Five Asian environmental activists killed for defending land and natural resources against exploitation

In the week NGO Global Witness reported the killing of 207 environmental defenders worldwide in 2017, we look at five of the most shocking recent cases in East Asia

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A giant SOS is carved into an oil palm plantation in Sumatra by Lithuanian artist Ernest Zacharevic to draw attention to the damage caused by deforestation to the wildlife and indigenous people of Indonesia. Photo: Reuters

Published: 3:31pm, 26 Jul 2018Updated: 3:38pm, 26 Jul 2018

On Tuesday, NGO Global Witness released a report documenting the killing of 207 environmental and land rights activists worldwide in 2017. While South America was the most dangerous continent, with 57 killings recorded in Brazil alone last year, Asia was not far behind. In the Philippines there were 48 deaths.

Such deaths are not new. We look back at five of the most egregious cases in Asia in recent years.

Chut Wutty founded and managed the National Resource Protection Group in Cambodia. Photo: EPA

Chut Wutty, aged 40, Cambodia, 2012

Chut Wutty founded and managed the National Resource Protection Group (NRPG), an association that investigated illegal logging in Cambodia. In 2003 Chut Wutty was named deputy director of Global Witness, an international cooperative investigating and reporting on illegal smuggling of natural resources worldwide; in Cambodia, it looked into the role senior government officials played in the smuggling of timber.

Chut Wutty was shot dead in 2012, when accompanying a group of journalists from The Cambodia Daily, a national English newspaper which conducted extensive investigations of the illegal timber trade in the country’s Koh Kong province. An official report said Chut Wutty had been killed by a military police officer who was himself killed by a ricocheting bullet. Doubts about the circumstances of his death remain.