In a statement to Peruvian authorities, international banks and the international community dated March 2003, Peru’s national indigenous organization AIDESEP joined with COMARU, the Machiguenga Council for the Urubamba River, to condemn the impacts of the Camisea Gas Project on thousands of indigenous families living in its path as “an attack on the physical, cultural, territorial and environmental integrity of our indigenous brothers and sisters.”
Representatives from COMARU, AIDESEP and the indigenous support NGO, CEDIA had planned to travel to Milan to meet on March 25 with the President of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), Enrique Iglesias. The IDB has been considering for more than a year investing over $400 million of public financing in the Project. However, the Italian Embassy in Lima denied travel visas to these organizations seeking to speak out about the human rights costs of extracting gas from Camisea’s globally significant primary tropical forests.
In Milan, Amazon Watch – accompanied by Friends of the Earth International, Institute for Policy Studies (SEEN) and Bank Information Center – presented a list of local demands to Enrique Iglesias which included the call to withdraw completely and permanently from the Nahua-Kugapakori Reserve, created by the State to protect indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation, due to indigenous rights violations by project companies.
However IDB representative Sergio de Falco dismissed their call, declaring: “What you want will not happen”. IDB officials at the meeting claimed that the Camisea consortia would not agree to IDB demands to withdraw from the Reserve, where illness is now spreading among groups with no immunity to the diseases that are introduced by project representatives who insist on forcibly contacting them.
While IDB Private Sector Department representative Robert Montgomery admitted that it is impossible to eliminate the risk of disease and death among these peoples while project operations continue in their territories, the IDB Public Sector official Sergio de Falco refused to accept that the financing of the Camisea Project by the IDB would represent a blow to indigenous rights.
AIDESEP and COMARU pose the following questions: “What right does a consortium of companies have to come to our territories, to pursue our isolated indigenous brothers and sisters, to expose them to contagious diseases and death and to alter the entire natural environment that has sustained us for thousands of years and has provided us with spiritual and material sustenance? Is the International Bank (IDB) prepared to finance operations that attack the physical, territorial and environmental integrity of Amazonian indigenous peoples?”
Calling for an independent investigation into project impacts, COMARU and AIDESEP demand that the pipeline be re-routed to avoid protected areas, and that companies be sanctioned and construction prohibited until impacts can be resolved. Impacts outlined in the statement include the involuntary displacement of entire communities by pipeline operations, the recent reduction in fish and game on which local peoples depend for sustenance, the soiling of community drinking water sources and escalating health problems.
COMARU and AIDESEP state that the Peruvian government has not provided effective oversight, monitoring and enforcement for the project. They call for an independent monitoring system for Camisea and the deactivation of the government-appointed Camisea Project Ombudsman due to its total failure to seek the views of indigenous peoples living in the immediate path of the project or their representative organizations.
IDB President Iglesias recognized serious problems with the project stating: “It would be a lot easier to get out of Camisea.” However he believes that the Bank’s involvement can ‘improve’ Camisea: “Walking out is not in our interest.” READ FULL AIDESEP AND COMARU STATEMENT in spanish (pdf 28kb)
