By Milagros Salazar
LIMA, Mar 9, 2010 (IPS) - Although the Peruvian government reported that it had suspended the exploration activities of the Afrodita mining company in the country's northern Amazon jungle region to avoid further protests by local indigenous people, officials took no actual steps to bring the firm's work to a halt.
So what really happened?
After a meeting of the Council of Ministers, Prime Minister Javier Velásquez and Minister of Energy and Mines Pedro Sánchez announced on Feb. 17 that the Peruvian company's permits to drill in the rainforest had been suspended.
The two officials said OSINERGMIN, Peru's mine and energy regulatory agency, had stated that the decision would be in effect until the company provided evidence that it had authorisation to use the land where the exploration activities are being carried out.
"We have reached a decision on the Minera Afrodita business," Velásquez repeated in parliament two days later. "OSINERGMIN just suspended the company's activities. And it is not like the company says - that we have given in to blackmail (by local indigenous protesters); what happened was that the firm did not comply with what is established by law."
Leaders from 52 native communities complain that the company has polluted two rivers in Awajun indigenous territory with the mercury and cyanide used in mining operations.
Afrodita has been exploring for gold and silver in the Cordillera del Cóndor mountain range in the northern province of Amazonas, 15 km from the Ecuadorean border, despite protests by the local Awajún Indians.
Many local members of the Awajún ethnic group were also involved in a two-month roadblock and protests near the northern jungle town of Bagua - also in Amazonas - that ended in a tragic clash with police on Jun. 5, 2009 in which at least 10 native demonstrators and 23 police officers were killed.
The mining boom in Peru that has resulted from soaring minerals prices over the last few years, and the passage of laws aimed at opening up the jungle to the extractive industries, have led to numerous conflicts between mining companies and native communities protesting the environmental and social effects of the mining industry.
After the government reported the suspension of Afrodita's activities, OSINERGMIN inspection and oversight chief Guillermo Shinno told IPS that the company could continue its prospecting operations as soon as it obtained a permit showing it had surface rights to the land in question.
"We have to clarify that OSINERGMIN has not brought the company's exploration activities to a halt; it merely sent the firm an official letter indicating that it cannot engage in such activities without a land-use permit," he said.
In its Feb. 11 letter to the company, the regulatory agency cited a document in which the Ministry of Energy and Mines informed the company that the Superintendencia de Bienes Nacionales (Superintendence of National Assets) had not issued Afrodita a permit granting it surface rights or ownership to the land where it has already begun to operate.
In other words, OSINERGMIN's letter merely notified the mining company that it needed a permit. The firm has not yet presented its request for the permit to the Superintendencia, sources in the government office told IPS.
In a statement, Afrodita said it would "temporarily" bring its drilling operations to a halt while the administrative problems were worked out.
But OSINERGMIN said that "no appeal is necessary, because no administrative steps have been taken" to stop the company's activities.
Afrodita also said that during the halt in activities, it would focus on analysing geological reconnaissance data collected in the area where it is prospecting mainly for gold and silver.
Minera Afrodita is owned by Peruvian geologist Carlos Ballón, who is also a director of the Cardero Group, the umbrella company that includes Dorato Resources.
Through a series of option agreements, Dorato Resources Inc., a Canadian mineral exploration company set up to focus on the Cordillera del Cóndor - described by the firm's web site as "one of the most important gold-bearing districts in the region since pre-Incan times" - has the right to acquire 100 percent of Afrodita, which has held seven concessions in the area since 1995.
Dorato says the option would involve "an extensive land package of approximately 800 square kilometres."
But the Peruvian constitution bans foreigners from owning property within 50 km of the border.
Canada is the second-largest investor in Peru, after Spain. The biggest Canadian company operating in this South American country is Barrick Gold, the world's largest gold miner.
Mining is one of the engines of the economy in Peru, which according to "Top Mining Companies in Peru" put out by the Peru: Top Publications publishing company, is the world’s leading producer of silver and tellurium, and is second in zinc, third in copper, tin and bismuth, fourth in lead, molybdenum and arsenic, and sixth in gold and selenium.
In a communiqué, Dorato said "The Peruvian government is stating that although Minera Afrodita has legitimate, long-standing mining claims and a valid drill permit, it does not own the surface rights and therefore cannot proceed with the previously permitted and officially endorsed drill programme.
"The company believes, based on legal advice, that this reasoning has no legal basis, as Minera Afrodita has only carried out exploration work on state-owned land, where such work is expressly authorised under Peruvian Mining Law pursuant to which no additional authorisation is required.
"The exploration authorisation was granted to Minera Afrodita in December 2009, after having agreed with the local population, in a public assembly in the Santa Maria de Nieva town, the undertaking of exploration activities in the area," it adds.
But OSINERGMIN clarified that what Afrodita obtained on Dec. 9, 2009 was approval of the environmental impact study for the mining project, and that to begin exploration work it also had to prove that it had ownership or surface rights to the property in question, according to the country's environmental regulations.
And in the case of communally owned indigenous territory, a permit granted by two-thirds of the local community is needed.
"Approval of the environmental assessment study is not sufficient to begin exploration operations; other permits are also needed," Shinno told IPS. He pointed out, for example, that the company also needs to apply for a water use permit.
The technical report by the Ministry of Energy and Mines explaining that the environmental impact study was approved clearly states that a land-use permit is needed.
On page 13, the report says "it is the responsibility of the Afrodita SAC mining company to have, before the start of exploratory activities, surface rights to the land where said activities are to take place."
The report, seen by IPS, also says that approval of the environmental impact study "does not constitute the granting of authorisation, permits or other legal requisites that the mining project must have before it begins operations."
Under OSINERGMIN regulations, Afrodita could be subject to sanctions for beginning exploration work without the required permits.
The prime minister took advantage of the company's failure to comply with the regulations to try to nip in the bud indigenous protests that threatened to spread once again in the country's Amazon jungle region.
The suspension of Afrodita's activities was one of the 16 demands that indigenous organisations of northern and eastern Peru set forth in a Feb. 22 protest.
But the Awajun are demanding more than a mere suspension of operations. They are worried about pollution of rivers and destruction of flora and fauna by mining industry activity in the area.
Their worries are not unfounded. In 2009, OSINERGMIN initiated legal procedures to sanction Afrodita for mismanagement of solid waste. The company has appealed. But the regulatory agency declined to provide further details.
For the Awajun people, the hill in the Cordillera del Cóndor where Afrodita has cleared four hectares of jungle represents Kumpanan or "powerful hill", considered to be the father of lightning and the owner of air and water, according to the Lima newspaper La República.
The Awajun (also known as Aguaruna) are the biggest native ethnic group in Peru's Amazon region and have a reputation as fierce warriors.
Their leaders have denounced that Afrodita pays soldiers from military barracks in the area to guard the company's operations, rather than protecting the local population.
The Awajun also reported a year ago that the El Tambo military post was used as a base of operations by the company. At that time, the tension was at its peak, because local native anti-mine protesters had taken several mine workers hostage after they entered Awajun territory without permission from the local communities. The hostages were released unharmed after a few days.
For now, the government's announcement of a suspension of operations would appear to be merely a pain-killer or even a placebo, because the central problem remains unsolved: Afrodita will be able to continue operating as soon as it takes care of the pending bureaucratic steps. (END)
Republished from IPS
Showing posts with label Amazon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Amazon. Show all posts
Monday, 15 March 2010
Wednesday, 4 November 2009
Peru: Hunt Oil Contract to Reignite Amazon Uprising?
Bill Weinberg
After the indigenous uprising in Peru's Amazon region in June, the country is in many ways fundamentally changed. For the first time, indigenous leaders from the rainforest are in direct dialogue with the highest levels of government. For the first time, a powerful alliance has emerged between rainforest peoples, highland campesinos, and urban workers, who joined in the protest campaign. The days when Lima's political elite could treat the rainforest as an internal colony seem definitively over.
Yet there has been a high price in human lives, and only the most controversial of President Alan García's legislative decrees, which triggered the uprising, have been overturned. These decrees-promulgated under special powers granted to García by Peru's congress in 2008 to ready the country for the new U.S. free trade agreement-would undo a generation of progress in protecting indigenous territorial rights in the rainforest, opening indigenous lands to oil drilling, logging, and other forms of resource extraction as never before.
The southern Amazon region of Madre de Dios was the scene of considerable unrest during the past two years' worth of protests. In early July 2008, regional government offices in Puerto Maldonado, the regional capital of Madre de Dios, were occupied for three days. The city was paralyzed as the Native Federation of the Río Madre de Dios (FENAMAD), an indigenous Amazonian organization, joined the regional campesino union in launching the general strike. Campesino demands for land titles were united with indigenous demands for territorial rights, while federations representing small miners, Brazil-nut harvesters, Puerto Maldonado moto-taxi drivers, and other sectors also joined the strike, uniting in an Alliance of Federations.
Then the regional government offices were burned down. It remains unclear who was responsible, but indigenous protesters were accused. More than a year later, the burned-out shell of the building still stands, its walls scrawled with graffiti. The words have been painted over in an attempt to obscure them, but they are still readable: "La tierra es del pueblo" (The land is the people's) and "No se vende, se defiende" (We don't sell out, we defend ourselves). Some 25 were arrested, and Jorge Payaba, a former president of FENAMAD, was beaten and hospitalized. His successor, Antonio Iviche, went into hiding for several days before the charges against him were dropped.
Now it appears that an indigenous pledge to physically resist the operations of Dallas-based Hunt Oil on communal rainforest lands could reignite the uprising. In what is shaping up as an important test case, Hunt Oil is opening trails in preparation for seismic exploration within an indigenous reserve in Madre de Dios.
Hunt signed a contract with Peru's government to explore within Lot 76 in 2006 and later brought in the Spanish firm Repsol as a half-partner in the project. The lot overlaps with much of the Amarakaeri Communal Reserve as well as 16 titled native communities-including those 10 that are adjacent to the reserve and jointly responsible for managing it with the national government. Hunt's exploration work calls for 18 seismic lines with 20,000 detonation points across the southern part of the reserve. This work is to be serviced by 166 mobile camps with heliports, as well a main base camp. FENAMAD said these activities are to take place in the most sensitive part of the reserve, near the headwaters of the rivers that flow into the Río Madre de Dios.
FENAMAD's Iviche, a traditional Harakmbut leader, said the oil project threatens the forests and waters of the reserve, which was established in 2002 for the use of local Harakmbut, Yine, and Matsigenka communities.
"Our communities have decided not to allow these activities in the communal reserve," Iviche said, charging that Hunt is operating without the consent of the area's native inhabitants, most of whom oppose the oil company's presence. "They have never consulted with the communities." Failing to adequately consult indigenous communities on land-use issues in their territories is a violation of both international standards and Peru's constitution.
The Amarakaeri reserve was created following years of petitioning by FENAMAD-and a march in April 2002 by some 1,000 indigenous people in Puerto Maldonado. Each of the 10 communities bordering the reserve has its own range within it for hunting and gathering, but indigenous residents cannot enter the zonas silvestres, or wild zones-yet this is where Hunt is now operating.
Additionally, Lot 76 borders (or nearly borders, separated by a strip barely two thirds of a mile wide) two national parks. On the north, it borders, and slightly overlaps with, a State Reserve for Peoples in Voluntary Isolation. This was created along with the Amarakaeri reserve to protect "uncontacted" Matsigenka bands believed to be living in this zone.
On September 9, FENAMAD sought an injunction against Hunt's exploration work before the Madre de Dios Superior Court of Justice, the equivalent of a local district court. Said FENAMAD secretary Jaime Corisepa: "We have to attack on every level, using the courts, but we are ready to defend our territory physically."
In 2007, Hunt began holding "information workshops" at FENAMAD's offices in Puerto Maldonado and at some of the communities bordering the reserve. Corisepa denies these were consultations, saying the company representatives were just "announcing what they were going to do."
One community, Shintuya, has signed an agreement with Hunt to accept $30,000 in compensation for allowing the company access to its titled lands. There is a dispute as to whether the community approved this decision by the two-thirds vote required under Peruvian law.
FENAMAD said Hunt is required at a minimum to compensate the two communities whose lands it seeks to enter-Shintuya and Puerto Luz, at the eastern and western ends of the seismic lines, respectively-and the Amarakaeri reserve's governing council, known as the Administrative Contract Executive (ECA). Hunt has no deal with Puerto Luz, and a tentative deal with the ECA is now in question.
"Laws are being systematically ignored by the company and the government," Corisepa charges. "The Peruvian state has a hydrocarbon policy that violates the rights of indigenous communities. This is what the Amazon uprising was about."
*
At a September 13 meeting at FENAMAD's Puerto Maldonado office, leaders from the 10 communities bordering the Amarakaeri reserve met privately to hash out their position, then invited three Hunt Oil representatives to receive their declaration. The atmosphere in the small thatched-roof conference room was tense.
Three communities, Shintuya, Puerto Luz, and Diamante, dissented from the decision to issue a declaration opposing the project. Nonetheless, the joint statement from FENAMAD and the ECA opposing the Hunt-Repsol presence in the reserve demanded that "this decision be respected by the state as well as the said companies."
Anoshka, a Harakmbut leader from the community of Masenawa who is also a popular singer on the local cumbia circuit, gave the most impassioned statement. "I plead with you from my heart to respect our desire," she said, directly addressing the Hunt representatives. "A majority of our communities have decided no. The conflicts you are sowing among us will not succeed, but you are already causing damage to our communities."
Speaking of the Amarakaeri reserve's management plan ostensibly drawn up with input from the 10 communities, she added: "The master plan said the communities favor the oil company. This is a lie and we will never accept this."
The master plan, drawn up by the government natural-resources agency, is strongly contested. Although the ECA signed off on it, many Harakmbut charge the communities were not informed of last-minute changes that afforded oil companies easier access to resource exploitation in the most sensitive area of the reserve. Also at issue is the plan's "recommendation" that the ECA accept any hydrocarbon contracts that the state permits in the reserve.
FENAMAD is especially concerned about the status of the high jungle in the south of the reserve, near the border with Cuzco region, which protects the watersheds of several tributaries of the Río Madre de Dios that run through the reserve. FENAMAD argues that under Peru's Water Law, this area should be a strict protection zone, which would bar resource exploitation there. Instead, it was reclassified as a zona silvestre, affording a lower level of protection.
Equally controversial is the environmental-impact study produced for the Hunt project by the Peruvian firm Demus. In April, Demus workers in the community of Barranco Chico were confronted by local residents armed with clubs, who chased them from their lands. FENAMAD challenged the impact study before the Mines and Energy Ministry as what Corisepa calls a "plagiarism"-basically a cut-and-paste job from earlier studies elsewhere in the Amazon. Nonetheless, the ministry accepted it in June.
Hunt workers may be the next to be physically confronted. At the end of the meeting, Iviche announced that if Hunt doesn't withdraw from the reserve, the communities are prepared to carry out a desalojo-eviction.
*
Silvana lay, a forestry engineer who serves as Hunt's director of environmental health and safety for the Lot 76 project, defended the company's position in comments outside the meeting at the FENAMAD office.
"We weren't going to come in until the master plan was approved," she said. "We waited two years, and during that period we met with the communities and gave information. We are working in the part where we are allowed to work under the rules that were put in the plan. The last thing we want is a dangerous situation for our workers or the communities."
While the ECA did not have to sign off on the impact statement, Lay points out that public hearings on the study were held in the village of Salvación. "We held workshops with the communities on whose lands we are going to work, with the ECA invited."
Lay insists that Hunt, in contrast to many resource companies in Peru, is committed to playing by the rules. "We have the [impact statement] approved. We have the master plan approved. We did workshops with the communities-all this before we started our work. We have the signatories of everybody saying the work can go ahead-within the rules, of course. And then we received a call saying the work cannot go ahead."
