Action Alert: Demand Justice in Peru!

Join us in demanding justice for internationally-respected Peruvian indigenous leader Santiago Manuin! If you have not already done so, you have untill the end of the week to sign this global petition on behalf of Manuin. Peru’s Pro-Human Rights Association (APRODEH) will deliver the letter to Peruvian President Alan Garcia on August 10th in honor of the United Nations recent declaration of August 9th as International Day of the World’s Indigenous People. For a succinct summary of Manuin’s case, please see the below Associated Press article.

Please sign the petition today!

Sincerely, Amazon Watch Peru Campaign Team

Jail and trial are next for wounded Peru Indians

By ANDREW WHALEN, Associated Press Writer – Tue Aug 4, 2:00 am ET

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.

Please sign the petition today!

–FULL TEXT OF LETTER TO PERUVIAN PRESIDENT ALAN GARCIA BELOW–

Peru, July 21, 2009

Dr. Alan García Pérez
President of the Republic of Peru

Dear Mr. President -

As citizens of Peru and the world, we are writing to you about the disproportionate and violent police incursion carried out to remove protesting indigenous people in Bagua, Amazonas, that Santiago Munuin Valera, a 52 year old Awajun indigenous leader, has been seriously injured. At the moment that he was shot, he was unarmed and calling for peace.

Santiago Munuin, chief of the indigenous leaders (Apus) of the five River-basins of Santa María de Nieva, is one of the most important leaders of the Aguaruna-Huambisa communities. A pacifist and founder of the Jesuit Social Center SAIPE, he was also President of the Aguaruna-Huambisa Council (CAH) and the Organizing Committee for Respect of the Indigenous People of Condorcanqui Province, Amazonas. He has been internationally recognized for this commitment to the environment and human rights.

This past June 5th, Santiago Manuin was shot 8 times throughout his body with bullets coming from AKM rifles. As a product of this disproportionate use of force by members of the DINOES, the Awajun leader was rushed to the Las Mercedes hospital in Chiclayo.

This situation notwithstanding, this past June 13th, Francisco Miranda Caramutti, judge with the First Penal Court of Utcubamba, ordered the search, finding, capture, and booking (order no. 0610-09-1) of Santiago Manuin, for his responsibility in the confrontation that happened in “The Devil’s Curve”, in which dozens of people were killed, among them police and indigenous citizens. Given Manuin’s history, it is surprising and outrageous that the court is attempting to hold him responsible for the lamentable death of police officers.

In recent weeks, some authorities have pressured for this pacifist indigenous leader to be released from the hospital and taken to the local jail, even as his health situation continues to be delicate and requires medical attention. Manuin has 8 gunshot wounds in his body and is at great risk of infection. Because of the gunshots, his colon is outside of his body that requires a prolonged and intensive treatment. Additionally, he is diabetic, which makes more difficult the healing of his wounds and requires new surgical procedures. At the moment the hospital’s doctors have indicated that he won’t be released until he has recovered fully.

Similar to the case of Santiago Manuin, there are other cases of indigenous leaders facing legal charges, investigations, and legal persecution. The Peruvian government intends to hold them responsible, both materially and intellectually, for various violent acts. Amongst them we mention Alberto Pizango Chota, Saúl Puerta Peña, Cervando Puerta Peña, Teresita Antazú López, Marcial Mudarra Taki, Daysi Zapata Fasabi, Walter Kategari Iratsimery, Roger Muro Guardián, and Milton Silva, amongst leaders, even though there isn’t valid evidence to support the accusations against them.

In this regard, the recent report on the events in Bagua and Utcubamba by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of the Human Rights of Indigenous Peoples, James Anaya, “reiterates the recommendation to revise the criminal charges against the individuals and indigenous leaders and urges the State to carefully justify future claims, given the special circumstances that have arisen surrounding the alleged crimes and the need to create adequate conditions for dialogue”.

The Special Rapporteur also emphasizes that “while recognizing the need to preserve the public order and to investigate and punish those responsible for crimes and/ or human rights violations, the use of criminal recourse should not be the standard route for dealing with social unrest and protest, but should instead be applied as a last resort and should be strictly limited to the principle of social necessity in a democratic society”.

We have no doubt that behind the arrest warrant of Santiago Manuin and other leaders, exist forces not only driven by legal motivations but also by a political interest to criminalize public protests in Peru.

Given this, we the citizens of the world in exercise of our rights and ethical responsibility to defend life and human rights from any kind of abuse, are asking that:

An investigation be initiated around the attempt on the life of Santiago Manuin Valera (ID# 337600081, 52 years old) and that the material and intellectual authors be brought to justice.
Economic reparations be paid to this Awajun leader, that he be provided with quality medical expertise independent of the State, and that the State guarantee his health and complete recovery, assuming the costs of medical attention for the injuries he has suffered.
Legal harassment against Santiago Manuin and other social leaders be ended, that the police officers that surround the hospital where Manuin is being interned be called off, and that the arrest warrant be changed to a summons for a court appearance.
We reiterate our belief in the innocence of Santiago Manuin, for whom we are expressing our solidarity.

Please sign the petition today!

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Tel 415-487-9600 www.amazonwatch.org

Protests in Peru: Another World is Happening

The pre-dawn assault of protesters which led to the violence that has claimed as many as 70 lives is a violent response to the on-going stand-off between the proponents of the free-market and the people who inhabit the land up for environmental liquidation.

