Edit: it was pointed out below that it's probably more influenced by an increase in environmentally damaging activities such as logging.
Edit 2: Yes, I think that murdering peaceful, innocent protestors is a disgusting act. I'm just questioning the article's use of statistics
That's most probably the case, yes. I live in a country (Romania) where a lot of illegal (or borderline-illegal) logging activities happen and a few environmental activists have been physically harmed while one or two foresters have actually been killed.
The issue is that many mountain communities (where the logging happens) are dependent on that activity for their actual survival, because honestly there's not that much one can do in a mountain village to gain your daily bread, and of course when outside forces (like the central administration that employs said foresters, or the environmental activists whose income does not depend on those trees being cut down) come in and threaten that survival the inevitable happens, i.e. physical violence.
The ones targeted by the law and activists for illegal logging are usually companies connected to politicians. They are indeed violent, but they don't get to benefit from any excuses like the one you presented.
Another thing is that a lot of people living in those mountain villages were dependent on those forrest trees for their winter heating and small things to do around the house, it was an unwritten rule centuries old, i.e. the forrest belonged to everyone from the village. In Western Europe the powers that be got rid of this custom some time ago, the French around 200 years ago thanks to Napoleon, the English I think even before that. Now, you have those foresters accompanied in some cases by the police who can send you to prison if you're carrying some undocumented wood, the same as your dad or your grand-dad or your ancestors used to do for centuries. Of course that will create havoc.
> Almost a third of the murders were reportedly linked to resource exploitation - logging, mining, large-scale agribusiness, hydroelectric dams and other infrastructure.
There is probably nothing logically wrong with that question, and you are probably right that there is a correlation. But... seriously?
I don't mean this is the case here (I'm yet to read the article itself) - but this failure mode in reporting is so common that it's a good habit to immediately look for / question lack of base rate data.
I agree that murder is horrible, but the article seems to try to sell that these murders are related to their activism, which is not something you can say just based on the absolute number. You need to have the ratio to compare to the last year and to the base rate in the general population to make a better statement. Without it, we can't be sure of the real cause and might try to fix this at the wrong place, leading to us to not prevent murders effectively - so yes, you need to get your statistics right, even when talking about horrible incidents.
there is not necessarily a reason to assume that the percentage of murder of activists is going to stay the same if you increase the number of activists, although it may be the case.
Perhaps you're right that in this case, the rate isn't going to stay constant. But in general, with news reporting, I found it safe to assume that if the rate was rising, they would've reported on the denominator too - the reason to omit it is usually because it would kill the story.
EDIT:
To expand on this further - and again, I'm defending the original question as a perfectly legit one, not trying to diminish the fact that we're talking about murders here - you always want to see the whole fraction spelled out, numerator and denominator, because the other common trick to deceive with numbers is by providing only the ratio itself. E.g. "over past year, incidents of $crime rose by 80%", or "$substance increases your cancer risk by 300%", where the unmentioned denominator is "3" and "0.00001", respectively.
The way I see it: even if we're talking about clear tragedies or acts of evil, it's always better to have an accurate picture of what is being talked about.
If activists are being murdered for activism, the rate among activists will go up. If a greater share of the population is becoming activist, and are being randomly murdered for non-activist reasons, that’s a different story.
what if 5% of the workers at big corporations are willing to kill activists for activism, those 5% are busy killing activists, if the activists increase unless the corporations increase the number of people they have willing to kill activists it follows that there are not going to be a significant increase in the number of murdered activists.
In short there can be all sorts of reasons why the percentage of activists killed for activism would not remain constant.
>whereas usually the denominator - which they neglect to mention - has rose proportionally, meaning there's nothing newsworthy there.
then in my reply to you
>there is not necessarily a reason to assume that the percentage of murder of activists is going to stay the same if you increase the number of activists, although it may be the case.
again, nothing about not needing to know the base rate, just noting that there might reasons for the rate of murders to not rise proportionally.
After writing something so straightforward that it might as well be observing that water is wet I've gotten a number of responses from people whom, just as straightforward, seem to want to inform me that the sun is out today and are intent on hammering it into my thick skull despite my never having said otherwise.
I don't know anything about this particular situation, but your callous dismissal of this indisputably correct warning is wrong.
> The pertinent comparison (for those interested in the whole "murders" thing) is with how many murders there were in previous years, whether it's gone up, etc, information which is covered in the article.
It wasn't, at least not directly. The numbers I saw are:
- 227 activists killed in 2020, the titular record number
- 4 activits / week on average being killed since the signing of the Paris Agreement in 2015[0]
You can tease out some insight from deconstructing the average (e.g. the 2020 number is above the average), but not much really. Not enough to tell you whether something has changed about this situation.