She points out that the $380,000 offered in compensation to the ECA is nearly 25% of the Amarakaeri reserve's five-year budget. It is now in question whether the ECA will accept this money. She said the $30,000 pledged to Shintuya is forthcoming, and that Hunt will stay off of Puerto Luz community's lands until a compensation deal is finalized. Hunt's overall budget for the exploration project is $17 million, she said.
Lay asserted that the Hunt contract is in the best interests of the communities. "They can use that money to police the reserve against illegal logging and mining. The illegal exploitation is the greatest threat to the reserve, while the media and government are checking up on us. We are a good opportunity for the reserve."
FENAMAD attorney Milton Mercado rejects Lay's portrayal. "The ECA has never signed any document allowing Hunt in the reserve," he said. While the master plan allows oil exploitation in a general sense-with approval by the National Service of Protected Areas-it makes no reference to the Hunt contract. And this provision was added above the protests of the communities, he added.
"The only consultation has been with Shintuya and Puerto Luz," Mercado said. Consultation is mandated by the International Labor Organization's Convention 169, to which Peru is a signatory. The principle is also enshrined in Article 6 of Peru's constitution.
Mercado sees a hopeful precedent in a February ruling by the Constitutional Tribunal, Peru's highest court, in a case concerning Lot 103-which includes the Cordillera Escalera Regional Conservation Area, a high jungle that protects the headwaters of important rivers in northern San Martín region. Citing potential damage to aquifers, the tribunal ruled against a consortium including Repsol, Petrobras, and Occidental Petroleum, ordering a halt to exploration in the reserve until a master plan is in place.
FENAMAD's case against Hunt likewise focuses on the issue of protecting aquifers. But Mercado points out that it is the first in the history of Peru to rest on lack of consultation with indigenous communities-and a favorable ruling would be precedent-setting.
*
Almost all of the Madre de Dios region is divided into hydrocarbon exploration lots. Sapet, a Peruvian venture of China National Petroleum, has a license for Lots 113 and 111-the former covering the Reserve for Peoples in Voluntary Isolation, and the latter actually covering the town of Puerto Maldonado. The company has pledged not to explore in the reserve, for the moment at least. Lot 157, on unprotected lands to the east of the large protected areas, is currently suspended following the "Petrogate" scandal, in which officials are accused of kickbacks in the granting of concessions to Norwegian company Discover Petroleum.
These medium-sized firms are clearly viewed as an advance guard for the industry majors, who mostly abandoned operations in the Peruvian Amazon because of instability in the 1990s-and who García openly hopes to woo back.
Shell Oil explorations in area in the mid-1980s took a grave toll in disease on the recently contacted Yaminahua people in the north of Madre de Dios, who now have a titled community in neighboring Ucuyali region.
A decade later, a consortium including ExxonMobil and Elf began exploration in Lot 78-covering nearly the same territory as the contemporary Lot 76. This lot was reorganized in subsequent years as the communities around the Amarakaeri reserve were being titled.
In addition to hydrocarbons, timber is being massively exploited in Madre de Dios, mostly by Peruvian firms for export to the United States and China. There are legal concessions on state land in the largely unprotected eastern half of Madre de Dios-as well as much illegal exploitation in the protected areas.
Gold is next in line in the local resource boom. Legal placer and dredge mining concessions operate on the region's rivers. But illegal and highly destructive hydraulic mining goes on in pirate operations.
A hydroelectric project is pending on the Río Inambari, with the Brazilian firm Odebrecht likely to get the contract. The Inter-Oceanic Highway linking Brazil's Atlantic coast with Peru's Pacific is also under construction through Madre de Dios.
This matrix of development interests could make the frontier zone of Madre de Dios a very different place in a few short years-and many young indigenous people fear what the future will bring. Wili Corisepa, a young Harakmbut from Shintuya who works with FENAMAD, said: "In the time of the missionaries, in the time of the rubber, of the timber, and now the oil, they all lied to us. It is the same person wearing a different mask."
Bill Weinberg is author of Homage to Chiapas: The New Indigenous Struggles in Mexico (Verso, 2000) and editor of the website World War 4 Report (ww4report.com). Research support for this article was provided by the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute.
Republished from NACLA
After the indigenous uprising in Peru's Amazon region in June, the country is in many ways fundamentally changed. For the first time, indigenous leaders from the rainforest are in direct dialogue with the highest levels of government. For the first time, a powerful alliance has emerged between rainforest peoples, highland campesinos, and urban workers, who joined in the protest campaign. The days when Lima's political elite could treat the rainforest as an internal colony seem definitively over.
Yet there has been a high price in human lives, and only the most controversial of President Alan García's legislative decrees, which triggered the uprising, have been overturned. These decrees-promulgated under special powers granted to García by Peru's congress in 2008 to ready the country for the new U.S. free trade agreement-would undo a generation of progress in protecting indigenous territorial rights in the rainforest, opening indigenous lands to oil drilling, logging, and other forms of resource extraction as never before.
The southern Amazon region of Madre de Dios was the scene of considerable unrest during the past two years' worth of protests. In early July 2008, regional government offices in Puerto Maldonado, the regional capital of Madre de Dios, were occupied for three days. The city was paralyzed as the Native Federation of the Río Madre de Dios (FENAMAD), an indigenous Amazonian organization, joined the regional campesino union in launching the general strike. Campesino demands for land titles were united with indigenous demands for territorial rights, while federations representing small miners, Brazil-nut harvesters, Puerto Maldonado moto-taxi drivers, and other sectors also joined the strike, uniting in an Alliance of Federations.
Then the regional government offices were burned down. It remains unclear who was responsible, but indigenous protesters were accused. More than a year later, the burned-out shell of the building still stands, its walls scrawled with graffiti. The words have been painted over in an attempt to obscure them, but they are still readable: "La tierra es del pueblo" (The land is the people's) and "No se vende, se defiende" (We don't sell out, we defend ourselves). Some 25 were arrested, and Jorge Payaba, a former president of FENAMAD, was beaten and hospitalized. His successor, Antonio Iviche, went into hiding for several days before the charges against him were dropped.
Now it appears that an indigenous pledge to physically resist the operations of Dallas-based Hunt Oil on communal rainforest lands could reignite the uprising. In what is shaping up as an important test case, Hunt Oil is opening trails in preparation for seismic exploration within an indigenous reserve in Madre de Dios.
Hunt signed a contract with Peru's government to explore within Lot 76 in 2006 and later brought in the Spanish firm Repsol as a half-partner in the project. The lot overlaps with much of the Amarakaeri Communal Reserve as well as 16 titled native communities-including those 10 that are adjacent to the reserve and jointly responsible for managing it with the national government. Hunt's exploration work calls for 18 seismic lines with 20,000 detonation points across the southern part of the reserve. This work is to be serviced by 166 mobile camps with heliports, as well a main base camp. FENAMAD said these activities are to take place in the most sensitive part of the reserve, near the headwaters of the rivers that flow into the Río Madre de Dios.
FENAMAD's Iviche, a traditional Harakmbut leader, said the oil project threatens the forests and waters of the reserve, which was established in 2002 for the use of local Harakmbut, Yine, and Matsigenka communities.
"Our communities have decided not to allow these activities in the communal reserve," Iviche said, charging that Hunt is operating without the consent of the area's native inhabitants, most of whom oppose the oil company's presence. "They have never consulted with the communities." Failing to adequately consult indigenous communities on land-use issues in their territories is a violation of both international standards and Peru's constitution.
The Amarakaeri reserve was created following years of petitioning by FENAMAD-and a march in April 2002 by some 1,000 indigenous people in Puerto Maldonado. Each of the 10 communities bordering the reserve has its own range within it for hunting and gathering, but indigenous residents cannot enter the zonas silvestres, or wild zones-yet this is where Hunt is now operating.
Additionally, Lot 76 borders (or nearly borders, separated by a strip barely two thirds of a mile wide) two national parks. On the north, it borders, and slightly overlaps with, a State Reserve for Peoples in Voluntary Isolation. This was created along with the Amarakaeri reserve to protect "uncontacted" Matsigenka bands believed to be living in this zone.
On September 9, FENAMAD sought an injunction against Hunt's exploration work before the Madre de Dios Superior Court of Justice, the equivalent of a local district court. Said FENAMAD secretary Jaime Corisepa: "We have to attack on every level, using the courts, but we are ready to defend our territory physically."
In 2007, Hunt began holding "information workshops" at FENAMAD's offices in Puerto Maldonado and at some of the communities bordering the reserve. Corisepa denies these were consultations, saying the company representatives were just "announcing what they were going to do."
One community, Shintuya, has signed an agreement with Hunt to accept $30,000 in compensation for allowing the company access to its titled lands. There is a dispute as to whether the community approved this decision by the two-thirds vote required under Peruvian law.
FENAMAD said Hunt is required at a minimum to compensate the two communities whose lands it seeks to enter-Shintuya and Puerto Luz, at the eastern and western ends of the seismic lines, respectively-and the Amarakaeri reserve's governing council, known as the Administrative Contract Executive (ECA). Hunt has no deal with Puerto Luz, and a tentative deal with the ECA is now in question.
"Laws are being systematically ignored by the company and the government," Corisepa charges. "The Peruvian state has a hydrocarbon policy that violates the rights of indigenous communities. This is what the Amazon uprising was about."
*
At a September 13 meeting at FENAMAD's Puerto Maldonado office, leaders from the 10 communities bordering the Amarakaeri reserve met privately to hash out their position, then invited three Hunt Oil representatives to receive their declaration. The atmosphere in the small thatched-roof conference room was tense.
Three communities, Shintuya, Puerto Luz, and Diamante, dissented from the decision to issue a declaration opposing the project. Nonetheless, the joint statement from FENAMAD and the ECA opposing the Hunt-Repsol presence in the reserve demanded that "this decision be respected by the state as well as the said companies."
Anoshka, a Harakmbut leader from the community of Masenawa who is also a popular singer on the local cumbia circuit, gave the most impassioned statement. "I plead with you from my heart to respect our desire," she said, directly addressing the Hunt representatives. "A majority of our communities have decided no. The conflicts you are sowing among us will not succeed, but you are already causing damage to our communities."
Speaking of the Amarakaeri reserve's management plan ostensibly drawn up with input from the 10 communities, she added: "The master plan said the communities favor the oil company. This is a lie and we will never accept this."
The master plan, drawn up by the government natural-resources agency, is strongly contested. Although the ECA signed off on it, many Harakmbut charge the communities were not informed of last-minute changes that afforded oil companies easier access to resource exploitation in the most sensitive area of the reserve. Also at issue is the plan's "recommendation" that the ECA accept any hydrocarbon contracts that the state permits in the reserve.
FENAMAD is especially concerned about the status of the high jungle in the south of the reserve, near the border with Cuzco region, which protects the watersheds of several tributaries of the Río Madre de Dios that run through the reserve. FENAMAD argues that under Peru's Water Law, this area should be a strict protection zone, which would bar resource exploitation there. Instead, it was reclassified as a zona silvestre, affording a lower level of protection.
Equally controversial is the environmental-impact study produced for the Hunt project by the Peruvian firm Demus. In April, Demus workers in the community of Barranco Chico were confronted by local residents armed with clubs, who chased them from their lands. FENAMAD challenged the impact study before the Mines and Energy Ministry as what Corisepa calls a "plagiarism"-basically a cut-and-paste job from earlier studies elsewhere in the Amazon. Nonetheless, the ministry accepted it in June.
Hunt workers may be the next to be physically confronted. At the end of the meeting, Iviche announced that if Hunt doesn't withdraw from the reserve, the communities are prepared to carry out a desalojo-eviction.
*
Silvana lay, a forestry engineer who serves as Hunt's director of environmental health and safety for the Lot 76 project, defended the company's position in comments outside the meeting at the FENAMAD office.
"We weren't going to come in until the master plan was approved," she said. "We waited two years, and during that period we met with the communities and gave information. We are working in the part where we are allowed to work under the rules that were put in the plan. The last thing we want is a dangerous situation for our workers or the communities."
While the ECA did not have to sign off on the impact statement, Lay points out that public hearings on the study were held in the village of Salvación. "We held workshops with the communities on whose lands we are going to work, with the ECA invited."
Lay insists that Hunt, in contrast to many resource companies in Peru, is committed to playing by the rules. "We have the [impact statement] approved. We have the master plan approved. We did workshops with the communities-all this before we started our work. We have the signatories of everybody saying the work can go ahead-within the rules, of course. And then we received a call saying the work cannot go ahead."
She points out that the $380,000 offered in compensation to the ECA is nearly 25% of the Amarakaeri reserve's five-year budget. It is now in question whether the ECA will accept this money. She said the $30,000 pledged to Shintuya is forthcoming, and that Hunt will stay off of Puerto Luz community's lands until a compensation deal is finalized. Hunt's overall budget for the exploration project is $17 million, she said.
Lay asserted that the Hunt contract is in the best interests of the communities. "They can use that money to police the reserve against illegal logging and mining. The illegal exploitation is the greatest threat to the reserve, while the media and government are checking up on us. We are a good opportunity for the reserve."
FENAMAD attorney Milton Mercado rejects Lay's portrayal. "The ECA has never signed any document allowing Hunt in the reserve," he said. While the master plan allows oil exploitation in a general sense-with approval by the National Service of Protected Areas-it makes no reference to the Hunt contract. And this provision was added above the protests of the communities, he added.
"The only consultation has been with Shintuya and Puerto Luz," Mercado said. Consultation is mandated by the International Labor Organization's Convention 169, to which Peru is a signatory. The principle is also enshrined in Article 6 of Peru's constitution.
Mercado sees a hopeful precedent in a February ruling by the Constitutional Tribunal, Peru's highest court, in a case concerning Lot 103-which includes the Cordillera Escalera Regional Conservation Area, a high jungle that protects the headwaters of important rivers in northern San Martín region. Citing potential damage to aquifers, the tribunal ruled against a consortium including Repsol, Petrobras, and Occidental Petroleum, ordering a halt to exploration in the reserve until a master plan is in place.
FENAMAD's case against Hunt likewise focuses on the issue of protecting aquifers. But Mercado points out that it is the first in the history of Peru to rest on lack of consultation with indigenous communities-and a favorable ruling would be precedent-setting.
*
Almost all of the Madre de Dios region is divided into hydrocarbon exploration lots. Sapet, a Peruvian venture of China National Petroleum, has a license for Lots 113 and 111-the former covering the Reserve for Peoples in Voluntary Isolation, and the latter actually covering the town of Puerto Maldonado. The company has pledged not to explore in the reserve, for the moment at least. Lot 157, on unprotected lands to the east of the large protected areas, is currently suspended following the "Petrogate" scandal, in which officials are accused of kickbacks in the granting of concessions to Norwegian company Discover Petroleum.
These medium-sized firms are clearly viewed as an advance guard for the industry majors, who mostly abandoned operations in the Peruvian Amazon because of instability in the 1990s-and who García openly hopes to woo back.
Shell Oil explorations in area in the mid-1980s took a grave toll in disease on the recently contacted Yaminahua people in the north of Madre de Dios, who now have a titled community in neighboring Ucuyali region.
A decade later, a consortium including ExxonMobil and Elf began exploration in Lot 78-covering nearly the same territory as the contemporary Lot 76. This lot was reorganized in subsequent years as the communities around the Amarakaeri reserve were being titled.
In addition to hydrocarbons, timber is being massively exploited in Madre de Dios, mostly by Peruvian firms for export to the United States and China. There are legal concessions on state land in the largely unprotected eastern half of Madre de Dios-as well as much illegal exploitation in the protected areas.
Gold is next in line in the local resource boom. Legal placer and dredge mining concessions operate on the region's rivers. But illegal and highly destructive hydraulic mining goes on in pirate operations.
A hydroelectric project is pending on the Río Inambari, with the Brazilian firm Odebrecht likely to get the contract. The Inter-Oceanic Highway linking Brazil's Atlantic coast with Peru's Pacific is also under construction through Madre de Dios.
