically, since the beginning of President Castillo’s administration in July 2021, the Peruvian congress has been characterized by a racist, classist and violent vision and narratives, and put forth a fierce fight for Castillo’s dismissal. The congress has dedicated itself solely to block the work of the executive branch, which has prolonged the stagnation of the State and the country. Six presidents in four years demonstrate the political instability that obviously generates discomfort in Peruvian society.

We express our concern about the tepid role of international bodies; the UN and OAS, that are already per se delegitimized, reiterate their position at the service of the interests of local oligarchies and international corporations to prevail over the needs of the population in general.

As independent communication media and collectives, we stand by the generalized rejection against  the media concentration that exists in Peru, where the radioelectric space is monopolized by a handful of companies that use it to spread a racist, classist and patriarchal narrative that confuses and polarizes public opinion.

We denounce that the state of national emergency, decreed by who currently usurps the presidency of Peru, is an open letter for the violation of all human rights, a history sadly repeated in the territories of our Abya Yala where repression gave rise to barbarism; a situation which we deeply regret again in Peru.

We urge the national and international actors involved to channel mechanisms for the restoration of constitutional order and respect for human rights in Peru.

We call on governments, institutions, international bodies and civil society throughout the continent to ensure that the Peruvian State respects and acts in accordance with the principles that govern human life on the planet; peace and respect for life, self-determination and autonomy of the peoples.

We invite the various free, popular and community communication groups to articulate in the dissemination and denunciation of human rights violations against the Peruvian people and their just demands.

From all Latin America we send our solidarity and support to the sisters and brothers of Peru. We are peoples of peace weaving the word to communicate the defense and care of life and territories.

Abya Yala, January 11, 2023.

Around the world deepfakes are becoming a powerful tool for artists, satirists, and activists. But what happens when vulnerable people are not “in on the joke,” or when malignant intentions are disguised as humor? JUST JOKING! focuses on the fast-growing intersections between deepfakes and satire. Key questions explored in the report include: who decides what’s funny, what’s fair, and who is accountable?

“WITNESS knows the power of video to challenge rights abuses and the powerful. But our research over the last three years has revealed the lines where deepfakes are misused, and claims of humor disguise gaslighting and malice,” said WITNESS’ Sam Gregory, a co-producer of the report. “We’re in a critical moment to ensure we have a robust conversation about protecting the creative, political power of deepfakes satire and other emerging forms of critique. At the same time, we must demand consistent approaches from platforms, app-makers and others who are implicated in the creation and distribution of deceptive and malicious digital forgeries that masquerade as ‘just joking!’”

“A wide range of voices need to be part of answering these deep questions,” said Katerina Cizek, the Co-Creation Studio producer of the report, “These questions arise in the cracks and overlaps between satire and disinformation. Voices who need to be at the table include not only technologists, lawyers and politicians, the platforms – where these videos are shared and where they are made–but also human rights activists, artists, journalists. Most importantly, perhaps, we must hear from people from around the world who are both finding new uses for these technologies, as well as have a profound understanding of the impact and harm that vulnerable communities face when malicious actors and institutions are not held accountable.”

JUST JOKING! analyzes more than 70 recent, wide-ranging cases of deepfakes. Some are examples of potent satire, art, or activism, from mocking authoritarian leaders to synthetically resurrecting victims of injustice to demand action. But others demonstrate how bad actors use comedy as both a sword and a shield, to glorify the powerful and attack marginalized communities, while seeking to escape culpability. Increasingly, satire is used as a defensive excuse — “just joking!” — after a video has circulated and caused harm.

JUST JOKING! is part of a continuing collaboration between Co-Creation Studio at MIT Open Documentary Lab and WITNESS on the Deepfakery project. WITNESS’ “Prepare, Don’t Panic” initiative pursues a globally-inclusive, human rights-lead approach to deepfakes, authenticity, and media manipulation. The report is written by deepfake experts Henry Ajder and Joshua Glick, based on the lead research of Henry Ajder.

For more information or to request interviews with the report’s producers, email media [@] witness [dot] org.

