We've spent more than a year on Drill's Real Free Speech Threat Season looking at all the ways environmental protests is being criminalized around the world. We've looked at who's driving that trend, too, from corporate operatives to right wing think tanks. There's another network that's been particularly influential where it comes to repressing environmental fights around the globe, the
US military and its national security agencies. For a coverage of the Copcity protests, I examined how the post nine to eleven War on Terror incentivized a crackdown on environmental activists who have been labeled eco terrorists and environmental violent extremists. This is not just true in the US. America's approach to terrorism, and the way it's been used to crack down on peaceful protests has spread across the globe. There's one place that really stands out as a clear example,
the Philippines. The country sits toward the top of lists of dangerous countries for land defenders. People are killed there every year for trying to protect the environment. That's because the Filipino government routinely labels political opponents as communist terrorists, which can lead to assassinations, disappearances, and abductions. Indigenous organizers and environmental activists are often the targets. As I started
looking into it, a detail caught my eye. In the wake of nine to eleven, the UN Security Council essentially required that countries pass counter terror laws, and the Philippines did just that. At the same time, the US offered the Philippines military aid to crack down on terror. I began to realize that a version of what I documented
in the US had also happened in the Philippines. Those policies I had been investigating from thousands of miles away were actually rooted right here at home in the US. To understand what was really going on, I decided to get to know one of these so called terrorists that's coming after the break. I'm Alan Brown, and this is Drilled.
I am a Windo la boulnot the chairperson of the Cordelliera People's Alliance. I am an indigenous Igoru, the collective word referring to the indigenous peoples here in the Cordillera, part of Northern Philippines.
The Cordeliera People's Alliance is one of the most important indigenous and environmental organizations in the Philippines. They're based in a part of the archipelago that is defined by lush, green mountains that have long been a target for extractive industries. It's also a region where indigenous people have long struggled for their rights. That makes his homeland a military hotspot too. In twenty twenty three, Windel was labeled a terrorists under
a new terrorism law. But his story began much earlier.
Even during my younger days in my home Bayle Age, I was witnessed to the ongoing civil war and the armed conflict.
At times, the military would take over his school's classrooms.
We were just kids that time, and we don't know the serious implications of this, but what we saw the times that the classrooms that we are supposed to use are occupied by the Philippine military. So sometimes we heard that near the rights films or just outside the community, there are firefights and we really hear the shooting and the guns.
It was a stark contrast to what Wendell was learning outside the classroom.
I grew up in an indigenous village.
It was a difficult life, a difficult life, but meaningful. I attended the activities that boys in our villages do help with my parents in our economic and home activities, join my parents in plowing the fields, planting and harvesting rice vegetables.
Gathering firewood from the forest.
During Saturdays and Sundays, when there's no classes, I attend.
To the what do you call this? You know, we have this author or.
Which is the political and socio cultural center of the village, and this is led and governed by the Council of elders. And as indigenous boys, we are there to listen to stories with the elders, slip there and there we learn the affairs of the communities. I really realized from those childhood the teachings that land is life for indigenous peoples. In our ancestral land, in our ancestral domain, that's where we stay, that's where we're born, that's where we live
and die. And this has been defended and nurtured by our ancestors. Those teachings are very valuable and meaningful, and it has to be passed on also for future generations.
Window's earliest involvement in protest was less about protecting the environment and more about fighting the militarization of his community. So he would soon find that the two went hand in hand.
Inside and to us.
One kid was killed when a soldiers fired and killed due civilian a child. When there was a protest, Lali organized I joined.
Many people outside the Philippines are unaware that the country has been embroiled in a civil conflict for more than fifty years. It began during the Cold War under the brutal dictatorship of Ferdinand Marco's senior. To understand what happened, it's useful to look at how the Philippines came to
have a special relationship with the USA. Jason Lambcheck, a Filipino research fellow at Deacon University in Melbourne who has researched human rights and counter terrorism in the Philippines, walked me through it.
After becoming free from Spain and the Americans game through the Philippines and colonized the Philippines until World War Two, and after that we became him officially an independent country, but we maintained so called special relationship with the United States. For example, we hosted American basis in the Philippines for a long time. We were like Cold War allies in that region. All of our governments were like rabbid anti communist governments supporting the United States in the region.
