Silas Siakor, the Liberian campaigner who exposed Charles Taylor’s regime’s toxic dependence on the timber trade, continues to campaign against illegal logging. At great personal risk, Silas, along with other activists, collected evidence of falsified logging records, illegal logging practices, and associated human rights abuses, and reported them to the world.
A 2006 recipient of the Goldman Environmental Prize, Silas Siakor has dedicated his life to fighting for the disempowered in Liberia, a country where corruption and land grabs have led to a massive gap between the haves and have-nots.
Liberia is known for its lush rolling forests covering around 45% of the country. But between 1990 and 2010, Liberia lost over 12% of its forest cover. This has left the country even more vulnerable to climate change and extreme weather events, while at the same time homes and livelihoods are being destroyed by extensive logging and palm oil production. Although there are laws meant to curtail these practices, Liberia’s forests continue to be ‘hijacked’ by big business.
Silas Siakor has dedicated his life to trying to protect this environment. He, along with other activists, have taken great personal risks to collect evidence of falsified logging records, illegal logging practices, and evidence of associated human rights abuses.
The episode features Silas Siakor, human rights lawyer Jonathan Kaufman, and Alfred Brownell, a Liberian environmental activist and lawyer and the founder of Green Advocates International.
Defenders of the Earth captures the gripping and inspiring stories of activists around the world who are taking on powerful interests to protect our planet. Our presenter is Vanessa Nakate, climate justice activist from Uganda. Our episodes profile activists in Russia, Liberia, Honduras, and the Philippines.
As climate activist and journalist Bill McKibben wrote in Last Line of Defence, a report from Global Witness released in September 2021, land and environmental defenders ”are at risk, in the end, not just because of another local person who pulls the trigger or plunges the blade; they’re at risk because they find themselves living on or near something that some corporation is demanding.”
In 2020, 227 activists were murdered for taking a stand to defend human rights, their land, and our environment. Over a third of the attacks were reportedly linked to resource exploitation — logging, mining, and large-scale agribusiness — and hydroelectric dams and other infrastructure. And that number is likely to be higher due to poor reporting.
Defenders of the Earth is produced by Global Witness and Whistledown Productions. Find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you listen to podcasts.
Silas: At the time it was very common for activists to be picked up from their homes, locked away in unknown prison cells, and in some instances they were never to be seen.
Vanessa: Silas Siakor has dedicated his life to fighting for the disempowered in Liberia, a country where corruption and land grabs [00:00:30] have led to a massive gap between the haves and have-nots. In recent years, the government has awarded hundreds of logging, agriculture, oil and mining contracts on land owned under customary law by rural Librarians. And those who have stood up against this have faced intimidation, causing many to go into hiding or even flee the country.
[00:01:00] This is, Defenders of the Earth, a podcast by Global Witness. I am Vanessa Nakate. And in this episode, we champion the work of those who are standing up for Liberia's environment. Liberia, the first African Republic to proclaim its independence has had a turbulent history and has been permanently [00:01:30] scarred by brutal dictatorship and civil wars.
Today, it's the nation's landscape that, rolling forests covering around 45% of the country. But between 1990 and 2010, Liberia lost over 12% of its forest cover. This has left the [00:02:00] country even more vulnerable to climate change and extreme weather events. While at the same time homes and livelihoods are being destroyed by extensive logging and palm oil production. And although there are laws meant to curtail these practices, these forests continue to be hijacked by big business. Silas Siakor has dedicated his life to trying to protect this environment.
Silas: [00:02:30] I grew up in a countryside and we have very limited access to basic social services, education, healthcare roles, electricity, running water. And as a result, people like me grew up hating the system that actually gave rise to such level of deprivation. For example, during my time as a young person, it was very common to go to bed very hungry, that you didn't have [00:03:00] enough food on the table.
So when you grow up in that situation, it's a natural instinct to ask questions about why things are the way they are, especially when they see others are relatively well off. It is natural for you to develop a resentment against those who benefit from that system, who have a better living standard than you and your family will have.
