Police fire tear gas in Peru protests

[struggle4progress]

Source: AP

By CARLA SALAZAR – 1 hour ago

LIMA, Peru (AP) — Riot police used tear gas to turn student protesters away from Peru's Congress on Thursday as thousands marched to back Amazon Indians resisting oil and natural gas exploration on their land.

At least 20,000 students, labor union members and indigenous Peruvians from the country's Andean highlands to its jungle lowlands joined the mostly peaceful nationwide protests.

In Lima, riot police fended off several hundred students, some of whom threw rocks and Molotov cocktails, with tear gas and mounted officers. No injuries were immediately reported. Associated Press journalists witnessed several people being detained but police did not issue arrest figures.

Marchers chanted "The jungle isn't for sale" during Thursday's protests, which were organized in response to a bloody police assault on an Indian roadblock on June 5 in the northern state of Amazonas. It was Peru's worst political violence in more than a decade, with 23 police killed, many with spears. Indian leaders reported at least 30 dead civilians ...

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j9pNpad9T95Yc7VQREA4BViTQRhwD98OPJ9G0

Read more: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j9pNpad9T95Yc7VQREA4BViTQRhwD98OPJ9G0

[IndianaGreen]

1. Blame the genocidal US-educated President, the neoliberal Alan Garcia

He and he alone is responsible for all the violence.

[EFerrari]

2. AP still pimping for Garcia in this report.

They don't know how many indigenous have been killed. They don't say how many are still missing. They don't report press intimidation that has resulted in skewed numbers, either.

[struggle4progress]

4. All I could find on the general strike, except for even more superficial Financial Times stories

[EFerrari]

5. Oh, of course. It's not surprising that the story about media intimidation

isn't getting out much. :shrug:

[struggle4progress]

7. This NYT piece might interest you:

Protesters Gird for Long Fight Over Opening Peru’s Amazon (NYT)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x455689

The last sentence of the snippet was especially heartening, since it suggested the protesters really understood what they were up against

[rabs]

6. Media also not reporting ecological disaster in the Amazon

Q'orianka Kilcher video (English) of oil-drilling in the jungle. (2006 video)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXiAk2KuGIA

[rabs]

3. Pocahontas arrives in Peru to support native communities

Peruvian-Swiss actress Q'orianka Waira Qoiana Kilcher, (a U.S. citizen) who played Pocahontas in the movie "The New World" arrived in Lima today to support the indigenous people of the Amazon.

There is a video (in English) of her arrival on the frontpage of El Comercio newspaper.

http://www.elcomercio.com.pe/

There is also a video of the demonstration and clashes in Lima today. Click on the little video icon with the word "enfrentamientos" on it.

(Sorry but cannot access the url for the videos.)

[IndianaGreen]

8. Peru: President promises to protect foreign capital from social unrest

This April 2009 article reports on Peruvian President Alan Garcia's real agenda regarding transnationals.

Peru: President promises to protect foreign capital from social unrest

By Luis Arce
9 April 2009

Responding to fears that growing social unrest will scare off foreign capital, Peruvian President Alan Garcia vowed to employ extra-constitutional power to guarantee the security of investments in Peru.

In a speech to Latin American business leaders on March 25—which was recorded without Garcia’s knowledge—the Peruvian president said, “The president can’t pick his successor, but he can prevent the next president from being someone he doesn’t want.” Garcia went on to promise another 10 years of political stability.

Peru is one of the Latin American countries most firmly committed to free market policies, and President Garcia has tied the success of his economic program to a free trade agreement recently signed with the US.

After recording 7.5 percent growth over the past four years, Peru’s economic fortunes have shifted 180 degrees. Export earnings have collapsed as a result of copper, zinc, lead and silver prices falling at least 27 percent since the beginning of July 2008. Peru is the world’s largest producer of silver, the third-largest miner of copper, zinc and tin, and the fifth largest for gold.

Garcia’s anti-democratic statement prompted his main political rival, the ultra-nationalist former army officer Ollanta Humala, to accuse the President of being “a dictator.”

Garcia defeated Humala for the presidency in a run-off election in 2006. He was able to beat Humala, who came first in the general election, thanks to votes from right-wing candidate Lourdes Flores’s (eliminated in the first round) supporters among the bourgeoisie and the more affluent layers of the middle class of Lima, the capital city, who viewed him as the “lesser evil.”