GitHub Rejects Challenge on Tool used to Preserve Videos of Abuses

(New York, November 25, 2020) – A decision by GitHub, a leading software development platform, to reinstate a popular free software tool for downloading videos, means that human rights groups will be able to continue to use the software without interruption to preserve documentation of human rights abuses, Human Rights Watch, Mnemonic, and WITNESS said today. GitHub had removed the code for the software, youtube-dl, from its platform in response to a request by the Recording Industry Association of America Inc (RIAA).

youtube-dl is one of the primary tools used to download videos from hundreds of websites, including YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. The tool is maintained and updated on GitHub. Videos posted online are essential for human rights investigations and research to expose human rights violations and provide evidence in legal proceedings to hold human rights violators accountable, including in international tribunals.

GitHub did the right thing in reinstating youtube-dl, following a spurious copyright claim, the organizations said. It is a vital tool for preserving and archiving documentation of human rights abuses to preserve evidence that can bring the abusers to justice.

On October 23, the Recording Industry Association of America submitted a Digital Millennium Copyright Act request to GitHub to remove all public code repositories of youtube-dl, which essentially constitute the code behind the tool. This request would have left the youtube-dl developers without a key platform to coordinate with other developers working on the open-source tool. These requests are legal notices sent to online service providers that ask them to remove material that allegedly infringes on copyright.

Microsoft-owned GitHub complied with the request a few days later. On November 16, GitHub reversed course and reinstated youtube-dl to its platform, saying that it did so after it “received additional information about the project” that enabled it to reverse its decision.

While there is a possibility that youtube-dl might be used to download copyrighted material like Taylor Swift’s Shake it Off video and other videos mentioned in the request, the Recording Industry Association of America did not provide evidence that this had happened. Instead, it contended that youtube-dl should be removed for use by anyone for any purpose.

During the weeks youtube-dl was removed from GitHub’s platform, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and youtube-dl provided GitHub with information on the legitimate uses of the tool, including “changing playback speeds for accessibility, preserving evidence in the fight for human rights, aiding journalists in fact-checking, and downloading Creative Commons-licensed or public domain videos.”

The code behind youtube-dl is used by dozens of other archival tools and browser plug-ins. Given how important it is across platforms, the attempted removal of youtube-dl from GitHub threatened to do serious damage, the groups said. GitHub is used by the small group of programmers and external contributors behind youtube-dl to help manage the constant updates needed to keep up with the way social media platforms and other websites update their services.

As a recent Human Right Watch report “Video Unavailable” notes, the ability to download, archive, and preserve videos documenting human rights abuses is crucial for human rights work because that potential evidence can be removed by the uploader or by the platform where it was published at any moment, especially as commercial platforms like YouTube prohibit graphic violence on their platforms.

The removal of this tool would seriously hamper a key form of evidence gathering. Social media platforms themselves have acknowledged the problem of losing human rights documentation when they remove content and have encouraged groups to archive videos.

“We use youtube-dl to archive and preserve videos related to human rights violations at the highest resolution available,” said Nicole Martin, associate director of archives and digital systems at Human Rights Watch. “Losing the ability to download and preserve content would be disastrous to efforts to hold abusers accountable.”

The archival and human rights group Mnemonic has used youtube-dl to preserve over two million videos from Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. In its own evaluations it has found a substantial portion of these videos would most likely disappear without the ability to archive them.

“Mnemonic’s most recent review of our archived videos from the Syrian conflict revealed that 23 percent of videos in collections of verified human rights documentation are no longer available on YouTube,” said Dia Kayyali, associate advocacy director at Mnemonic. “Without youtube-dl, that content could have been lost forever.”

People rely on social media platforms as the primary way they access the internet and share information throughout the world. “youtube-dl is essential in the accessible and transparent workflows we employ with our local partners to collect and preserve documentation for human rights advocacy and legal evidence,” said Yvonne Ng, archives program manager at WITNESS.

This free tool enables people to retrieve information and have it accessible offline, especially in low-bandwidth situations or when the internet has been shut down, the groups said.

The Recording Industry Association of America’s request was based on Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, also known as the “anti-circumvention” rule, which prohibits bypassing, removing, or revealing defects in “technical protection measures” that control not just use but also access to copyrighted works. These protection measures control activities as disparate as who can fix cars and tractors, who can audit the security of medical implants, and who can refill a printer cartridge.

