On August 29, the Criminal Court of Appeals of Ucayali annulled the 28-year prison sentences that had been handed down in February against two logging businessmen who were found guilty of masterminding the murder of four Indigenous leaders on the Peru-Brazil border in 2014. The judges argued a lack of evidence and procedural errors in the initial decision, which took seven years of legal battles to achieve, and sent the case back to the beginning.
The Asháninka leaders Edwin Chota, Jorge Ríos, Leoncio Quintisima, and Francisco Pinedo were killed for defending their territories and rainforest from illegal logging, an illicit activity that threatens Indigenous peoples’ lives and culture. Even though they repeatedly denounced the death threats they received from clandestine logging mafias, the Peruvian government failed to provide the necessary protection. Their murders forced the world to finally recognize their struggle for their rights and environment and ultimately resulted in the legal recognition of territory of Alto Tamaya Saweto, after decades of waiting.
The court’s decision is a strong affront to justice, memory, and the dignity of the victims and their families, who now face yet another chapter of legal strife and uncertainty.
Organizations that accompany cases of Indigenous defenders are concerned that the Saweto case demonstrates that the Public Ministry and the judiciary “in recent years have acted with bias, delays and lack of effectiveness in cases of Indigenous defenders, applying discretionary and disproportionate criteria to convict them for minor crimes, while in processes involving material and intellectual authors of attacks against the lives of these defenders, delays, and irregularities have been reported, despite the fact that the alleged perpetrators maintain links with illegal activities such as drug trafficking, mining, land trafficking, or illegal logging.”
Unfortunately, the trend that must be reversed shows how criminalization and impunity are the two faces of the judicial treatment of Indigenous defenders in the Amazon. A report by Mongabay Latam reveals that from 2016 to 2021, out of “58 crimes registered against Indigenous leaders and settlers in the four countries, at least 50 have not yet been resolved by the justice system. Most of the open processes, according to the ten lawyers consulted, continue to this day in a state of investigation or have been involved in a series of irregularities.”
The Saweto case and other injustices against environmental defenders were highlighted during Climate Week
Jamer López, President of ORAU, traveled to New York for Climate Week with support from allies including the Sociedad Peruana de Derecho Ambiental (SPDA), Amazon Watch, and Rainforest Foundation US. During an intensive agenda of private meetings and public events, he brought attention to the emblematic case of Saweto, as well as others such as the unpunished murder of Cacataibo leader Arbildo Meléndez. The NGO If Not Us Then Who released a new short film on the case in the context of the Our Village initiative, which highlighted the voice of global Indigenous leaders during Climate Week.
In addition, Jamer participated in a demonstration in the streets of New York City. Along with other Indigenous leaders from Africa and Asia, he called on Governor Kathleen Hochul to sign the New York Tropical Deforestation-Free Procurement Act, which the state legislature has already passed. The bill requires state contractors that trade in forest risk commodities to certify that their products do not drive tropical deforestation or degradation and provide data to the state and the public that demonstrates due diligence in the supply chain all the way back to the points of origin of their products.
All the above is one more chapter in our work over the last few years, accompanying Indigenous organizations in their agenda to strengthen their capacity for organizational resistance to the advance of illegal economies and to pressure both Amazonian governments and international agencies to take urgent and appropriate action to defeat organized crime. Meanwhile, it is essential to demand equal access to justice for Indigenous Earth Defenders in all of the nine Amazonian countries.
