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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsBlood on Your Ottoman: Your Furniture's Link to a Murderous Logging Epidemic
http://www.takepart.com/feature/2015/02/06/sutainable-furniture-killing-indigenous-people?cmpid=tpfeature-eml-2015-02-08-logging
Once just a climate threat, illegal deforestation is becoming a human rights crisis.
February 06, 2015 By Alexander Zaitchik
Alexander Zaitchik is a freelance writer based in New Orleans. He has written for The New Republic, The Nation, Salon, Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, and others.
PuCALLPA, PeruOne afternoon last September, Edwin Chota and three colleagues were walking the dirt track that connects the villages of their Asháninka tribe along the Peru-Brazil border. They were on an organizing mission. Illegal loggers were destroying the forests around Chotas village of Saweto, and the government was doing little to stop it. So the men went to meet with their fellow tribesmen across the border to strategize about what might be done. They never returned.
The four anti-logging activists were shot and killed, their bodies dumped in the jungle. Their widows traveled for three days by boat to report the murder to authorities here, the nearest city, which has recently grown into a timber boomtown.
For years, Chota had faced down death threats for loudly demanding the government stop illegal logging in the forest where the tribe, like others throughout the region, has lived sustainably for centuries. Those threats had grown more specific with time, and came from powerful people. Before his death, Chota testified to police that a local timber boss warned him, someone from Saweto is going to die. The widows promised to continue their husbands work, leading to yet more pointed warnings, and eventually to the governments stationing of police near Chotas villagea rare state security presence in the remote jungles where, as Chota told National Geographic, The only law is the law of the gun.
FULL story at link.
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Blood on Your Ottoman: Your Furniture's Link to a Murderous Logging Epidemic (Original Post)
Omaha Steve
Feb 2015
OP
countryjake
(8,554 posts)1. Our Fight
Edwin Chota
sheshe2
(83,773 posts)2. KnR
hollysmom
(5,946 posts)3. the last time I bought furniture it was from US wood from a US company.
but I can see what I spent 5K on 30/40 years ago is now selling at 1K because of all the short cuts - disposable society.
Marie Marie
(9,999 posts)4. This story is just tragic.
I hope these families get some type of justice but somehow, I doubt that will happen.