More rights defenders murdered in 2021, with 138 activists killed just in Colombia

The grave of Pablo Isabel Hernández, a murdered indigenous leader and activist in Honduras. The killer of another activist in the country, Berta Cáceres, was found guilty last year in a rare moment of accountability. Photograph: Délmer Membreño/The Guardian

A Colombian conservationist who saved a rare species of parrot from extinction, a young feminist activist in Afghanistan, and two poets in Myanmar who used words to protest against the military coup were among 358 human rights defenders murdered in 35 countries last year, analysis has found.

The environmentalist Gonzalo Cardona Molina, 55; Frozan Safi, a 29-year-old Afghan economics lecturer; and K Za Win and Khet Thi, two of several poets to be killed, were among those targeted because of their “peaceful and powerful” work, according to a global analysis of threats and attacks faced by human rights activists compiled by Front Line Defenders (FLD) and the Human Rights Defenders Memorial.