The most infamous of these rabbid anti communist governments was led by Marcos.
As you know, you may know, we had like a twenty plus year period in which we only had one president who sort of was the law of the land. He was a dictator, so there was not much room for resisting the regime through open, you know, political contestations such as true elections, and so a lot of people, you know, I thought it was illogical to resist the Marcus regime true armed resistance, and that's why you have
the NBA and the CPP. The CPP stands for Communist Party of the Philippines, and it has an armed wing called the New People's Army, and they arose in the nineteen sixties in resistance to the Marcus dictatorship.
Years of martial law and human rights violations didn't stop the US government from providing hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to the Marcos government. The dictator was seen as a strategic ally and fighting communism in the region. It was during these same years that the Filipino environmental movement was born. So right from the beginning the easiest way to undermine it was to paint it communist red.
One of the biggest environmental battles in the Philippines during those years was the fight the Cordeliera people put up again the Chico River dam project.
The Cordelliera peoples were threatened with the building of big hydropower dams under the dictator Marcos, whose son now the junior is now the president. Unfortunately, that was to be funded by the World Bank. If the project was not a successfully stopped, then it would have displaced around the one hundred thousand people along the Chico River.
The indigenous people of the Cordelier region organized the obstructed construction, participated in acts of sabotage, and were at times joined by armed members of the New People's Army. The dam project was never completed, however. One of the leaders of the resistance to the dams, machli In Dulag, was shot and killed in his home in nineteen eighty and remains a symbol of the indigenous and environmental movement in the Philippines.
Historic and brave resistance of these communities in the face of Martialllow was really inspiring. I learned that it's really their right to defend and it was a just cause to resist.
The Chico River Dam wouldn't be the last project the Cordeliera people would fight on their land.
The Cordillera is targeted again of several big mining projects by local and foreign corporations, big hydro power dump projectstermal geothermal power projects with milk or with farm projects again to provide energy, when in fact the ordeal is already host to several big dumb projects. So we are not taking this sitting down. It is our collective obligation to
defend and nurtured the environment for the future nations. It is in indigenous communities where you can find biodiversity, the remaining rich forests and the environment, because we have always believed that land is life and the land should not be endangered for the sake of profit, because that's not how indigenous peoples look at land in resources.
When he left college in nineteen ninety six, Windows started working for the Cordelier People's Alliance, which grew out of the fight against the Chico River Dam.
We do barricades to prevent the equipments of these companies to come inside. We bardicade to prevent them from operations. We organize mass mobilizations and protest actions. We engage international governmental bodies as the United Nations. But most important is community organizing, and not just the organizing of affected communities, but also so the different sectors of youth, women, farmers, and even the elders.
Unlike some of the Chico River Dam activists, the land defenders with the Cordelier People's Alliance are not armed, but those opposing their work are. Wendell couldn't have known when he began this work what he would face in the years ahead. The Filipino government branded Windel an armed communist. They charged him with murder, They put him on a hit list. Most recently, they officially labeled him a terrorist.
Several of my colleagues in CPA have been killed by state forces, abducted, and several of them are not yet surfaced until now illegally detained because of what we do.
About two hundred and ten landed environmental defenders were killed in the Philippines between twenty fourteen and twenty twenty four alone. There's evidence of state involvement in one hundred and nine of those cases. According to a recent investigation by in These Times magazine. Wendell joined the CPA at a turning point for Filipino environmental defenders. A few years after he was hired, Global events would provide the Filipino government with a cover to pursue him as a terrorist.
Every nation in every region now has a decision to make either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.
A little over a week after nine to eleven, US President George Bush gave a speech to Congress launching what would become known as the Global War on Terror.
From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States is a hostile regime. Our nation has been put on notice. We're not immune from attack. We will take defensive measures against terrorism to protect Americans today, dozens of federal departments and agencies, as well as state and local governments, have
responsibilities affecting home land security. These efforts must be coordinated at the highest level, So tonight I announced the creation of a cabinet level position reporting directly to me the Office of Homeland Security, and tonight I also announced that distinguished American to lead this effort.