Also, please don't assume people asking for more clarity and better data are ignoring the human life context of the story.
--
There seems to be an error in the reported context of that figure - Paris Agreement was adopted in 2015, but signed in April 2016 and became effective from November 2016 - per - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Agreement.
If you have 100 ppl demonstrating against a hydro dam and 1 gets murdered later that night it does not follow that there likely would have been 2 killed if 200 ppl demonstrated.
• hackers? • crackers? • political activists?
> To meet our criteria, a case must be supported by the following available information:
> Credible, published and current online sources of information.
> Details about the type of act and method of violence, including the date and location.
> Name and biographical information about the victim.
> Clear, proximate and documented connections to an environmental or land issue.
When people are murdered, we can't be sure who did it unless there's evidence. The methodology doesn't seem to include gathering evidence of who the murderer was, only that the murder happened to an activist. Saying "when people are murdered by anti-green corporations" is begging the question, because the report doesn't pass on any evidence that they were murdered by anyone in particular.
Who else do you think is going around conveniently getting rid of activists that oppose profit and greed?
You're missing the point. People are murdered all the time for all sorts of reasons, including people who happen to be activists. The question is: are activists being murdered for their activism or for some other reason? Until you can demonstrate that, you simply don't have grounds to suspect megacorps or their agents are doing the murdering.
For example, the number of people who listen to Ed Sheeran music has risen enormously in the last decade. So has the number of Ed Sheeran listeners who were murdered. It doesn't follow that they were murdered because they have dubious taste in music—just that as the population of Sheeran fans grows so does the number of people in it being murdered. That might happen even if the overall murder rate was going down.
If murder rates have doubled that is bad, regardless of the number of people becoming activists.
I just wanted to see some context as to why the rate was increasing.
Of course corporate murder is horrible, but the world is on fire (quite literally). Without putting the numbers in perspective, there's no way to tell whether we need to put our resources towards fighting activist murders or, for example, clan criminality.
The real question is : "Is environmental activism today more dangerous than it was yesterday". The typical way of computing "dangerosity" is through a ratio. Eg: number of death / kilometer for transportation systems, number of injury / game for sports, ...
Why should the dangerosity of the "environmental activism" activity be computed differently, by only taking into consideration a numerator, and dismissing the denominator ?
I cannot imagine that being their best PR strategy, not to mention the fact that murdering your opposition attracts a lot of scrutiny, investigation, and which corp exec would want to risk going to jail for ordering a hit on an activist. Far more practical to lobby or spread counter marketing spin.
I’ve never been more sure of the sad HN bubble.
Is there an increase, though?
The BBC has sadly become known to be rather loose with facts. The answer to the upstream question here would let us know if there is an increase and what kind. Absolute? Relative? How big of a problem is this, really, or is it more of the BBC fomenting noise and anxiety for clicks.
We're trying to get information to understand the world better. People who run around insisting that x piece of information is irrelevant and how dare you ask either don't understand the question or have something to hide
Do you think that these murders (as stable or as decreasing as you believe them to be) should not be reported on? And that your statistical skills somehow matter to the real world activists dying?
Personally, I don't like this kind of discourse. It gets people excited, anxious, and not thinking clearly, as intended. That would be ok with me maybe, if there ever were some good results from that (e.g. effective environmental control, or good legislation), but there never, ever is.
I could go through and answer your questions as if we were talking for real, but your response is kind of a poison pill, designed to put me on the defensive ("Oh, of course I didn't mean...")
No. The adults in the room do need to know if activists are being murdered at an ever increasing rate, or if we can devote our limited time and attention to other very important matters. We don't like to be guided to the "proper" opinion by people who will shout But it's murder, you cold-hearted nerd! if we go off track and ask for accurate information
It instead implies that it is an increasing problem, without giving us the tools to evaluate the claim or understand the scope of the problem.
If you want to accept such claims as true, go ahead. That practice won't arm you to understand your world better, but will instead make you excitable and easily swayed.
There is a lot more behind a statistic than just a number or trend-line, one which often requires single or multiple policy changes that could take years. So yes, observing that the trend line goes and keeps going down is good, a sharp rise is a cause for concern. That is not the same thing, at all, as thinking the status quo is just fine.
The situation is probably the same for environment activists, you can be sure that it's not PR that will prevent them from getting killed...
Plus, given how dangerous some places are even for locals, you can always plausibly deny your involvement: oh, it was the bandits, they are awful to everyone.
