Activism under siege: Navigating safety and security in a hostile world
In today's polarized world, where democracy, free speech, and activism are constantly under pressure, the fight for justice remains as urgent as ever. Feminism has long been a catalyst for progress—sparking debate, driving change, and challenging power structures. At the heart of these efforts are grassroots activists whose work turns movements into tangible impact. In this final duo interview, we sat down with grassroots activists Renske Wienen and Lionel Júnior, who are working on the frontlines of human and climate justice. How can we continue to push back against oppression and create space for inclusive, transformative movements?
Photo: Ruby Cruden
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Renske Wienen is the Director of Fossielvrij Nederland, an organisation that campaigns to break the power of the fossil industry. Originally skeptical of activism, her perspective shifted during the COVID-19 pandemic when she started noticing systemic injustices. Her involvement in social movements, including protests against institutional racism, deepened her understanding of inequality and environmental injustice.
She has always been involved in movements focused on keeping activists safe, such as ensuring the safety of students in encampments. She has actively advocated for the rights and safety of the LGBTQ+ community, which continues to face discrimination and legal challenges amid the rise of far-right policies. Renske was also a Climate Activist at Extinction Rebellion and a Campaign Coordinator at DeGoedeZaak.
Her interest in safety and activism grew from her own experiences with insecurity. She began sharing tools with other activists to help mitigate these challenges.
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Lionel Júnior is the Monitoring and Evaluation Officer for the +PorNós program at Associação Kudjindja, a Mozambican youth association for diversity and inclusion that works to empower excluded and marginalised young people. This association is part of Hivos' Free To Be Me Programme. He is also the coordinator and founder of the Queer Políticos project, which focuses on the empowerment of LGBTQ+ youth. Additionally, he works as an administrative assistant at Rede de Jovens Defensores de Direitos Humanos – REJODH.
Raised by his great-grandmother, Lionel became deeply engaged in activism as he grew up, strongly influenced by Brazil – both culturally and in terms of activism. Brazilian online activism, combined with the realities of Mozambique, pushed him from social media militancy into full-fledged activism. As a young entrepreneur, Lionel understood the struggles of starting a business, especially for LGBTQ+ individuals. He saw firsthand the challenges and the various insecurities faced by marginalised communities.
Photo: DC Scenes
When it comes to activism, the reality and the challenges Renske has in The Netherlands and Lionel has in Mozambique are very different from each other. In what ways do you encounter insecurity in your country as an activist, and how does it impact your work?
Renske: ‘What I notice is that there are two ways that we experience unsafety and insecurity. One of them is more from people naturally opposing you. So, if you do anti-fascist action, fascists will attack you. If you do pro-Palestinian actions, Zionists will be the ones and so on. Some of them are violent, and some of them tend to dox you or try to leak your personal information, like your workplace. And that's something that I've experienced myself from the very beginning.’
‘This (type of insecurity) happens in interaction with unsafety coming from the state, the government and the police. They have way more tools in their toolbox to use against activists, like advanced surveillance and police brutality. Also, they embolden people to use violence.’
Lionel: ‘Being an activist in Africa is a very big challenge. Here, we are murdered, poisoned, and kidnapped as activists in general.’
‘Anyone who, in some way, has the power to influence the masses, is persecuted. Unfortunately, we have a political party (FRELIMO) that has been in power for 50 years, and its way of staying in power is through coercion, kidnappings, and assassinations. So, unfortunately, when it comes to security, we don’t have much of it. We don’t have any real protection, not even legal protection. Our safety is entirely individual.’
‘We had a case here of a young woman who, on the day of the inauguration of the president "elected" by the Constitutional Council - I'll put it that way because he wasn’t elected by the people -, so… she was beaten by a police commander, on camera. Imagine what that man does to his own family. Imagine what he would do to an activist.’
‘We activists are already labeled as vandals. We were called vandals by former President Armando Guebuza when he was in power. We were given that label simply because we went out into the streets to protest peacefully.’
‘Insecurity is part of our everyday life as activists.’
How do you protect yourself from potential attacks? Do you have any specific security measures in place?
