[WSF-Discuss] Fwd: The Global Significance Of The Amazon Protest

[Jai Sen]

Friday, June 12, 2009

A great comprehensive summary of the situation in Peru - thanks, Bijoy !

Begin forwarded message:

> From: "C.R.Bijoy" <cr.bijoy at gmail.com>
> Date:  June 12 2009 7:13:07 AM GMT+05:30
> To: Jai Sen <jai.sen at cacim.net>
> Subject: The Global Significance Of The Amazon Protest
>
> http://www.countercurrents.org/urquhart110609.htm
>
>
> The Global Significance Of The Amazon Protest
>
> By Sam Urquhart
>
> 11 June, 2009
> Countercurrents.org
> Peru's Amazon region has been locked down, after the death of  
> perhaps 40 indigenous protesters and 20 police during an attempt to  
> break up a blockade last Friday. Some reports put the death toll as  
> high as 84, in the worst violence that the Amazon region has seen  
> since the height of the Shining Path insurgency in the 1980s.  
> [http://enlacenacional.com/2009/06/05/enfrentamiento-
> entre-policias-y-nativos-en-bagua-deja-tragico-saldo/]
>
> On 6 June, a peaceful blockade was allegedly fired upon by  
> helicopters from the nation's army. Most of the dead were  
> indigenous protesters, part of a contingent at the blockade in  
> Bagua province which numbered thousands - all of them seeking to  
> resist the expansion of energy exploration and logging into Peru's  
> Amazon region. And many of them appear to have been not just  
> peaceful, but asleep.
>
> As the NGO Amazon Watch reported, [http://www.amazonwatch.org/
> newsroom/view_news.php?id=1829] "At approximately 5 am...the  
> Peruvian military police staged a violent raid" during which  
> "several thousand Awajun and Wambis indigenous peoples were  
> forcibly dispersed by tear gas and real bullets." In a brutal  
> attack, helicopters dropped tear gas bombs from on high while  
> police moved in on the protesters - shooting some in the process.  
> The NGO also reports that "as the unarmed demonstrators were killed  
> and injured some wrestled the Police and took away their guns and  
> fought back in self-defense resulting in deaths of several Police  
> officers."
>
> Doctors in Bagua allege that the evacuation of casualties was  
> obstructed. As Dr Jose Sequen Reyes told El Mundo, "During great  
> part in the morning...the police did not allow the passage of the  
> ambulances for the evacuation." [http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/
> 2009/06/06/internacional/1244268533.html] El Mundo's correspondent  
> Beatrice Jimenez also reported that "the bodies of the dead [were]  
> being “disappeared” by those paid by the police Special Operations  
> Directorate" - allegations that are backed up by Peru's National  
> Coordinator of Human Rights, who has blogged about reports that his  
> organization has received of corpse-burning by the authorities.
>
> This has been reported by Amazon Watch, which reported on 8 June  
> that "numerous eyewitnesses are reporting that the Special Forces  
> of the Peruvian Police have been disposing of the bodies of  
> indigenous protesters who were killed" in what Amazon Watch  
> spokesperson Gregor McClennan calls "an apparent attempt by the  
> Government to underreport the number of indigenous people killed by  
> police." [http://www.amazonwatch.org/
> newsroom/view_news.php?id=1843]
>
> Over one hundred protesters remain in detention while, according to  
> McClennan, "Eye-witness reports also confirm that police forcibly  
> removed some of the wounded indigenous protesters from hospitals,  
> taking them to unknown destinations." Fears grow that other  
> blockades, such as one ongoing outside the town of Yurimaguas,  
> could be due to face similar repression, as an atmosphere of fear  
> and intimidation spreads across Amazonian Peru.
