Caracas – Venezuelan Pemon indians have set up roadblocks on the arterial continental highway from Brazil in a major protest over the construction of electricity power transmission lines which have cut a 400 kilometer (250 mile) swathe through tropical Amazon rainforest affecting some 5,500 acres in the ecologically sensitive 9 million acre Imataca Forest Reserve and Canaima National Park, which were declared a World Heritage site in 1994.
Jose Luis Gonzalez, speaking for the Bolivar State Indigenous says some 600 Karina, Arawako, Akawalo and Pemon tribal indians have blocked the El Dorado-Santa Elena road and say they’re staying there as long as it takes for the government to pay heed to their life-or-death demands.
Last year the United Nations told the Venezuelan government of its concern because significant studies on the environmental impact of the power line has NOT been carried out on the project which affects some 10,000 rainforest indians.
Reporting directly from the roadblock at Kilometer 14, close to Las Claritas in Bolivar State, Nicla Camerin says the Pemon indians have received direct threats of up to four (4) years in prison from the president of the EDELCA power company and Borders Minister Pompeyo Marquez. Camerin says the National Guard (GN) is in a media stand-off as emotions on both sides of the barricades run high. GN commanders have been told to take a low-key approach to dispersal of the protesters in view of the presence of TV cameras with satellite link-ups to international news organizations.
Senator Lucia Antillano, president of the Venezuelan Senate Environment Committee is trying to establish a dialogue with central government officials to immediately halt construction work until legal recognition is given to the indigenous peoples’ rights over their ancestral lands.
Environmentalists say the power line will accelerate the destruction of the region’s rainforest by enabling large-scale logging and mining operations in the Imataca Forest Reserve. In May 1997, the Venezuelan government signed Decree 1850 opening up 40% of the Imataca to industrial mining and logging concessions. They say a major bone of contention is the Las Cristinas gold mine, claimed to be inside the rainforest reserve’s limits and described as one of South America’s largest gold mines – Canadian mining corporation Placer Dome’s track record on environmental pollution is a major factor in the Senate Environment Committee’s support of the indians’ cause.
In late news, VHeadline/VENews has been told that a government delegation is to visit the scene at 3.00 p.m. today to meet the indians and their supporters in a first round of discussions.
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Jose Luis Gonzalez of the Indigenous Federation of Bolivar State may be contacted at fieb@telcel.net.ve
In the United States of America, Atossa Soltani of Amazon Watch is at asoltani@igc.org
David Rothschild, Amazon Coalition at amazoncoal@igc.org