The rule has been applied in ways that hamper public interest archiving by libraries and other institutions, since copyright holders allege that these activities constitute circumventing the technical protection measures to infringe on copyright. The EFF has argued, and GitHub agreed, that its use in the youtube-dl case was a misapplication of the law.

Human Rights Watch contacted the Recording Industry Association of America, GitHub, and youtube-dl for comment. The association did not respond, and youtube-dl declined to comment on the events due to the ongoing legal case. However, youtube-dl did note the importance of GitHub as a platform and explained the origins of its tool. A spokesperson from GitHub said in a November 12 email to Human Rights Watch, prior to the tool’s reinstatement, that “GitHub believes that, as applied to source code, Section 1201 is outdated and too broad, often sweeping up code that has otherwise lawful purposes, but we are nonetheless required to comply with the law.”

The association’s attempt to use Section 1201 this way raises concerns about future efforts to misuse the law to restrict access to the internet’s archival tools that human rights organizations rely on, the organizations said.

GitHub announced new measures to address similar situations in the future. It said it plans to change how it evaluates requests under Section 1201, and to establish and donate US$1 million to a developer defense fund to support open-source developers on GitHub from unwarranted Section 1201 takedown claims. It also said it is advocating changing the copyright law’s anti-circumvention provisions.

This case points to a larger problem of flaws in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the organizations said. The law gives copyright holders very broad powers to impede the use of tools even for legal applications that are in the public interest, like preserving evidence of human rights crimes.

Elsewhere, Human Rights Watch has also warned that abusive takedowns for alleged copyright violations under other Digital Millennium Copyright Act provisions can become a powerful tool for silencing criticism and commentary online.

The provisions in the copyright law are outdated and overbroad, the organizations said. Policymakers need to ensure copyright laws don’t improperly restrict rights or eliminate key sources of evidence to hold rights abusers and war criminals accountable.

###

For more on WITNESS’s work on archives, technology, and human rights, please visit:
http://archiving.witness.org/ and https://technology.witness.org/

For more information, please contact:
In New York, for Human Rights Watch, Deborah Brown (English): +1-347-920-8978; or brownd@hrw.org. Twitter: @deblebrown
In New York, for Human Rights Watch, Nicole Martin (English): martinn@hrw.org. Twitter: @av_archivist
In Berlin, for Mnemonic, Dia Kayyali: dia@mnemonic.org. Twitter: @DiaKayyali
In Prague, for WITNESS, Yvonne Ng: yvonne@witness.org. Twitter: @ng_yvonne

We are keenly aware that neither our mission nor the bearing out of that mission in our daily work insulates WITNESS from the moral and ethical blights of systemic racism, white supremacy, and neo-colonialism. As an institution and as individuals within that institution, we recognize that we have a pressing obligation to examine this truth with earnestness and rigor, in order to make reparative, restorative, forward-looking amendments to both our personal behaviors and our infrastructure. 

As a global network of activists with strengths in both the Global North and the Global South, we must continue to fight for, build, and support equitable power within a human rights framework, and continue to do the internal work necessary to do better. This includes re-evaluating dynamics of power within the organization. To date, we have worked to carefully monitor how we practice the critical human rights that are at the heart of our mission and live our policies, both internally among colleagues and externally in our partnerships with activists worldwide. 

Our work around the world is to create spaces where people feel empowered, supported and affirmed. We are fully committed to doing more toward necessary institutional reform—including structural and policy changes around power and equity—and we welcome ongoing constructive feedback with that end in mind. We must do amongst ourselves the work we ask others to do. 

Contact:

Dia Kayyali, dia@witness.org,

Heidi Beirich, heidi@globalextremism.org

Global and national groups call on Mark Zuckerberg to hold Facebook India accountable

In early August, the Wall Street Journal published an exposé of Facebook India, with evidence that Ankhi Das, the head of Public Policy at Facebook, India, South and Central exhibited political bias by suspending the community guidelines when it came to genocidal hate speech. The article has been followed by myriad press reports in the Wall Street Journal, Reuters, TIME Magazine, and more, detailing bias and failure to address dangerous content at the Facebook India office. This week, a wide range of civil society organizations from around the world, including WITNESS, Free Press, Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, Media Justice,  Southern Poverty Law Center, and the Islamic Women’s Council of New Zealand have signed an open letter calling on Mark Zuckerberg to work with civil society to address dangerous content on Facebook, ensure that a thorough audit of Facebook India takes place, and place Ankhi Das on administrative leave while the audit is being conducted. 