>
> As a statement released by the indigenous umbrella group CAOI on 5  
> June put it, [http://www.peru.com/noticias/portada20090605/
> 37858/La-CAOI-pide-juicio-internacional-
> contra-Alan-Garcia-y-su-gobierno] "The government of Alan Garci'a  
> Perez has unleashed a bloody repression in the Peruvian Amazonia at  
> dawn today." For CAOI, the deaths at Bagua are "[a] dictatorial  
> answer [to] 56 days of indigenous peaceful struggle and supposed  
> dialogue and negotiations, that always finishes in bullets [and] a  
> continuation of more than 500 years of oppression."
>
> Indigenous leader Walter Kategari expressed similar sentiments,  
> telling the Mexican newspaper El Universal [http:// 
> www.eluniversal.com.mx/internacional/61995.html] that "They began  
> to shoot against our people. And the government knows that the  
> natives are pacific, but when there is an action against us they  
> will always find a reaction. And they made us react." Kategari  
> echoes the words of Alberto Pizango, one of the major organizers of  
> the indigenous movement in Peru, who has said that police shot down  
> indigenous "brothers" like nothing more than animals. [http:// 
> www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2009/
> 06/06/internacional/1244268533.html]
>
> The government, meanwhile, has responded by verbally attacking the  
> protesters. President Alan Garcia said of protest leader Alberto  
> Pizango that he was guilty of "falling to a criminal level:  
> assaulting a police post, grabbing arms from police, killing police  
> who are fulfilling their duty." [http://www.google.com/hostednews/ 
> ap/article/
> ALeqM5j9pNpad9T95Yc7
> VQREA4BViTQRhwD98KMT982] (The government maintains that 24  
> policemen died in the clashes, and just 9 protesters - numbers that  
> are challenged by eyewitness accounts.) [http://www.ipsnews.net/ 
> news.asp?idnews=47142]
>
> According to Peru's La Republica newspaper, "Garcia reproached that  
> some native ones have been deceived with inexact information on the  
> norms that have caused to the controversy between the State and the  
> natives" saying that "I hope that this finishes there. And also of  
> the side of the native ones that has been taken in by such deceit  
> to pronounce itself, without having read the decrees" adding that  
> "We hope that there are not more victims."
>
> Meanwhile, Interior Minister Mercedes Cabanillas has said that the  
> protests are merely politically motivated - the product of Garcia's  
> opponents - and hence ripe for repression. [http:// 
> www.livinginperu.com/news/9268]. Garcia himself has said the same.  
> As La Republica puts it, the president has "inferred that behind  
> the protests international interests of competition exist to  
> prevent the development of the extractive industry in the forest."
>
> On a different tack, Peru's Labor Minister has attacked the leaders  
> of the indigenous movement, [http://www.peru.com/noticias/portada
> 20090605/37815/Villasante-responsabiliza-a-Alberto-Pizango-por- 
> muertes-en-Bagua-] counseling Peruvians to remember the fallen  
> police as well as the indigenous victims, and arguing that "Pizango  
> with his intolerance to taken to this situation to the country."
>
> Yet for his part, Pizango has told the press [http:// 
> www.reuters.com/article/GCA-BusinessofGreen/idUSTRE55463G20090605]
> that he "hold[s] the government of President Alan Garcia  
> responsible for ordering this genocide" - and for his trouble has  
> been smeared on national radio, with station CNR saying that he  
> "might ask for asylum from Bolivia, Venezuela or Ecuador in the  
> next few hours."
>
> The war of words, gas bombs, helicopters and bullets puts us on the  
> brink of a precipice. Facing a grave threat to his investment  
> centered economic program in the form of an indigenous movement of  
> unprecedented vitality and organization, Garcia is responding with  
> violence. But how have we come to this pass?
>
> []
>
> The pace of indigenous mobilization and resistance in Peru has  
> quickened over the past three years since Alan Garcia took power  
> for the second time as president of Peru. Garcia embarked upon a  
> twin-track economic strategy which has alienated large sections of  
> Peruvian society, but none more so than the country's 14 million  
> indigenous people.