The "backend" 80% of the world doesn't work with PR strategies.
Nobody cares if an activist is murdered in Nigeria or Mexico etc., same way few care about journalists in those area. There will be some reports (if that), most will never even reach your preferred news outlets, and that's it.
And in more subtle areas (outside the developing world) they can always make it look like a "mysterious" homicide case, despite e.g. known threats, beatings, etc, that had been reported prior to the murder.
There are interests of billions to be made, from mega-corps, local lackeys, corrupt politicians and cops on their pockets, and so on.
Same way nobody cares for 10-100 million dollar bribes all too common in big construction, supply, procurement, finance, and so on, tenders. One in 100 might get some scrutiny (usually after the party doing it is out of power with no way to be re-elected, so those affected don't have any clout anymore).
>not to mention the fact that murdering your opposition attracts a lot of scrutiny, investigation, and which corp exec would want to risk going to jail for ordering a hit on an activist.
Lol. No exec "orders a hit" (except if it's some local representative or director and knows the ropes in that area).
Foreign execs convey a message that "this thing is an inpediment", "something must be done" and so on, in the vaguest (but clear) possible ways, and people with a lot to gain locally, paid for those deals, know how to take care of things, with several layers of indirection.
Same way sweatshops and child labour (all the way to small kids working on cobalt mines) have "plausible deniability" from industry execs, and several layers of contractors between them.
Why would that be a real question? The activism itself should not be life threatening activity. If the amount of killed activists is proportionally the same every year ... then there is still have real issue.
Why would that be the "real question"? Just because all we have is the hammer of statistical analysis?
More people are getting killed, whether they are environmental activists is not that relevant.
What's relevant is that there is increased willingness to kill in favor of anti-environmnet interests.
>Why should the dangerosity of the "environmental activism" activity be computed differently, by only taking into consideration a numerator, and dismissing the denominator ?
It shouldn't be computed at all, the concern here is not to give people some dangerocity score to help them avoid being killed.
The concern is to stop the interests that kill -- that is, to stop the murders and the murderers, not to avoid them by having people not be environmental activists or be more careful about it.
(Same way we would want to reduce racist crime, not e.g. tell blacks to be more careful. We might also want that, but not as a first priority, as a treatment to the symptoms, not the cause).
Worse, it's corporate murder. Not some "crime passionel" or a marginalized mental patient going bezerk.
This is big corps silencing dissent, premeditated and usually paid for.
It's hard to get justice in these cases, like in this case:
If people die because they engage in non-violent activism it's just wrong, plain and simple, there's no gray area (at least I have a very hard time thinking of one). The overall number of activists or the growth thereof has absolutely nothing to do with that.
they didn't expect it to be, they said if it remains constant.
You seem to be the one making the assumption -- that it wouldn't remain constant -- otherwise why would you have made that comment?
If I am making the wrong inference here then I put it down to the strong and yet imprecise language of "it has everything to do with it".
It's a legitimate question. Any answer other than environmental activists have increased/decreased by x is not an answer to the question. If it's an emotionally loaded response (e.g. Seriously? People are murdered while you quibble!), it's a non-sequitur.
Language/communication doesn't work the way you argue here. There is context. OP's question would be valid and common for science on e.g. the connection of total brain cancers and smartphone usage.
No. The cynicism is the insistence that it doesn't matter.
> ...which derails the conversation
If the answer were "There has been a decrease in the total number of activists, therefore the record is worse that the absolute numbers imply" would you make this accusation? No. No you would not.
You would insist, correctly, that it was very relevant. You would rightly look with suspicion upon people who insist that the question "derails the conversation"
The "derails the conversation" accusation is itself a cynical attempt to control the conversation
Likewise you wouldn't discuss a rise in Al Qaeda terrorist attacks in relation to US population growth, or cartel excutions in relation to Mexico's birth rate. What you are interested in is the number of organized, state-like, violent offenders only, not the pool of their victims.
I hope my point gets across. Not a native speaker.
And I especially don't appreciate some of the histrionics of the "Don't question the accuracy!!" side.
Headline: "There is a 50% increase in the child-crushing rate!" Me: "There's nothing in the article that tells us how many children are being crushed, exactly. Is this a big problem? Small problem?" You: "You monster! Children are being crushed! Stop quibbling about how many! Even One. Single. Child. is too many!!"
To paint a clearer picture you would have to look at the distribution of both murders and new activists. I bet there are more online activists now, but it doesn't necessarily translate to having more helpers in poor areas. Which are where the natural resources are.