On May 9 2003, over 50 indigenous protesters joined together to march through Washington to the Inter-American Development Bank head office to denounce the Camisea Gas Project’s “irreparable harm to the biodiversity and the life of indigenous peoples who have lived in these lands for thousands of years.”
Peruvian indigenous delegates presented a letter with over 60 signatures from Amazonian organizations to an assistant of the IDB President Enrique Iglesias, demanding the withdrawal of the Camisea Project from the Nahua-Kugapakori State Reserve, home to indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation. Read full letter to IDB (en español)
The letter decried the malnutrition and disease caused among isolated peoples by the Project: “Due to the gas related activities being carried out in the Reserve, these people are being forced to change their patterns of settlement and are being displaced to more remote areas with insufficient food resources, consequently suffering malnutrition; the presence of outsiders and the changes to their environment create conditions for the spread of diseases against which they do not have immunological resistance.”
Earlier in the week Iglesias refused to meet with Peruvian indigenous leaders. An IDB delegation led by IDB VP Dennis Flannery visited the project site at the weekend, but the visit was overshadowed by the demonstration. Roger Rivas, the Machiguenga head, denounced the IDB’s evaluation process stating that the IDB “is simply not doing an environmental impact assessment on Camisea”.
“We’re concerned that the Bush administration, in an effort to serve the needs of Hunt and Halliburton, is backing away from a long-standing position backing international environmental standards,” said Jon Sohn, international policy analyst for Friends of the Earth.
