Quarantining activism: COVID-19, frontline defenders and intensifying extractivism in the Philippines

Wolfram Dressler

doi:10.2458/jpe.2955

Abstract

How does the intersection of authoritarian populism and a global pandemic reinforce the suppression of human rights, dismantle environmental protections, and accelerate resource extraction? In parts of Southeast Asia, the rise of authoritarian regimes has created conditions of impunity in which state and non-state actors have exploited restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic to restrain activism, contain indigenous livelihoods, and intensify resource exploitation. This article explores how political control and violence against activists (‘defenders') under authoritarian Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte have intersected with and been reinforced throughCOVID-19 health measures to curtail grass-roots efforts to protect social and environmental safeguards. Since March 2020, violence against defenders has gone viral as activism in the country has been quarantined. Under Duterte's authoritarian populist rhetoric, state actors, parastatal and shadowy assassins have allegedly used public health measures to suppress activism further,enabling the harassment, arrests, and deaths of defenders and the intensification of resource extraction. Based on a critical review of news media and conservation policy, I describe the history and current context of defenders being 'quarantined' by authorities using lockdown measures to coercively suppress social and environmental activism across the country. I examine cases from Palawan Island to show how political authorities and elites have used COVID-19 to suppress defender mobility and enforcement practices and how lulls in defending and discourses of 'pandemic recovery' have facilitated mining and deforestation. The conclusion asserts that paying attention to how political conjunctures produce violent governance and local resistance reveals civil society's crucial role and vulnerabilities in protecting human rights and the environment in the Philippines and Southeast Asia.

Highlights

How do authoritarian populism and a global pandemic intersect to reinforce the suppression of human rights, dismantle environmental protections, and intensify resource extraction? In parts of Southeast Asia, resurgent authoritarian regimes have created conditions of impunity in which state and non-state actors have intensified campaigns of intimidation, harassment, and murder of activists ('defenders') who uphold human rights and environmental protections (Beban et al, 2020; Middeldorp & Billon, 2019; Neimark et al, 2019)
Elected in 2016, President Duterte built upon exploitative resource policies and growth agendas of predecessors to exercise repressive political control with revanchist rhetoric and practices directed against actors in civil Journal of Political Ecology
With new mineral agreements on the table, the Palawan Council for Sustainable Development (PCSD) announced plans to review the criteria by which the Environmental Critical Areas Network (ECAN)'s core and restricted zones are designated, noting that "the probable amendments of the implementing guidelines of ECAN are projected to somehow reduce the restraints on many industries from operating in Palawan."20 Palawan NGO Network Incorporated (PNNI)'s Chan and other defenders quickly pointed out that the PCSD's aim was in effect to modify the designation of 'no-touch' core zones into controlled or multiple-use zones that would allow for timber clearing and the expansion of mining activities

Summary

Introduction

How do authoritarian populism and a global pandemic intersect to reinforce the suppression of human rights, dismantle environmental protections, and intensify resource extraction? In parts of Southeast Asia, resurgent authoritarian regimes have created conditions of impunity in which state and non-state actors have intensified campaigns of intimidation, harassment, and murder of activists ('defenders') who uphold human rights and environmental protections (Beban et al, 2020; Middeldorp & Billon, 2019; Neimark et al, 2019). While human rights and environmental activists have faced ongoing harassment and death by murder under previous state administrations, President Duterte's brutish populism has reinforced earlier political economies of violence to embolden the military, police and assassins to further unleash violence across the countryside. Many of these actors have intensified the decades-old practice of red-tagging Filipino defenders as leftist 'anti-capitalists' and presumed sympathizers of the New People's Army (NPA), the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). I discuss plight on the plight of defenders in the medium-term under COVID-19 and what this means for the future of activism in the Philippines

Methods

Political economies of violence

Discussion and Conclusion