Peru Indigenous vs Amazon OIL selloff

grannynote:
It may not be happening here, but the issues are exactly the same for Indigenous Peoples throughout Canada and the world: Governments seek to maximize corporate profits via FREE extraction of natural resources, violating the rights of the Indigenous Peoples on their traditional lands everywhere, and putting lives in jeopardy via conflict and environmental destruction.

If two thirds of the Amazon jungle, the 'lungs' of the world, is to be denuded, made toxic and destroyed, HOW ARE THE REST OF US GOING TO BREATHE?


Peru Indian tribes join forces to fight off Amazon sale to oil companies
October 9, 2009

Achuar elders in Washintsa, Peru.
The Government plans to auction off 75 per cent of the Amazon to [oil] companies

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6867053.ece
Ramita Navai in Washintsa, Peru

They emerged from the thick, green jungle clenching their spears: a long file of barefoot chiefs and elders, their faces painted with their tribal markings and crowns of red, blue and yellow parrot feathers.

They had been summoned by the chief of Washintsa village for a meeting to discuss an oil company’s efforts to buy the rights to their land. Most had travelled for hours, padding silently through the dark undergrowth.

They came from Achuar Indian communities scattered along the Pastaza River, one of the most remote parts of the Peruvian Amazon near the border with Ecuador.

These men are part of a growing resistance movement crystallising deep in the jungles of Peru. For the first time isolated indigenous groups are uniting to fight the Government’s plans to auction off 75 per cent of the Amazon — which accounts for nearly two thirds of the country’s territory — to oil, gas and mining companies.

They oppose 11 decrees issued by President García, under special legislative powers granted to him by the Peruvian Congress, to enact a free trade agreement with the US. These would allow companies to bypass indigenous communities to obtain permits for exploration and extraction of natural resources, logging and the building of hydroelectric dams.

Indigenous leaders say that the laws will affect more than 50 Amazonian nations representing hundreds of thousands of Indians.

One by one the men step forward and deliver angry, defiant messages. “If an oil company tries to come here, we will block its path and block the rivers. We will not let them in and we will take strong action,” Jempe Wasum Kukush, a local leader, said. Another, Tayajin Shuwi Peas, warns: “We are not scared and we will fight to the death over this.”

Some groups have already begun the battle. Protests have turned deadly, with scores of clashes and rallies erupting across the country this year. Oil operations and airports were besieged and shut down, culminating in a mass demonstration of more than 3,000 Indians, mainly from the Awajun tribe, blockading a road in the sweltering jungle town of Bagua in June. More than 30 people were killed, including 20 policemen, after special forces, airlifted to the scene, opened fire on the protesters.

Fearing more violence and faced with public outrage, the Government was forced to revoke two of the most contentious decrees. The Prime Minster resigned and President García also admitted to a series of errors in the handling of the incident.

The Government has also called the protesters extremists and terrorists, and has charged an indigenous leader, who has since fled to Nicaragua, with sedition and rebellion. More than 100 men face criminal charges and many of them live in hiding.

Francisco Shikiu Ukuncham was shot through the back and saw three of his friends killed. He says that the fighting has served to strengthen ties between tribes. “All we want is for our home, the jungle, to be respected. We were demonstrating peacefully and they shot at us like we were dogs,” he said. “But the Government doesn’t listen to us. And if it doesn’t listen, the situation is going to get worse.”

Some of the tribes communicate with each other via a web of radios. The network has enabled disparate indigenous groups — often located hundreds of miles apart — to form alliances, co-ordinate protests and exchange information.

According to Ambrosio Uwak, the president of an indigenous rights organisation and one of the leaders of the movement, his group can mobilise more than 15,000 people through the radio system. “We want every single one of these decrees revoked. But if not, we won’t hesitate to call on our people to rise up again,” he said.

Unreported World, Peru: Blood and Oil. Friday, October 9. 7.30pm. Channel 4

Aboriginal tribes threatened by Peruvian logging "Putting it simply, the loggers are killing and expelling the isolated people.

October 17, 2008

REUTERS RIO DE JANEIRO–Evidence is mounting that unchecked logging in the Peruvian Amazon is pushing some of the world's last isolated tribes into Brazil and increasing land and food conflicts, according to a leading Brazilian tribe researcher and indigenous rights groups. From his observation outpost in a remote part of Brazil's Acre state near the Peruvian border, Jose Meirelles of the government's Indian affairs agency Funai told Reuters he was seeing regular evidence of uncontacted tribes fleeing the destruction of their traditional homeland. "Putting it simply, the loggers are killing and expelling the isolated people. It's clear that they (the Indians) are coming here," Meirelles told Reuters by e-mail. The 60-year-old Meirelles, who has lived in the area for 20 years researching and mapping uncontacted tribes, said he and a colleague had been attacked with last month near the outpost by a group of Aboriginals. The arrows were a different type than the ones used by Brazilian tribes he has studied, suggesting that the group had fled Peru. "Until two years ago, there were three peoples (in the area). A fourth moved to the area recently. The cut of their hair, their arrows and the place where they live is distinct from the others," Meirelles wrote. The reported attack took place in the same region where pigment-covered uncontacted Aboriginals were shown in photographs released in May that caused a worldwide media frenzy and drew calls for Peru to clamp down on logging in its Ucayali region. The head of Peru's agency that gives out petroleum licenses has occasionally questioned the existence of uncontacted tribes. An official at the Peruvian Indian Affairs department told Reuters it still aims to issue a full study on uncontacted tribes and logging that it promised several months ago. Initial findings were that logging is not causing groups to flee Peru, he said. "It is the policy of the state to recognize and protect uncontacted indigenous communities," said the official, who asked not to be identified. RESOURCE CONFLICTS Brazil has 26 confirmed native Indian tribes that live with little or no contact with the outside world, surviving by hunting and gathering as they have for centuries. Survival International, a group that campaigns for tribal people, says there are at least three groups on Peru's side of the border. "The (Peruvian) government has made it very clear that it wants to open up large parts of the Amazon – it's done that for oil and gas," said Survival's David Hill. "In this case there is a logging problem in all kinds of areas where it shouldn't be happening and it's failing to do anything about it." There is also logging on Brazil's side of the border. The Amazon Protection System that monitors the forest detected in May a deforested area of 2,000 hectares in the Kaxinawa Igarape reserve in Acre, 16 per cent of its total area. Funai has requested reconnaissance flights in 20 areas where isolated Indians are suspected to live. Meirelles says that newly built huts he photographed from the air this year about three miles inside the Brazilian border are further evidence of tribes moving from Peru. Planks of wood, empty fuel containers and other debris found floating down the Envira river past Meirelles' outpost point to logging activity upstream. Beatriz Huertas, an official with international indigenous rights group CIPIACI, spent three weeks in the border area in June. She said logging had caused conflicts between tribes over scarcer resources in Peru and pushed them into Brazil. Indigenous leaders in Rio Branco on Brazil's side told her they had been attacked by newcomer Peruvian tribes, she told Reuters. Former members of isolated tribes on the Peruvian side of the border told her in interviews that they had been attacked by loggers. "On one side they are persecuted and killed by loggers and when they flee they come into conflict with rival isolated tribes. So they have to keep looking for space where they can feed themselves," she said.