Renske: ‘In the Netherlands, I think that, first of all, there's this concern with digital security. It’s better to assume that all our electronic devices are being wiretapped. If you keep that in mind, you’d probably prefer discussing plans related to activism in a room without electronics. Those were the moments when we were the safest. There are a lot of action groups that also do security training to address this question of digital security.’
‘Then there's also physical violence, which puts us in a really hard position because many of the groups, for example, Extinction Rebellion, insist repeatedly, "We're peaceful, we don't use any violence," but does that mean that when violence is done to you, you're not going to protect yourself and react? How can we be peaceful and defend ourselves when we are being attacked?’
‘There are also some very practical things. We try to build some kind of physical barrier to protect ourselves so we could still hold on to the peaceful values we have. For example, instead of sitting in front of a building, we sit inside, which is actually a harder offense according to Dutch law - blocking a building instead of blocking the street in front of us - but it is physically safer for us to do that. And we also wear helmets, mainly to protect us from the police, who use a lot of violence.’
‘Protecting ourselves can be tricky. We have noticed that if we wear helmets in a protest, the police justify their use of violence by saying, "Oh, but they came ready to fight," and they act much quicker against us. The moment you start protecting yourself, there's a visible cue that you're prepared for physical violence, and that gives your opponents a free pass to use violence because they see you as a threat. That's very complex, and the same goes for facial recognition.’
‘I think we should be aware that this software (of facial recognition) is here, and it's already being used by the police. Something I always tell activists is that if you are live streaming your actions, you should either wear a facial cover or tell everyone that their faces will be visible to the police. They (the police) download these live streams and use them later in court. You need to be super careful with that.’
‘But again, if you cover your face, people will say you are ready to do something wrong. So, this is really complex. We go back and forth between what actually keeps you safe and what is then used by the state to cast doubt upon you and try to create the idea that you're a terrorist organisation or undemocratic.’
So, if activists don’t hide themselves, they become targets of all kinds of attacks. If they do hide, they are seen as dangerous. Is it a dead end?
Lionel : ‘It’s indeed a dead end. And in many moments, we face this dead end. For example, when we talk about the importance of visibility… Visibility is still very poor in Mozambique for LGBTQ+ activists, and maybe it's less safe for us now than before. As our visibility increases, we take more space, and we make ourselves present. It’s a victory. On the other hand, it’s also riskier and more insecure for us and for the members of the community. We’ll be safer once we occupy more spaces and become more visible, but we’ll also have more situations of insecurity. There’s no easy answer and easy way to balance this.’
And in your case in Mozambique, Lionel, how do you protect yourself?
Lionel: ‘To be honest, here in our country, there is no security. We have cameras in the streets but, unfortunately, these cameras don't work. They were installed, but they don't work. Or if they do work, they only work when it's to benefit those who installed them. There is no security for the people and even less so for activists. Is there any device on my phone that protects me? No. It’s God.’
‘I wake up every day, I leave home, I use public transport and I come to the office, then I go with my team to the marginalised communities. There is no guarantee of security. We don’t have any security measures. I just hope I can come back home in the evening’.
‘And there are many other problems. For example, I could be beaten out there for homophobia, go to the police, and say, "Look, I was beaten. That person beat me because I’m gay." And they would ask me, "Why are you gay?" That’s the first thing the officer would ask. "Why do you do that? Didn’t you know that this is a sin?" They will never address the issue.’
‘From the moment you start talking too much, when you start going to the streets and demanding your rights, they will come to investigate your organisation, your records, etc. All these things will shut you down. You’ll get arrested. They’ll start with lawsuits against you for different reasons, but we know the real reason.’
‘In December, a young man called Mano Shottas was brutally murdered while livestreaming during the protests. On the day of his funeral, the police showed up at the cemetery and took more lives. He didn’t even have the dignity of a proper funeral.’
‘We have a history of journalists being murdered, starting with Carlos Cardoso (he was assassinated in 2000 after his newspaper investigated corruption in the privatisation of Mozambique's largest bank). More recently, Wilker Dias (activist and president of the Electoral Platform “Decide”) was poisoned with arsenic. We also saw endless fake news about Alice Mabota, the founder of the Human Rights League, with major defamation campaigns aimed at delegitimizing her activism.’
