Attacks on Opponents of GMO
Opponents of GMO are under attack worldwide. The severity of the attacks varies from intimidation and threats to physical attacks. Countries that banned GMO are punished with economic sanctions.
Threatened and Intimidated by The Mexican Government
In 🇲🇽 Mexico a GMO researcher was threatened and intimidated by the Government to prevent publication of his research in Nature.
'I don't want to be a martyr by any means, but I cannot avoid now realising that this is a very, very well concerted and coordinated and paid for campaign to discredit our GMO research.' Dr. Ignacio Chapela
He [Government official] makes reference to knowing my family & ways he can access my family. It was very cheap. I was scared. I felt intimidated and I felt threatened for sure.
The official Biosafety Commissioner took him to an empty office room where he was told that he 'was creating a really serious problem, that he was going to pay for. The development of GMO crops was something that was going to happen in Mexico and elsewhere.'.
Dr. Chapela replied: 'So you are going to take a revolver out now and kill me or something, what is going on?'. Then the Biosafety official offered Dr. Chapela a deal: he could become part of a secret scientific team of top scientists that informed the world about GMO. He could meet his team members in Baja, California. Two scientists from Monsanto and two from DuPont.
Dr. Chapela refused: 'Well that is not the way I work, and I wasn’t the problem, and the problem is GMO”'. Then events took a very sinister turn. 'He brings up my family', recalls Dr. Chapela. 'He makes reference to him knowing my family and ways in which he can access my family. It was very cheap. I was scared. I felt intimidated and I felt threatened for sure. Whether he meant it I don’t know, but it was very nasty to the point that I felt "why should I be here, listening to all this and I should leave".'
The threats intensified against Dr. Chapela, who received a letter from an agricultural under-secretary, saying that the government had ‘serious concerns’ about the ‘consequences that could be unleashed’ from his GMO research. Moreover the government, would ‘take the measures it deems necessary to recuperate any damages to agriculture or the economy in general that this publication’s content could cause’
Dr. Chapela believes that the approach was not surprising, as the Agriculture Ministry itself is ‘riddled with conflicts of interest. There are just working as spokespeople for DuPont, Syngenta and Monsanto’.
Just over two months later, Dr. Chapela’s team published their GMO research in Nature.
(2009) 🌽 Immoral Maize - account of Chapela affair This is far and away the best account of the Mexican maize scandal and the campaign by Monsanto and its supporters to discredit the Berkeley researchers, David Quist and Ignacio Chapela. Source: GMWatch.org
Violent Attack on Professor
In 🇦🇷 Argentina, professor Andrés Carrasco whose research showed that Monsanto's Roundup GMO herbicide caused malformations in embryos, only narrowly escaped violent attackers who left one of his entourage unconscious and another partially paralysed.
In 2010, a delegation of two provincial deputies, a former public official and members of the neighbouring community of Resistencia went to attend a talk about a GMO herbicide by Professor Andres Carrasco, a scientist and doctor from the Buenos Aires University Medical School.
The delegation was attacked by a group of people who threatened them and beat them. Dr Carrasco and his colleague shut themselves in a car, and were surrounded by people making violent threats and beating the car for two hours. Members of the community were injured and a journalist's camera equipment was damaged.
Members of the community who witnessed the incident recognized local officials in the attack, as well as a local GMO rice-producer and his security guards.
The police were slow and unmotivated to respond and failed to send sufficient reinforcements to stop the violence.
(2010) Violent attack on professor Source: Amnesty International (a copy on archive.org)
Murder of Landless Workers’ Movement Leader
In 🇧🇷 Brazil, GMO giant Syngenta was found guilty of the murder of the leader of Landless Workers’ Movement (MST), one of the largest social movements in Brazil with 1.5 million members, while he and 150 members were protesting against an illegal experimental GMO farm.
Keno, an MST leader in Paraná, 🇧🇷 Brazil
The anti-GMO activists were attacked by 40 armed agents hired by GMO giant Syngenta. Keno and Isabel were shot and she lost sight in her right eye. She was forced to kneel down to be executed, but she raised her head and was shot by the eye. Three other big farmers were wounded in the attack.