So there was that obvious divide between the haves and the have-nots. [00:03:30] And the haves happened to be the politicians, the families of politicians, and business at least, and the have-not were basically the rest of the population. So that was the context in which I grew up in and I think it became a natural calling for me to start to ask questions at a very early stage and to begin to question why the situation was the way it was.
Jonathan: More and more across west Africa, we're seeing that there are a series of investments [00:04:00] or developments that are very land and natural resource hungry.
Vanessa: Jonathan Kaufman is a human rights lawyer and is the executive director of Advocates for Community Alternatives, a non-profit organization that helps threatened west African communities fight back against businesses moving in to exploit the area's natural resources. He's seen firsthand what's happening.
Jonathan: So much of this region [00:04:30] has over time faced civil war and has been inaccessible in different ways. But now we're getting to a point in history where the companies and powerful governments are ready to go to places where they weren't before to get the bauxite, to get the gold, to get the Rosewood, to grow the rubber or the palm oil. We're seeing destruction of forests. We're seeing pollution of waterways and other sensitive ecological resources.
[00:05:00] In Liberia as elsewhere, land that's useful and productive is used, it is needed. Even if it's not in production right now, it may be a clan's reserve land that they are planning to use for expansion when their population expands or to rotate onto when they need to give the current land a rest. So land that looks like bush to outsiders is very often, very clearly planned for.
So we're seeing, for example, rubber plantations and palm oil plantations expand [00:05:30] into land that communities either occupy, use or are planning to use and need for future generations. In Liberia, maybe more so than in a lot of other countries in west Africa, we're seeing these big Ag plantations, of particularly rubber and oil palm, as something that has the potential to displace huge numbers of people and really affect their livelihoods.
Mining is also very much a reality in Liberia. There's mining for iron ore. There's gold [00:06:00] to a lesser extent. There's diamonds. And mining projects often come with what you would expect. A lot of issues involving pollution, also loss of land, distortion of local economies so that people who no longer have the land that they would've produced their own food on, also can't buy it anymore because of inflation and the changes in the way that economic patterns are happening.
And when communities organize to either oppose those impacts or stand up for themselves, [00:06:30] we're seeing situations where the companies team up with state actors to intimidate, repress, arrest, or sometimes commit physical violence against community defenders.
Vanessa: In recent history, Liberia has been through two civil wars. The first between 1989 and 1997 and the second between 1999 and 2003. In total, it [00:07:00] is estimated that 250,000 people died in the conflicts. And Silas Siakor says the wars themselves were linked to illegal deforestation and the stealing of land by big corporations.
Silas: The link between our forests, or natural resources in general, and the conflict that engulf for the better part of 15 years, occurs at two [00:07:30] levels. So the natural resources to begin with, are managed basically by the politicians who are in leadership, and the way our legal framework was structured back then in the 80s and before that, was that the state literally managed the natural resources on behalf of the population.
And because the system was set up in such a way that it excluded the vast majority of the population, the population [00:08:00] did not benefit from the resources. That was actually a part of the trigger that led to the conflict in 1919. And then the second level takes place during the war itself, during the conflict, when different warring factions turn to natural resources to exploit and trade in those resources to be able to fund their militias, their war efforts. So it actually was a good to the conflict itself and also became a driver [00:08:30] for the conflict going forward.
Vanessa: At great personal risk, Silas, along with other activists, collected evidence of falsified logging records, illegal logging practices and associated human rights abuses.
Silas: When I started first investigating and writing stories about these issues, about the timber exploitation, the deprivation of the communities, I started that off as basic, very [00:09:00] short articles. Put them out in the newsletter. And so we decided, a small group of young people, to set up an organization to use this as a channel to get that information out.
So we started off first as a Save My Future Foundation, back in 1998, and then fast forward to 2000, we had done very extensive research and needed to find a way to publish [00:09:30] that in 2001. But after a year, and of course that was a very strategic decision to make, because immediately that report got released, we got very strong pushback from the state.