This matrix of development interests could make the frontier zone of Madre de Dios a very different place in a few short years-and many young indigenous people fear what the future will bring. Wili Corisepa, a young Harakmbut from Shintuya who works with FENAMAD, said: "In the time of the missionaries, in the time of the rubber, of the timber, and now the oil, they all lied to us. It is the same person wearing a different mask."
Bill Weinberg is author of Homage to Chiapas: The New Indigenous Struggles in Mexico (Verso, 2000) and editor of the website World War 4 Report (ww4report.com). Research support for this article was provided by the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute.
Republished from NACLA
Monday, 2 November 2009
Amazonian natives say they will defend tribal lands from Hunt Oil with "their lives"
By Jeremy Hance
Indigenous natives in the Amazon are headed to the town of Salvacion in Peru with a plan to forcibly remove the Texas-based Hunt Oil company from their land as early as today. Peruvian police forces, numbering in the hundreds, are said to be waiting in the town.
The crisis has risen over an area known as Lot 76, or the Amarakaeri Communal Reserve. The 400,000 hectare reserve was created in 2002 to protect the flora and fauna of the area, as well as to safeguard watersheds of particular importance to indigenous groups in the region.
Despite its protected status, in 2006 the Peruvian government granted concessions within the reserve to two oil companies, Hunt Oil and the Spanish company Repsol.
According to FENAMAD (the Native Federation of the Madre de Dios) protections had been slowly and systematically stripped from the reserve without indigenous groups' input. In addition, FENADMAD contends that Hunt Oil has violated international standards and the Peruvian constitution by going ahead with their operations without approval from the indigenous groups.
Hunt's director of environmental health and safety for Lot 76, Silvana Lay, disagrees. He told the Indian Country Today that “we weren’t going to come in until the Master Plan was approved. We waited two years, and during that period we met with the communities and gave information. We have the signatories of everybody saying the work can go ahead – within the rules, of course. And then we received a call saying the work cannot go ahead.”
However, indigenous groups say that Hunt Oil only met with two communities: the Shintuya and the Puerto Luz, leaving others who use the reserve out in the cold.
A document written by FENAMAD further alleges that the Environmental and Social Impact Study conducted by Hunt Oil and approved by the federal government is "completely irresponsible and [does] not describe any reality for the area. It was approved illegally and unconstitutionally, in spite of the observations made by a group of professionals from civil society in Madre de Dios."
On September 13th of this year representatives of indigenous groups released a statement that said "the entry of Hunt Oil and Respol into the interior of the Amarakaeri Communal Reserve to execute seismic projects is not accepted, a decision that will be respected by the Peruvian State, Hunt Oil and Repsol, who have been present witnesses to this decision."
However, Hunt Oil has continued its seismic surveys inside the reserve. It is their unwillingness to halt activities that has prompted the indigenous groups to travel to Salvacion and, according to statements made by the indigenous groups, forcibly remove the US-corporation from their land.
"The most vulnerable ecological and cultural areas are now being invaded by seismic lines, whose impacts are irreparable. The area of intervention is one of very high biological value from a worldwide perspective and its surface and underground hydrological system have great cultural significance for the Harakmbut, which makes this a vital space for the subsistence of not only the indigenous communities, but the greater population of the Amazon Basin," the document by FENAMAD states. "For that reason, all of the beneficiary communities of the RCA have taken the position of impeding the entrance into the oil block and defending the protected area with their lives."
FENAMAD's statement may be a portent: in June a clash between native peoples and Peruvian police over exploitation of the Amazon turned bloody. Thousands of indigenous people blocked roads to protest new rule changes that made it easier for foreign companies to extract oil, gas, minerals, and timber from the Peruvian Amazon, including tribal lands. During the ensuing clash, twenty-three police were killed and at least ten protestors, according to official numbers. Indigenous groups, however, say that hundreds remain missing and have asked for a Truth Commission to investigate the tragic incident.
Republished from Mongabay.com
Indigenous natives in the Amazon are headed to the town of Salvacion in Peru with a plan to forcibly remove the Texas-based Hunt Oil company from their land as early as today. Peruvian police forces, numbering in the hundreds, are said to be waiting in the town.
The crisis has risen over an area known as Lot 76, or the Amarakaeri Communal Reserve. The 400,000 hectare reserve was created in 2002 to protect the flora and fauna of the area, as well as to safeguard watersheds of particular importance to indigenous groups in the region.
Despite its protected status, in 2006 the Peruvian government granted concessions within the reserve to two oil companies, Hunt Oil and the Spanish company Repsol.
According to FENAMAD (the Native Federation of the Madre de Dios) protections had been slowly and systematically stripped from the reserve without indigenous groups' input. In addition, FENADMAD contends that Hunt Oil has violated international standards and the Peruvian constitution by going ahead with their operations without approval from the indigenous groups.
Hunt's director of environmental health and safety for Lot 76, Silvana Lay, disagrees. He told the Indian Country Today that “we weren’t going to come in until the Master Plan was approved. We waited two years, and during that period we met with the communities and gave information. We have the signatories of everybody saying the work can go ahead – within the rules, of course. And then we received a call saying the work cannot go ahead.”
However, indigenous groups say that Hunt Oil only met with two communities: the Shintuya and the Puerto Luz, leaving others who use the reserve out in the cold.
A document written by FENAMAD further alleges that the Environmental and Social Impact Study conducted by Hunt Oil and approved by the federal government is "completely irresponsible and [does] not describe any reality for the area. It was approved illegally and unconstitutionally, in spite of the observations made by a group of professionals from civil society in Madre de Dios."
On September 13th of this year representatives of indigenous groups released a statement that said "the entry of Hunt Oil and Respol into the interior of the Amarakaeri Communal Reserve to execute seismic projects is not accepted, a decision that will be respected by the Peruvian State, Hunt Oil and Repsol, who have been present witnesses to this decision."
However, Hunt Oil has continued its seismic surveys inside the reserve. It is their unwillingness to halt activities that has prompted the indigenous groups to travel to Salvacion and, according to statements made by the indigenous groups, forcibly remove the US-corporation from their land.
"The most vulnerable ecological and cultural areas are now being invaded by seismic lines, whose impacts are irreparable. The area of intervention is one of very high biological value from a worldwide perspective and its surface and underground hydrological system have great cultural significance for the Harakmbut, which makes this a vital space for the subsistence of not only the indigenous communities, but the greater population of the Amazon Basin," the document by FENAMAD states. "For that reason, all of the beneficiary communities of the RCA have taken the position of impeding the entrance into the oil block and defending the protected area with their lives."
FENAMAD's statement may be a portent: in June a clash between native peoples and Peruvian police over exploitation of the Amazon turned bloody. Thousands of indigenous people blocked roads to protest new rule changes that made it easier for foreign companies to extract oil, gas, minerals, and timber from the Peruvian Amazon, including tribal lands. During the ensuing clash, twenty-three police were killed and at least ten protestors, according to official numbers. Indigenous groups, however, say that hundreds remain missing and have asked for a Truth Commission to investigate the tragic incident.
Republished from Mongabay.com
Wednesday, 28 October 2009
Amazon natives move to evict U.S. Oil company
By Ahni
Some three hundred indigenous people from the Peruvian Amazon region of Madre de Dios are on their way to the town of Salvacion to evict the Texas-based company Hunt Oil from their ancestral territory.
According to reports on mongabay.com, hundreds of Peruvian police officers are waiting in the town for their arrival.
Last month, Indigenous leaders from the Madre de Dios issued a formal statement rejecting Hunt Oil’s presence in the Amarakaeri Communal Reserve—a legally protected biodiversity ‘hot spot’ which the government handed over to the company in 2006. The leaders warned Hunt Oil to voluntarily exit the territory within a week or they would be forced out.
This ultimatum was released just a few days after FENAMAD, the Native Federation of the Madre de Dios River and tributaries, took legal action to halt the company’s activities, which, according to the lawsuit, threatens the headwaters of the Madre de Dios river, Upper Alto Madre de Dios, the Blanco river, the Azul river, the Inambari river and the Colorado river.
Referred to by the company as “Lot 76″, the Amarakaeri Communal Reserve was created in 2002 to safeguard all six rivers, which are of critical importance to the indigenous Harakmbut, Yine and Machiguenga Peoples and to protect the region’s biodiversity. When the lawsuit was filed, FENAMAD’s leader stated his hope to “paralyze any activity inside the Amarakaeri Communal Reserve, as otherwise the very existence of Madre de Dios’ indigenous people would be put at risk.”
The lawsuit also points out that the government failed to consult with the communities in the reserve. “This omission violates the Agreement No.169 of the International Labour Organization, which Peru had signed, and which points out in its article 6 that governments should ‘consult with the interested peoples by using appropriate procedures and in particular through their representatives institutions, each time when legal or administrative measures are planned that might affect them directly’”, notes a statement by FENAMAD.
Despite this and other laws, not too mention the ultimatum, Hunt Oil is actively operating inside the reserve, content to hide behind the government’s unlawful “generosity.”
“The most vulnerable ecological and cultural areas are now being invaded by seismic lines, whose impacts are irreparable. The area of intervention is one of very high biological value from a worldwide perspective and its surface and underground hydrological system have great cultural significance for the Harakmbut, which makes this a vital space for the subsistence of not only the indigenous communities, but the greater population of the Amazon Basin,” states FENAMAD. “For that reason, all of the beneficiary communities of the RCA have taken the position of impeding the entrance into the oil block and defending the protected area with their lives.”
Republished from Intercontinental Cry
Some three hundred indigenous people from the Peruvian Amazon region of Madre de Dios are on their way to the town of Salvacion to evict the Texas-based company Hunt Oil from their ancestral territory.
According to reports on mongabay.com, hundreds of Peruvian police officers are waiting in the town for their arrival.
Last month, Indigenous leaders from the Madre de Dios issued a formal statement rejecting Hunt Oil’s presence in the Amarakaeri Communal Reserve—a legally protected biodiversity ‘hot spot’ which the government handed over to the company in 2006. The leaders warned Hunt Oil to voluntarily exit the territory within a week or they would be forced out.
This ultimatum was released just a few days after FENAMAD, the Native Federation of the Madre de Dios River and tributaries, took legal action to halt the company’s activities, which, according to the lawsuit, threatens the headwaters of the Madre de Dios river, Upper Alto Madre de Dios, the Blanco river, the Azul river, the Inambari river and the Colorado river.
Referred to by the company as “Lot 76″, the Amarakaeri Communal Reserve was created in 2002 to safeguard all six rivers, which are of critical importance to the indigenous Harakmbut, Yine and Machiguenga Peoples and to protect the region’s biodiversity. When the lawsuit was filed, FENAMAD’s leader stated his hope to “paralyze any activity inside the Amarakaeri Communal Reserve, as otherwise the very existence of Madre de Dios’ indigenous people would be put at risk.”
The lawsuit also points out that the government failed to consult with the communities in the reserve. “This omission violates the Agreement No.169 of the International Labour Organization, which Peru had signed, and which points out in its article 6 that governments should ‘consult with the interested peoples by using appropriate procedures and in particular through their representatives institutions, each time when legal or administrative measures are planned that might affect them directly’”, notes a statement by FENAMAD.
Despite this and other laws, not too mention the ultimatum, Hunt Oil is actively operating inside the reserve, content to hide behind the government’s unlawful “generosity.”
“The most vulnerable ecological and cultural areas are now being invaded by seismic lines, whose impacts are irreparable. The area of intervention is one of very high biological value from a worldwide perspective and its surface and underground hydrological system have great cultural significance for the Harakmbut, which makes this a vital space for the subsistence of not only the indigenous communities, but the greater population of the Amazon Basin,” states FENAMAD. “For that reason, all of the beneficiary communities of the RCA have taken the position of impeding the entrance into the oil block and defending the protected area with their lives.”
Republished from Intercontinental Cry
Thursday, 10 September 2009
Defending the defenceless: Peru's most wanted refuses to be silenced
From her jungle hideaway, Teresita Lopez tells Guy Adams why she won't give up fighting for her persecuted people.
Teresita Lopez is in hiding. "Somewhere in the Amazon" is as much as she is willing to reveal about her current location now she has been placed on the Peruvian government's most-wanted list.
The authorities in Lima have charged her with inciting murder, sedition and insurrection. Nonsense, she says. All she has been doing is protecting the rights of Peru's 350,000-strong Amazonian Indian community and helping them safeguard their traditional way of life, under threat from a President keen to open the Amazon to international mining, logging and oil companies.
"The indigenous people of the Amazon don't ask anything of the government because it has never supported us," Lopez said in an interview. "All we demand is respect for our ways of life, and respect for our rights as citizens to live on our land – where we were born and where we will die."
The tensions in this corner of South America burst onto the international radar in June, with a massacre that became known as "the Amazon's Tiananmen". Dozens of people were killed and hundreds wounded when Peruvian police fired on crowds demonstrating on a highway near the northern town of Bagua Grande against plans to sell swathes of their homeland to foreign-owned corporations.
That spiralled into a political crisis for President Alan Garcia. His popular Prime Minister, Yehude Simon, resigned, apparently in protest at how the whole affair was handled. Now, more than two months after these grisly events, the President's still wobbly government has turned its attention to the business of exacting serious revenge.
Ms Lopez, a community leader from the Yanesha tribe, is just one of the Amazonian Indian's most prominent leaders to have been forced into hiding as a result. She could face life imprisonment if arrested and convicted.
"We have been charged with sedition, rebellion, and insurrection," she explained. "The accusations were announced at a press conference. This violates all legal procedures. The government is effectively persecuting us, the leaders, for working with indigenous people and voicing their demands."
Peruvian authorities have accused her of being responsible for sparking the Bagua massacre on 5 June. But Ms Lopez says she was 900 miles away in Lima on that day.
The basis of the charges against her is that she attended a televised press conference in the capital in May, which prosecutors say helped inspire the unrest. "I have been denounced, and a warrant for my arrest has been issued, for sitting at a table during a press conference," Ms Lopez said. "I didn't even say anything. Imagine if I had!"
The 48-year-old, from the Oxapampa region in central Peru, says she is being sheltered by "brothers, family and colleagues in the indigenous movement". She has been advised to remain in hiding or seek asylum, rather than emerge to clear her name. "I have no possibility or guarantee of defending myself legally because the executive is interfering in what the judiciary is doing," she said.
At the heart of the dispute are 13 laws unveiled by President Garcia last year. They threatened to open 67 million hectares of Peru's undeveloped rainforest to exploitation by foreign-owned logging, mining and energy companies. The Indians were outraged and staged protests to demand they be repealed. Four of the 13 controversial laws have now been dropped. However, that still leaves nine in place.
Stephen Corry, the director of Survival International, a human rights organisation that supports tribal peoples, says that Teresita's case clearly illustrates what is going on in Peru right now. "Garcia's government is determined to sabotage the indigenous movement by driving the real leaders into exile or trying to imprison them," he said.
Alberto Pizango, the leader of AIDESEP, a group representing Peru's 56 tribes, was granted asylum in Nicaragua, along with two colleagues, in the aftermath of the violence on the grounds of political persecution. The Central American nation believes that the men are unlikely to get fair trial in their homeland. The number of Amazonian Indians facing charges – in relation to a massacre they blame on the police – has soared to 120.
Among those being prosecuted, rights groups say, are 48 native Indians who are still receiving hospital treatment for injuries sustained when security forces opened fire in June. Armed guards are stationed outside the medical facilities, so the Aguaruna and Wampi Indians can be arrested and whisked to jail the moment doctors agree to sign their discharge papers.
One indigenous leader, Santiago Manuin, was shot in the stomach at Bagua by at least four bullets. From his bedside, a plastic pouch still draining his intestines, and five AK-47-toting guards at the door, he told the Associated Press last week: "Justice doesn't exist for the indigenous. The government values the police more than us and doesn't want to acknowledge its mistake."