‘There’s also a big lack of resources and this makes our work unsafe. I am talking about very basic things, not about big funding. Even us, as an institution, we don’t have, for example, someone from IT who can install something on our phones or computers to keep us safe or at least safer. We also don’t have private transportation that takes us, activists, from home to work. We always have to call a taxi which puts us in danger as well, as many police officers in Mozambique complement their salaries by working as taxi drivers.’
Considering the risks and lack of security described by both of you, how do you balance the personal dangers you face with the need to keep pushing for change in such a challenging environment?
Renske: ‘There's no clear balance or solution because it's an unfair fight. You're fighting according to peaceful principles, and then you have an opponent that uses violence or surveillance, and we can't really survey the State back. In fact, even documents that we have a right to see, we don't get to see. So, this transparency only works as a one-way mirror. I think something that has helped me in my context in Europe is letting go of the idea that if you're liked by the government, you will achieve more. I've been in talks with the government, I've been a public speaker, and honestly, they still hate you.’
Lionel: ‘Nowadays, I don’t go out with friends in public spaces, I can’t have casual conversations about my work unless I know the people very well, even for everyday topics… not to mention LGBTQ+ issues or current politics. I remember once getting into a taxi while on the phone with a colleague, talking about what was happening, about the protests. The taxi driver told me, "Be careful." Then he showed me his badge - he was an undercover police officer. "Be very careful with whom you speak because if I were someone else, a colleague of mine, for example, you wouldn’t even make it home".’
‘There is a lot of insecurity, even for those who are not activists but simply go out to protest. They get beaten by the police. And, honestly, I make videos, I do live streams, I invite people to discuss sensitive issues - but always with fear. Every day I leave my house, and when I return, I say: "Thank God".’
‘We always have to watch our backs. Literally. If I see someone walking behind me for about five steps, I cross to the other side of the street. I don’t know if that person was following me or not. So, for us activists, I say this with a heavy heart - there is no security and no balance at all because even the police follow government orders. It is not an impartial institution. It is an institution that serves a political party.’
Renske: ‘If you protest something that is important enough for the State to use physical violence or surveillance against you, you are doing something that is making a change. It doesn't matter if they like you or not, because the point is not convincing them. It’s making it hard enough for them so they can’t ignore you. That, for me, is really important for activists to know as well: you don’t have to be liked. The government always gives us the idea that they will only talk to us if they like us, but that's not true at all. They don’t like your ideals, so they will never take you seriously.’
‘We have to understand very well the reality of the place where we are doing the activism. When you look at some countries in the world, the physical violence they face only for existing is a very serious issue. This really shows how difficult it can be to set up a social movement because it's squashed so quickly. It’s incredibly brave to even try.’
Thank you both for sharing your personal experiences. It’s very important to shed light on these harsh realities. Lionel, do you see any positive developments or initiatives that are making a difference?
Lionel: ‘We have positive initiatives too. In Mozambique, there is an organisation called Rede de Jovens Defensores de Direitos Humanos – REJODH. The network’s goal is to create defense mechanisms and reporting channels for human rights violations, with a focus on the persecution of social activists. In Mozambique, many activists face persecution, kidnappings, and assassination attempts often at the hands of the police and state institutions controlled by the ruling party.’
‘The initiative has struggled with implementation due to a lack of resources to address these persecutions. During the post-election protests (end of 2024 and early 2025), REJODH faced significant logistical challenges in assisting activists and young people who were arrested. Even with very limited funds, many activists went to police stations to support detainees, only to end up arrested themselves. Despite these challenges, the initiative remains highly relevant in the context of protecting and supporting human rights defenders.’
It is definitely refreshing to hear that people are persisting even with all these challenges and insecurities. Renske, how important is legal support in ensuring the effectiveness and safety of social movements?
Renske: ‘A lot of bigger groups and organisations have legal advisors. This is crucial for the activism. In the Netherlands, there's also the project PILP (Public Interest Litigation Project), which advocates for the right to protest and provides legal advice.’
