Calgary, April 29, 2009 – Amazon Watch will address the CEO and board of directors of Talisman Energy at the company’s Annual Meeting today calling on the company to keep its promise to respect indigenous peoples’ rights to approve or deny any oil project on their territories. At the request of the Achuar authorities, Amazon Watch is urging the company to withdraw from Achuar territory in the Peruvian Amazon.
“The reality is that 84 percent – 27 out of 32 – of Achuar communities within Talisman’s Block 64 in Peru have repeatedly expressed their vehement opposition to drilling on their lands,” said Gregor MacLennan, spokesperson from Amazon Watch who is in Calgary to attend the AGM. “Talisman should abide by its stated commitment to respect indigenous peoples’ rights, and relinquish its concessions within Achuar territory.”
Meanwhile, in Peru, indigenous demonstrations against the Peruvian government’s grabbing of indigenous territories for oil and mining concessions continue across the Peruvian Amazon during the past two weeks, shutting down roads and fluvial traffic and crippling oil industry operations.
MacLennan, who has worked closely with Amazonian indigenous communities for seven years, added that although Talisman is carrying out a Free and Prior Informed Consent (FPIC) study due in early 2010, “the real question is, does Talisman truly respect indigenous peoples’ right to determine their own path of development within their own territories? The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is very clear on this, as is Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization.”
Amazon Watch reminds the company of the commitment Talisman CEO John Manzoni made publicly to the Achuar people last April at the company’s annual meeting that it would only operate in areas where it had consent.
Human rights groups have criticized Talisman’s use of standard oil company tactics of travelling village by village to pressure residents to sign oil exploration agreements.
“Talisman’s current tactic of so-called consensus gathering divides communities and the Achuar people,” said Lily la Torre, a Peruvian human rights lawyer, “The Achuar have rights recognized under both national and international law. For the past twelve years, they made it very clear as a people that they would not accept oil extraction activity in their territories. Any separate meeting with individuals or families is a deliberate attempt to negate these rights.”