The timeline of Facebook’s complicity in genocide goes back to 2013, where hate speech on the platform fuelled the Muzzafarnagar riots. It has continued unabated. In 2020,  content like #Coronajihad has spread as quickly as COVID itself, and has led to real world violence against many. Facebook itself admitted that it was used to incite genocide against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar. An Indian parliamentary panel on information technology questioned Facebook on September 2 and will do so again, following demands made by ex-civil servants and Facebook India employees. But Facebook shouldn’t wait to be forced to take action. It should publicly state what steps it is taking to address its tragic failures in India. 

Here’s what civil society is saying:

Anjum Raman, project Lead for Inclusive Aotearoa Collective (New Zealand) and member of the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism Independent Advisory Committee, said:

The activities and actions of Facebook staff in India show the danger of political parties and tech companies colluding to undermine the democratic process.  It shows the result of not having independent, transparent regulatory systems in place to oversee the activities of companies which have significant impact on the wellbeing and safety of millions of people.  We have already seen evidence of that harm across the world, whether in Myanmar, India, or New Zealand.  The international community needs to come together to ensure urgent action in regulating the behaviour and activities of these companies.

Dia Kayyali, Program Manager, tech + advocacy at WITNESS, said:

Facebook has been warned about the offline violence enabled by its platform in places like India. From the United Nations Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide to civil society organizations, the alarm has been raised. So why is dangerous Islamophobic content that is directly linked to real world harm being allowed to persist? Even before the Wall Street Journal article, it seemed to many of us in the global community that it’s about profit in an important market- but Facebook’s business model can’t be reliant on ignoring warning signs of genocide.. Facebook must take real action now, not just apologize or even get rid of one or two executives. This is your chance, Facebook. Conduct the most thorough investigation you’ve done yet. Make the results as public as possible. And work with civil society to stem the flow of the bloody, harmful content on your platform. 

Heidi Beirich, Ph.D., EVP  at the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, said:

It’s high time Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook take anti-Muslim hatred seriously and change how its policies are applied in Asia and across the world. The scandal in the Indian office, where anti-Muslim and other forms of hatred were allowed to stay online due to religious and political bias, is appalling and the leadership in that office complicit. Hatred fomented on Facebook has led to violence and the most terrifying crime, genocide, against Muslims and other marginalized populations across the region, most notably in Myanmar. Anti-Muslim content is metastasizing across the platform as Facebook’s own civil rights audit proved. Facebook must put an end to this now.

Sana Din from Indian American Muslim Council said:

 Facebook allowed incendiary Islamophobic content even after they were informed that it was leading to genocidal violence.  From Muzzafnagar to Delhi, Indian Muslims and millions of other caste oppressed minorities cannot wait for change.  Facebook needs to act now. They  cannot evade their direct role in supporting genocidal hate speech at Facebook India and the only remedy to this harm is an Audit of caste and religious bias. 

Steven Renderos, executive director of MediaJustice said: 

As a global company with over 3 billion followers, Facebook has the unprecedented power of affecting users both on and off their platform. Counter to Mark Zuckerberg’s public aspirations of creating an inclusive platform, Facebook has become the tool of choice around the world to escalate violence around race, caste, and religion. As recent history in Myanmar has taught us, the consequences of not preventing hate speech from going viral on their platform translate into actual violence and genocide for some. This is not merely about a company struggling to address hateful activities at scale, this is a result of people Facebook has entrusted to represent its interest around the world. Nowhere is this more true than with Ankhi Das and Facebook India.

You can read the letter here.

With over 1.5 million people in U.S. state and federal prisons, the U.S. puts more people in prison than any other country in the world. We know these astronomical levels of incarceration disproportionately impact people of color and low-income communities. Besides costing over $80 billion dollars a year to lock people up, mass incarceration has very little to no impact on crime reduction, but instead tears families apart and diminishes their economic stability. 

