Marivic Danyan
Marivic Danyan is a land, environmental and T’boli indigenous rights defender. In 2017, the Philippine army killed eight members of Marivic's community, including her father and her husband. According to Marivic, the massacre was a retaliation for their opposition to the powerful agribusinnes company Silvicultural Industries, which had acquired almost 12 thousands hectares of land for a coffee plantation. After the massacre, Marivic started seeking justice for her father and her husband and she decided to take up their stuggle, leading her community's efforts to take back control of their land.
The climate of impunity that prevails in the Philippines, combined with the administration’s encouragement of extra-judicial killings of alleged drug users as well as the increasingly hard line taken by the army towards the National Democratic Front of the Philippines, has resulted in the serious deterioration in the situation for human rights defenders in the country. Since the election of President Rodrigo Duterte in May 2016, HRDs are facing a spate of killings and violence. Judicial harassment and criminalisation of HRDs remain common, with politicians and private actors, such as mining companies, using the criminal justice system to silence those who oppose their interests.
