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

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Amazon Watch

Oil Production Interrupted as Peru Sends in Army to Suppress Peaceful Indigenous Protests
2 hrs 44 mins ago

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 governments 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."


Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/usnw/20090519/pl_usnw/amazon_watch__oil_production_interrupted_as_peru_sends_in_army_to_suppress_peaceful_indigenous_protests

[pleah]

1. K&R

:(

[blindpig]

2. K&R

There is nowhere on this earth where international capitalism does not extend it's destructive ways. Indigenous peoples are always the first to feel the grasping 'invisible hand'.

Let us not think that protesting against an individual company or country is sufficient. Let's get to the heart of the issue, these things are going on world wide, it is endemic to the system.

[fascisthunter]

7. yup.... pure greed at the expense of other's lives

the investors must be happy... scumbags

[SpiralHawk]

3. This is a bigger story than it seems

Thanks for posting it and calling our attention to it, Judi Lynn.

The k and the r.

[ananda]

4. Poor Peru. Poor Peruvians.

Free trade is just so fucking evil!

[Baby Snooks]

5. Afghanistan, Iraq, Peru....

Who is next?

[INdemo]

6. just another excuse to raise oil prices another $20 barrel ...

[SammyWinstonJack]

8. Yup!

x(

[Arctic Dave]

17. Oil prices will rise even though their consumption negligible at best

when compared to ours.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/Peru/Oil.html

[FailureToCommunicate]

9. "paging Al Gore, paging Al Gore..."

[bluesmail]

10. I just saw a site on Peru's presidentes and there's been more than a couple

of coup d'etats. More like a dozen. (Zombie) president Alan Garcia Perez. He's back.

[imdjh]

11. What Garcia actually said is a little different from the abbreviated quote in your article

President Alan Garcia defended the laws as needed to help impoverished Peru develop.
"We have to understand that when there are resources like oil, gas, wood ... they don't belong to the group that had the good fortune to be born there, because that would mean that more than half of Peru's territory belongs to a few thousand people," the president said Saturday.

He appears to be saying that the interests of all the people outweigh those of some of the people. How is that different from what Chavez has said?

[Judi Lynn]

15. You should take more time to grasp what has been happening here.

All that's missing is your own personal investment of your time and your attention.

From an article on the subject written in April:

Peruvian Indigenous Blockades Extract Government Promise

~snip~
For weeks, thousands of indigenous people have been blockading roads and river traffic throughout the Amazon in non-violent protests over the Peruvian government's roll-back of indigenous land rights and plans for water privatization.

Indigenous peoples are demanding the repeal of a series of new laws enacted by the administration of Peruvian President Alan Garcia as part of Peru's Free Trade Agreement with the United States, which took effect on February 1, 2009.

The indigenous communities say these laws have created a rush of private investments in natural resource extraction on their lands and have stripped away their rights to their traditionally owned ancestral territories.

In a letter to Pizango Chota dated April 22, the President of the Peruvian Congress Javier Velasquez Quesquen undertakes to bring the issues motivating the indigenous protest up in a plenary session of Congress next Tuesday without putting these matters through the usual parliamentary proceedings.

~snip~
"We are opposed to a development model that destroys the rainforest for profit of a few individuals and companies. We seek development in harmony with the environment, where all indigenous peoples can participate and benefit," says Pizango Chota.

Indigenous and environmental organizations are concerned that the new legislation takes advantage of the hundreds of indigenous communities whose land titles have not yet been formalized by the Peruvian government.

"This amounts to government backed land-grab," said Atossa Soltani, executive director of Amazon Watch, based in the United States. "Peru is basically becoming a 'corpocracy' with large corporations that possess close political ties to the government chomping at the bit to get a slice of the pie."

~snip~
In addition to repeal of the six presidential decrees, AIDESEP is concerned about plans to privatize water resources on indigenous lands, and the rapid expansion of palm oil plantations that are one of the biggest threats to the rainforest.

