Washington, D.C. – President Obama will meet today with Peruvian President Alan Garcia for the first time since taking office, “to discuss a wide range of bilateral, hemispheric, and global issues.”
Amazon Watch, along with a diverse coalition of human rights, environmental, trade and labor groups have urged President Obama to raise concerns with President Garcia over his government’s failure to respect indigenous rights and address resulting social unrest.
In a letter submitted last Friday, the coalition of ten organizations urged President Obama to press President Garcia on his administration’s pattern of violating the rights of indigenous peoples and imposing industrial resource extraction schemes on their ancestral lands without prior consultation. Another concern is the government’s pursuance of baseless legal charges against numerous indigenous leaders. The letter highlights the case of Alberto Pizango, the President of AIDESEP who returned to Peru last week following almost a year in exile in Nicaragua. While Pizango was released within 24 hours of his immediate detention, the serious charges against him have not been dropped.
The Obama / Garcia meeting comes around the one-year anniversary of the violent clashes in Bagua and Oil Pumping Station 6, which resulted in 34 deaths and dozens suffering serious wounds over the 5th and 6th of June 2009. The incident was sparked when the Peruvian government sent military police to suppress peaceful indigenous protesters who were blocking a road near Bagua. Indigenous communities had been protesting across the Peruvian Amazon for almost two months over Garcia’s pronouncement of a series of legislative decrees designed to roll back indigenous land rights and open up the last vestiges of the Peruvian Amazon to destructive oil and gas drilling. Garcia Administration officials had claimed the new decrees were required for the implementation of the U.S.-Peru Free Trade Agreement.
Following the Bagua tragedy and tremendous international pressure, Garcia’s government established thematic dialogues with indigenous federations and repealed two of nine problematic decrees. However, human rights groups and the indigenous organizations have criticized President Garcia for refusing to engage in these reconciliation efforts in good faith. The ongoing pursuit of politically-motivated legal charges against indigenous leaders is a concrete example of this.
The Garcia administration has also recently come under fire for opening dozens more new oil and gas concessions on indigenous lands in violation of indigenous peoples legal rights and the recommendations of the UN International Labor Organization. In February 2010, the International Labor Organization (ILO) recommended that the Peruvian government “suspend the exploration and exploitation of natural resources which are affecting [indigenous peoples]” until the government has developed consultation and participation mechanisms in compliance with the ILO convention 169 on the rights of indigenous peoples.
On May 19th, the Peruvian Congress passed a new law to require consultation with affected indigenous communities before development projects on their lands can go forward although it does not apply to the recently awarded concessions. The Peruvian national indigenous federation AIDESEP has acknowledged that – while the new law does not go far enough – it is a positive step forward, and they are urging President Garcia to sign it into law. In line with the ILO recommendations, AIDESEP is demanding that new extractive concessions be suspended until the law can go into effect and until affected indigenous communities can be properly consulted.
To mark the Bagua anniversary, AIDESEP will carry out a week of activities in Lima and Bagua to bring attention to continuing indigenous rights violations and the criminalization of legitimate social protest in Peru. These events include:
- June 3rd: A public forum in Lima titled “The Amazon Struggle and Its Impact on Climate Change”;
- June 4th and 5th: Indigenous assembly in Bagua, to be attended by Alberto Pizango, and a memorial service in the Devil’s Curve, where the violent confrontation occurred; and
- June 8th: A peaceful march in Lima, culminating at the Museo de la Nación, where the General Assembly of the Organization of American States will be in session.
