Activists' Inktober 2018

Berta Cáceres

Berta Cáceres was a Honduran environmental activist, indigenous leader, and co-founder and coordinator of the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH). She won the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2015, for "a grassroots campaign that successfully pressured the world’s largest dam builder to pull out of the Agua Zarca Dam" at the Río Gualcarque.

In 1993 Cáceres co-founded the COPINH, an organization to support indigenous people's rights in Honduras. She led campaigns on a wide variety of issues, including protesting illegal logging, plantation owners, and the presence of US military bases on Lenca land. She supported feminism, LGBT rights, as well as wider social and indigenous issues.

From 2006, working with a group of indigenous Lenca from Río Blanco, Cáceres mount a protest campaign and took the case to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, preventing the construction of a series of four hydroelectric dams on the Gualcarque River (a joint venture between Sinohydro, the International Finance Corporation, and the Honduran Desarrollos Energéticos, S.A). During the action, some protesters were killed, many detained and officials filed criminal charges against Cáceres and two other indigenous leaders for "usurpation, coercion and continued damages" against DESA for their roles in the protest. Charges that were largely contested nationally and internationally.

In April 2015, the international human rights organization Global Witness highlighted Cáceres' case as emblematic of the severe risks environmental activists face in Honduras, which had the highest number of killings of environmental and land defenders per capita in the world.

She was assassinated in her home by armed intruders, after years of threats against her life. Some of them directly linked to the USA.

Her murder was followed by those of two more activists within the same month.

Source EN Wikipedia, link in header.

Berta had a life too full to describe with Instagram's limitations. Please, check the links in the header for more information... and do your own research. Always!
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Indianara Siqueira

Today Brazil was voting. Far right won, but not enough to reign without a second round.
Indianara Siqueira is a trans activist, proud prostitute, and also does politics. She's the first transsexual in Brazil to win an alternate seat on a municipal council, this happened in Rio de Janeiro in 2016.

In a country where trans-related murders are one of the highest and sexual workers struggle to get official recognition, she fights on both fronts.

She got known in 2013, by walking topless during the SlutWalk. In Brazil, a woman can take up to 1-year imprisonment and a fine for being topless in public spaces. This simple action jeopardised the whole judiciary system. If they punish her, they have to accept her condition as a woman, if they do not, she's proving that woman are discriminated. Until today she is fighting to get a verdict.

She started as an activist by doing sexually transmitted diseases prevention. From that moment she participated in numerous collectives and movements, as Transrevolução and the Marcha das Vadias (SlutWalk).

I couldn't find a lot of information in English about Indianara. Please, check the link in the header for more my sources. Feel free to correct me or send more (accurate) information... and do your own research Always!
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Anton Lubowski

Anton Lubowski was a Namibian politician, lawyer and an activist of the South West Africa People's Organisation (SWAPO) which was recognised by the United Nations as the sole legitimate authority in Namibia during the 1970s and 1980s when apartheid South Africa illegally occupied the country.

In 1978, the United Nations Security Council adopted a blueprint for independence for Namibia. Lubowski, as a lawyer, came in contact with prisoners tortured because of their pro-SWAPO positions. As result, he became involved with political movements that favoured an independent, democratic, and non-racial Namibia.

During the next years, Lubowsky slowly moved towards joining the SWAPO. A decision he took when he met Sam Nujoma, President of SWAPO, in Paris. From that moment he receives a continuous stream of abuse and death threats, the price of being regarded as a ‘traitor' by his fellow whites, and is from is detained several times by the state police.

A strong focus of his work for SWAPO was to make fellow white Namibians understand that SWAPO was a nationalist movement that with, amongst other concerns, propagated a genuine non-racial society in which whites would be welcome as citizens.

When the independence process began on 1st April 1989, Lubowski was heavily involved in the election campaign. However, Lubowski did not live to see an independent Namibia.

In the evening of 12 September 1989, Lubowski was shot by a group of assailants in front of his house.

I couldn't find a lot of information about Anton. Please, check the link in the header for my sources. Feel free to correct me or send more (accurate) information... and do your own research Always!
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