(2018) GMO giant Syngenta found guilty of murder of MST leader in southern Brazil Source: terradedireitos.org.br | Landless Workers’ Movement (MST)
Violent Eviction From Home During Christmas
In 2022 in 🇮🇳 India an anti-GMO researcher was violently evicted from her home by the military during Christmas 2022. The eviction was illegal.
(2023) Anti-GMO researcher's eviction from home: 'Armed forces meant to protect, not attack citizens' rights' The Home Secretary of 🇮🇳 India must immediately initiate an enquiry into how local police were allowed to participate in an illegal attack on anti-GMO researcher Aruna Rodrigues.
Rodrigues was illegally evicted from her own home just as she was preparing to celebrate Christmas with family and friends. Source: Counterview | Change.org petition: Condemn the dastardly attack on India’s prominent anti-GMO Public Campaigner Aruna Rodrigues
Violent Attack at Home in France
In 2023 in France, a grain farmer who won a legal case against Bayer-Monsanto, was violently attacked at his home. The attackers said “We are tired of hearing you and seeing your face on TV”.
Well known economy journalist Salomé Saqué wrote the following remark about the attack.
When environmental activists protest, Gérald Darmanin [France’s Minister of the Interior] calls them "eco-terrorists" and sends hundreds of police but when the whistleblower who convicted Monsanto is the victim of an attack which could not be more worrying, there is radio silence.
(2023) Salomé Saqué on Twitter Source: Twitter
In 2020 a French organic farmer was hospitalized after vandals sprayed his farm with GMO pesticide.
(2020) Poisoning of organic farmer in GMO pesticide attack Source: GMWatch.orgVandalism and Threats
In the 🇺🇸 US, an Arkansas farmer who remonstrated about GMO giant Syngenta's herbicide dicamba (used for GMO crops) was threatened. Hundreds of bales of hay were set on fire and two tractors vandalized, causing ~$78,000 in damage.
Terry Fuller, an Arkansas farmer who served as the chairman of the Arkansas State Plant Board gave a presentation to state lawmakers in which he discussed the need for restrictions of Syngenta's GMO dicamba. When he returned he found two of his tractors vandalized.
When scientist Tyrone Hayes of the University of California, Berkeley discovered that GMO giant Syngenta's herbicide atrazine - a chemical that is banned in Europe - has harmful effects to the health of consumers, he and his family were intimidated and threatened.
(2014) Silencing the Scientist: Tyrone Hayes on Being Targeted by GMO giant Syngenta The Syngenta scientist was ordered to keep silent about his findings and when he tried to publish the results, the GMO giant launched a slander campaign to discredit him and his family, and he was intimidated and received threats.‘This guy would directly come up and make lewd comments to me and threatening comments to me. But it was the kind of thing where, you know, it sounded like something out of a movie. I couldn’t go and tell my colleagues, like, “They’re following me around, and, you know, they’re hacking into my email” Source: Democracy Now
Attacks on Countries
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has been involved in the forcing of GMO in countries through economic sanctions.
Hungary was punished economically for banning GMO. The country had to throw out the IMF along with GMO to get rid of it.
(2012) Hungary Throws Out GMO AND the IMF Hungary's PM Victor Orbán had thrown GMO giant Monsanto out of the country, going as far as to plow under 1000 acres of land. It's remarkably hard to find sources on this, ironically. It’s even harder, even more ironically, to find anything that mentions the Wikileaks report on the connections between the US government and the GMO industry and the sanctions imposed on Hungary through the IMF. Source: The Automatic Earth (2012) US to StartTrade Warswith Nations Opposed to GMO Source: Natural Society
Eat GMOs! or We'll Cause PainThe cables show US diplomats working directly for GM companies such as Monsanto and Bayer.
Opponents of GMO punished with
retaliation and pain.
Sri Lanka introduced a GMO ban that supposedly caused an economic collapse of the country in 2021, after which the IMG, suspiciously, was the 'only option' with a $2.9 billion USD bailout.
