Lima, Peru (April 09, 2009) – Saying that the natural resources of the Amazon are not for sale and rather belong to everyone, thousands of indigenous peoples across the Peruvian Amazon have joined a ‘Mobilization for Indigenous Peoples’ to demand the repeal of legislative decrees they say promote unhindered oil exploration on their lands by stripping away their ancestral rights to control communal territory.
Members of the Kichua and Arabela nations have closed off the Napo and Curaray Rivers blocking all shipping in the zone, much of which is linked to the Argentinean operated Pluspetrol that has been drilling in the Amazon. Kichua leaders said that in the face of government inaction, they were being forced to close the rivers to protect their lands and people from further pollution by the oil company.
Responding to reports of the massing of police and soldiers, Cervando Puerta Peña, president of the indigenous group ORPIAN, representing the Awajún and Wampis nations that have mobilized along sectors of the Canepa and Santiago Rivers, Thursday called on the government not to use force and to recognize the legitimacy and universality of his people’s demands:
“The government’s strategy is to treat us as if we are criminals or savages. All we seek is to safeguard our lands and our future, along with that of the planet and the lives of all who live on her.”
The organization which represents the majority of indigenous organizations in Peru, AIDESEP, says that people from the Achuar nation have taken control of a sector of the Corrientes River, closing off all shipping through the area.
AIDESEP defends the rights of more than 1,350 communities in the Peruvian Amazon and has framed a platform that lists a series of demands it considers essential before the blockade on river traffic is lifted. It calls for the repeal of a number of presidential decrees that affect indigenous rights, including the restoration of territorial rights, the recognition and entitlement of indigenous communities, and the suspension of all concessions within indigenous lands.
“What the government refuses to understand is that the peoples of the Amazon will defend their lands against further contamination and degradation,” said Alberto Pizango Chota, President of AIDESEP. “Our efforts at dialogue with Prime Minister Yehude Simon and Congress President Javier Velásquez Quesqu�n, have been ignored. Our own legislators don’t know how to listen. Yet if we were business people I’m sure we would have received a response by now.”