It's difficult to overstate the role of the US led a global war on terror in the global criminalization of land defenders. In the US, corporations had spent the nineteen nineties trying to get police to pursue eco saboteurs as terrorists. After nine to eleven, their wishes were granted. Across the US. Facilities called fusion centers popped up in state after state,
Operating under the newly created Department of Homeland Security. They brought together national security officials and local and federal law enforcement to surveil environmental activists. The agency developed a whole language for classifying activists that damaged property as domestic terrorists
or environmental violent extremists. At the same time, new law enforcement resources and incentives encouraged policing of those activities, and new penalties like the Terrorism Sentencing Enhancement meant they faced even more severe punishments then. Soldiers trained in counterinsurgency during the US anti terror wars in Afghanistan and Iraq brought wartime tactics into private security companies hired by corporations to
protect everything from factory farms to pipelines. Nearly twenty five year years after nine to eleven, the US government's aggressive push for a crackdown on terrorism continues to play an indelible role in US struggles for land and water. In the rest of the world. A similar pattern played out, driven by US foreign policy as.
The ash was smoldering, as the Twin Towers had fallen. Security Council meets and in that first month they create a new resolution UN Security Council Resolution thirteen seventy three.
We have adopted a very ambitious, comprehensive strategy to find theorism in all its form throughout the world.
The meeting is a job, but there's no agreed definition of terrorism. So each state essentially has got to define what terrorism is on its own terms. And the absence of a common definition has meant that there's been this real ripeness for abuse.
That was Finula Nieline, the recently departed UN Special Rapperture on Counter Terrorism and Human Rights, speaking in a short UN documentary.
States get to define whomever they like as a terrorist with almost no consequence at the domestic level. And so what we're seeing around the globe is the imprisonment of civil society. Actor we're seeing direct targeting. In some cases, they're killing by the permissive framework of counter terrorism.
The documentary was made to go with a damning report that was released in twenty twenty three on the impact for human rights defenders of over twenty years of counter terror efforts. The report underlined that in every region of the world, defenders are targeted with legislation and other measures purportedly designed to counter terrorism. The United States drafted that
United Nations resolution that she mentioned. The US also pushed another international body, called the Financial Action Task Force, to create new standards meant to prevent terrorism funding. The Task Force explicitly called on governments to ensure that nonprofit organizations cannot be misused to finance terrorism. It encouraged countries to pass laws freezing accounts linked to terrorism. A complex architecture of international anti terrorism institutions and policies was being constructed,
and it continues to justify repressive measures today. Here's Jason from Deacon University again.
The legacy of the warrant there in the Philippines, you know, is really profound. When the war error started at the Philippine government was one of the first to sign up to the so called Coalition of the Willing President Arroya. Then I saw that as an opportunity to reignite military relations with the United States. The Communists were in peacetocks with the Philippine government, but that broke down because eventually the nits the States tagged the cpp NPA as therorists.
The Philippine government recast not the way it saw these centers first armed the centers armed groups who were you know, locked in arms struggled with the Philippine government as terrorists. So at first it was just the Abusa group which was which was sort of like this kidnapper ransom group, which was also engaged in bombings, and then eventually the leftist the communists, so the National Democratic Front, the new People's arm in the Communist Party if the Philippines were
branded as therorists. And then besides these groups who are engaged in armed conflict with the government, people who were engaged in peacepool dissent, such as the above ground leftist organizations who were ideologically aligned in the Communist Party but not organizationally aligned, were also considered part of this so called communist terrorist movement, just.
As it had in the US, in the Philippines, this new approach to terrorism meant a massive expansion of who was considered a terrorist.
Above ground activists have always been sort of like fair game, but with the War on Terror, you also had an added dimension that this was all sort of like legitimate from an international point of view, because, as you know, the United States also engaged in a diplomatic slash legal campaign. The notion of countering terrorism became sort of like an international obligation on everyone.
Right in the midst of the Filipino government newly revamped counterinsurgency crackdown, Windle got his first serious taste of repression.