Although Peru insists that just 33 people died at Bagua – of which 10 were protesters and 23 were armed police officers – several observers claim scores of other tribes-people remain unaccounted for. News reporters at the scene estimated the death toll at 60.
Peru's government has faced widespread international criticism in the wake of the killings. Its justice minister was hauled before a UN Human Rights Committee in Geneva this month and the UN special envoy on indigenous rights has called for an independent investigation.
Somewhat belatedly, given its speed in filing charges against the indigenous leaders, Peru this week finally announced action against some of the armed officials who were present at Bagua, charging two police generals and 15 other officers with homicide.
Whether that will be enough to appease Mr Garcia's opponents and repair his reputation remains to be seen. Since the events at Bagua, the President's approval ratings have dropped to 25 per cent, and his former ally Yehude Simon is said to be considering a hostile bid for his job.
Republished from The Independent
Teresita Lopez is in hiding. "Somewhere in the Amazon" is as much as she is willing to reveal about her current location now she has been placed on the Peruvian government's most-wanted list.
The authorities in Lima have charged her with inciting murder, sedition and insurrection. Nonsense, she says. All she has been doing is protecting the rights of Peru's 350,000-strong Amazonian Indian community and helping them safeguard their traditional way of life, under threat from a President keen to open the Amazon to international mining, logging and oil companies.
"The indigenous people of the Amazon don't ask anything of the government because it has never supported us," Lopez said in an interview. "All we demand is respect for our ways of life, and respect for our rights as citizens to live on our land – where we were born and where we will die."
The tensions in this corner of South America burst onto the international radar in June, with a massacre that became known as "the Amazon's Tiananmen". Dozens of people were killed and hundreds wounded when Peruvian police fired on crowds demonstrating on a highway near the northern town of Bagua Grande against plans to sell swathes of their homeland to foreign-owned corporations.
That spiralled into a political crisis for President Alan Garcia. His popular Prime Minister, Yehude Simon, resigned, apparently in protest at how the whole affair was handled. Now, more than two months after these grisly events, the President's still wobbly government has turned its attention to the business of exacting serious revenge.
Ms Lopez, a community leader from the Yanesha tribe, is just one of the Amazonian Indian's most prominent leaders to have been forced into hiding as a result. She could face life imprisonment if arrested and convicted.
"We have been charged with sedition, rebellion, and insurrection," she explained. "The accusations were announced at a press conference. This violates all legal procedures. The government is effectively persecuting us, the leaders, for working with indigenous people and voicing their demands."
Peruvian authorities have accused her of being responsible for sparking the Bagua massacre on 5 June. But Ms Lopez says she was 900 miles away in Lima on that day.
The basis of the charges against her is that she attended a televised press conference in the capital in May, which prosecutors say helped inspire the unrest. "I have been denounced, and a warrant for my arrest has been issued, for sitting at a table during a press conference," Ms Lopez said. "I didn't even say anything. Imagine if I had!"
The 48-year-old, from the Oxapampa region in central Peru, says she is being sheltered by "brothers, family and colleagues in the indigenous movement". She has been advised to remain in hiding or seek asylum, rather than emerge to clear her name. "I have no possibility or guarantee of defending myself legally because the executive is interfering in what the judiciary is doing," she said.
At the heart of the dispute are 13 laws unveiled by President Garcia last year. They threatened to open 67 million hectares of Peru's undeveloped rainforest to exploitation by foreign-owned logging, mining and energy companies. The Indians were outraged and staged protests to demand they be repealed. Four of the 13 controversial laws have now been dropped. However, that still leaves nine in place.
Stephen Corry, the director of Survival International, a human rights organisation that supports tribal peoples, says that Teresita's case clearly illustrates what is going on in Peru right now. "Garcia's government is determined to sabotage the indigenous movement by driving the real leaders into exile or trying to imprison them," he said.
Alberto Pizango, the leader of AIDESEP, a group representing Peru's 56 tribes, was granted asylum in Nicaragua, along with two colleagues, in the aftermath of the violence on the grounds of political persecution. The Central American nation believes that the men are unlikely to get fair trial in their homeland. The number of Amazonian Indians facing charges – in relation to a massacre they blame on the police – has soared to 120.
Among those being prosecuted, rights groups say, are 48 native Indians who are still receiving hospital treatment for injuries sustained when security forces opened fire in June. Armed guards are stationed outside the medical facilities, so the Aguaruna and Wampi Indians can be arrested and whisked to jail the moment doctors agree to sign their discharge papers.
One indigenous leader, Santiago Manuin, was shot in the stomach at Bagua by at least four bullets. From his bedside, a plastic pouch still draining his intestines, and five AK-47-toting guards at the door, he told the Associated Press last week: "Justice doesn't exist for the indigenous. The government values the police more than us and doesn't want to acknowledge its mistake."
Although Peru insists that just 33 people died at Bagua – of which 10 were protesters and 23 were armed police officers – several observers claim scores of other tribes-people remain unaccounted for. News reporters at the scene estimated the death toll at 60.
Peru's government has faced widespread international criticism in the wake of the killings. Its justice minister was hauled before a UN Human Rights Committee in Geneva this month and the UN special envoy on indigenous rights has called for an independent investigation.
Somewhat belatedly, given its speed in filing charges against the indigenous leaders, Peru this week finally announced action against some of the armed officials who were present at Bagua, charging two police generals and 15 other officers with homicide.
Whether that will be enough to appease Mr Garcia's opponents and repair his reputation remains to be seen. Since the events at Bagua, the President's approval ratings have dropped to 25 per cent, and his former ally Yehude Simon is said to be considering a hostile bid for his job.
Republished from The Independent
Friday, 28 August 2009
Peru Natives complain of persecution, may restart protests
By Renzo Pipoli
Peru Native groups keeping ancestral ways of life may restart protests unless President Alan Garcia makes good on promises to heal dozens of Natives with bullet wounds following the June 5 clash with police armed with assault rifles, and stops harassment and persecution.
More than 300,000 Natives from the Peruvian Amazon organized through the Association for the Development of the Peruvian Amazon (AIDESEP) claim Garcia’s government is doing the opposite of what it said it was going to “consider,” including suggestions by the United Nations to respect rights of indigenous Peruvians.
Natives and their leaders have faced arrests and taken the blame for the June 5 clash following two months of protests that left more than 30 dead and nearly 100 people injured while top indigenous leaders have been forced into exile.
“It is clear that Alan Garcia has started a campaign to silence the legitimate aspirations of people to their free will and to their wellness and to their proposals for the defense of life and of the planet Earth,” AIDESEP leader in exile Alberto Pizango said in La Primera, a Lima newspaper.
Pizango said the Peruvian government has used the little-known National Institute for the Development of Andean, Amazon and Afro-Peruvian Peoples (INDEPA) as an instrument to get rid of AIDESEP, an organization Natives created to organize themselves.
AIDESEP joins diverse groups including the biggest tribes of Awajun, Ashaninka and Machiguenga with myriad smaller groups. It serves as a development tool and a channel for foreign aid, which is the tribe’s main source of revenue, since those groups are often neglected by government.
“They use our indigenous brothers that do not have conscience and behave as ‘Felipillos’ who betray the alignments and world vision of the indigenous people,” Pizango explained why a group of Natives want to take his leadership away. Felipillo was an infamous Peruvian Native who walked alongside conquerors in the 16th century serving as a translator.
According to the organization’s Web site, Pizango remains the head of the group.
Stolen identity
Pizango said Alexander Teest, who the Peruvian government now recognizes as AIDESEP president, was a former indigenous leader who tried to continue his term as head of the Organization of Indigenous Peoples of the Peruvian Northern Amazon despite the end of his period. Teest didn’t call elections, was ousted by his people, so found himself at loggerheads with AIDESEP.
Pizango said Teest has now sided with the government, and is posing as a false Native leader using the organization’s name.
Pizango also criticized Peruvian Justice Minister Aurelio Pastor for his presentation before the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in Geneva because he said foreign conspirers, non-governmental organizations and the church were responsible for the deadly June 5 clash. Pastor described Garcia’s government as a victim of violence, and Pizango as violent.
“They call me violent to clean their bloody hands,” Pizango said. Natives have demanded an international investigation and strongly denied accusations of being violent.
Carlos Navas, spokesperson for Native Peoples of the Northern Amazon, said on AIDESEP’s Web site that as a result of these problems several Native communities in areas of the Amazon are unhappy with the lack of government compliance with agreements intended to secure peaceful living.
Navas said the government had fully agreed to help some 70 indigenous people, injured by bullets June 5, pay for medical treatment, but is not making good. Indigenous people are also upset about many arrest warrants issued.
The organization is also facing a bureaucratic government crackdown over supposed infractions committed years ago, and AIDESEP could be closed for good, leaving Natives without their key organization.
The alleged “serious infractions,” according to AIDESEP spokeswoman Augustina Mayan, are not over misuse of donations but “for missing a letter, a word in the name of a project and this is called by APCI (Agency for International Cooperation) false information.” APCI regulates agencies that receive donations.
Carlos Pando, APCI director, said he wants to sanction AIDESEP over infractions and is not acting politically to look good before party colleagues and superiors.
Pando has assured that he is an independent technician, though at one point, he was vice president of the APRA Party, led by Garcia; a mid-level ranking position in the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance.
Republished from Indian Country Today
Peru Native groups keeping ancestral ways of life may restart protests unless President Alan Garcia makes good on promises to heal dozens of Natives with bullet wounds following the June 5 clash with police armed with assault rifles, and stops harassment and persecution.
More than 300,000 Natives from the Peruvian Amazon organized through the Association for the Development of the Peruvian Amazon (AIDESEP) claim Garcia’s government is doing the opposite of what it said it was going to “consider,” including suggestions by the United Nations to respect rights of indigenous Peruvians.
Natives and their leaders have faced arrests and taken the blame for the June 5 clash following two months of protests that left more than 30 dead and nearly 100 people injured while top indigenous leaders have been forced into exile.
“It is clear that Alan Garcia has started a campaign to silence the legitimate aspirations of people to their free will and to their wellness and to their proposals for the defense of life and of the planet Earth,” AIDESEP leader in exile Alberto Pizango said in La Primera, a Lima newspaper.
Pizango said the Peruvian government has used the little-known National Institute for the Development of Andean, Amazon and Afro-Peruvian Peoples (INDEPA) as an instrument to get rid of AIDESEP, an organization Natives created to organize themselves.
AIDESEP joins diverse groups including the biggest tribes of Awajun, Ashaninka and Machiguenga with myriad smaller groups. It serves as a development tool and a channel for foreign aid, which is the tribe’s main source of revenue, since those groups are often neglected by government.
“They use our indigenous brothers that do not have conscience and behave as ‘Felipillos’ who betray the alignments and world vision of the indigenous people,” Pizango explained why a group of Natives want to take his leadership away. Felipillo was an infamous Peruvian Native who walked alongside conquerors in the 16th century serving as a translator.
According to the organization’s Web site, Pizango remains the head of the group.
Stolen identity
Pizango said Alexander Teest, who the Peruvian government now recognizes as AIDESEP president, was a former indigenous leader who tried to continue his term as head of the Organization of Indigenous Peoples of the Peruvian Northern Amazon despite the end of his period. Teest didn’t call elections, was ousted by his people, so found himself at loggerheads with AIDESEP.
Pizango said Teest has now sided with the government, and is posing as a false Native leader using the organization’s name.
Pizango also criticized Peruvian Justice Minister Aurelio Pastor for his presentation before the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in Geneva because he said foreign conspirers, non-governmental organizations and the church were responsible for the deadly June 5 clash. Pastor described Garcia’s government as a victim of violence, and Pizango as violent.
“They call me violent to clean their bloody hands,” Pizango said. Natives have demanded an international investigation and strongly denied accusations of being violent.
Carlos Navas, spokesperson for Native Peoples of the Northern Amazon, said on AIDESEP’s Web site that as a result of these problems several Native communities in areas of the Amazon are unhappy with the lack of government compliance with agreements intended to secure peaceful living.
Navas said the government had fully agreed to help some 70 indigenous people, injured by bullets June 5, pay for medical treatment, but is not making good. Indigenous people are also upset about many arrest warrants issued.
The organization is also facing a bureaucratic government crackdown over supposed infractions committed years ago, and AIDESEP could be closed for good, leaving Natives without their key organization.
The alleged “serious infractions,” according to AIDESEP spokeswoman Augustina Mayan, are not over misuse of donations but “for missing a letter, a word in the name of a project and this is called by APCI (Agency for International Cooperation) false information.” APCI regulates agencies that receive donations.
Carlos Pando, APCI director, said he wants to sanction AIDESEP over infractions and is not acting politically to look good before party colleagues and superiors.
Pando has assured that he is an independent technician, though at one point, he was vice president of the APRA Party, led by Garcia; a mid-level ranking position in the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance.
Republished from Indian Country Today
Thursday, 6 August 2009
Peru: witch hunt against indigenous protesters
Peru's government not only ordered the brutal massacre of indigenous peoples protesting to defend the environment and their way of life from rapacious transnational companies, in Bagua on June 5, (from which at least 60 people remain "disappeared"), but has also launched racist witch hunt, forcing 2 indigenous leaders into exile, and charging a further 120 with "murder" and "sedition" in its drive to carve up the Amazon and flog it off to oil, mining and logging companies.
President Alan Garcia has cynically claimed "foreign interference" from Venezuela and Bolivia is behind the indigenous protests, while at the same time whipping up racism against indigenous communities, referring to them as "second class citizens" and saying they are like "dogs in a barnyard," in order to ram through his agenda.
Read article below about how indigenous leader Santiago Manuin, who is lying in a hospital bed fighting for his life after receiving at least 4 bullet wounds, is hounded by police armed with AK47 assault rifles.
Jail and trial are next for wounded Peru Indians
By ANDREW WHALEN (AP) Aug 3 2009
CHICLAYO, Peru — Santiago Manuin is lucky to be alive. On June 5, the Awajun Indian leader was hit by at least four bullets when police broke up a protest by Indians over government plans for large-scale economic development of their ancestral lands in the Amazon.
Inside his hospital room, Manuin lies in a bed while a plastic pouch drains his intestines. Outside the door, five police officers lounge on wooden benches, AK-47 assault rifles resting across their knees.
Manuin is the most prominent of 48 protesters wounded in the June melee who face jail the moment hospital doctors sign discharge papers, according to Peru's main Amazon Indian federation.
Critics of the government say it is no way to treat people who engaged in peaceful civil disobedience — blocking roads and rivers — to protect their traditional lands from the oil drilling, mining, farming and logging projects envisioned by President Alan Garcia.
Negotiations to resolve the dispute, involving 350,000 Amazon Indians, will be difficult if the government treats the protest leaders as criminals, the U.N. special envoy on indigenous rights, James Anaya, said last week.
The dark, wiry Manuin is more blunt.
"Justice doesn't exist for the indigenous. The government values the police more than us and doesn't want to acknowledge its mistake," the 53-year-old apu, or tribal leader, said from his hospital bed.
The government's mistake, Indian leaders and sympathizers say, has been to vilify protest leaders while failing to consider that police might have used excessive force. At least 10 civilians and 23 police officers were killed in the violence, while 200 civilians were wounded, 82 by gunshot, according to Peru's ombudsman's office.
"It's very surprising that while there are criminal investigations against people accused of killing police, no one has been arrested or implicated for the abuses that led to the death of the indigenous protesters," said Susan Lee, director of Amnesty International's Americas program. Amnesty says it has gathered testimony telling of police abuses.
Peru's justice minister, Auerelio Pastor, defended the police action before a U.N. Human Rights Committee in Geneva on Monday and said the government has no plans to drop any charges.
The government's request that protesters clear the road "by no means justifies acts of violence, and the seizure of highways and interruption of public services is illegal," he said.