‘If you're considering an action, PILP will keep it confidential and advise you on the legal repercussions and potential consequences if certain laws pass. I'm not a legal expert, and I think that's fine. I'm an expert in other areas, and having people dedicated to legal matters is essential.’
‘If you want to start a new movement, legal expertise - along with political and campaigning expertise - should be part of the foundation. Many lawyers support activist causes and are willing to help. In The Netherlands, PILP would be a great starting point as they can connect you with the right people.’
Being a former law student. Lionel, have you decided to study Law because of your work as an activist and in which field do you want to work?
Lionel: ‘I’m in my first year of Law school and, yes, activism played a big role in my decision to choose this course. It was also a childhood passion and I’ve always loved books and movies about lawyers and judges fighting against injustice.’
‘My goal is to specialise in Civil Law, and my dream is to contribute to the empowerment of LGBTQ+ youth in Mozambique, especially in matters of political participation. This is one of the reasons I envisioned the Queer Políticos project, a project aimed at equipping and inspiring young members of the LGBTQ+ community to take an active role in the country’s political decision-making processes.’
Have you seen any changes in the nature or level of risks since you began your activism?
Renske: ‘Absolutely. I've definitely noticed that, in the past couple of years, it's gotten worse. What Trump did on January 6th of 2021 gave people a free pass. It’s as if he said "Anyone can really drive a car over all these activists." And then people got inspired by that.’
‘We have (ed: in The Netherlands) a government that idolises Trump. The government is made up of center-right and far-right parties, but you can see that, when Trump won the elections, the far-right were celebrating, and they see him as an inspiration. They look to Milei (ed: current far-right Argentinian president) and Bolsonaro (ed: former far-right Brazilian president) and, if they had the majority, then that's also what would happen here.’
Lionel: ‘Trump’s victory already made a big impact on our work. First of all, there’s again the question of resources. Many activities have been suspended for 90 days (following an executive order signed by Donald Trump temporarily suspending all U.S. foreign assistance programs for 90 days pending reviews to determine whether they are aligned with his policy goals). We don’t know if, after these 90 days, they will resume. Our government, unfortunately, was on television crying over the withdrawal of funding, saying it doesn’t know how it will survive nowadays. So, we (progressive activists) will be blamed. They will say: ‘If the American government withdrew this financial aid, it’s because of this kind of people.’
‘Even without this (financial) support, we will continue with our activities, we will keep giving talks in the communities, we will come together, and we will use the resources we have.’
‘Some very conservative people are gaining the courage to express their hate, especially now with this president in the United States. I think that direct violence used to be a bit more hidden, but now it is becoming evident. It's already manifesting as physical violence, and now it's also the violence of people being expelled from places, being insulted and humiliated. This narrative has gained momentum. These people feel legitimised by world leaders like Trump.’
‘The movement that defends that there are only two genders is growing here in Mozambique. We have already conducted research that will be released soon about this phenomenon. Before, the idea of diversity within gender and sexual orientation was seen as something that came to Mozambique from foreign countries – from Europe and the United States. Now, people here in Mozambique are saying: “See? Even Westerners don’t accept this diversity”.’
All along this interview, we have seen two distinct yet equally important perspectives – one from the so-called Global North and the other from the Global South. How can activists from these regions work together and strengthen their collaboration?
Renske: ‘I think where we can collaborate is, first of all, in showing people that these are two branches of the same system. What's happening to activists in the Global South isn’t because their governments are worse than ours; there’s also an economic analysis to be made. When people in the Global South rise, there’s nothing left for the North to exploit.’
‘Activists in the Global South can help guide us on where and when to take action. They have a much better understanding of the direct consequences of corporate actions.’
‘People in the Global North need to realise that the democracy they have today is built on exploitation – just not of themselves. There’s a huge responsibility for activists in the Global North to expose this reality.’
‘As Fossil Free, we work a lot with activists from Colombia, Mozambique, and the Philippines because the companies we fight against often cause great harm in the Global South.’