Through our recent trainings and collaborations with groups like CUNY Law School’s Defenders Clinic, Legal Aid New York and Bard College, we’ve seen the power of video and storytelling in advancing efforts to decrease this devastating prison population. Video creates the opportunity to see someone in their full humanity – their mannerisms, their essence, the parts that tend to get lost in a written statement. Amid a climate of fear mongering and misinformation, this has the power to break down stereotypes about people serving long prison sentences, nurturing empathy and understanding.

We are moved by the individuals who have collaborated with us and motivated by the impact this work has had so far. Learn more about this work and share our new Legal Video Advocacy tips and resources.

Nine people were killed and 12 others were injured during a police operation in the Paraisópolis favela in São Paulo, Brazil, on December 1st.

While state governor João Dória originally defended the police’s actions and denied any responsibility for the violence, the images captured by eyewitnesses and shared on social media have since forced him to change his story, saying three days later that he was “very shocked” by the videos and that he’s ordered a review of police protocols for the use of force. 

The massacre happened when police arrived to disrupt a “baile funk” party where 5,000 people were celebrating favela funk music culture. Although the police originally claimed that local gangs were to blame for the deaths, local residents said the officers arrived with extreme violence and deliberately entrapped the people trying to flee. Horrifying videos showed police beating young people as they tried to run away, later being cornered and corralled into a narrow alleyway where some were trampled to death. The victims were between the ages of 14-23.

After the killings, investigative news agency Ponte launched a campaign focused on cellphones as a tool for self-defense, encouraging the public to share any videos of police violence — sharing WITNESS guidance on how to film safely and effectively.

The governor’s feigned “shock” is almost as outrageous as his claim that the Paraisópolis massacre was an “isolated” flaw unrelated to “routine” behavior by police. Brazilian police are among the most lethal in the world with official statistics breaking records year after year. In São Paulo, the number of those killed by police in 2019 so far is 12% higher than last year and, in Rio, official numbers show the highest number ever recorded, with 1546 people killed by police in the first 10 months of the year alone.

The majority of those killed by police are young, black residents of the country’s favelas and urban peripheries, where often the most significant presence of the state comes in the form of heavily armed police officers and military tanks, instead of schools or hospitals. When these killings happen, predominant narratives reinforce the country’s legacy of racism, and victims are often presumed guilty by default.

But video is helping change that, capturing evidence from the point of view of the community and not allowing these stories to be further misrepresented or denied. WITNESS remains committed to standing alongside the courageous activists and favela media groups that are rising up to confront and end state-sponsored violence in their communities. In the current climate of elected politicians like Bolsonaro and Witzel, we also reaffirm our commitment to fighting for the Right to Record.   

Follow WITNESS Brasil on Facebook and Twitter for more on how video is helping communities expose and confront the legacy of police violence in favelas.

A group of human rights activists and organisations from Southeast Asia are calling to stop the attacks on democracy and media activists, as well as other individuals-at-risk, for their expression online. In the increasingly authoritarian region, we stand witness to bloggers, protestors, human rights defenders, journalists and everyday internet users being harassed, threatened, beaten, prosecuted and imprisoned for their legitimate use of online spaces.

The many brave individuals people fighting discrimination, hostility and violence include Nguyen Van Hoa (Vietnam), Le Dinh Luong (Vietnam) and Min Htin Ko Ko Gyi (Myanmar), who are currently in prison for expressing dissent and exercising their rights online. Their detention violates their guaranteed constitutional and international human rights. They are sentenced to lengthy prison terms and we fear for their physical and psychological integrity.

We stand in solidarity with Fahmi Reza (Malaysia) who was convicted; and Maria Ressa (Philippines), Margarita Valle (Philippines), Dandhy Laksono (Indonesia), Karn Pongpraphapan (Thailand) and Michael Do Nam Trung (Vietnam), who were recently released from detention, while Veronica Koman (Indonesia) and Lookate Chonthicha (Thailand) face threats of arrest and legal harassment for exercising their rights through digital tools. Authorities have often confiscated digital devices of activists, violating their privacy and hindering their work.