Pastor also echoed a claim repeatedly voiced by Garcia: that unidentified foreign elements have incited the Indians to instigate the violence.
The president of AIDESEP, the Indian federation that organized the protests, says 120 Indians have been charged with crimes including murder and sedition. Many wounded Indians have not sought medical attention for fear of arrest, the federation's president, Daysi Zapata, told The Associated Press.
AIDESEP's top leader, Alberto Pizango, and two other officials of the organization have taken asylum in Nicaragua from sedition and rebellion charges.
In a July report following a visit to Peru, Anaya, the U.N. envoy, called for an independent, internationally backed investigation into the violence.
The government has yet to publicly respond.
Manuin is expected to be released from the main hospital in Chiclayo shortly after an operation this week to close the hole in his stomach and reconnect his intestines. He will then be jailed and tried on charges of inciting murder and unrest, which carry a maximum penalty of 35 years in prison. His lawyer has appealed to reduce his arrest warrant to an order to appear in court.
The Jesuit-schooled Manuin is an internationally recognized activist who met with Spain's Queen Sofia in 1994 after leading Awajun resistance to leftist rebels who tried to get his people to grow coca, the basis of cocaine.
On June 5, when heavily armed police advanced toward nearly 5,000 protesters at a highway blockade, he says he approached the officers seeking to talk.
"I never made it because they opened fire when I was about 50 meters (yards) away," Manuin said. Bullets tore open his left side.
Other protesters saw he was hurt, and "hand-to-hand combat broke out to remove the guns from police," he added.
Erroneous reports of Manuin's death spurred a bloody reaction hours later when Awajun protesters killed 12 police officers they had taken captive at an oil pipeline station.
Manuin faults the government, not the police officers, who he says told Indian leaders on June 4 that their superiors in Lima had ordered them to clear the highway.
The Cabinet chief at the time, Yehude Simon, said the entire Cabinet voted to issue the order. He and the then-interior minister were replaced last month as Garcia sought to allay public criticism of his handling of the protests.
The Indians had been blockading jungle highways and rivers on and off since last August, demanding the revocation of 11 decrees issued by Peru's president last year under the rubric of a free trade pact with the United States.
Peru's Congress repealed two of the decrees after protests last year and two more after June's bloodshed. Indians feared the decrees would lead to a widespread land and resource grab by private companies.
Despite the revocations of some of the decrees, 75 percent of Peru's Amazon remains carved up into oil concessions, with the government owning all subsoil rights.
"If they want to put the Amazon up for sale, they'll do it by spilling blood. Period," Manuin said.
President Alan Garcia has cynically claimed "foreign interference" from Venezuela and Bolivia is behind the indigenous protests, while at the same time whipping up racism against indigenous communities, referring to them as "second class citizens" and saying they are like "dogs in a barnyard," in order to ram through his agenda.
Read article below about how indigenous leader Santiago Manuin, who is lying in a hospital bed fighting for his life after receiving at least 4 bullet wounds, is hounded by police armed with AK47 assault rifles.
Jail and trial are next for wounded Peru Indians
By ANDREW WHALEN (AP) Aug 3 2009
CHICLAYO, Peru — Santiago Manuin is lucky to be alive. On June 5, the Awajun Indian leader was hit by at least four bullets when police broke up a protest by Indians over government plans for large-scale economic development of their ancestral lands in the Amazon.
Inside his hospital room, Manuin lies in a bed while a plastic pouch drains his intestines. Outside the door, five police officers lounge on wooden benches, AK-47 assault rifles resting across their knees.
Manuin is the most prominent of 48 protesters wounded in the June melee who face jail the moment hospital doctors sign discharge papers, according to Peru's main Amazon Indian federation.
Critics of the government say it is no way to treat people who engaged in peaceful civil disobedience — blocking roads and rivers — to protect their traditional lands from the oil drilling, mining, farming and logging projects envisioned by President Alan Garcia.
Negotiations to resolve the dispute, involving 350,000 Amazon Indians, will be difficult if the government treats the protest leaders as criminals, the U.N. special envoy on indigenous rights, James Anaya, said last week.
The dark, wiry Manuin is more blunt.
"Justice doesn't exist for the indigenous. The government values the police more than us and doesn't want to acknowledge its mistake," the 53-year-old apu, or tribal leader, said from his hospital bed.
The government's mistake, Indian leaders and sympathizers say, has been to vilify protest leaders while failing to consider that police might have used excessive force. At least 10 civilians and 23 police officers were killed in the violence, while 200 civilians were wounded, 82 by gunshot, according to Peru's ombudsman's office.
"It's very surprising that while there are criminal investigations against people accused of killing police, no one has been arrested or implicated for the abuses that led to the death of the indigenous protesters," said Susan Lee, director of Amnesty International's Americas program. Amnesty says it has gathered testimony telling of police abuses.
Peru's justice minister, Auerelio Pastor, defended the police action before a U.N. Human Rights Committee in Geneva on Monday and said the government has no plans to drop any charges.
The government's request that protesters clear the road "by no means justifies acts of violence, and the seizure of highways and interruption of public services is illegal," he said.
Pastor also echoed a claim repeatedly voiced by Garcia: that unidentified foreign elements have incited the Indians to instigate the violence.
The president of AIDESEP, the Indian federation that organized the protests, says 120 Indians have been charged with crimes including murder and sedition. Many wounded Indians have not sought medical attention for fear of arrest, the federation's president, Daysi Zapata, told The Associated Press.
AIDESEP's top leader, Alberto Pizango, and two other officials of the organization have taken asylum in Nicaragua from sedition and rebellion charges.
In a July report following a visit to Peru, Anaya, the U.N. envoy, called for an independent, internationally backed investigation into the violence.
The government has yet to publicly respond.
Manuin is expected to be released from the main hospital in Chiclayo shortly after an operation this week to close the hole in his stomach and reconnect his intestines. He will then be jailed and tried on charges of inciting murder and unrest, which carry a maximum penalty of 35 years in prison. His lawyer has appealed to reduce his arrest warrant to an order to appear in court.
The Jesuit-schooled Manuin is an internationally recognized activist who met with Spain's Queen Sofia in 1994 after leading Awajun resistance to leftist rebels who tried to get his people to grow coca, the basis of cocaine.
On June 5, when heavily armed police advanced toward nearly 5,000 protesters at a highway blockade, he says he approached the officers seeking to talk.
"I never made it because they opened fire when I was about 50 meters (yards) away," Manuin said. Bullets tore open his left side.
Other protesters saw he was hurt, and "hand-to-hand combat broke out to remove the guns from police," he added.
Erroneous reports of Manuin's death spurred a bloody reaction hours later when Awajun protesters killed 12 police officers they had taken captive at an oil pipeline station.
Manuin faults the government, not the police officers, who he says told Indian leaders on June 4 that their superiors in Lima had ordered them to clear the highway.
The Cabinet chief at the time, Yehude Simon, said the entire Cabinet voted to issue the order. He and the then-interior minister were replaced last month as Garcia sought to allay public criticism of his handling of the protests.
The Indians had been blockading jungle highways and rivers on and off since last August, demanding the revocation of 11 decrees issued by Peru's president last year under the rubric of a free trade pact with the United States.
Peru's Congress repealed two of the decrees after protests last year and two more after June's bloodshed. Indians feared the decrees would lead to a widespread land and resource grab by private companies.
Despite the revocations of some of the decrees, 75 percent of Peru's Amazon remains carved up into oil concessions, with the government owning all subsoil rights.
"If they want to put the Amazon up for sale, they'll do it by spilling blood. Period," Manuin said.
Monday, 13 July 2009
Peru: Social movement confidence grows
Karl Cosser, Lima
Street protests and blockades occurred throughout Peru on July 8, in the middle of a three day strike against the neoliberal policies of President Alan Garcia.
The protests follow on from the intense struggle for the Amazon — between indigenous communities and multinational corporations supported by the government. Although this struggle has been very hard on the indigenous communities, including an unknown death toll at the hands of security forces, it is a great example of what can be achieved with great effort and solidarity.
Through relentless struggle, the Garcia government’s decrees, which allowed oil and gas giants to exploit the resources in the Amazon on indigenous land, were repealed.
I witnessed an example of this struggle at a June 11 demonstration of about 15,000 in Lima in solidarity with the Amazon indigenous people. The protest included various unions, student groups and even a left-wing Christian group which considers Jesus Christ the first revolutionary.
There was a lot of energy and passion as we marched through the streets of Lima chanting “la selva no se vende” (the jungle is not for sale). Banners and graffiti on the way called Garcia an assassin for the massacre that occurred in Bagua, a town in the Amazon region.
The demonstration reached a fever pitch as it approached the police blockade several blocks from Congress and the presidential palace. The percussion from the Amazonian indigenous contingent grew more intense.
The police then violently repressed the demonstration, firing rubber bullets and tear gas at the crowd. They assaulted demonstrators with batons.
The attack was indiscriminate. Protesters as old as 70 were badly affected by tear gas, having difficulty breathing.
In self-defence, some demonstrators responded with sticks and stones, which the police threw back at the crowd. One molotov cocktail was thrown.
Most people ran from the repression — possibly remembering with fear the massacre in the Amazon.
However, once the tear gas cleared, many returned to the police barricades to continue the protest in solidarity with many other demonstrations and blockades occurring across Peru that day against the decrees.
Two days later, there was a “pro-democracy rally” in support of Garcia. The right-wing demonstration was escorted by police past Congress — facing no repression whatsoever.
The hypocrisy of “promoting democracy” by supporting such a brutally repressive government is ridiculously obvious.
The private media in Peru are supporting the government. It repeats police reports that the nine civilians and 11 police were killed at Bagua.
However, it has been independently reported that many more people are still missing and more than 150 civilians were injured — mostly by bullets.
One survivor of the Bagua massacre was treated for eight bullet wounds. He and many others were shot at while running away from police.
In the face of such repression, through relentless struggle involving many strikes, blockades and demonstrations, the movement forced the government to repeal the pro-corporate decrees.
This is an example to the rest of the world what can be achieved through people power — including for the struggles of Indigenous people in Australia.
The confidence gained by this victory is increasingly obvious as protests and blockades against other neoliberal polices continue across the country. The July 8 national day of protests and strikes is just the latest.
The demands of the July 8 demonstrations included: ending the criminalisation of social protests; the reinstatement of seven Congresspeople from left-nationalist Ollanta Humala’s Peruvian Nationalist Party suspended for staging a protest in Congress against the decrees; respect for the right of self-determination of indigenous communities; sacking Prime Minister Yehude Simon and the rest of the cabinet; and granting the demands of the transport workers’ union to repeal an increase in traffic fines.
In Lima, various contingents held their own protests, occupying several streets, before converging on the Dos de Mayo Plaza.
The various contingents included members of the General Confederation of Peruvian Workers (CGTP), transport workers unions, the teachers union, an indigenous contingent, students and various social and political organisations.
The protest, about 8000-strong, was downplayed by the mainstream newspaper Peru 21. The paper featured an aerial photograph of the plaza on its front page taken after several contingents had already marched off.
The shot was almost certainly taken from the police helicopter that circled above the crowd, demonstrating the use of police resources for political propaganda.
Days before, masked police union members announced that they would go on strike, partially over the police deaths at Bagua. They refused to give a date for their strike for “security reasons”.
Unfortunately, the police turned up for work on July 8, along with the armed forces.
Protesters carried banners featuring caricatures of Garcia as a vampire with the victims of the Bagua massacre in his arms. There were many indigenous Tahuantinsuyu flags with the mosaic of colours representing the solidarity between the many indigenous groups of the Amazon.
After several speeches, including by Humala demanding the sacking of Garcia’s cabinet, protesters began marching towards central Lima.
Demonstrators were divided several times within just a few blocks by the extraordinary numbers of riot police armed with batons, shields, grappling hooks, tear gas bombs and guns. Police carried automatic weapons with live rounds and rubber bullets.
There were also water cannon trucks and mounted police — although the inability of the police to control the horses proved more entertaining than anything else for the demonstrators.
Protesters defended themselves against police attempts to break the demonstration up, managing to break through police lines a few times before the sheer numbers of police broke up the protest into several groups.
Towards the end of the protest, a small number of young people engaged in passive resistance. Police chased them through the streets of Lima, with the protesters outnumbered by 10-1.
Then, for no reason, police fired tear gas at the demonstrators. This affected everyone nearby, including shopkeepers with nothing to do with the protest.
By resorting to putting the military on the streets to repress protests, the Garcia government reveals itself to be on the ropes.
As it continues to deny people’s right to social protest, the protest movement continues to grow in strength — building on solidarity between unions, indigenous peoples, campesinos (peasants), students and many other sectors.
Republished from Green Left Weekly
Street protests and blockades occurred throughout Peru on July 8, in the middle of a three day strike against the neoliberal policies of President Alan Garcia.
The protests follow on from the intense struggle for the Amazon — between indigenous communities and multinational corporations supported by the government. Although this struggle has been very hard on the indigenous communities, including an unknown death toll at the hands of security forces, it is a great example of what can be achieved with great effort and solidarity.
Through relentless struggle, the Garcia government’s decrees, which allowed oil and gas giants to exploit the resources in the Amazon on indigenous land, were repealed.
I witnessed an example of this struggle at a June 11 demonstration of about 15,000 in Lima in solidarity with the Amazon indigenous people. The protest included various unions, student groups and even a left-wing Christian group which considers Jesus Christ the first revolutionary.
There was a lot of energy and passion as we marched through the streets of Lima chanting “la selva no se vende” (the jungle is not for sale). Banners and graffiti on the way called Garcia an assassin for the massacre that occurred in Bagua, a town in the Amazon region.
The demonstration reached a fever pitch as it approached the police blockade several blocks from Congress and the presidential palace. The percussion from the Amazonian indigenous contingent grew more intense.
The police then violently repressed the demonstration, firing rubber bullets and tear gas at the crowd. They assaulted demonstrators with batons.
The attack was indiscriminate. Protesters as old as 70 were badly affected by tear gas, having difficulty breathing.
In self-defence, some demonstrators responded with sticks and stones, which the police threw back at the crowd. One molotov cocktail was thrown.
Most people ran from the repression — possibly remembering with fear the massacre in the Amazon.
However, once the tear gas cleared, many returned to the police barricades to continue the protest in solidarity with many other demonstrations and blockades occurring across Peru that day against the decrees.
Two days later, there was a “pro-democracy rally” in support of Garcia. The right-wing demonstration was escorted by police past Congress — facing no repression whatsoever.
The hypocrisy of “promoting democracy” by supporting such a brutally repressive government is ridiculously obvious.
The private media in Peru are supporting the government. It repeats police reports that the nine civilians and 11 police were killed at Bagua.
However, it has been independently reported that many more people are still missing and more than 150 civilians were injured — mostly by bullets.
One survivor of the Bagua massacre was treated for eight bullet wounds. He and many others were shot at while running away from police.
In the face of such repression, through relentless struggle involving many strikes, blockades and demonstrations, the movement forced the government to repeal the pro-corporate decrees.
This is an example to the rest of the world what can be achieved through people power — including for the struggles of Indigenous people in Australia.
The confidence gained by this victory is increasingly obvious as protests and blockades against other neoliberal polices continue across the country. The July 8 national day of protests and strikes is just the latest.
The demands of the July 8 demonstrations included: ending the criminalisation of social protests; the reinstatement of seven Congresspeople from left-nationalist Ollanta Humala’s Peruvian Nationalist Party suspended for staging a protest in Congress against the decrees; respect for the right of self-determination of indigenous communities; sacking Prime Minister Yehude Simon and the rest of the cabinet; and granting the demands of the transport workers’ union to repeal an increase in traffic fines.
In Lima, various contingents held their own protests, occupying several streets, before converging on the Dos de Mayo Plaza.