>
> On the one hand, Garcia has pushed through a Free Trade Agreement  
> with the United States, passing numerous "decrees" in order to  
> remodel the economy to suit the terms of the deal. On the other, he  
> has aggressively pursued the opening up of the Amazon to energy  
> exploration and development, a strategy which poses an immediate  
> threat to indigenous ways of life and native ecologies.
>
> As one study published in 2008 reported, Garcia has allotted over  
> 70 percent of the Peruvian Amazon to oil firms such as Argentina's  
> Pluspetrol, France's and France's Perenco. Such deals have also  
> been secured without consultation with indigenous communities that  
> they will affect. In fact, Alan Garcia has overridden concerns  
> about indigenous rights, saying that "We have to understand when  
> there are resources like oil, gas and timber, they don't belong  
> only to the people who had the fortune to be born there."
>
> The decrees which Garcia passed in order to ready Peru for  
> integration with the U.S. economy stand to make the expropriation  
> of indigenous lands much easier.
>
> Decree 1064, for instance, sought to outflank local communities,  
> allowing companies with concessions to arrange changes to zoning  
> permits in the Amazon with Peru's central government, potentially  
> bypassing any form of local consultation. Amazon Watch notes that  
> this puts Peru in contravention of ILO regulation 169, which  
> requires governments "to consult with indigenous people prior to  
> signing contracts and establishing any development projects that  
> will affect them" - something which "has never happened, but there  
> has always been a requirement for companies to at least negotiate a  
> financial settlement with a community prior to moving in." [http:// 
> www.bicusa.org/admin/Document.101184.aspx]
>
> Article 7 of Decree 1064 also sought to "[reclassify] communal land  
> rights as subordinate to individual and private ownership" while  
> "sub-clauses of article 7 give favor in any conflict to individuals  
> and companies, and to settlers who have invaded indigenous  
> territory." This was supposed to work in conjunction with decree  
> 1089, which expanded the role of Peru's urban land titling service,  
> COFPRI, whose policy "has been to promote individual land titles,  
> offering credit to individuals who rescind their communal land for  
> individual titles." Decrees 1015 and 1073, in addition, would make  
> it easier to break up indigenous landholdings by requiring a simple  
> majority amongst communities, rather than two thirds as was  
> previously the case.
> [http://www.en-camino.org/node/96]
>
> Perhaps most controversially of all, Decree 1090 sought to  
> drastically reduce the amount of the Amazon covered by Peru's  
> Forestry Heritage protection system, "freeing" some 45 million  
> hectares for the purposes of economic development (comprising some  
> 60 percent of Peru's jungles).
>
> This single mindedness has brought resistance. Indigenous peoples  
> have long struggled against energy firms. The Achuar, for example,  
> have taken the American giant Occidental Petroleum to court in Los  
> Angeles over the pollution of their land. Yet this resistance has  
> never been unified.
>
> As Latin American expert John Crabtree of Oxford University told me  
> "Peru, unlike Bolivia and Ecuador, lacks a powerful indigenous  
> movement that brings together pro-indigenous groups in the  
> highlands and in the
> Amazon jungle." Groups in the Amazon have often been divided and  
> have "always tended to focus on their own reality rather than enter  
> into alliances with others" but this may be changing due to  
> Garcia's "Law of the Jungle" (decree 1090).
>
> The past two years have seen a deepening of cooperation between  
> disparate peoples in Peru's Amazon. In August 2008, with indigenous  
> grouping AIDESEP in the lead, protesters blockaded some of Peru's  
> most important waterways and transport arteries. A bridge in Bagua  
> was occupied, severing Amazonian Peru from the coast, sparking  
> clashes in which over 800 protesters battled with police with tens  
> of injuries. In the south of the country, protesters surrounded and  
> blockaded the Camisea natural gas facility, as well as other  
> drilling platforms and a hydroelectric dam project taking the fight  
> against Garcia's reforms nationwide.