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/apr2009/peru-a09.shtml

[Judi Lynn]

9. The Global Significance Of The Amazon Protest

The Global Significance Of The Amazon Protest
June 12, 2009 By Sam Urquhart

Peru's Amazon region has been locked down, after the death of perhaps 40 indigenous protesters and 20 police during an attempt to break up a blockade last Friday. Some reports put the death toll as high as 84, in the worst violence that the Amazon region has seen since the height of the Shining Path insurgency in the 1980s. <http://enlacenacional.com/2009/06/05/enfrentamiento-[br />entre-policias-y-nativos-en-bagua-deja-tragico-saldo/]

On 6 June, a peaceful blockade was allegedly fired upon by helicopters from the nation's army. Most of the dead were indigenous protesters, part of a contingent at the blockade in Bagua province which numbered thousands - all of them seeking to resist the expansion of energy exploration and logging into Peru's Amazon region. And many of them appear to have been not just peaceful, but asleep.

As the NGO Amazon Watch reported, <http://www.amazonwatch.org/[br />newsroom/view_news.php?id=1829] "At approximately 5 am...the Peruvian military police staged a violent raid" during which "several thousand Awajun and Wambis indigenous peoples were forcibly dispersed by tear gas and real bullets." In a brutal attack, helicopters dropped tear gas bombs from on high while police moved in on the protesters - shooting some in the process. The NGO also reports that "as the unarmed demonstrators were killed and injured some wrestled the Police and took away their guns and fought back in self-defense resulting in deaths of several Police officers."

Doctors in Bagua allege that the evacuation of casualties was obstructed. As Dr Jose Sequen Reyes told El Mundo, "During great part in the morning...the police did not allow the passage of the ambulances for the evacuation." <http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/[br />2009/06/06/internacional/1244268533.html] El Mundo's correspondent Beatrice Jimenez also reported that "the bodies of the dead being "disappeared" by those paid by the police Special Operations Directorate" - allegations that are backed up by Peru's National Coordinator of Human Rights, who has blogged about reports that his organization has received of corpse-burning by the authorities.

This has been reported by Amazon Watch, which reported on 8 June that "numerous eyewitnesses are reporting that the Special Forces of the Peruvian Police have been disposing of the bodies of indigenous protesters who were killed" in what Amazon Watch spokesperson Gregor McClennan calls "an apparent attempt by the Government to underreport the number of indigenous people killed by police." <http://www.amazonwatch.org/[br />newsroom/view_news.php?id=1843]

More:
http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/21681

[Judi Lynn]

10. Voices Raised Against Violence in Peru

Voices Raised Against Violence in Peru

OeWorld.net, News Report, Posted: Jun 12, 2009

Violent confrontations broke out Friday as approximately 400 Peruvian riot police used force to dismantle a blockade built by indigenous protesters on a highway in northern Peru, near the town of Bagua Grande, reports the BBC. "At least 30 indigenous protesters and 24 police officers are reported to have been killed in two days of clashes," notes the news agency.

"The use of army units to quell these protests is merely inflaming an already volatile situation, and does nothing to address the Indians' fundamental and justified concerns," said the human rights group Survival International.

Roughly 2,500 people participated in the protest. Dozens are missing and feared dead.

The military is now clamping down on the surrounding area -- preventing people from looking for those who may have died -- and officials have ordered the arrest of 36 demonstrators, charged with "kidnapping, homicide, impeding delivery of public services, disturbing the peace, and sedition," reports CNN.

Over the last two months, indigenous Peruvians have been protesting government policies that would allow major corporations to mine for oil and gas on indigenous communities' ancestral lands. (Read more from Survival International below.)

Testimonies from Protest Leaders

"Three armed forces helicopters are flying, throwing tear gas bombs, and firing bullets directly as if we were criminals, as if there weren't women and children protesting," said Servando Puerta, president of the Regional Organization of Indigenous Peoples of Peru's Northern Amazon, according to Latin America Press. The indigenous protesters could not have fired on security forces since they were only carrying bows and arrows, added the Amazonian tribal leader.