The various contingents included members of the General Confederation of Peruvian Workers (CGTP), transport workers unions, the teachers union, an indigenous contingent, students and various social and political organisations.
The protest, about 8000-strong, was downplayed by the mainstream newspaper Peru 21. The paper featured an aerial photograph of the plaza on its front page taken after several contingents had already marched off.
The shot was almost certainly taken from the police helicopter that circled above the crowd, demonstrating the use of police resources for political propaganda.
Days before, masked police union members announced that they would go on strike, partially over the police deaths at Bagua. They refused to give a date for their strike for “security reasons”.
Unfortunately, the police turned up for work on July 8, along with the armed forces.
Protesters carried banners featuring caricatures of Garcia as a vampire with the victims of the Bagua massacre in his arms. There were many indigenous Tahuantinsuyu flags with the mosaic of colours representing the solidarity between the many indigenous groups of the Amazon.
After several speeches, including by Humala demanding the sacking of Garcia’s cabinet, protesters began marching towards central Lima.
Demonstrators were divided several times within just a few blocks by the extraordinary numbers of riot police armed with batons, shields, grappling hooks, tear gas bombs and guns. Police carried automatic weapons with live rounds and rubber bullets.
There were also water cannon trucks and mounted police — although the inability of the police to control the horses proved more entertaining than anything else for the demonstrators.
Protesters defended themselves against police attempts to break the demonstration up, managing to break through police lines a few times before the sheer numbers of police broke up the protest into several groups.
Towards the end of the protest, a small number of young people engaged in passive resistance. Police chased them through the streets of Lima, with the protesters outnumbered by 10-1.
Then, for no reason, police fired tear gas at the demonstrators. This affected everyone nearby, including shopkeepers with nothing to do with the protest.
By resorting to putting the military on the streets to repress protests, the Garcia government reveals itself to be on the ropes.
As it continues to deny people’s right to social protest, the protest movement continues to grow in strength — building on solidarity between unions, indigenous peoples, campesinos (peasants), students and many other sectors.
Republished from Green Left Weekly
Tuesday, 30 June 2009
Confidence of Peru's social movements is growing
Karl Cosser
Although the struggle for the Amazon has been very hard for the indigenous community it is a great example of what can be achieved with great effort and solidarity. The June 11 demonstration in solidarity with the Amazon prompted the mobilzation of many various unions, students and even a left wing Christian political organisation who believe that Jesus was the first revolutionary. There was also of course a significant contingent of people from Amazon regions. Contingents converged from different streets to form one big demonstration of approximately 15.000 people at the dos de mayo plaza where the May day rally was held a few weeks before.
There was a lot of energy and passion in the rally as we marched the streets of Lima with banners and chanting "la selva no se vende", (the jungle is not for sale). Banners and graffiti also stated "APRA asesino" and "Garcia genocida", rightly placing the responsibility for the Bagua massacre on the Garcia government. The demonstration reached a fever pitch as it approached the police blockade several blocks away from congress and the plaza de mayo where the presidential palace is, with an increased intensity of percussion from the Amazon indigenous contingent.
Aggressively the police repressed the right to protest against the government when they opened fire with rubber bullets, tear gas bombs, batons and shields. The police response was indiscriminate; protesters aged as old as 65-70 were affected by the tear gas and had great difficulty breathing. In defense some demonstrators responded with sticks and stones, which the police threw back at the protesters. One Molotov cocktail was thrown. Most people were forced to run away from the police possibly in fear of similar aggression to that in Bagua.
However, once the tear gas blew away many came back to the police barricades to continue the protest in solidarity with many other demonstrations and blockades occurring all over Peru against the decrees 1090 and 1064, "the laws of the jungle" allowing international corporations to exploit the Amazon for resources.
Two days after the national strike there was a "pro democracy rally" in support of the Garcia government, which was allowed to begin three blocks ahead of where the police attacked protesters on June 11. The pro-rightwing rally was escorted by police and passed congress with no repression at all. The hypocrisy of promoting democracy in support of a brutally repressive government is ridiculously obvious with those supporting Garcia given greater freedom to mobilise while those against the government are attacked.
The private media in Peru are supporting the government and police reports of nine civilians killed in Bagua and 11 police killed, however, it has also been independently reported that there are many people still missing and over 150 civilians injured, of which most were from bullet wounds. One survivor of the Bagua massacre was treated for eight bullet wounds as he and many others were shot at while running away from the police.
The current Peruvian government is not a great example of democracy when those responsible for the death and injuries of many civilians are writing the reports and the private media are swallowing it up as it represents their own economic interests.
However, in he face of a repressive neo-liberal government, through relentless strikes, protests and blockades the 1090 and 1064 decrees were repealed demonstrating to the rest of the world what can be achieved through people power, especially for indigenous struggles such as in Australia. Prime Minister Yehude Simon has stated that he will be resigning over the Amazon conflict The confidence of recent gains is becoming apparent as protests and blockades continue throughout the country and there is ongoing solidarity between unions, campesinos and students to get rid of the rest of the ministers.
Although the struggle for the Amazon has been very hard for the indigenous community it is a great example of what can be achieved with great effort and solidarity. The June 11 demonstration in solidarity with the Amazon prompted the mobilzation of many various unions, students and even a left wing Christian political organisation who believe that Jesus was the first revolutionary. There was also of course a significant contingent of people from Amazon regions. Contingents converged from different streets to form one big demonstration of approximately 15.000 people at the dos de mayo plaza where the May day rally was held a few weeks before.
There was a lot of energy and passion in the rally as we marched the streets of Lima with banners and chanting "la selva no se vende", (the jungle is not for sale). Banners and graffiti also stated "APRA asesino" and "Garcia genocida", rightly placing the responsibility for the Bagua massacre on the Garcia government. The demonstration reached a fever pitch as it approached the police blockade several blocks away from congress and the plaza de mayo where the presidential palace is, with an increased intensity of percussion from the Amazon indigenous contingent.
Aggressively the police repressed the right to protest against the government when they opened fire with rubber bullets, tear gas bombs, batons and shields. The police response was indiscriminate; protesters aged as old as 65-70 were affected by the tear gas and had great difficulty breathing. In defense some demonstrators responded with sticks and stones, which the police threw back at the protesters. One Molotov cocktail was thrown. Most people were forced to run away from the police possibly in fear of similar aggression to that in Bagua.
However, once the tear gas blew away many came back to the police barricades to continue the protest in solidarity with many other demonstrations and blockades occurring all over Peru against the decrees 1090 and 1064, "the laws of the jungle" allowing international corporations to exploit the Amazon for resources.
Two days after the national strike there was a "pro democracy rally" in support of the Garcia government, which was allowed to begin three blocks ahead of where the police attacked protesters on June 11. The pro-rightwing rally was escorted by police and passed congress with no repression at all. The hypocrisy of promoting democracy in support of a brutally repressive government is ridiculously obvious with those supporting Garcia given greater freedom to mobilise while those against the government are attacked.
The private media in Peru are supporting the government and police reports of nine civilians killed in Bagua and 11 police killed, however, it has also been independently reported that there are many people still missing and over 150 civilians injured, of which most were from bullet wounds. One survivor of the Bagua massacre was treated for eight bullet wounds as he and many others were shot at while running away from the police.
The current Peruvian government is not a great example of democracy when those responsible for the death and injuries of many civilians are writing the reports and the private media are swallowing it up as it represents their own economic interests.
However, in he face of a repressive neo-liberal government, through relentless strikes, protests and blockades the 1090 and 1064 decrees were repealed demonstrating to the rest of the world what can be achieved through people power, especially for indigenous struggles such as in Australia. Prime Minister Yehude Simon has stated that he will be resigning over the Amazon conflict The confidence of recent gains is becoming apparent as protests and blockades continue throughout the country and there is ongoing solidarity between unions, campesinos and students to get rid of the rest of the ministers.
Monday, 29 June 2009
Peru: Blood for rubber, blood for oil
David T. Rowlands
At the turn of the twentieth century, global demand for rubber from the upper reaches of the Amazon (encompassing Peruvian, Colombian and Brazilian territory) was at its height.
Capitalising on this profitable opportunity, the agents of an international consortium known as the Anglo-Peruvian Amazon Rubber Company enslaved virtually the entire local indigenous population to maximise output and reduce labour costs.
Over a decade, tens of thousands of indigenous men, women and children were worked to death. When eyewitness reports of the company’s brutal methods reached the outside world, public opinion eventually forced the British government in 1910 to convene a formal inquiry in the Peruvian rubber port of Iquitos.
The investigation found that the company “forced the Indians to work day and night at the extraction of rubber, without the slightest remuneration; that they give them nothing to eat; ... that they rob them their crops; their women, and their children to satisfy their voracity, lasciviousness and the avarice of themselves and their employees, for they live on the Indians food, keep harems and concubines, and sell these people at wholesale and retail in Iquitos; that they flog them inhumanly, until their bones are visible; that they give them no medical treatment, but let them die, eaten by maggots, or to serve as food for the chiefs’ dogs; that they castrate them, cut off their ears, fingers, arms and legs; that they torture them by means of fire, of water, and by tying them up, crucified, head down; that they burn and destroy their houses and crops; that they grasp children by the feet and dash their heads against walls and trees, until their brains fly out; that they have the old folks killed when they can work no longer; and finally, that to amuse themselves, to practice shooting…they discharge their weapons at men, women, and children, or in preference to this, they souse them with kerosene and set fire to them to enjoy their desperate agony.”
Entire tribes were exterminated. The horror remains a collective memory in the upper Amazon.
Atrocities such as the Amazonian genocide were a product of rapidly expanding capitalism. The voracious appetite of the European and North American industrial powers for the natural resources of the global South led to the systematic displacement and massacre of expendable “surplus” populations in Asia, Australasia, Oceania, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America.
The parallels between then and now are striking. In the present era, the forces of capitalist globalisation still hold the most vulnerable populations of the “developing” world in their exploitative grip.
This is nothing short of a global war of conquest, waged by capital against the dispossessed inhabitants of resource-rich regions in the global South.
The war has many fronts. One of them remains the upper Amazon, where the international hunger for hardwood timber and fossil fuel has led to another devastating boom.
Mindful of their history, the people of Utcubamba in northern Peru recently mounted a gallant stand against the international oil and gas companies who plan to desecrate their land and contaminate their rivers.
The government of President Alan Garcia passed a number of decrees opening up the Amazon to greater exploitation by oil and gas giants — sparking the uprising.
For millennia, the rainforest realm in Utcubamba has been safeguarded by the Aguaruna people and other tribal groups. The beauty of Utcubamba and the bond between the land and its people means nothing to the Garcia, elected in 2006 with the financial backing of the US.
Garcia returned the favour by enacting a US-Peru “free trade agreement” in 2007. The inhabitants of regions such as Utcubamba, long ear-marked for fossil fuel extraction, were denied a say in the “developmental” future of their lands.
As far as the government in Lima was concerned, the Amazon now belonged to the various international consortia to whom vast blocks of territory have been assigned. Unfortunately for these powerful interests, the indigenous people had other ideas.
The people of Utcubamba responded by blocking a section of highway near Bagua Grande (the capital of Utcumbamba) in an attempt to defend themselves and their land.
On June 5, the Peruvian police initiated a pitched battle in an attempt to end the blockade. At least 34 people were killed with many more disappeared. The total number of protesters killed remains unclear. Several police also died in the battle.
Using the June 5 clash as a pretext, the Garcia administration authorised a full-scale campaign of repression in Utcubamba to serve as a warning to other potential dissidents. Hundreds, at the least, are reported to have been summarily executed.
Despite the high toll, indigenous resistance achieved an important victory. A June 22 Counterpunch.org article by Laura Carlsen said: “Their movement to save the Amazon and their communities forced the Peruvian government to roll back implementing legislation for the U.S.-Peru Free Trade Agreement that would have opened up the vast jungle to transnational oil and gas, mining and timber companies ...
“Peru’s Congress, deep in a political crisis of national and international legitimacy, voted 82 to 12 to repeal Legislative Decree 1090, the Forestry and Wildlife Law and 1064, the reform to permit changes in agrarian land use without full prior consent.”
In the upper Amazon, blood for rubber has given way to blood for oil. The region’s indigenous people have shown they will not accept it.
Republished from Green Left Weekly
At the turn of the twentieth century, global demand for rubber from the upper reaches of the Amazon (encompassing Peruvian, Colombian and Brazilian territory) was at its height.
Capitalising on this profitable opportunity, the agents of an international consortium known as the Anglo-Peruvian Amazon Rubber Company enslaved virtually the entire local indigenous population to maximise output and reduce labour costs.
Over a decade, tens of thousands of indigenous men, women and children were worked to death. When eyewitness reports of the company’s brutal methods reached the outside world, public opinion eventually forced the British government in 1910 to convene a formal inquiry in the Peruvian rubber port of Iquitos.
The investigation found that the company “forced the Indians to work day and night at the extraction of rubber, without the slightest remuneration; that they give them nothing to eat; ... that they rob them their crops; their women, and their children to satisfy their voracity, lasciviousness and the avarice of themselves and their employees, for they live on the Indians food, keep harems and concubines, and sell these people at wholesale and retail in Iquitos; that they flog them inhumanly, until their bones are visible; that they give them no medical treatment, but let them die, eaten by maggots, or to serve as food for the chiefs’ dogs; that they castrate them, cut off their ears, fingers, arms and legs; that they torture them by means of fire, of water, and by tying them up, crucified, head down; that they burn and destroy their houses and crops; that they grasp children by the feet and dash their heads against walls and trees, until their brains fly out; that they have the old folks killed when they can work no longer; and finally, that to amuse themselves, to practice shooting…they discharge their weapons at men, women, and children, or in preference to this, they souse them with kerosene and set fire to them to enjoy their desperate agony.”
Entire tribes were exterminated. The horror remains a collective memory in the upper Amazon.
Atrocities such as the Amazonian genocide were a product of rapidly expanding capitalism. The voracious appetite of the European and North American industrial powers for the natural resources of the global South led to the systematic displacement and massacre of expendable “surplus” populations in Asia, Australasia, Oceania, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America.
The parallels between then and now are striking. In the present era, the forces of capitalist globalisation still hold the most vulnerable populations of the “developing” world in their exploitative grip.
This is nothing short of a global war of conquest, waged by capital against the dispossessed inhabitants of resource-rich regions in the global South.
The war has many fronts. One of them remains the upper Amazon, where the international hunger for hardwood timber and fossil fuel has led to another devastating boom.
Mindful of their history, the people of Utcubamba in northern Peru recently mounted a gallant stand against the international oil and gas companies who plan to desecrate their land and contaminate their rivers.
The government of President Alan Garcia passed a number of decrees opening up the Amazon to greater exploitation by oil and gas giants — sparking the uprising.
For millennia, the rainforest realm in Utcubamba has been safeguarded by the Aguaruna people and other tribal groups. The beauty of Utcubamba and the bond between the land and its people means nothing to the Garcia, elected in 2006 with the financial backing of the US.
Garcia returned the favour by enacting a US-Peru “free trade agreement” in 2007. The inhabitants of regions such as Utcubamba, long ear-marked for fossil fuel extraction, were denied a say in the “developmental” future of their lands.
As far as the government in Lima was concerned, the Amazon now belonged to the various international consortia to whom vast blocks of territory have been assigned. Unfortunately for these powerful interests, the indigenous people had other ideas.
The people of Utcubamba responded by blocking a section of highway near Bagua Grande (the capital of Utcumbamba) in an attempt to defend themselves and their land.
On June 5, the Peruvian police initiated a pitched battle in an attempt to end the blockade. At least 34 people were killed with many more disappeared. The total number of protesters killed remains unclear. Several police also died in the battle.
Using the June 5 clash as a pretext, the Garcia administration authorised a full-scale campaign of repression in Utcubamba to serve as a warning to other potential dissidents. Hundreds, at the least, are reported to have been summarily executed.