>
> Spokespeople demanded the recision of over 30 of the decrees, and  
> for substantive consultation on specific projects. As AIDESEP  
> spokesman Alberto Pizango put it, [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/ 
> americas/7569851.stm] the protesters were "[mobilizing] themselves  
> for the right to life, the right to keep their territory and to  
> defend the environment - the Amazon rainforest which is the lungs  
> of the world."
>
> At one point, the government sought to bring AIDESEP leaders into a  
> "dialogue" on development issues, but protests continued when the  
> government made their cessation a precondition for talks. Voices in  
> the media began to make absurd comparisons between the indigenous  
> protesters and the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) - a brutal  
> Maoist group active in the 1980s and early 90s.
>
> The situation escalated, with indigenous activists unwilling to  
> step down. The government had failed to either co-opt their  
> representatives, or to launch an effective response against  
> protests which had been almost completely non-violent and carried  
> support across Peru. So when Garcia declared a state of emergency  
> on 19 August, instead of being able to mop up the protests through  
> police actions, the activists became emboldened.
>
> One AIDESEP leader, Alberto Pizango, called the declaration "a  
> declaration of open war." But indigenous Peruvians would not  
> surrender. Far from it, in fact. As journalist Sandra Cuffe  
> related, [http://www.dominionpaper.ca/weblogs/sandra/2001] "The  
> occupations, blockades and protests continued; in fact, others  
> joined in solidarity. A provincial Committee of Struggle in La  
> Convención (Cusco) including a Farmworkers’ Federation announced  
> indefinite actions in support of the communities in the Amazon,  
> including blockades of roads and inter-provincial transportation."
>
> On 20 August, AIDESEP met with the president of Peru's Congress,  
> Javier Velásquez Quesquén, who agreed to convene an extraordinary  
> plenary session which would discuss the contentious decrees. By the  
> 22 August, Congress had passed legislative decree 2440, which  
> revoked Garcia's decrees 1073 and 1015. Pressure from indigenous  
> movements had shot down two of the most controversial decrees -  
> those which dealt with changes to landholding - but many still  
> remained.
>
> Nevertheless, as Alberto Pizango put it, "The people of Peru,  
> indigenous or not, have demonstrated once more that it is possible  
> to reclaim our rights to life, to dignity, and to a lasting  
> sustainable development. This is a new dawn for the Indigenous  
> Peoples of the country.”
>
> []
>
> New dawn or not, many of the decrees remained in force and  
> continued to pose a grave threat to indigenous communities.  
> Moreover, in January 2009, the Free Trade Agreement between  
> Washington and Lima came into force after receiving the signature  
> of George W. Bush, and it was clear that the FTA would further  
> increase pressure on the Amazon region.
>
> As Will Petrik of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs put it, "As  
> small and middle-scale Peruvian farmers are forced to compete with  
> U.S. subsidized agricultural imports, it is estimated that  
> countless farmers will be forced off their land, exacerbating  
> problems, such as urban poverty, the drug trade, and forced  
> migration." [http://www.coha.org/2009/01/ramming-
> the-matter-home-peru-us-fta-rushed-diluted-and-finagled/]
>
> The integration of Peru's economy into the wider free trade area  
> will have profound implications for the Amazon. In fact, as Farid  
> Matuk, former Director of the Peruvian National Institute of  
> Statistics and Informatics, told me, while "The whole idea of the  
> FTA is to expand the agricultural frontier of the US economy" it  
> will have the effect of driving food production from the coast into  
> Peru's Amazon region. While "Coastal areas will switch to growing  
> food for export but food production" he told me, "less land  
> available for food for domestic consumption may lead to demand for  
> land in the jungles [and] you will need to cut more forests down to  
> produce more food for domestic consumption."
>
> As Petrik adds, "As the new FTA ensures investor protections for  
> multi-national corporations, more of these corporations and their  
> industrial model, which marginalizes labor rights and the  
> environment as mere externalities, are likely to negate any  
> obstacles to expanding trade at any cost."
