Amazon Watch: Oil Production Interrupted as Peru Sends in Army to Suppress Peaceful...

Amazon Watch: Oil Production Interrupted as Peru Sends in Army to Suppress
Peaceful Indigenous Protests

LIMA, Peru, May 19 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Peruvian government Saturday
authorized the intervention of armed forces in the Amazon to crack down on
growing indigenous protests against new decrees aimed at facilitating the
entry of oil, mining, logging and agricultural companies into indigenous lands
without prior consultation or consent.

On Monday, sustained protests led the state oil company, Petroperu, to shut
down its main oil pipeline. This shutdown comes after a month of protests by
more than 30,000 indigenous peoples. Indigenous communities have engaged in
peaceful actions and blockades of roads and rivers throughout the Amazon
protesting new legislation passed to facilitate the Free Trade Agreement with
the USA that undermines their rights.

Videos and photos available on www.amazonwatch.org show police beating
peaceful protesters and firing rubber bullets to break up peaceful Awajun and
Huambis demonstrators last week when they blockaded the Corral Quemado Bridge
near the northern town of Bagua, resulting in dozens injured and one person
missing, who is feared dead.

In a statement, Alberto Pizango, president of the national indigenous rights
organization AIDESEP who was criminally charged today for his role in the
nationwide protests, stated: "The extraction of gas and oil, logging and the
dredging of rivers in search of gold are destroying in a few years social
structures, indigenous customs and coexistence strategies that date back
thousands of years."

International and Peruvian human rights organizations are widely criticizing
the Peruvian government's backward policies on indigenous peoples. In a recent
statement President Alan Garcia said that every Peruvian should be entitled to
benefit from the nation's natural resources, and not just a "small group of
people who had the fortune to be born there."

Atossa Soltani, who heads the human rights and environmental organization
Amazon Watch, commented, "Indigenous Peoples are asserting their collective
right to determine how and under what conditions 'development' is carried out
on their traditionally owned and legally recognized homelands."

"The Garcia Administration is clearly out of step with international
conventions on indigenous rights that have been ratified by Peru, not to
mention aspects of country's own Constitution. We urge the government of Peru
to use restraint and avoid bloodshed, seeking meaningful dialogue to resolve
the conflict instead."

SOURCE Amazon Watch

Gregor MacLennan, +1-415-395-6734, gregor@amazonwatch.org in the U.S., or
Edson Rosales, +511 265-5011, comunicaciones@aidesep.org.pe in Peru