Peru’s Nahua Indigenous Leaders Come Out of Isolation to Say No to Oil Right to Life At Risk As Camisea Project Companies Eye Indigenous Rainforest Refuge Photos available from Shinai Serjali | Amazon Watch
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Peru’s Nahua Indigenous Leaders Come Out of Isolation to Say No to Oil Right to Life At Risk As Camisea Project Companies Eye Indigenous Rainforest Refuge Photos available from Shinai Serjali

November 11, 2003 | For Immediate Release


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A delegation of Nahua, an indigenous people in initial contact with the outside world, has arrived in Lima from a remote corner of the Amazon rainforest to call on the Peruvian government to remove oil concessions from their territories. The Nahua, who live adjacent to the controversial Camisea Gas Project in Peru’s southeastern Amazon, fear that their right to life will be jeopardized by the return of diseases which in the 1980s caused the deaths of over half their population after Shell Oil first contacted them.

The Nahua are taking the extraordinary step of traveling to Lima to defend their right to maintain their way of life. They will meet with government authorities to demand that Block 57, a new oil exploration concession offered to investors – which covers almost all their territory – be modified to exclude their lands. They state:

“…In the past, Shell worked here and almost all of us died from the diseases… We know that if another company comes here, our rivers and land will be destroyed. The rivers will be polluted, the fish will die and the animals will run away. Minister, we ask you, what will we eat when the rivers are dead and the animals have run away? …We do not want companies working here, we want clean water and a quiet and peaceful life.”

Unannounced visits to the Nahua community of Serjali by Camisea Project operator Pluspetrol could indicate that the Camisea production consortium led by Hunt Oil, a Texas-based independent with close ties to the Bush administration, is eyeing Block 57. Nearly 75 percent of Camisea gas extraction operations are located inside an indigenous reserve for the Nahua, Nanti and Kirineri peoples living with little or no contact with the outside world, some of whom have been forcibly contacted by the Camisea consortium.

The Peruvian national indigenous organization AIDESEP has repeatedly denounced indigenous rights abuses by Camisea Project companies as a “threat to the physical, cultural, territorial and environmental integrity” of indigenous peoples. AIDESEP supports the Nahua in defending their lands and lives against the threat of expanding oil and gas operations.

The Nahua will also request an end to invasions of their territory by illegal loggers, and title for their ancestral lands. The visiting delegation will have meetings with representatives from the Ministry of Energy and Mines, the Ministry of Agriculture, INRENA, and non-governmental organizations. The delegation will hold a press conference on Friday November 14th at 12 pm in Lima.

The Nahua have lived in the remote headwaters of the Manu, Mishagua and Serjali rivers, spanning the borders of Cusco, Ucayali and Madre de Dios regions, since the beginning of the 20th century, when they fled the slavery and genocide accompanying the Peruvian rubber boom. Until the 1980s they lived without regular contact with other indigenous groups or national society. Since then they have maintained contact with advocacy, health, educational and church workers.

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