The harassment has also been extended to civil society organisations including Sisters in Islam (Malaysia) against whom a fatwa was issued banning all their publications including content on social media. AlterMidya (Philippines) on the other hand is facing a defamation suit demanding exorbitant amounts for exposing the role of corporates in cyber attacks. We view these as deliberate attacks on the right to freedom of expression and information.

The increasing number of arbitrary arrests, detentions and prosecutions of individuals exercising their right to freedom of expression online highlights the failure of governments to respect human rights and damages the region’s reputation on the international stage. Southeast Asian governments must stop repressing free expression online, as this ultimately discourages civic participation.

With this statement, we express our collective voice in support for all people to exercise their rights online and call on all Southeast Asian governments to immediately and unconditionally release all detained activists, drop charges and refrain from harassing digital rights activists, advocates and media-makers. The governments in the region must STOP the ATTACKS on our rights and democracy.

Endorsed by:

Organizations:

Association for Progressive Communications
Body & Data (Nepal)
Cambodia Center for Human Rights (Cambodia)
EMPOWER (Malaysia)
EngageMedia
Internet Policy Observatory (Pakistan)
KRYSS Network (Malaysia)
Open Culture Foundation (Taiwan)
Pelangi Campaign (Malaysia)
PERIN+1S (Indonesia)
PurpleCode Collective (Indonesia)
Radio Rakambia (East Timor)
SAFEnet (Indonesia)
Sindikasi (Indonesia)
Storycycle (Nepal)
Stop the Attacks (Philippines)
Thai Netizen Network (Thailand )
Viet Tan (Vietnam)
West Papua Updates
WITNESS

Individuals:

Pavitra Ramanujam
Gayatri Khandhadai
Nancy Yu
Laura Summers
Somphop Krittayaworagul
Jason Liu
Khon Danaeth
Buth Vanndy
Hein Min Oo
Satt (Tharthi Myay)
Ry Kruy
Dionisio
Nontarat Phaich
Lainie Yeoh
Shubha Kayastha
Farhanah Zevonia
Christiana X Belo
Christopher Burdett
Thina Lopez
Dr. Adam Fish
Sanjib Chaudhary
Azreen Madzlan
Aghniadi
Pitra
Harun
Rezwan
Ry Kruy
Buth Vanndy
San Chey
Irine Wardhanie

For more on WITNESS’ programmatic work in Asia, follow WITNESS Asia on Facebook and Twitter.

The gathering drew over 30 delegates from 16 countries, African indigenous communities and the Video4Change network. Video practitioners learned and shared proven methodologies of Video4Change. An expansion of the Pan African Living Cultures Alliance (PALCA) was also resolved.

Our Africa Program Manager, Adebayo Okeowo, led the WITNESS team in a session on Video as Evidence and stressed the importance of a collection plan as a best practice when seeking to document evidence of violations against communities.

Click here to see highlights of the four-day event in pictures in addition to a livestream that we hosted on Twitter.

Since we began working with the All Eyes on the Amazon (AEA) project, we have lost three from our community. This rivals the pace at which we lost friends from our work on Syria and illustrates the threat level that environmental human rights defenders face.

All of the defenders harassed and killed have stories similar to Paulo Paulino Guajajara: they are ordinary people who have been living on their land for generations, and when they stand up to protect their homes, they come up against companies’ private security, state forces, contract killers, or teams of aggressive lawyers. It is the same everywhere WITNESS works to support land defenders.

Environmental health is the umbrella human rights issue. If we fail to protect our land, air, water and atmosphere, not only will we prevent solutions to human rights abuses, we will exacerbate them. And the rainforest is at the heart of this. Deeply respected conservation biologists believe that once 25% of the Brazilian rainforest has been destroyed, the rainforest will disappear.

It’s already 20% deforested, and logging is spiking under Bolsonaro. Paulino is not only protecting the Brazilian forest, he is protecting New York City from deadly hurricanes like Sandy (coming in at over $70 billion in damages), California from destructive wildfires, and coastal regions from massive floods.

The loss of Paulino is not only a tremendous loss for the Brazilian and AEA communities, it is a loss for the global community because when defenders like Paulino stand up, they stand up for each and every one of us.

Add your name to this petition to tell Bolsonaro’s government to save the Amazon Rainforest and protect the lands of indigenous and traditional communities.