>
> So the FTA carries with it an implicit pincer movement focused on  
> Amazonian lands. On the one hand, there is an increasing pressure  
> on Peruvian land to grow food for domestic consumpion. On the other  
> there is the opening up of the region to corporate investment and  
> the hollowing out of regulatory safeguards.
>
> []
>
> On 8 April 2009, AIDESEP emerged once again with a call-out to  
> indigenous communities across Peru, mobilizing 1,350 of them to  
> launch another campaign against Garcia's decrees and the FTA.  
> Blockading the Napo and Corrientes rivers, AIDESEP demanded the  
> repeal of remaining decrees, taking 30,000 or more people out onto  
> the streets and onto the barricades, while leaving over 40 vessels  
> owned by energy firms becalmed and unable to get to market.
>
> By 28 April, as Intercontinental Cry reported, [http:// 
> intercontinentalcry.org/peruvian-indigenous-
> peoples-mobilize-across-the-amazon/] "protests and other blockades  
> [had] also taken place along the Cenepa and Santiago Rivers, on a  
> set of train tracks leading to Machu Picchu, and in several other  
> commercially-important areas in the departments of Amazonas,  
> Loreto, Ucayali, Madre de Dios, Cuzco and Junin."
>
> Tensions remained relatively low, despite continuous blockades and  
> protests, yet by 8 May, the government had declared a state of  
> emergency - with protesters beginning to challenge massive  
> investments. Deals like French firm Perenco's $2 billion investment  
> in oil exploration were being challenged by thousands of protesters  
> demanding "development from our perspective," as Alberto Pizango  
> put it.
>
> After talks with the government broke down one week later, Pizango  
> emerged, telling reporters that indigenous protesters "refuse to  
> recognize the authority" of the government. Instead, they will obey  
> their ancestral laws and view any government security forces on  
> their lands as an "external aggression" while "The government  
> "wants to take our lands and hand them over to giant multinationals  
> for the oil, lumber, gold and other riches there that are coveted  
> by the world's rich."
>
> Yet Pizango also uttered the "I" word in responding to government  
> intransigence, calling the indigenous campaign an "insurgency" - a  
> label that the government seized upon. President Garcia made a rare  
> television address, calling the indigenous communities selfish for  
> locking away resources beneath their lands which should by rights  
> be enjoyed by all Peruvians. "We have to understand" he said, that  
> "when there are resources like oil, gas and timber, they don't  
> belong only to the people who had the fortune to be born there  
> because that would mean more than half of Peru's territory belongs  
> to a few thousand people."
>
> Garcia coupled this appeal to nationalism with an escalation of  
> force, sending Peru's military into the Amazon region for 30 days  
> to quell protests at strategic locations while Pizango and AIDESEP  
> continued to call for dialogue. As Irene Claux of Upside Down World  
> reported, "Pizango stresse[d] that "the government should lift the  
> state of emergency that has been established since May 9 in five  
> Amazonian regions, the Congress must repeal the controversial  
> decrees, and there should be a sit-down discussion concerning a  
> different path to development in the Amazon."
>
> Meanwhile, "Garcia's party declined to back a motion that would  
> open debate on the presidential decrees, a move that his main  
> political opponent, the center-left nationalist Ollanta Humala has  
> called a "gross error." [http://www.reuters.com/article/GCA- 
> BusinessofGreen/idUSTRE55463G20090605] Garcia had, in other words,  
> chosen confrontation as his strategy.
>
> Despite his unwillingness to engage in honest talks with AIDESEP or  
> to debate the matter in Congress, Garcia has since then became more  
> desperate to end the indigenous blockades, which are taking a  
> direct toll on energy production and transportation. Although  
> protesters have failed to hold the pipeline leading from the  
> Camisea natural gas project in Peru's south after almost two weeks  
> of occupation, other pipelines still remain blocked. Yet even  
> before that occupation, as the Financial Times reports, "The  
> demonstrations...[had]prompted warnings of fuel rationing within a  
> fortnight" while in Block 1A, run by Argentine firm Pluspetrol,  
> operations have been suspended.