The Liberian Senate made a point of convening a special, extraordinary session to investigate those behind the report and to try to find a way to intimidate all of us that were involved with the publication. [00:10:00] So that turned out to be very strategic because we were able to use that platform to talk about it without necessarily bringing the Save My Future Foundation into the fray.
Vanessa: Silas knew that publishing the report was risky, but he still took the decision to put himself in the firing line.
Silas: As a compromise I opted that as a lead researcher and the head for the organization, I would [00:10:30] take personal responsibility by signing off on the report. So basically putting my name to it so that if there were any fall-out from it, I would be a buffer between the organization, my colleagues, and the state.
So when we published a report and distributed copies in the legislature, as we had anticipated, their immediate reaction was to try to haul me in for a hearing, under [00:11:00] the guise of conducting a hearing, but basically to find excuses to lock me up because that was their modus operandi, what we seen with other activists.
So you get called in, you get questioned, you accused of contempt of the legislature or some trumped up charges and you end up in prison. And from one thing to another, you are either not heard from again, or you spend a very long time in prison.
Vanessa: [00:11:30] As a result, Silas feared for his life and fled the country. But after the end of the civil war and Charles Taylor's rule, he came home. And for his work in exposing his state sponsored illegal activity, he was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2006. In his acceptance speech, he made a point of thanking all those who had campaigned [00:12:00] at his side.
Silas: As I moved towards the podium it dawned on me that a moment of reckoning had arrived for me. The challenges that go with stepping forward, coming out of the shadows to accept this prize, had appeared insurmountable for so long. But now I realized that the many allies who worked with me over the years at the international level, and [00:12:30] more importantly at the community level, people who took far greater risk than I, are at this moment stepping out into the spotlight to accept the challenge to carry out this struggle.
Vanessa: Since President Taylor was ousted in 2003, Siakor has been working with Liberia's new leadership to create sustainable timber policies and give the local forest communities a voice through [00:13:00] the First Forest People's Congress. But the situation today is still perilous and many voices are going unheard. Jonathan Kaufman.
Jonathan: Many parts of Liberia are quite remote, difficult to reach by car for outsiders. And so it's difficult often for communities to form alliances with outside groups. And so what we're seeing is a lot of very homegrown activism.
For example, in an area where I [00:13:30] work and where ECA works, that's affected by the Salala Rubber plantation, we've seen communities band together and form their own, what they call, a National Human Rights Congress. But it's actually a very local group of people who just see the problems in their communities.
They're dedicated to documenting them, raising attention in the national capital. And our key partner in Liberia, Green Advocates International, which started as essentially a public [00:14:00] interest environmental law shop and evolved into an important umbrella group for raising the voices of communities that are trying to protect their land and natural environment.
Alfred: I knew what I was getting into. I mean, let's face it, I'm not afraid, right? I know myself. I'm not afraid at all.
Vanessa: Alfred Brownell is a Liberian environmental activist and lawyer, and the founder of Green Advocates International.
Alfred: There were [00:14:30] protests and contestations and conflict because communities were complaining that their land and resources and the forest were being taken away and granted, and they were not being consulted. And so complaints were coming to us. And so we had to respond to the threat. So quickly we mobilized the communities. We brought them to the city to complain what was going on, to get the government to stop [00:15:00] it. And no one was responding.
And so we took action to stop it. We file legal actions to stop the clearing of the forest. And then everything changed because the pressure started off now. The government knew that the company wouldn't have proceeded to clear cut. The company was worried that they wouldn't achieve the results.
Then, attempt to arrest communities, intimidate them, harass them. Even us, myself, was being threatened [00:15:30] as well. But then we stood our ground, right? So as we're doing that we slow down Sime Darby. And they're accompanied, the second largest in the world, Golden Agri, subsidiary, Golden Veroleum, got another contract from the government to start in the south-eastern part of Liberia.
