Report blames Peru’s government for Amazon violence

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A report written by a splinter group of a government-appointed commission blames Peru’s government for violent conflict in the Amazon.

The violence occurred after armed police attacked Awajún and Wampis protesters blocking a road near the town of Bagua in northern Peru on 5 June last year.

The government appointed a commission to investigate what happened, but two members, Carmen Gomez Calleja and Jesus Manaces Valverde, refused to sign the commission’s final report, which was published in December and which they strongly criticised for its pro-government bias.

Instead, Gomez Calleja and Manaces Valverde wrote their own report, released last week. The report says that the police operation to clear the road was ‘badly planned’ and ‘could only lead to a disaster’: thirty-three people died, including more than 20 policemen, and one disappeared.

Liquid error: internal

The report rejects various claims in the government commission’s official report, including the assertion that the protesters were manipulated into blocking the road by outsiders. The report also lists the reasons why the Awajún and Wampis, and other Indigenous people elsewhere in Peru, were protesting. These include:

· A series of articles by President García perceived by Peru’s Indigenous population as ‘offensive, provocative and threatening.’

· A series of laws considered ‘highly contradictory’ to Indigenous rights.

· Promises made by the government to Indigenous organisations that were not kept.

· Government institutions’ public attacks on Indigenous leaders, and attempts to promote internal divisions within the Indigenous movement.

· The ‘progressive deterioration of the legal security of Indigenous territories’ since 1993.

· The fact that, in addition to all the above, many Indigenous people in Peru had already ‘found themselves and their territories caught up in an aggressive, alien economic system without anyone consulting them and which was considered threatening to the continuation of traditional Indigenous ways of life.’