‘As Extinction Rebellion, we have also run a major campaign with a Ugandan movement called Stop EACOP (a campaign opposing the East African Crude Oil Pipeline). This campaign has really shown the stark differences in activism conditions. Police brutality has increased in the Netherlands, and laws are becoming more restrictive, but when you look at Uganda, the level of violence activists face is extreme. Simply going out into the street can immediately lead to imprisonment, making it incredibly difficult to build a strong movement since it's crushed so quickly. That level of bravery is remarkable. Despite these differences, we can connect through the tools we use because the political landscape in the Global North is rapidly changing. The Dutch often assume that nothing will happen to them and that they will always live in a liberal democracy. However, the imperialist core has depleted many systems in the Global South, and now we are witnessing colonialism coming home in the form of fascism.’
‘One thing the Global North can offer the Global South is media visibility. With Stop EACOP, we have worked to block certain gas stations and to bring attention to a Ugandan news story that would otherwise be ignored by Dutch media. As a result, the story is finally being covered, and people are engaging with ministries and embassies to demand action. We're also pushing for companies to boycott certain businesses because financial pressure is a powerful tool. This is a critical strategy in our fight.’
Lionel: ‘Collaboration between the Global North and the Global South on activist security should focus on capacity building and knowledge exchange, including training in digital security, physical protection, and strategies for dealing with persecution, such as the use of secure communication tools. Sharing best practices from activists who have faced high-risk situations can strengthen local response capabilities. Financial support is also crucial, including funding for protection networks and emergency funds to cover legal fees, medical care, or even the evacuation of activists in danger.’
‘Beyond training and direct support, international collaboration should include political pressure. Organizations can apply diplomatic pressure on governments in the Global South, holding them accountable for violations against activists and ensuring these abuses are brought to light. International solidarity, through visibility campaigns and public support, is also essential, creating a global network that discourages persecution and helps protect activists. This collaboration not only enhances activist security but also contributes to building a safer environment for the defence of human rights.’
I’d like to end the interview on a more positive note. What advice or encouragement would you give to someone who’s thinking about starting their journey in activism?
Renske: ‘If you become an activist, especially in this political climate, you should do it based on the assumption that you will be followed and take measures accordingly. Don't think that your work is unimportant and that it won't attract any attention, especially if there's big money involved, with topics like weapons and the climate.’
‘I think a second thing is that it's not true for an activist that all publicity is good publicity. If you talk to the press or a newspaper that you know is going to frame you in a certain way, it often leads to you being doxed. Be careful who you talk to and listen to more experienced activists because they have faced police brutality.’
‘Lastly, and I think this is really important, don't be discouraged. All these things – being followed and so on – show that you are actually doing something worth fighting for. I think that's super important, that we don't get paralysed by the threat that looms over us both from states and non-state actors, like just regular opponents. You are making a difference, and it is a sacrifice that you are giving, but it also hurts a lot.’
‘Protecting ourselves is a priority because it's also for the long term. If they get you and if you're in jail for two years, how many actions could you have done? How much change could you have made? If you really want to make a change that's long-lasting, it's also important to keep protecting yourself physically, mentally, and digitally, to make sure that you can continue this fight.’
Lionel: ‘First, don’t look at activism as a source of income. Have a cause and fall in love with it. I’m fighting for a cause, I’m fighting for myself, and I’m fighting for a community. Unfortunately, very often, the effect of our fight won’t be felt by us, but we fight anyway.’
‘For people in countries like Mozambique, I would also recommend they have less aggressive approaches. Many times, when we know our rights, we have the urge to attack but don’t attack because it will delay things. Try activism in a more subtle way, protect yourself a little, try to find dialogue as a way to resolve things.’
‘Be resilient and strong because it’s not easy. And have a real passion for wanting to change the lives of others, wanting to change the world. Together, we can overcome these barriers that are rising today.’
‘Arm yourself with knowledge of the law. Before fighting for rights, know your rights.’
This series of interviews about feminism in today’s polarized world and inspiring examples of grassroots activism is made possible by Hivos’ Walking the Talk program.