Despite the high toll, indigenous resistance achieved an important victory. A June 22 Counterpunch.org article by Laura Carlsen said: “Their movement to save the Amazon and their communities forced the Peruvian government to roll back implementing legislation for the U.S.-Peru Free Trade Agreement that would have opened up the vast jungle to transnational oil and gas, mining and timber companies ...
“Peru’s Congress, deep in a political crisis of national and international legitimacy, voted 82 to 12 to repeal Legislative Decree 1090, the Forestry and Wildlife Law and 1064, the reform to permit changes in agrarian land use without full prior consent.”
In the upper Amazon, blood for rubber has given way to blood for oil. The region’s indigenous people have shown they will not accept it.
Republished from Green Left Weekly
Tuesday, 23 June 2009
Peru: Blood Flows In The Amazon
James Petras
In early June, Peruvian President Alan García, an ally of US President Barack Obama, ordered armored personnel carriers, helicopter gun-ships and hundreds of heavily armed troops to assault and disperse a peaceful, legal protest organized by members of Peru’s Amazonian indigenous communities protesting the entry of foreign multinational mining companies on their traditional homelands.
Dozens of Indians were killed or are missing, scores have been injured and arrested and a number of Peruvian police, held hostage by the indigenous protestors were killed in the assault. President García declared martial law in the region in order to enforce his unilateral and unconstitutional fiat granting of mining exploitation rights to foreign companies, which infringed on the integrity of traditional Amazonian indigenous communal lands.
Alan García is no stranger to government-sponsored massacres. In June 1986, he ordered the military to bomb and shell prisons in the capital holding many hundreds of political prisoners protesting prison conditions – resulting in over 400 known victims. Later obscure mass graves revealed dozens more. This notorious massacre took place while García was hosting a gathering of the so-called ‘Socialist’ International in Lima. His political party, APRA (American Popular Revolutionary Alliance) a member of the ‘International’, was embarrassed by the public display of its ‘national-socialist’ proclivities, before hundreds of European Social Democrat functionaries. Charged with misappropriation of government funds and leaving office with an inflation rate of almost 8,000% in 1990, he agreed to support Presidential candidate Alberto Fujimori in exchange for amnesty. When Fujimori imposed a dictatorship in 1992, García went into self-imposed exile in Colombia and later, France. He returned in 2001 when the statute of limitations on his corruption charges had expired and Fujimori was forced to resign amidst charges of running death squads and spying on his critics. García won the 2006 Presidential elections in a run-off against the pro-Indian nationalist candidate and former Army officer, Ollanta Humala, thanks to financial and media backing by Lima’s rightwing, ethnic European oligarchs and US overseas ‘AID’ agencies.
Back in power, García left no doubt about his political and economic agenda. In October 2007 he announced his strategy of placing foreign multi-national mining companies at the center of his economic ‘development’ program, while justifying the brutal displacement of small producers from communal lands and indigenous villages in the name of ‘modernization’.
García pushed through congressional legislation in line with the US-promoted ‘Free Trade Agreement of the Americas’ or ALCA. Peru was one of only three Latin American nations to support the US proposal. He opened Peru to the unprecedented plunder of its resources, labor, land and markets by the multinationals. In late 2007, García began to award huge tracts of traditional indigenous lands in the Amazon region for exploitation by foreign mining and energy multinationals. This was in violation of a 1969 International Labor Organization-brokered agreement obligating the Peruvian government to consult and negotiate with the indigenous inhabitants over exploitation of their lands and rivers. Under his ‘open door’ policy, the mining sector of the economy expanded rapidly and made huge profits from the record-high world commodity prices and the growing Asian (Chinese) demand for raw materials. The multinational corporations were attracted by Peru’s low corporate taxes and royalty payments and virtually free access to water and cheap government-subsidized electricity rates. The enforcement of environmental regulations was suspended in these ecologically fragile regions, leading to wide-spread contamination of the rivers, ground water, air and soil in the surrounding indigenous communities. Poisons from mining operations led to massive fish kills and rendered the water unfit for drinking. The operations decimated the tropical forests, undermining the livelihood of tens of thousands of villagers engaged in traditional artisan work and subsistence forest gathering and agricultural activities.
The profits of the mining bonanza go primarily to the overseas companies. The García regime distributes state revenues to his supporters among the financial and real estate speculators, luxury goods importers and political cronies in Lima’s enclosed upscale, heavily guarded neighborhoods and exclusive country-clubs. As the profit margins of the multinationals reached an incredible 50% and government revenues exceeded $1 billion US dollars, the indigenous communities lacked paved roads, safe water, basic health services and schools. Worse still, they experienced a rapid deterioration of their everyday lives as the influx of mining capital led to increased prices for basic food and medicine. Even the World Bank in its Annual Report for 2008 and the editors of the Financial Times of London urged the García regime to address the growing discontent and crisis among the indigenous communities. Delegations from the indigenous communities had traveled to Lima to try to establish a dialogue with the President in order to address the degradation of their lands and communities. The delegates were met with closed doors. García maintained that ‘progress and modernity come from the big investments by the multinationals…,(rather than) the poor peasants who haven’t a centavo to invest.’ He interpreted the appeals for peaceful dialogue as a sign of weakness among the indigenous inhabitants of the Amazon and increased his grants of exploitation concessions to foreign MNCs even deeper into the Amazon. He cut off virtually all possibility for dialogue and compromise with the Indian communities.
The Amazonian Indian communities responded by forming the Inter-Ethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Rainforest (AIDESEP). They held public protests for over 7 weeks culminating in the blocking of two transnational highways. This enraged García, who referred to the protestors as ‘savages and barbarians’ and sent police and military units to suppress the mass action. What García failed to consider was the fact that a significant proportion of indigenous men in these villages had served as rmy conscripts, who fought in the 1995 war against Ecuador while others had been trained in local self-defense community organizations. These combat veterans were not intimidated by state terror and their resistance to the initial police attacks resulted in both police and Indian casualties. García then declared ‘war on the savages’ sending a heavy military force with helicopters and armored troops with orders to ‘shoot to kill’. AIDESEP activists report over one hundred deaths among the indigenous protestors and their families: Indians were murdered in the streets, in their homes and workplaces. The remains of many victims are believed to have been dumped in the ravines and rivers.
Conclusion
The Obama regime has predictably not issued a single word of concern or protest in the face of one of the worst massacres of Peruvian civilians in this decade – perpetrated by one of America’s closest remaining allies in Latin America. García, taking his talking points from the US Ambassador, accused Venezuela and Bolivia of having instigated the Indian ‘uprising’, quoting a letter of support from Bolivia’s President Evo Morales sent to an intercontinental conference of Indian communities held in Lima in May as ‘proof’. Martial law was declared and the entire Amazon region of Peru is being militarized. Meetings are banned and family members are forbidden from searching for their missing relatives.
Throughout Latin America, all the major Indian organizations have expressed their solidarity with the Peruvian indigenous movements. Within Peru, mass social movements, trade unions and human rights groups have organized a general strike on June 11. Fearing the spread of mass protests, El Commercio, the conservative Lima daily, cautioned García to adopt some conciliatory measures to avoid a generalized urban uprising. A one-day truce was declared on June 10, but the Indian organizations refused to end their blockade of the highways unless the García Government rescinds its illegal land grant decrees.
In the meantime, a strange silence hangs over the White House. Our usually garrulous President Obama, so adept at reciting platitudes about diversity and tolerance and praising peace and justice, cannot find a single phrase in his prepared script condemning the massacre of scores of indigenous inhabitants of the Peruvian Amazon. When egregious violations of human rights are committed in Latin America by a US backed client-President following Washington’s formula of ‘free trade’, deregulation of environmental protections and hostility toward anti-imperialist countries (Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador), Obama favors complicity over condemnation.
Republished from Countercurrents.org
Monday, 22 June 2009
Defeating the US-Peru Free Trade Pact: Victory in the Amazon
Laura Carlsen
Thousands of indigenous people from the Amazon jungle of Peru accomplished the unthinkable last week. Their movement to save the Amazon and their communities forced the Peruvian government to roll back implementing legislation for the U.S.-Peru Free Trade Agreement that would have opened up the vast jungle to transnational oil and gas, mining and timber companies.
The decision did not come without blood. Police attacked indigenous roadblocks and sit-ins in Bagua in northern Peru, killing some sixty indigenous protestors members of a 300,000 strong interethnic association of Amazon groups , according to estimates by human rights groups. The Peruvian government claims that 24 police officers and nine civilians died in the violence. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the UN Special Rapporteur and other human rights and environmental organizations throughout the world have initiated investigations into the massacre.
Peru’s Congress, deep in a political crisis of national and international legitimacy, voted 82 to 12 to repeal Legislative Decree 1090, the Forestry and Wildlife Law and 1064, the reform to permit changes in agrarian land use without full prior consent.
As president Alan Garcia went on national television to admit errors in not consulting with the indigenous groups of the Amazon, Daysi Zapata, representative of the association celebrated the triumph:
“Today is an historic day, we are thankful because the will of the indigenous peoples has been taken into account and we just hope that in the future, the governments attend and listen to the people, that they don’t legislate behind our backs.”
Zapata called to lift roadblocks and other actions throughout the country, while anticipating more battles to come over the repeal of seven related decrees, reinstatement of legislators suspended for protesting government actions against the Amazon people and the safe return of the president of the association, Alberto Pizango, forced to seek asylum in Nicaragua.
Indigenous women fought at the forefront of protests against the displacement of indigenous communities in the Amazon in the interests of foreign-led development plans. A Spanish sub-titled video of an Aguaruna mother provides a rare glimpse of how the Amazon communities view these plans--even if you don’t understand her language, her anguish and anger cut straight to the heart. Other videos taken by journalists who risked their lives as police fired on demonstrators, quickly circulated in the cyber world, raising global indignation.
Washington’s “New” Trade Policy Leads to Amazon Massacre
The recent clash between indigenous peoples and the Peruvian national police sends a powerful message from the Amazon jungle straight to Washington. The enormous social, political, and environmental costs of the free trade model are no longer acceptable.
In addition to the dead, hundreds remain missing and reports that the police threw the bodies of the protestors in the river to hide the real death toll have begun to circulate. Survival International and Amazon Watch have deplored the violence, the subsequent crackdown on NGOs in Peru, and the role that the free-trade agreement played in the crisis.
In May 2004 the U.S. and Peruvian governments began negotiations for a free trade agreement and signed the bilateral agreement onDecember 8, 2005. The signing provoked the first round of widespread protests, led by small farmers. Demonstrations against the agreement continued up through the signing of the ratified version by former president Bush and President Garcia in January of this year; four protestors were killed in 2008.
No doubt exists about the connection between the protests, the executive decrees, and the U.S. free trade agreement. In his televised mea culpa, Garcia began by stating that the repudiated measures were designed to eliminate illegal logging and informal mining (by legalizing it in the hands of transnationals, according to critics) and was “a demand of ecologist and progressive sectors in the North American Congress in negociations to pass the Free Trade Agreement”.
The U.S.-Peru trade agreement is held up as a model of the new trade agreement developed through a compromise between free-trade Republicans and Democrats with growing anti-free trade constituencies. To avoid the negative connotations of free trade agreements it was redubbed a “Trade Promotion Agreement” and incorporates environmental and labor standards into the text. These are the standards Garcia says he was complying with when he passed the decrees to open up 45 million hectares of Peruvian jungle to developers.
The Democratic leadership in Congress pushed the new model that looks remarkable=y like the old model, although the majority of Democrats voted against it. At the Pathways to Prosperity meeting, Sec. of State Hillary Clinton hailed the agreement as “good environmental stewardship”-- just four days before Peruvian police shot indigenous activists protesting invasion of the Amazon jungle.
The Obama administration has so far avoided comments on the conflict. But neither the battle for the Amazon or the debate over free trade’s role in indigenous displacement and environmental destruction are likely to go away any time soon, despite repeal of the decrees.
A planetary lung and a legendary reserve of culture and biodiversity, the Amazon region embodies conflicting values and views of human progress.
For Peruvian President Alan Garcia, in an editorial in El Comercio, the jungle is currently just a big waste: “There are millions of hectares of timber lying idle, another millions of hectares that communities and associations have not and will not cultivate, hundreds of mineral deposits that are not dug up and millions of hectares of ocean not used for aquaculture. The rivers that run down both sides of the mountains represent a fortune that reaches the sea without producing electricity.”
Garcia argues that indigenous peoples, just because they were lucky enough to be born in the Amazon, do not have special land-use rights on the land. Instead, the Amazon should be carved up into very large plots and sold to people with the capital to make use of it. The Peruvian government coveted the free trade agreement with the United States because, along with the required changes in national legislation, it opens up the Amazon to foreign investment.
In contrast, the indigenous communities and their supporters seek to conserve the Amazon jungles, and preserve traditional knowledge and cultures, all of which would be threatened by exploitation, bioprospecting and patent law changes under the FTA.
This contest between oil wells and jungles, foreign engineers and Amazon inhabitants has spread to the rest of Peru and the world. On June 11, tens of thousands of people marched in support of the indigenous protests in cities and towns across the country, chanting, “In defense of the jungle--the jungle is not for sale.” Simultaneously, demonstrators hit the streets to show support for the indigenous communities in cities throughout the world.
And it follows similar battles in other countries. In Mexico, hundreds of thousands of farmers marched to protest NAFTA’s agricultural chapter; in Colombia, indigenous and farm organizations marched to oppose a U.S.-Colombia free trade agreement; in Costa Rica, nearly half the population voted against CAFTA; and Guatemala, CAFTA protesters were killed in the streets.
Yet somehow these voices never make it into the U.S. trade debate. The assumption that a free trade agreement is a gift to a developing country continues to be enforced by a U.S. government refusal to listen to voices other than national economic elites. Meanwhile, the New York Times echoes accusations that foreign countries or terrorist organizations have duped these thousands of women, farmers, indigenous groups, and workers into opposing progress.
As long as providing clear access and mobility for transnational companies and financial capital is accepted as the sole measure of progress, concerns for the earth and human beings with little economic power and a different view of development won’t be part of the discussion.
We have to rethink the free-trade model and listen to the men, women and children on the bottom of the economic ladder who sacrifice their lives to help save the Amazon jungles they call home. We owe them an enormous debt. The global crisis compels a new vision of sustainable growth and social equity. The Obama administration has noted the need for changes--reviewing trade policy should be at the top of the agenda.
Laura Carlsen is director of the Americas Policy Program in Mexico City. She can be reached at: (lcarlsen(a)ciponline.org).
Republished from CounterPunch
Thousands of indigenous people from the Amazon jungle of Peru accomplished the unthinkable last week. Their movement to save the Amazon and their communities forced the Peruvian government to roll back implementing legislation for the U.S.-Peru Free Trade Agreement that would have opened up the vast jungle to transnational oil and gas, mining and timber companies.
The decision did not come without blood. Police attacked indigenous roadblocks and sit-ins in Bagua in northern Peru, killing some sixty indigenous protestors members of a 300,000 strong interethnic association of Amazon groups , according to estimates by human rights groups. The Peruvian government claims that 24 police officers and nine civilians died in the violence. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the UN Special Rapporteur and other human rights and environmental organizations throughout the world have initiated investigations into the massacre.
Peru’s Congress, deep in a political crisis of national and international legitimacy, voted 82 to 12 to repeal Legislative Decree 1090, the Forestry and Wildlife Law and 1064, the reform to permit changes in agrarian land use without full prior consent.
As president Alan Garcia went on national television to admit errors in not consulting with the indigenous groups of the Amazon, Daysi Zapata, representative of the association celebrated the triumph:
“Today is an historic day, we are thankful because the will of the indigenous peoples has been taken into account and we just hope that in the future, the governments attend and listen to the people, that they don’t legislate behind our backs.”