When the protesters said “No” to the government’s renunciation of their rights, their rights as indigenous peoples, as moral people, as people who respect the earth, they signaled the latest shift in the on-going struggle against Globalization.  Be it oil in the south or uranium in the North, indigenous peoples now find themselves inhabiting the areas with the largest amount of remaining extractable resources.  This is paradoxically because they live in some of the least accessible and most inhospitable places on the planet.  Also setting them at odds with globalization, indigenous peoples often take the presently estranged position of often preferring to keep natural resources in the ground, rather than viewing the entire Earth as a large, bottomless bank account.  As protest leader Alberto Pizango stated, “There are riches there like oil, wood, gold – riches that arouse the ambitions of the world’s wealthy.”  He added though, “We are not against development even though we are portrayed as being against the system. What we want is development from our perspective.”

Where the indigenous protesters of Peru do approve of resource removal, they strive to involve local communities to ensure that those persons who incur the direct penalties that follow in the wake of such ‘development’, the penalties of poisoned water, of forests over 1,000 years old reduced to toothpicks, be among those who benefit from the extraction.

Protesters in Peru are responding to edicts of globalization which have become very familiar to many who stand in opposition to empire and in support of environmental and human rights.  Mobil and other oil companies view the Amazonian rainforest, the largest remaining contiguous rainforest, as a gold-mine, waiting to be emptied.  The 1400 different indigenous communities in the Amazon view the area as their home, the Earth which has sustained both they and their ancestors for millennia.

AIDESEP, an indigenous group representing 350,000 people from 1400 indigenous communities, called for the direct action 2 months ago in response to the failure of the government to consult the people who live on the land as to the future of that land.  AIDESEP is demanding an immediate end to 10 regulations, 9 of which were determined by the Peruvian Congress as violating the Peruvian Constitution six months ago, in December 2008.  Among the regulations opposed by AIDESEP are “Legislative Decrees” which move to bypass local approval for resource extraction, to break apart communal farms in favor of large, private land-holdings and to privatize water.  Indigenous leaders clearly understand the importance of safeguarding these rights and are fighting to protect them.  Such rights renounced once are never given back.  The Government is predictably referring to the protesters as ‘terrorists’, ‘anti-democratic’ and, interestingly, in-league with Hugo Chavez.  The charges are of course laughable and show the government’s lack of desire to speak on equal terms with the indigenous persons about honest grievances.

The Peruvian Congress late last year allowed the Executive Branch absolute authority to adjust the legal and regulatory framework of the Free-Trade Zone of the America’s. The move was reminiscent of both the pre-invasion of Iraq, where the US Congress voted away its Constitutionally mandated obligation to declare war, and the NAFTA closed-door dealings which lead to an abeyance of oversight and public debate.  Such hidden workings have lead, without exception, to the weakening of environmental and labor laws, the further destruction of natural habitats and the massive displacement of populations.

The current protests that have killed indigenous people, follow protests less than a year ago, in october of 2008, when Jorge del Castillo, the Prime Minister of Peru, was forced to resign over allegations of crooked dealings between the state Oil Company, Petroperu, and Discover Petroleum of Norway.

President Alan Garcia has stated that the oil belongs to all Peruvians, not just the indigenous peoples.  The conflict brings to light another struggle, one that has simmered but never ceased for the last 500 years.  As recently as 1990, tribes of the Amazon were having as much as 70% of their population die from disease brought in by contact with outsiders.  These tribes are among the last of the uncontacted peoples on the planet, and the exploitation of their land is at the center of what the future of the world will consist of.  In a sane world, an area that is so interwoven, complex and as yet undisrupted, would be allowed to follow its own course.  At what point will we as human beings acknowledge that there are other ways to function as a society?  As a civilization?  If we truly consider ourselves compassionate, we will stand in solidarity with the tribes and seek all possible means to not ‘develop’ the Amazon, unless we can honestly say to one another that we have tried all other possible courses.  As Davi Kopenawa Yanomam, dubbed the Dalai Lama of the Amazon, stated Monday, “We must listen to the cry of the earth which is asking for help. The earth has no price. It can’t be bought, or sold or exchanged. It is very important that white people, black people and indigenous peoples fight together to save the life of the forest and the earth. If we don’t fight together what will our future be? Your children need land and nature alive and standing.”

As of Wednesday morning, Alberto Pizango, leader of AIDESEP had fled the country and been granted asylum in Nicaragua, after he had a warrant put out for his arrest by the Garcia Government.  More than 70% of the Peruvian Amazon has been allocated for oil and gas extraction, and the Government of Alan Garcia is hungry for more.  The area which has been freed up for multi-national development by the Peruvian Government’s is 170,000 square miles of the Amazon Rainforest.  It is an area equal to the size of the entire National Parks system of the United States, plus an extra 60,000 square miles.  An area the size of the state of California, or all of New England, plus six extra states.  “The government wants to take our territory to give it to the big multinational companies.”  Pizango stated.

AIDESEP has stated that they will continue the protests and are demanding an the immediate halt to the violence and the repeal of the 10 National Unconstitutional Decrees.  They are organizing a Nationwide Strike in Peru, and are calling for protests worldwide, on Thursday, June 11, 2009 in response to the violence.