In two thousand and six, my name appeared in a military hit list. This military hit list was a list of some leaders of CPA and the Cordella People's Movement targeted for assassination, and some of my colleagues who were in that list were killed. For example, Marcus Bangitt, one of my colleagues in CIPA, was killed in June two thousand and six in front of his son when they were bound from Tabuk to Baggio and accompany his son supposedly to enroll in tali Age, but.
When the bus stopped for the passengers.
To rest and eat, a military assasin fired several shots against Marcus Bangit.
I was afraid.
The normal and expected reaction was we fear for our security, and not just us individually, but also our family and colleagues in the organization as a whole.
We knows of the killings and threats. Made him seriously consider stepping away from his activism.
Of course, to.
Be honest about it, because I have four children, I have a wife, I have siblings and parents, and my parents advised me, why don't you just stop before being killed like your colleagues, because the killings and abjuccess are really high opining. It's not just a public statement of
the state. The reign of peror is really there. Yeah, but I resolved to myself that this is precisely why they are doing this, to stop us from what we are doing, to silence us from the cause we are advancing, and we should not allow what they want.
It is.
A difficult process that I really have to process within myself, my family and convince my siblings and of course my parents.
Amid growing anxiety among environmental and human rights defenders, and with encouragement from the US government, the Philippines passed a new anti terrorism law, the Human Security Act of two thousand and seven. It would soon be followed by a terrorism financing law in twenty twelve. The legal foundations were being laid to formalize repression against government dissenters like Windel.
The role of the US in this so called counter terror legislations is clear.
So the US is also to.
Be blamed about the impacts of this so called terror laws in committing serious and widespread violations of human rights and international humanitarian law in the Philippines. And that is happening now, and that is even happening to me.
You'd think being put on a military hit list would be about as bad as government repression gets. But more than a decade later, under the authoritarian leadership of President Rodrigo Duterte, things not even worse for Filipino land defenders. In twenty eighteen, du Tert's Department of Justice filed a petition declaring over six hundred people terrorists under the Human
Security Act. The list included not only Wendel, but also the UN Special Rappertoire on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Victoria Taui Corpus, as well as several former Catholic priests and a former lawmaker. The court was unconvinced, and several names, including Windells, were dropped, But the Duterte administration didn't give up.
They started passing more severe laws and policies. First, there was Executive Order seventy in twenty eighteen, which introduced a so called whole of nation approach to crushing the perceived communist resistance movement in the country. The order established the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict, a body that now routinely labels Induvadi jewels and groups as communists. This is the practice I mentioned before. It's called red tagging,
and the country's environmental movement is often the target. Then the pandemic hit. The new crisis provided to Terairt's government an opportunity to hit land defenders harder than Windell had seen in his lifetime.
We mobilized distributing medicines, medical equipment against COVID, distributing rice supplies and groceries because during that time, the economic impact of pandemic was really hard, especially to the poor people and indigenous peoples.
At the same time, Wendell and his family began experiencing escalating attacks. In April twenty twenty, photos of his children in indigenous attire began circulating on Facebook.
Then made a layout like a collad then posted it stating that these are the children of an in pay of a terrorist like that, and that time my youngest was still a minor sixteen years. All that time, he received some bad messages in his messenger, of course, being tagged or branded a son of an m pay, son of a terrorist, and being.
Just a kid.
He does not know how to respond to that, or he does not know anything about that, but he knows that he's being bullied or being persecuted, and sometimes he will just cry, and it was really traumatic for him. This all happened at a time that our movements are restricted. The state forces are are the ones free rooming around, and they are more in control because they have weaponized the pandemic for state prosecution against activists like us.
Then, in December twenty twenty, someone who worked with the government leaked some disturbing news to Windle.
I was surprised and shocked to learn that I was charged with murder along with several people in a regional trial court in Tagum City in Dabou del Norti, which I have never been to in my entire life, so I have to go for a sanctuary away from my family. So during the Christmas break and the new year of twenty twenty one, I was away from my colleagues's family.
With Window and hiding. The chief of the Philippines National Police publicly issued a shoot kill order against Windle. They hung a wanted poster near Window's home featuring his photo and a bounty, so it.
Was really deleted to bareify me and even to terrorize my neighbors.
That I am a terrorist. I am a one ped you know that.