>
> Garcia has also been plummeting in opinion polls in recent weeks,  
> providing a further spur to action. One poll carried out by Ipsos,  
> Apoyo and Opinión y Mercado put his approval rating at just 30 percent
> [http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/view/33491/ peruvians_not_
> impressed_with_president_garca/] - hardly a mandate to force  
> through decrees that would remould a nation.
>
> It was against this backdrop - dismal poll numbers and threatened  
> investments - that Garcia launched the assault on sleeping  
> protesters in Bagua.
>
> []
>
> In choosing to militarize the conflict with indigenous protesters,  
> Garcia is not just attacking the physical bodies of indigenous  
> Peruvians. His government has set out to challenge, and potentially  
> dismantle, a constellation of diverse - yet related - cultures, all  
> of which see "development" and the "environment" in ways strikingly  
> alien to corporate strategists and neoliberal politicians.
>
> As Ricardo Carrere, international coordinator of the World  
> Rainforest Movement puts it, "if you want to do something about  
> climate change, then you must stop oil extraction and the reality  
> shows that the only people in the world who are actually doing  
> something to protect the world versus climate change are the  
> indigenous peoples saying "no more oil."
>
> In Carrere's opinion, indigenous peoples are standing up against  
> forces that are antithetical to environmental sustainability and  
> social justice. They are opposing an "economic logic which means we  
> need to destroy" and offering a different model of development, one  
> which "needs to be decentralised, bringing people from the cities  
> back to the land where they can have a better way of life" and  
> demands "a very profound change is needed in every single country."
>
> If, as Carrere points out, "we are becoming poorer with every  
> barrel of oil we export" then we are becoming richer with every  
> indigenous person who stands up for their lands and their rights  
> against energy firms. They are not simply local instances of  
> resistance, but are actions with global importance.
>
> They are also the continuation of centuries of anti-colonial  
> resistance. As Survival International's Stephen Corry says,  
> "protests signal that the colonial era has finally drawn to a  
> close. No longer are Amazon Indians prepared to put up with the  
> illegal and brutal treatment which has been routine. That’s  
> finished." [http://www.laht.com/article.asp?
> ArticleId=336792&CategoryId=14095]
>
> The protests in Peru therefore have a global significance - both in  
> terms of resistance against neo-colonial investment laws and in  
> terms of environmental sustainability. The massacre at Bagua speaks  
> to all of us. As Yanomami Indian spokesman Davi Kopenawa Yanomami  
> eloquently expresses: [http://www.survival-international.org/news/ 
> 4644]
>
> "We must listen to the cry of the earth which is asking for help.  
> The earth has no price. It can’t be bought, or sold or exchanged.  
> It is very important that white people, black people and indigenous  
> peoples fight together to save the life of the forest and the  
> earth. If we don’t fight together what will our future be? Your  
> children need land and nature alive and standing. We Indians want  
> respect for our rights. You can learn with us and with our shamans.  
> That is important not only for the Yanomami but for the future of  
> the whole world."
>
> Sam Urquhart is a journalist and activist from the UK who has  
> written for ZNet, Guerrilla News Network, Toward Freedom, Dissident  
> Voice and Monthly Review Magazine. His work focuses on the global  
> struggle for social and environmental justice, at a time of  
> environmental and social crisis. He blogs at the Hidden Paw, which  
> you can find here http://szamko.wordpress.com/
>
>
>
>


______________________________
Jai Sen
jai.sen at cacim.net
CACIM, A-3 Defence Colony, New Delhi 110 024, India
www.cacim.net
Ph : +91-11-4155 1521, +91-98189 11325

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