"I personally hold the government of Alan García Pérez responsible for ordering the genocide," continued Alberto Pizango, president of the Inter-Ethnic Development Association of the Peruvian Amazon (AIDESEP), who has since fled into hiding to avoid persecution. "They're killing us for defending our lives, our sovereignty, human dignity... For thousands of years, we've run the Amazon forests."

More:
http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=dc7e677f0d4b15c7b145a279e56550bb

[Judi Lynn]

11. Peru protesters march in support of Indians

Peru protesters march in support of Indians
Police use tear gas to turn away protesters in Lima. The Indians are fighting a government plan to expand oil development on their land.
Associated Press
June 12, 2009

http://www.latimes.com.nyud.net:8090/media/photo/2009-06/47461659.jpg

Lima, Peru -- Riot police used tear gas Thursday to turn student protesters away from Peru's Congress as thousands nationwide marched in support of Amazon Indians resisting oil and natural gas exploration on their land.

At least 20,000 students, labor union members and indigenous Peruvians from the country's Andean highlands to its jungle lowlands joined mostly peaceful protests.

In Lima, riot police fended off several hundred students, some of whom threw rocks and Molotov cocktails. No injuries were immediately reported. Associated Press journalists witnessed several people being detained, but police did not issue arrest figures.

Marchers chanted, "The jungle isn't for sale," during the protests, which were organized in response to a bloody confrontation at an Indian roadblock June 5 in the northern state of Amazonas. It was Peru's worst political violence in more than a decade, with 23 police officers killed, many with spears. Indian leaders reported that at least 30 civilians died.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-peru-protest12-2009jun12,0,4147371.story?track=rss

(Once again, news from AP with the information missing, as one might predict.)

[struggle4progress]

12. Thousands march over Peru clashes (BBC)

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk.nyud.net:8090/media/images/45908000/jpg/_45908962_007480195-1.jpg
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8096719.stm

Little new in the article

[David__77]

13. There's no one to defend the people from the armed forces and police.

That's too bad. It wasn't always that way.

[Judi Lynn]

14. Don't get in the way of the Anglo search for (black) gold.

From:
Peru and The Long Genocide, 1492 to ??
by jqjacobs
Thu Jun 11, 2009 at 07:55:05 AM PDT

~snip~
In 1969, as a Peace Corps volunteer working in Peru, one of my responsibilities working in Peru's Ministry of Agriculture was enacting an Agrarian Reform decree, seizing haciendas from wealthy descendants of Spanish invaders. The law was, in effect, often returning royal land grants to Indigenous peoples.

At Hacienda Sollocota I witnessed slavery for the first time in my life, in the form of chattel, Indians living in the corrals of the animals they tended. In one corner of a stone animal corral I saw a separate enclosure for an Indian family, and in the corner of this area a small, thatch-roofed room only large enough to sleep a family, with walls only a meter high. When we transferred title to the newly-formed cooperative of 100 families, a celebration was conducted. I remember best one quote, an elderly man saying in broken Spanish, "We waited 400 years to get our land back, and today we got it back." At Sollocota there still are people who remember slavery, who remember growing up in a corral. This is the reality of Peruvian Indigenous people.

I returned to Peru to visit my former villages in 1989, amidst the violence of the Senderos and other resistance movements, to bombed bridges, liberated zones, roadblocks, and mounting death tolls. As I hitchhiked many people related their stories. One person's racism was the worst I have ever encountered. He stated that the solution to Peru's problems was simple enough, "Kill all the Indians." What he failed to understand, from my perspective, was that he was an Indian too. Class identification does not match genetics in Peru. This racism is exemplified by President Alan Garcia declaring the Indigenous Peoples to not be "first-class" citizens, as seen in the Democrcy Now videos linked herein.

The deep-seated racial conflict in Peru has its beginning with Contact. Europeans came to Peru to steal the riches, genocide ensued, and the same process continues today. It is not accomplished with gas chambers, it is not as explicit as the European methods of the last century, but it continues and the toll, many tens of millions, continues to mount.

Europeans do not have the right to draw a line around an Indigenous American territory, declare sovereignty, and impose their own rules--not in 1492, not in Mexico in 1523, nor in Peru in 2009. There is no real difference between doing it 500 years ago or doing it today. Because the frontier of the conquest is in remote jungles and inaccessible regions, where the few remaining traditional Native populations survive, their genocide is easily ignored. It is the game genocide that began over 500 years ago, THE LONG GENOCIDE, and it must STOP.

More:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/6/11/741166/-Peru-and-The-Long-Genocide,-1492-to-

[Judi Lynn]

15. PERU: Native Protesters Search for Their Dead

PERU: Native Protesters Search for Their Dead
By Milagros Salazar

http://www.ipsnews.net.nyud.net:8090/fotos/Nativos_hospital_Bagua_MIlagros_Salazar1.jpg

Wounded indigenous men at
the hospital in Bagua.

Credit:Milagros Salazar/IPS

BAGUA, Peru, Jun 11 (IPS) - Indigenous people taking part in protests near this town in the northern Peruvian province of Amazonas that ended in a bloody clash with the police last week are now focusing on drawing up a list of the dead and missing, amidst a climate of fear and mistrust.

Several eyewitnesses said they saw police load the bodies of dead protesters into a helicopter and dump them into the Marañón river, after the Friday, Jun. 5 incident in which both demonstrators and policemen were killed.

But authorities from the prosecutors office failed to find any more bodies on their third search in the area, carried out on Wednesday.

For the past two months, native protesters have been blocking roads and access to oil industry installations to demand the repeal of a series of government decrees that violate their land rights, which are protected under the constitution and by international conventions signed by Peru.

"The helicopter stopped at least three times to pick up bodies," Luis Padilla, a member of the Awajun ethnic group from Río Santiago in Amazonas province, told IPS. "That was between eight and nine in the morning on Friday," added Padilla, who said it took three days to reach the town of Bagua from his village.

Padilla, who was wary of the camera, said that on Friday, Jun. 5 the police opened fire on the protesters manning the roadblock at a spot along the highway into Bagua called Curva del Diablo (Devil’s Curve), at around 6:00 AM, and that in response the indigenous demonstrators used their spears. "We defended ourselves," he said.

The police "picked up the bodies of our brothers and sisters and dumped them into the Marañón river," added Joel Tupicá, from the district of Nieva, who along with Padilla and another 24 Indians, including two women, were on their way back to their home villages on Wednesday, five days after the violent incident that left at least 30 protesters and policemen dead.

More:
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=47188

[Judi Lynn]

16. US-Peru FTA Sparks Indigenous Massacre

Truthout Original

US-Peru FTA Sparks Indigenous Massacre
Thursday 11 June 2009

by: Tom Loudon, t r u t h o u t | Report

~snip~
For almost two months, as many as 30,000 indigenous people have been blocking road and river traffic, demanding the repeal of presidential decrees issued last year to facilitate implementation of the US-Peru FTA. According to the indigenous leaders, several of these decrees directly threaten indigenous territories and rights. After having attempted several times to negotiate with the government the repeal of the most egregious of the decrees, and faced with a permanent influx of extraction equipment into the region, the people decided it was imperative to "put their bodies in front of the machines" in order to prevent this equipment from entering their territory.

On Friday, June 5, the government decided the protests needed to end and launched an aggressive assault against the people protesting on the road outside of Bagua. The dislocation was conducted from helicopters and the ground, with police and army using automatic weapons and heavy equipment against people armed with only rocks and spears. As videos, photos and testimonies from the region slowly emerge, it is clear that this was designed to inflict as many civilian casualties as possible, and deter those in other regions from continuing protests. Pictures circulating on the Internet depict snipers in uniform firing at protesters from the streets, tanks and from on top of buildings. On Saturday, in Lima, Peru's capital, a large spontaneous demonstration in support of the Amazonian indigenous was broken up by police.

In the wake of what appears to be a massacre perpetrated by the police, the government of President Alan Garcia is mounting a massive propaganda campaign, claiming that indigenous protesters attacked the police, and accusing them of being terrorists. Human rights lawyers have accused Peru's government of a cover-up, and have been impeded from getting in to investigate more fully. The Bishop's Vicariate for the Environment for Jaen, Nicanor Alvarado, said "The main problem is that injured and deceased civilians are being transferred to the "El Milagro" military base ... so, it's possible that a group of injured and deceased people are disappeared later on."

Credible accusations are emerging that the police are systematically disappearing civilian bodies by burning or throwing then in rivers. Right now, people in the region are preparing lists of those missing to document the large number of civilians disappeared. Amnesty International has issued a warning expressing concern for the scores of demonstrators who were detained last weekend.