July, the charges were simply dismissed, but de Terte's onslaught continued. His administration pushed through yet another terrorism law, the Anti Terrorism Act, which would allow yet another panel of government officials, known as the Anti Terrorism Council, to designate people as terrorists. This time, Australia provided technical assistance in drafting the revamped anti terrorism law. They knew full well that it would be administered by a government that was internationally infamous for
its human rights violations. The international pressure to crack down on so called terrorism continued to In twenty twenty one, the Financial Action Task Force put the Philippines on its so called gray list and encourage the country to prosecute more terrorism financing cases. Here's Jason from taking university again.
So these legal developments in the Philippines attest to the fact that the pressure from outside from the US, the UN Security Council, and all the other countries have been supporting this conti terrorism agenda has been persistent, and so
I characterize this pressure as like ritualistic. The international actors who are pushing the conter terrorism agenda in the Philippines, they're so obsessed with trying to update our counter terrorism laws to tend to be consistent with the latest US security standards, without considering now the politics of terrorism in
the Philippines. So people sometimes think that the Anti Terrorism Law is a good thing because you have a legal framework which limits how government exercises its power when conducting county terrorism. Right, But that's not how it works in the Philippines.
Windows organizations fought the Anti Terrorism Law all the way up to the Supreme Court, but the court upheld most of the laws provisions. The Chairite left office in twenty twenty two, so it was up to a new president to roll out the Anti Terrorism Act. The new president had a familiar name, Ferdinand Marcos Junior, the son of the former dictator.
We campaigned against him, but unfortunately he became the president and the policies of the previous thirty administration, especially the bladish human rights record, remains to be the same. Under Marcus Junior administration, the militarization and red bagging against activists continued the same, and it's a non stuck, which is why we see that Marcos Juniors administration is practically the same as his father's administration.
In the summer of twenty twenty three, as Windell was getting ready to go into the office, he got a message from one of his colleagues. They had just read in the newspaper that a month earlier, the Anti Terrorism Council had officially labeled Windele and four of his colleagues terrorists. Just as he had predicted, the new terror law was now being aimed directly at land defenders. It was deja vu, the same old tactics being used by a new administration using the new law.
I am a civilian, I am an activist, not armed, and I am not a fist.
When a member of the Cordeliera People's a Line went to the bank. They were handed a letter from the Anti Money Laundering Council. It noted Wendell's terrorism designation. His organization's bank account was now frozen.
It was me who was designated. Say it was not SPA or the organization who was designated. But why is it that the account of the organization of cp was frozen.
It was not CPA.
Just because I am the chair person does not mean that I control and own CPAY and own these accounts.
The appeal to the Anti Terrorism Council to delist Windell and his colleagues, but they were denied and since then Wendell has been forced to live with this latest attempt to silence him. The Philippines Department of Justice did not respond to questions from Drilled about the designation.
Me as an individual needs to survive on a daily basis, the modest the allowance I from CPA has been stopped when the CPE account was frozen. That other three colleagues, they also have their own family, They have needs of their children. These are greatly affected. So practically killing me softly? You know, how should our family survive? How an organization survive? And the communities who are dependent on the services being supported by these projects.
In addition to the freezing of the bank accounts, the designation also means Windle could be arrested at any time and detained for up to twenty four days with no warrant. Another effect of the designation legal surveillance.
Of course we knew that even before we were designated, we have been under surveillance.
Yeah, but this time it is legal, and so perhaps when we are doing this interview they can be listening legally.
Of even greater concern is the looming threat to windles family safety.
To be declared or designated as a therorist. It's already practically towards a dead sentence. Oh your children are Oh that's a children of a terrorist. Or your wife, Oh that's a husband of a terrorist. Or your communities, those are terrorists.
