UN High Commissioner for Human Rights must investigate massacre of Indians

After the massacre of dozens of Indians in Peru the Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) wrote on Monday to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navanethem Pillay, with the urgent appeal to investigate without delay the violent escalation of the land conflict between Indians and military in the Amazon provinces near the town of Bagua. About 30 Indians were killed there at the weekend. Tens of thousands of Indians have protested in the north of Peru for weeks with road-blocks against the aggressive opening-up of Indian land in favour of the mineral oil and natural gas industry, which would mean the collapse of their way of life.

"The government has over the heads of the Amazon Indians passed laws which make it very much easier to take over the Indian reservations if oil and gas are found there”, criticised Yvonne Bangert, GfbV consultant for indigenous peoples. "The Amazon area of Peru has for the purpose of opening up oil-fields been divided into about 180 lots, which very often cut right across the Indian areas. Licenses are issued without any regard for Indian land rights.”

Peru is therefore infringing the international guide-lines for the protection of the native peoples and the Universal Declaration of the United Nations on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The Convention 169 of the International Labour Organisation (ILO), which lays down bindingly the rights of the indigenous peoples and was ratified by Peru, is being ignored.

"The UN must make sure that the García government begins a dialogue immediately with the Indian umbrella organisation AIDESEP, so that the rightful claims of the indigenous peoples in the mining areas are duly respected”, says the GfbV. "They are fighting with their backs to the wall for their land and their lives.”

There is also conflict potential in other parts of Peru. Tension is increasing in the border area with Brazil in the federal state of Ucayali. The deforestation of the jungle there and the construction of roads are increasingly driving small Indian groups to Brazil in search of refuge. "It is particularly the tribes living in voluntary isolation in the region which are left helpless in this process of expulsion”, said Bangert.

The GfbV has documented the special situation of this particularly threatened indigenous tribe in a memorandum published in May. We shall be happy to send you a pdf-version.

If you have que stions please do not hesitate to telephone
Yvonne Bangert at 0049 (0)551 499 0614.