More:
http://www.truthout.org/061109B

[Judi Lynn]

17. Double posting. Sorry. n/t

Truthout Original

US-Peru FTA Sparks Indigenous Massacre
Thursday 11 June 2009

by: Tom Loudon, t r u t h o u t | Report

~snip~
For almost two months, as many as 30,000 indigenous people have been blocking road and river traffic, demanding the repeal of presidential decrees issued last year to facilitate implementation of the US-Peru FTA. According to the indigenous leaders, several of these decrees directly threaten indigenous territories and rights. After having attempted several times to negotiate with the government the repeal of the most egregious of the decrees, and faced with a permanent influx of extraction equipment into the region, the people decided it was imperative to "put their bodies in front of the machines" in order to prevent this equipment from entering their territory.

On Friday, June 5, the government decided the protests needed to end and launched an aggressive assault against the people protesting on the road outside of Bagua. The dislocation was conducted from helicopters and the ground, with police and army using automatic weapons and heavy equipment against people armed with only rocks and spears. As videos, photos and testimonies from the region slowly emerge, it is clear that this was designed to inflict as many civilian casualties as possible, and deter those in other regions from continuing protests. Pictures circulating on the Internet depict snipers in uniform firing at protesters from the streets, tanks and from on top of buildings. On Saturday, in Lima, Peru's capital, a large spontaneous demonstration in support of the Amazonian indigenous was broken up by police.

In the wake of what appears to be a massacre perpetrated by the police, the government of President Alan Garcia is mounting a massive propaganda campaign, claiming that indigenous protesters attacked the police, and accusing them of being terrorists. Human rights lawyers have accused Peru's government of a cover-up, and have been impeded from getting in to investigate more fully. The Bishop's Vicariate for the Environment for Jaen, Nicanor Alvarado, said "The main problem is that injured and deceased civilians are being transferred to the "El Milagro" military base ... so, it's possible that a group of injured and deceased people are disappeared later on."

Credible accusations are emerging that the police are systematically disappearing civilian bodies by burning or throwing then in rivers. Right now, people in the region are preparing lists of those missing to document the large number of civilians disappeared. Amnesty International has issued a warning expressing concern for the scores of demonstrators who were detained last weekend.

More:
http://www.truthout.org/061109B

[Judi Lynn]

18. Indigenous Peoples: 'We Are Fighting for Our Lives and Our Dignity'

Published on Saturday, June 13, 2009 by The Guardian/UK
Indigenous Peoples: 'We Are Fighting for Our Lives and Our Dignity'

Across the globe, as mining and oil firms race for dwindling resources, indigenous peoples are battling to defend their lands – often paying the ultimate price
by John Vidal

It has been called the world's second "oil war", but the only similarity between Iraq and events in the jungles of northern Peru over the last few weeks has been the mismatch of force. On one side have been the police armed with automatic weapons, teargas, helicopter gunships and armoured cars. On the other are several thousand Awajun and Wambis Indians, many of them in war paint and armed with bows and arrows and spears.

In some of the worst violence seen in Peru in 20 years, the Indians this week warned Latin America what could happen if companies are given free access to the Amazonian forests to exploit an estimated 6bn barrels of oil and take as much timber they like. After months of peaceful protests, the police were ordered to use force to remove a road bock near Bagua Grande.

In the fights that followed, at least 50 Indians and nine police officers were killed, with hundreds more wounded or arrested. The indigenous rights group Survival International described it as "Peru's Tiananmen Square".

"For thousands of years, we've run the Amazon forests," said Servando Puerta, one of the protest leaders. "This is genocide. They're killing us for defending our lives, our sovereignty, human dignity."

Yesterday, as riot police broke up more demonstrations in Lima and a curfew was imposed on many Peruvian Amazonian towns, President Garcia backed down in the face of condemnation of the massacre. He suspended – but only for three months – the laws that would allow the forest to be exploited. No one doubts the clashes will continue.

Peru is just one of many countries now in open conflict with its indigenous people over natural resources. Barely reported in the international press, there have been major protests around mines, oil, logging and mineral exploitation in Africa, Latin America, Asia and North America. Hydro electric dams, biofuel plantations as well as coal, copper, gold and bauxite mines are all at the centre of major land rights disputes.

More:
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/06/13-3