His experience isn't isolated. Around the world, anti terrorism laws and counter terrorism efforts have had serious consequences for land defenders. For example, the Financial Action Task Force pressured India to comply with its Post nine to eleven standard on monitoring nonprofits. So India introduced or updated multiple laws, such as the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act or VICRA that it now routinely
uses to attack nonprofits and freeze their accounts. In Algeria, an anti fracking protester was sentenced to prison time for glorification of terrorism over a Facebook post. Chile has repeatedly used its anti terrorism law to go after indigenous Mapuch people. In twenty fifteen, France was home to the climate conference
that generated the foundational, if flawed, Paris Agreement. In the middle of it all, the French government declared an anti terrorism state of emergency, curtailing climate protests and placing two dozen activists under house arrest. Outside the legal system, environmental defenders are routinely slandered as terrorists by industry groups, right
wing news outlets, and government officials too. It would be an oversimplification to claim that all of this was because of US War on Terror pressure, but Bush's addressed to Congress and everything that came after it sent a clear message anything called terrorism must be crushed.
Warrant there in the Philippines may have had a life of its own, may have merged with the phenomena, but the United States and other countries have ignored how the counter terrorism agenda has played out in the Philippines, and they have been pushing, pushing, and pushing the Philippines to enact this and that revision to the counter terrorism law, as if counterterrorism is something that you can do without any nasty political consequences.
There are mechanisms the US government could use to prevent abuses of environmental activists in the Philippines. According to the Lakey Law, it's illegal for the US to provide funds to a foreign security force if there's evidence that they've been involved in gross violations of human rights. However, the law hasn't slowed the flow of you arms and training into the Philippines. Marcos happens to be a major national
security ally of the United States. With the Philippines increasingly viewed as a bulwark against China, the US has poured military aid into the country. In July twenty twenty four, for example, US officials announced half a billion dollars in new military funding for the Philippines. For its part, the Philippines is allowing the US new access to military bases.
The role of the US is very clear, not just its support to the Israeli genocide in Palestine, but also supporting the Philippine government and the armed forces of the Philippines and the so called anti terrorism encounter insurgency, but it is resulting in bloody human rights violations against the people.
Marcos and the US have made it to give all this a green veneer. The Filipino president has claimed that his decision to give the US access to more military bases was not actually because of China.
It was really because of the effects of climate change and the increasing instances of disasters in the Philippines.
Marcos claimed that the bases would make it easier for the US to provide disaster relief in the wake of increasingly severe typhoons. The US, on the other hand, has promised to support the Filipino government in its exploitation of so called critical minerals like nickel that are needed to build renewable energy infrastructure and manufacture batteries. Filipino environmental defenders are concerned that the transition away from the fossil fuel
industry will be made at their expense. Wendel and the CPA are fighting back against his terrorism charges. They file the lo lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the anti terrorism law, but the relentless cycle of attacks has continued.
Just three days ago or four days ago, my name again and my photo, my picture with some of my colleagues in CPA was again included in a big tarpaulin which contaigns alleged leaders and members of the cppn PA in the Locals Cordellera region.
The poster, which was also presented at a local village assembly, included windows home address and instructed community members to contact the military with any information about his whereabouts.
I'm not hiding otherwise I otherwise I will not behaving this online interview with you. They know my address, they know my home address, they know our office address, then they can just cut right. Their aim is really to demonize us and set the political terrain for our neutralization. This is not really about terrorism. It is about killing democracy, killing civilians.
It's really to protect.
The power and the businesses by criminalizing, and the terror is stagging indigenous people's struggles like what we do here in the cordell Era. The impact is so devastating, but that's part of the struggle.
I continue to convince myself about that.
Drilled is an original Critical Frequency production. This episode was reported and written by me Allen Brown. I was also the senior editor for Our Real free Speech threat series.
Our senior producer is montez Altz.
Last week, Martin also did the sound design, scoring and composed much of our music.
Editing is Sarah Ventry, Mixing and mastering by Peter.
Duff, fact checking by Wooden Jan.
Our artwork was created by Matt Fleming. Our First Amendment attorney is James Sweeton. Our theme song is Bird in the Hand by a Forenown. The show was created and executive produced by Amy Westervelt. You can find more episodes from this season, as well as several print stories on our website at Drill dot media. To support our work or sign up for our weekly newsletter, visit patreon dot com slash drilled. Thanks for listening. Make sure you're subscribed
so you don't miss our next season. About yet another chapter in the repression of environmental protest, the year's long reaction to the Standing Rock protests, chan
And change