Zapata called to lift roadblocks and other actions throughout the country, while anticipating more battles to come over the repeal of seven related decrees, reinstatement of legislators suspended for protesting government actions against the Amazon people and the safe return of the president of the association, Alberto Pizango, forced to seek asylum in Nicaragua.
Indigenous women fought at the forefront of protests against the displacement of indigenous communities in the Amazon in the interests of foreign-led development plans. A Spanish sub-titled video of an Aguaruna mother provides a rare glimpse of how the Amazon communities view these plans--even if you don’t understand her language, her anguish and anger cut straight to the heart. Other videos taken by journalists who risked their lives as police fired on demonstrators, quickly circulated in the cyber world, raising global indignation.
Washington’s “New” Trade Policy Leads to Amazon Massacre
The recent clash between indigenous peoples and the Peruvian national police sends a powerful message from the Amazon jungle straight to Washington. The enormous social, political, and environmental costs of the free trade model are no longer acceptable.
In addition to the dead, hundreds remain missing and reports that the police threw the bodies of the protestors in the river to hide the real death toll have begun to circulate. Survival International and Amazon Watch have deplored the violence, the subsequent crackdown on NGOs in Peru, and the role that the free-trade agreement played in the crisis.
In May 2004 the U.S. and Peruvian governments began negotiations for a free trade agreement and signed the bilateral agreement onDecember 8, 2005. The signing provoked the first round of widespread protests, led by small farmers. Demonstrations against the agreement continued up through the signing of the ratified version by former president Bush and President Garcia in January of this year; four protestors were killed in 2008.
No doubt exists about the connection between the protests, the executive decrees, and the U.S. free trade agreement. In his televised mea culpa, Garcia began by stating that the repudiated measures were designed to eliminate illegal logging and informal mining (by legalizing it in the hands of transnationals, according to critics) and was “a demand of ecologist and progressive sectors in the North American Congress in negociations to pass the Free Trade Agreement”.
The U.S.-Peru trade agreement is held up as a model of the new trade agreement developed through a compromise between free-trade Republicans and Democrats with growing anti-free trade constituencies. To avoid the negative connotations of free trade agreements it was redubbed a “Trade Promotion Agreement” and incorporates environmental and labor standards into the text. These are the standards Garcia says he was complying with when he passed the decrees to open up 45 million hectares of Peruvian jungle to developers.
The Democratic leadership in Congress pushed the new model that looks remarkable=y like the old model, although the majority of Democrats voted against it. At the Pathways to Prosperity meeting, Sec. of State Hillary Clinton hailed the agreement as “good environmental stewardship”-- just four days before Peruvian police shot indigenous activists protesting invasion of the Amazon jungle.
The Obama administration has so far avoided comments on the conflict. But neither the battle for the Amazon or the debate over free trade’s role in indigenous displacement and environmental destruction are likely to go away any time soon, despite repeal of the decrees.
A planetary lung and a legendary reserve of culture and biodiversity, the Amazon region embodies conflicting values and views of human progress.
For Peruvian President Alan Garcia, in an editorial in El Comercio, the jungle is currently just a big waste: “There are millions of hectares of timber lying idle, another millions of hectares that communities and associations have not and will not cultivate, hundreds of mineral deposits that are not dug up and millions of hectares of ocean not used for aquaculture. The rivers that run down both sides of the mountains represent a fortune that reaches the sea without producing electricity.”
Garcia argues that indigenous peoples, just because they were lucky enough to be born in the Amazon, do not have special land-use rights on the land. Instead, the Amazon should be carved up into very large plots and sold to people with the capital to make use of it. The Peruvian government coveted the free trade agreement with the United States because, along with the required changes in national legislation, it opens up the Amazon to foreign investment.
In contrast, the indigenous communities and their supporters seek to conserve the Amazon jungles, and preserve traditional knowledge and cultures, all of which would be threatened by exploitation, bioprospecting and patent law changes under the FTA.
This contest between oil wells and jungles, foreign engineers and Amazon inhabitants has spread to the rest of Peru and the world. On June 11, tens of thousands of people marched in support of the indigenous protests in cities and towns across the country, chanting, “In defense of the jungle--the jungle is not for sale.” Simultaneously, demonstrators hit the streets to show support for the indigenous communities in cities throughout the world.
And it follows similar battles in other countries. In Mexico, hundreds of thousands of farmers marched to protest NAFTA’s agricultural chapter; in Colombia, indigenous and farm organizations marched to oppose a U.S.-Colombia free trade agreement; in Costa Rica, nearly half the population voted against CAFTA; and Guatemala, CAFTA protesters were killed in the streets.
Yet somehow these voices never make it into the U.S. trade debate. The assumption that a free trade agreement is a gift to a developing country continues to be enforced by a U.S. government refusal to listen to voices other than national economic elites. Meanwhile, the New York Times echoes accusations that foreign countries or terrorist organizations have duped these thousands of women, farmers, indigenous groups, and workers into opposing progress.
As long as providing clear access and mobility for transnational companies and financial capital is accepted as the sole measure of progress, concerns for the earth and human beings with little economic power and a different view of development won’t be part of the discussion.
We have to rethink the free-trade model and listen to the men, women and children on the bottom of the economic ladder who sacrifice their lives to help save the Amazon jungles they call home. We owe them an enormous debt. The global crisis compels a new vision of sustainable growth and social equity. The Obama administration has noted the need for changes--reviewing trade policy should be at the top of the agenda.
Laura Carlsen is director of the Americas Policy Program in Mexico City. She can be reached at: (lcarlsen(a)ciponline.org).
Republished from CounterPunch
Sunday, 14 June 2009
Peru: Battle for the Amazon
Kiraz Janicke
Peruvian President Alan Garcia ordered a violent crackdown on indigenous protesters near the town of Bagua Grande, 1400 kilometres north of Peruvian capital Lima. Special Forces opened fire, including from helicopters.
The protesters were calling for the repeal of government decrees that open up vast swathes of indigenous people’s land in the Amazon to oil, mining, timber and agribusiness companies.
On June 5, the Chachapoyas Medical College, in the region where the massacre occurred, put the number of indigenous people dead at 25. After a second day of clashes, indigenous leaders said at least 40 civilians were confirmed dead.
Twenty-three police also died in the clashes.
Eyewitnesses said Special Forces dumped the bodies of protesters into the nearby Manon River and others were burned in a nearby army barracks. Two journalists covering the clashes were also killed and four detained.
Human rights lawyers who visited the area said hundreds more were missing.
“The 5th of June 2009 will go down in history as the day when democratic illusions — illusions that were very weak, that’s for sure — ended”, Peruvian political economist Raul Weiner said on June 5.
“When Garcia decided that the decrees were more important than the relative social consensus, he changed the nature of power. His government cannot exist from now on without the use of force … This is the serious crossroad that exists in Peru.”
However, the government has tried to downplay the massacre, initially admitting a civilian death toll of only three, then later nine.
Indigenous communities, led by the Interethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Jungle (AIDESED), have been protesting the decrees, a requirement of the 2007 free trade agreement signed with the United States, for over a year.
The decrees have been deemed unconstitutional by a multi-party congressional commission, but have not been repealed by congress.
In an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of their demands, Garcia has resorted to racist slurs against indigenous communities, describing them as “savages” and “barbarians”. He said that “they are not first class citizens”.
On May 22, the government issued an arrest warrant for AIDESEP president Alberto Pizango on charges of “conspiracy, sedition and rebellion”. AIDESEP is the main indigenous organisation behind the protests.
Pizango has since been granted political asylum by the Nicaraguan embassy in Lima.
Garcia has even claimed that his government is the victim of a “conspiracy” and that indigenous communities are being manipulated by foreign powers — such as Venezuela and Bolivia — and political opponents such as left-nationalist Ollanta Humala’s Nationalist Party (PNP).
Radio YKVE Mundial said on June 8 that AIDESEP member Shapion Noningo ridiculed the claims: “The decrees denounced by the indigenous peoples, were ordered by the Peruvian government in compliance with the demands of a foreign government, which is not located in South America, but rather in Washington.”
Likewise, Humala has scoffed at the allegations: “Indigenous communities have the full capacity to make their own decisions.” He said the PNP supported their demands.
The massacre has created a crisis for the government, with the women’s minister Carmen Vildoso resigning on June 8 in protest over the government crackdown and in particular a government advertisement depicting indigenous people as “savages”.
In an attempt to avert growing popular resistance, Congress suspended the decrees for 90 days on June 10. However, tens of thousands of indigenous Peruvians, students and trade unionists took to the streets across the country on June 11 demanding the decrees be repealed, not just suspended.
The demonstration in Lima was violently dispersed with teargas and rubber bullets.
In a further crackdown on political opposition, that day seven PNP legislators (all of whom are indigenous) were suspended from parliament for 120 days.
They held a protest during the congressional debate the previous day, waving signs saying, “No to transnational (corporations) in the Amazon”, and “The land and water are not for sale”.
Freddy Otarola, spokesperson for the PNP legislators, described the suspensions as “racist” and a “grave abuse against democracy”.
“This confirms there is a civic-military dictatorship”, he said.
The government has also extended a state of emergency, initially decreed in four provinces on May 9, to cover the Alto Amazonas region.
However indigenous communities have won widespread popular support. Strikes and protests continue to spread, involving highland regions such as Puno, near the Bolivian border, and in Lima and Arequipa on the Pacific coast.
Even sectors of the police, angry over poor conditions and low pay, have denounced the government.
A June 5 statement by the clandestine Union of the Peruvian Police held the government responsible for the massacre.
It sent condolences “to the spouses, children and families of our comrades in arms, who were members of the clandestine police union, as well as to the families of our native brothers, to all of those fallen in Bagua; those in uniform, who were following orders of repression by the APRA [Garcia’s party] government,… and the natives defending the land and resources of the jungle, which belong to all Peruvians, in the face of their imminent privatisation.
“The only aim of the APRA government is to defend their sell-out politics and to sell off the country, which the most conscious uniformed workers [the police] reject, repudiate and condemn.”
The Peruvian elite are represented by the Garcia government, which acts on behalf of multinational capital scrambling to control the oil- and gas-rich Amazon. The elite is in an irreconcilable conflict with indigenous communities fighting to defend the environment and their way of life.
The conflict is occurring in the context of a continental-wide rejection of neoliberalism, which means allowing for increased plunder of Latin America by multinationals. This has included indigenous movements in neighbouring Bolivia and Ecuador winning big gains.
In the face of government intransigence, Peruvian indigenous communities have vowed not to take a step back.
Libia Rengifo, president of the Regional Association of Indigenous Peoples of the Central Jungle said: “Our mobilisation is permanent and we want the full repeal of all the legislative decrees that affect our interests.”
If the government did not comply, indigenous communities would march on Lima she said.
Republished from Green Left Weekly
Peruvian President Alan Garcia ordered a violent crackdown on indigenous protesters near the town of Bagua Grande, 1400 kilometres north of Peruvian capital Lima. Special Forces opened fire, including from helicopters.
The protesters were calling for the repeal of government decrees that open up vast swathes of indigenous people’s land in the Amazon to oil, mining, timber and agribusiness companies.
On June 5, the Chachapoyas Medical College, in the region where the massacre occurred, put the number of indigenous people dead at 25. After a second day of clashes, indigenous leaders said at least 40 civilians were confirmed dead.
Twenty-three police also died in the clashes.
Eyewitnesses said Special Forces dumped the bodies of protesters into the nearby Manon River and others were burned in a nearby army barracks. Two journalists covering the clashes were also killed and four detained.
Human rights lawyers who visited the area said hundreds more were missing.
“The 5th of June 2009 will go down in history as the day when democratic illusions — illusions that were very weak, that’s for sure — ended”, Peruvian political economist Raul Weiner said on June 5.
“When Garcia decided that the decrees were more important than the relative social consensus, he changed the nature of power. His government cannot exist from now on without the use of force … This is the serious crossroad that exists in Peru.”
However, the government has tried to downplay the massacre, initially admitting a civilian death toll of only three, then later nine.
Indigenous communities, led by the Interethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Jungle (AIDESED), have been protesting the decrees, a requirement of the 2007 free trade agreement signed with the United States, for over a year.
The decrees have been deemed unconstitutional by a multi-party congressional commission, but have not been repealed by congress.
In an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of their demands, Garcia has resorted to racist slurs against indigenous communities, describing them as “savages” and “barbarians”. He said that “they are not first class citizens”.
On May 22, the government issued an arrest warrant for AIDESEP president Alberto Pizango on charges of “conspiracy, sedition and rebellion”. AIDESEP is the main indigenous organisation behind the protests.
Pizango has since been granted political asylum by the Nicaraguan embassy in Lima.
Garcia has even claimed that his government is the victim of a “conspiracy” and that indigenous communities are being manipulated by foreign powers — such as Venezuela and Bolivia — and political opponents such as left-nationalist Ollanta Humala’s Nationalist Party (PNP).
Radio YKVE Mundial said on June 8 that AIDESEP member Shapion Noningo ridiculed the claims: “The decrees denounced by the indigenous peoples, were ordered by the Peruvian government in compliance with the demands of a foreign government, which is not located in South America, but rather in Washington.”
Likewise, Humala has scoffed at the allegations: “Indigenous communities have the full capacity to make their own decisions.” He said the PNP supported their demands.
The massacre has created a crisis for the government, with the women’s minister Carmen Vildoso resigning on June 8 in protest over the government crackdown and in particular a government advertisement depicting indigenous people as “savages”.
In an attempt to avert growing popular resistance, Congress suspended the decrees for 90 days on June 10. However, tens of thousands of indigenous Peruvians, students and trade unionists took to the streets across the country on June 11 demanding the decrees be repealed, not just suspended.
The demonstration in Lima was violently dispersed with teargas and rubber bullets.
In a further crackdown on political opposition, that day seven PNP legislators (all of whom are indigenous) were suspended from parliament for 120 days.
They held a protest during the congressional debate the previous day, waving signs saying, “No to transnational (corporations) in the Amazon”, and “The land and water are not for sale”.
Freddy Otarola, spokesperson for the PNP legislators, described the suspensions as “racist” and a “grave abuse against democracy”.
“This confirms there is a civic-military dictatorship”, he said.
The government has also extended a state of emergency, initially decreed in four provinces on May 9, to cover the Alto Amazonas region.
However indigenous communities have won widespread popular support. Strikes and protests continue to spread, involving highland regions such as Puno, near the Bolivian border, and in Lima and Arequipa on the Pacific coast.
Even sectors of the police, angry over poor conditions and low pay, have denounced the government.
A June 5 statement by the clandestine Union of the Peruvian Police held the government responsible for the massacre.
It sent condolences “to the spouses, children and families of our comrades in arms, who were members of the clandestine police union, as well as to the families of our native brothers, to all of those fallen in Bagua; those in uniform, who were following orders of repression by the APRA [Garcia’s party] government,… and the natives defending the land and resources of the jungle, which belong to all Peruvians, in the face of their imminent privatisation.
“The only aim of the APRA government is to defend their sell-out politics and to sell off the country, which the most conscious uniformed workers [the police] reject, repudiate and condemn.”
The Peruvian elite are represented by the Garcia government, which acts on behalf of multinational capital scrambling to control the oil- and gas-rich Amazon. The elite is in an irreconcilable conflict with indigenous communities fighting to defend the environment and their way of life.
The conflict is occurring in the context of a continental-wide rejection of neoliberalism, which means allowing for increased plunder of Latin America by multinationals. This has included indigenous movements in neighbouring Bolivia and Ecuador winning big gains.
In the face of government intransigence, Peruvian indigenous communities have vowed not to take a step back.
Libia Rengifo, president of the Regional Association of Indigenous Peoples of the Central Jungle said: “Our mobilisation is permanent and we want the full repeal of all the legislative decrees that affect our interests.”
If the government did not comply, indigenous communities would march on Lima she said.
Republished from Green Left Weekly
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