Peruvian government must end confrontation with the indigenous peoples and seek a dialogue

With the urgent appeal to end their confrontation with the indigenous peoples of the Amazon region and to seek a dialogue with the protesting native inhabitants the Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) wrote on Tuesday to the Peruvian government. „Meeting with violence the determined, but also desperate resistance of the indigenous against the selling-out of their means of life is the wrong way. These communities are fighting for their bare survival and for their chartered rights”, wrote the international human rights organisation to the President and the Prime Minister of the South American country, Alan García and Jorge del Castillo. The GfbV also announced that it will in the next few days be writing to hundreds of church institutions, human rights and civil rights organisations in the western world with the request that they likewise stand up for the cause of the Indians.

Over the heads of the Amazon Indians the government has passed more than 30 new laws facilitating the sale of areas of the indigenous peoples, criticised the GfbV. These actions constitute a breach of the international guide-lines for the protection of the native peoples such as the General Declaration of the United Nations on the rights of indigenous peoples. The Convention 169 of the International Labour Office (ILO), which lays down the rights of the indigenous and has been ratified by Peru, is evidently being ignored to accelerate the sale of huge areas of forest to multi-national corporations. These are especially interested in the mining of the mineral oil and natural gas to be found there.

Thousands of Indians have in Peru in the last few days been occupying in different parts of the country oil and gas installations, hydro-electric plants, roads and bridges. The government has in the four provinces Bagua, Utcubamba, Datem el Maranón and La Convención declared a state of emergency and sent the army to the crisis areas.

The mining of oil and gas in the Amazon region has already caused serious environmental damage and destroyed the means of life and the health of many indigenous peoples. The Camisea Project in the south-east of the country (Urubamba) is the largest gas mining project in Peruvian history. It has the most serious consequences for the 8,700 Machiguenga and the small communities of the Nahua, Nanti and Kirineri. Almost 75 percent of the gas mining takes place in an area in which there are small indigenous peoples who live in voluntary isolation. About 70 percent of the Peruvian Amazon region is already divided up into so-called mineral oil blocks, among them being several natural reserves.