AIDESEP has issued a statement demanding the restoration of territorial rights; the recognition and titling of indigenous communal lands; the creation of reserves to protect the rainforest and uncontacted populations; and the suspension of all oil, gas, mining, tourist and logging concessions within indigenous territories.

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/apr2009/2009-04-23-01.asp

Alan Garcia has a hideous record of violence against indigenous people founded in his first term as a Peruvian President years ago.

Last year his target was Peruvian indigenous farmers:

posted 27-02-2008
Peru: Four dead after government crackdown on protests against US trade deal

A two-day national agrarian strike against a pending Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the United States ended on Wednesday February 20th, leaving four farmers dead after President Alan Garcia declared a state of emergency and ordered a violent crackdown.

A two-day national agrarian strike against a pending Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the United States ended on Wednesday February 20th, leaving four farmers dead after President Alan Garcia declared a state of emergency and ordered a violent crackdown. Farmers are demanding financial support from the government in the face of a predicted increase in the importation of highly subsidized U.S. crops with the passage of the trade deal. 700 farmers were detained, a number of whom face terrorism charges.

The strike, called by the Peruvian Farmers Confederation (Confederación Campesina del Peru, CCP) and other organizations began on Monday February 18th and ended once the government agreed to talks. The strike was in protest of what the CCP called "government indifference that has descended into the total abandonment of our nation’s farms."

Over the last week teachers, doctors and residents also struck, angry at a series of neoliberal policies advanced by the Garcia administration.

The CCP also demanded an end to plans to privatize and exploit public lands in the Amazon, attacks on teachers’ job security, attempts to privatize water and a proposed law that would allow the privatization of cultural patrimony, including a number of sites in historic Cusco. Tens of thousands of Cusco residents blocked access to the ancient Incan ceremonial complex of Machu Pichu and other popular tourist sites and partially shut down the city’s airport, leaving over two thousand tourists stranded.

The Garcia administration vacillated between declarations that the strike was a failure and angry denunciations of farmers as "extremists" and "enemies of national development." According to José Coronado of the CCP , "On Monday the 18th, when men from the country began their protest, the Minister of the Interior, who in reality is a minister of nothing, came out and said that the country was in order, ’that nothing happened’, while the country’s highways were blocked by the agrarian strike. And the person pretending to be the Minister of Agriculture, who in reality is nothing more than a private banker, came out to say that ’the agrarian strike is a failure’, and then, as if nothing happened, went on to declare a State of Emergency in the provinces where the strike was strong." While claiming that all was normal on television, police cracked down against protesters in an effort to stamp out the strike, which generated an estimated $8.6 million in economic losses.

More:
http://www.bilaterals.org/article-print.php3?id_article=11298

[Grinchie]

12. NAFTA, CAFTA, POOFTA, It all means legalized overconsumption

I suggest the President go live in the mess created by open pit mining so he can benefit from it's resources.

The World government truly wants all remnants of old sustainable cultures to be wiped from the face of the earth, and raise an entire population of people that depend on Corporations for everything.

As soon as they come up with the perfect food grown in a vat of bacteria, they will have made a huge step toward that goal.

Just look at the success in America. The majority of Americans wouldn't know where to start in growing a Carrot, Chard or Rudabega. Many Americans don't realize that millions of acres of trees are now GMO, and the lumber they produce has pesticide built in to every cell.
When those millions of acres of trees bloom, people are afflicated with allergies that are blamed on "Ragweed" or other common suspects. Americans implicitly trust the scientist that have no other allegiance than to the Corporations, whose only motive is more money, power, and absolute control.

[louis-t]

13. And.... it begins again.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Oil prices rose on Tuesday as a flurry of U.S. refinery problems stoked supply fears leading into peak summer driving season.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090519/bs_nm/us_markets_oil

[mbperrin]

14. You didn't REALLY think gas wouldn't be $3 a gallon by Memorial Day,

didja?

[pink-o]

16. This is the consequences of what John Perkins wrote about

in "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man".