We have received the following message from the Forest Peoples Programme, requesting assistance for preparing a document to submit to the Intergovernmental Forum on Forests at its July-August meeting, on 'Human Rights violations against Forest Campaigners':
"This report will detail the oppression of indigenous peoples, other local communities and forest campaigners, by State agencies and commercial operators destroying forests all around the world. We hope to illustrate social and political issues of forests born from conflicts of interests between relatively powerless citizens as against big business and the government. The aim of the report then is to highlight the human aspects of forests and the way that peoples rights are being violated by economic interests.
We will be looking at incidents from both temperate and tropical forests during the last six years since Rio in 1992. We will include all violations of civil and political rights including abuse of rights to free speech, freedom of expression, the right to travel, slap suites, police harassments and the usual crimes against the person.
While compiling information for the above report I would be very grateful if your organisation could supply me with any incidents you feel should be included in this report. We would of course cite your organisation as the source and give you full credit for this information unless you ask us not to, as well as send you a copy of the final report.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Yours sincerely,
Louise Henson
Forest Peoples Programme