ABSTRACT

Across the Global South, authoritarian rule and extractivist agendas have intensified the harassment and murder of activists protecting remnant forest frontiers. In 2017, Global Witness documented the brutal murders of 207 defenders, the deadliest year on record. In the Philippines, violence against defenders has recently accelerated under the increasingly authoritarian regime of President Rodrigo Duterte. Excluding drug-related extrajudicial killings, an additional 30 murders were documented in the country in 2018, the highest number of such killings in any country that year. Largely because of expanding plantations and mines, the frontier province of Palawan has experienced a surge in land grabbing and illegal logging, driving defender harassment, intimidation, and death. While scholars have explored the trends and patterns behind violence against defenders in Southeast Asia, few have considered how the rural poor emerge as activists, the role of NGOs in this process, and how defenders negotiate their activism with everyday life and livelihood. This study fills this gap by ethnographically examining how NGOs on Palawan island mobilize rural communities to shape defender practices and by exploring why defenders do what they do amid mounting threats against them, their loved ones, and their comrades across the island.

摘要

在全球南方，威权统治和榨取主义议程加剧了对保护残余森林边界的活动家的骚扰和谋杀。2017 年，全球见证记录了 207 名捍卫者遭到残酷谋杀，这是有记录以来最致命的一年。在菲律宾，在总统罗德里戈·杜特尔特 (Rodrigo Duterte) 日益专制的政权下，针对维权者的暴力行为最近加速了。不包括与毒品有关的法外处决，2018 年该国又记录了 30 起谋杀案，是当年任何国家此类谋杀案数量最多的一年。主要是由于种植园和矿山的扩大，巴拉望省的土地掠夺和非法采伐激增，导致捍卫者受到骚扰、恐吓和死亡。虽然学者们已经探索了东南亚针对维权者的暴力行为背后的趋势和模式，但很少有人考虑过农村穷人如何成为活动家、非政府组织在这一过程中的作用以及维权者如何与日常生活和生计进行谈判。本研究通过人种学研究巴拉望岛上的非政府组织如何动员农村社区来塑造维权者的做法，并探讨维权者为什么会在全岛对他们、他们的亲人和他们的同志的威胁越来越大的情况下做他们所做的事情，从而填补了这一空白。