And when the communities in the south-eastern part of Liberia found out that we had slowed down Sime Darby in the north-western part, they asked us to intervene again. [00:16:00] You can't even describe the destructions because the south-eastern part of Liberia is in the heart of Liberia's pristine tropical forest. That is the area where in fact, in Sinoe, we have the nation's premier national park, called the Sapo National Park.
When I arrive in Buto that day, and the folks took me around and show me, I mean, you could see, I mean, the timber, I mean, [00:16:30] just in terms of the economic waste, just the amount of timber that this company have cut down and they would dig the hole and try to bury it. It were just unbelievable.
And then the threats, there were threats against the communities, against the dealers, trying to force them to give up the land. They didn't want to. So I give them my representation. We filed a complaint. Now we have two complaints now. One against Sime Darby, one against Golden Veroleum. You're [00:17:00] talking about beatings of the law of investment of almost trying to attract in oil palm.
And so when they couldn't succeed now, they started deploying the police. So people get arrested in Sinoe, and they were put in prison. And I, myself, was being threatened. And so the threat got beyond what we expected. I almost lost my life. Did a fake funny. I think it was in June 2014. My vehicle got surrounded by [00:17:30] militias of the company and security guards and employees. They had machetes, they had guns, and they tried to kill me and they tried to kill my staff members, with surrounded by these men.
And it was almost four hours sitting down, trying to puncture my tire, break into the window glasses and everything. It was terrible. And after that, it was one threat after the other threat. It was difficult for us to even represent them because [00:18:00] I was being threatened. They tried to indict me for inciting the communities and everything. I was being follow, surveillance. My phone, my emails, my colleagues were all being track, back and forth.
Vanessa: This all led to Alfred and his family fleeing the country in 2016, first to Ghana and eventually to the United States where he lives now today, still in temporary [00:18:30] exile. He continues to work to help Liberians and other west African communities victimized by resource exploitation. Like Silas Siakor, he has been internationally recognized for his work, being awarded a Goldman prize in 2019.
Alfred: Woo. Woo. [00:19:00] Yes, I survived to tell this story. But many defenders around the world who are part of our community, murder at the rate of four per week, have not been so lucky. This victory was possible only because we build an army of local and international NGOs.
Jonathan: [00:19:30] What happened to Alfred was extraordinary because it takes a lot for a government to go after someone who is nationally prominent and attention is paid. But it is relatively easy for repressive forces to go after local community defenders who don't have have a broad network and who it's not easy for information to get out. And the waters are always muddied by community factionalism or [00:20:00] by charges against them that they've somehow broken a law against unauthorized protest or something like that.
So Alfred's work to bring to light what is happening at the community level and put tools in the hands of community defenders so that they can organize, network, communicate and find alliances is I think absolutely the number one priority for anyone who's serious about community protection in west Africa.
Vanessa: Climate change [00:20:30] is only exacerbating the problems those in Liberia are facing. And Alfred believes if the illegal logging and palm oil production continue, then the situation will get even worse. And the divisions, wider.
Alfred: We're facing the climate crisis. Who is at the frontline? Who is at the frontline? It's [00:21:00] the fellows. Every single day they facing reprisals and attack. And what are the rest of the world doing? Nothing to protect them. So it's time for the world to speak up.
Vanessa: But for those still standing up against those trying to take their land from them, the fight is far from over. And the intimidation and threats remain real, as Silas [00:21:30] Siakor is only too aware.
Silas: The way I would describe it would be much more sensitive and careful about how you carry yourself. So you are a bit more aware of your surroundings. When you move around you try to be a more aware about happenings around yourself. You don't allow yourself to become totally oblivious of what's happening around you.
Vanessa: It's a war that Alfred Brownell is determined [00:22:00] to keep fighting.
Alfred: I'm a soldier of the Ives. I don't know how I'm going to stop fighting. I can't stop fighting.
Vanessa: This has been Defenders of the Earth. It is a Whistledown and Global Witness Production.