Peru: WikiLeaks cables shed light on US massacre role
Peru: WikiLeaks cables shed light on US massacre role
Saturday, June 14, 2014
By Christian Tym
WikiLeaks cables released on June 9 shed new light on the United States' role in the Bagua Massacre in Peru on June 5, 2009.
The cables suggest then-US ambassador Michael McKinley may have encouraged the Peruvian government to use force against protesters in an operation that cost 10 protesters and 24 police officers their lives.
Indigenous groups in the Amazon had been blockading highways for seven weeks. They were protesting against decrees passed by Peru’s then-president Alan Garcia.
The decrees were passed to fulfil the terms of the US-Peru free trade agreement (FTA). Garcia made use of sweeping executive powers to pass 101 decrees in three months.
In the embassy cable sent on June 1, four days before the massacre, McKinley criticised “the government’s reluctance to use force to clear roads and blockades”. He said it was “contributing to the impression that the communities have broader support than they actually do”.
The Lima-based ambassador wrote: “Should Congress and President Garcia give in to the pressure, there would be implications for the recently implemented Peru-US FTA.”
More:
https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/56637
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June 11, 2014, 04:00 pm
Peru's “Bagua massacre” haunts the TPP
By Jose de Echave and Lori Wallach
Five years ago last week, Peruvian police opened fire on indigenous people protesting the implementation of U.S.-Peru Free Trade Agreement (FTA) terms providing new access to exploit their Amazonian lands for oil, gas and logging.
On June 5, 2009, Peruvian security forces attacked several thousand Awajun and Wambis protestors, including many women and children, who were blocking the "Devil's Curve," a jungle highway near Bagua, 600 miles north of Lima. The protestors were demanding revocation of decrees enacted to conform Peruvian law to FTA requirements. Thirty-two Peruvians died in the infamous Bagua massacre and hundreds were wounded.
The FTA’s foreign investor privileges also allowed a U.S. firm to pressure Peru’s government to reopen a smelter that had severely lead-poisoned hundreds of children in La Oroya, Peru — a story revealed in a Bloomberg exposé. Outrageously, now the Obama administration is pushing for inclusion of the same extreme foreign investor privileges in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) it is negotiating with Peru and 10 other Pacific Rim countries.
Opposition to these terms, which empower foreign investors to circumvent domestic courts and laws, and sue governments for cash compensation in foreign tribunals, is just one issue that is bedeviling TPP negotiations, which have missed repeated deadlines.
The Baguazo, as Peruvians call the 2009 massacre, was caused in part by Peruvian President Alan Garcia. His decrees implementing the FTA violated the rights of indigenous people established both under the Peruvian Constitution and treaties Peru had signed guaranteeing prior informed consent by indigenous communities on projects involving their land. And, Garcia demonized the protestors as perro del hortelano – “manger dogs.” He likened the indigenous protestors to dogs growling over food that they neither eat nor let others eat.
Thanks to WikiLeaks, we can now see that the U.S. government was urging Garcia on.
More:
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/foreign-policy/208892-perus-bagua-massacre-haunts-the-tpp#ixzz36zUsRVZa
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A government soldier points out a Bagua native who has dared to remain unshot:
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More firepower needed to shoot down those indigenous men with wooden sticks and spears:
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More images from:
Peru Bagua massacre 2009 ordered by President Alan Garcia
https://archive.org/details/PeruBaguaMassacre2009OrderedByPresidentAlanGarcia
...or one of them--the very dark era of the Bush Junta that shadows this one like a swarm of flying monkeys in the control of the Wicket Witch of the West. Hugo Chavez, dictator. HA-HA-HA! (Dark Matter LOL!) Garcia: ONE HUNDRED AND ONE DECREES IN THREE MONTHS! All for Corporate Predators! And Hugo Chavez, what? A couple of paltry decrees in ten years, using powers LAWFULLY voted to him by the ELECTED National Assembly, to fix a flooded town or deal with the banksters.
The other was Alvaro Uribe (warmongering mafia don installed as prez of Colombia by the Bush Junta and given $7 BILLION of U.S. taxpayer money to kill peasants and trade unionists, to drive 5 MILLION peasants from their land, to rig elections, to spy on judges and prosecutors, to fund rightwing death squads--all prep for U.S. "free trade for the rich"
. But no, according to our benighted Corporate News Monopolies, Hugo Chavez was the dictator. Gawd.
U.S. "free trade" is FASCIST TYRANNY. That is why it required ONE HUNDRED AND ONE EXECUTIVE DECREES over three months' time, overriding Peruvian laws, to be implemented. And that is why the U.S. government cheered on the murders of peasant protestors in Peru. And that is why they lie about it so much. They painted Garcia as a "centrist." Even I believed it, not having a lot of information at the time. I knew he was very corrupt. I didn't know about the 101 unlawful decrees serving foreign corporate predators.
Our Corporate News Monopolies are not just liars and disinformationists; they are a BLACK HOLE where information should be. They suck all light into the dark, dark place where these lies are generated.
