Activists Urge Obama to Use Trade Pact as Leverage

[Judi Lynn]

Source: IPS News

Published on Wednesday, June 17, 2009 by Inter Press Service
Activists Urge Obama to Use Trade Pact as Leverage
by Haider Rizvi

NEW YORK - The United States government is coming under intense pressure from rights organisations and environmental groups to redefine its trade pact with Peru, a tool that they charge the government in Lima is using to justify oppression against the indigenous population.

"Whether or not the U.S. intended it, the reality is that the U.S.-Peru Trade Agreement gave license to the Garcia administration to roll back indigenous rights and has contributed to increasing social conflict and human rights abuses in Peru," said Andrew Miller of Amazon Watch.

On Monday, Miller's group joined a broad coalition of 14 other organisations in sending a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other high-level officials calling for immediate U.S. action regarding the ongoing political conflict in Peru between the state authorities and indigenous rights movement.

Last year the Garcia administration issued several decrees to implement the U.S.-Peru free trade agreement. The decrees are controversial because they are designed to regulate investment in the Amazon, which is a source of concern for environmental organisations as well as the indigenous population.

On Jun. 5, the police opened fire on indigenous activists at a roadblock near the northern Peruvian town of Bagua. The demonstrators were blockading traffic to protest the government's policy to let foreign investors use indigenous lands in the Amazon. In the clashes, an as yet uncertain number of protesters were killed, along with a number of police.

Read more: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/06/17

[Judi Lynn]

1. Peru: Radio Silenced, Legislators Suspended

Peru: Radio Silenced, Legislators Suspended

On June 8 Peru’s Transportation and Communication Ministry (MTC) cancelled the license of Radio La Voz de Bagua, a family-owned radio station with a signal of 100 watts in Utcubamba province in the Amazonas region in the north of the country. The MTC cited technical issues with the station’s equipment, but La Voz news director Carlos Flores Burgos dismissed this as “a lie.” The station is based in the area where dozens of people died on June 5 in a confrontation between police and indigenous protesters , and Flores said the station had made it possible for members of the public to report alleged abuses by security forces. After the June 5 killings, Interior Minister Mercedes Cabanillas accused the station of agitating the situation and called for sanctions against it, while Congress members Aurelio Pastor, Jorge Del Castillo and Mauricio Mulde, all from the Peruvian Aprista Party (PAP) of President Alan García, accused La Voz and Flores of supporting and inciting violence.

The Press and Society Institute of Peru (IPYS), an organization of independent journalists, questioned the license cancellation and said it might be a “reprisal.” (Radio Programas del Perú (RPP) 6/12/09; Los Andes (Puno, Peru) 6/13/08; La República (Peru) 6/13/09)

On June 12 the Peruvian Congress, which is dominated by the PAP, voted a 120-day suspension for seven legislators from the opposition Peruvian Nationalist Party (PNP) of Ollanta Humala for having staged a protest in the legislature’s chamber in support of the Amazonian indigenous protesters. The suspended Congress members were María Sumire, Hilaria Supa, Nancy Obregón, Juana Huancahuari, Cayo Galindo, Yaneth Cajahuanca and Rafael Vásquez. The suspension was approved 58-18 with one abstention; voting with the PAP for the suspension was National Unity and the Alliance for the Future of former president Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000), convicted of human rights abuses on Apr. 7 and sentenced to 25 years in prison.

The protests in the Congress began on June 10 after the legislators voted to suspend indefinitely decrees on drilling, mining and land use that had sparked the indigenous protests. The PNP members called for the decrees to be repealed rather than suspended, and nine PNP legislators began a fast to protest the vote. A total of 22 Congress members from the PNP and left groups stayed in the chamber overnight and prevented Congress from holding a session the morning of June 11. The protesters finally left later to join a march in Lima, part of a day of nationwide strikes and mobilizations in support of the indigenous demands. (Correo (Lima) 6/12/09; La Raza (Chicago) 6/13/09 from EFE; La Jornada (Mexico) 6/12/09 from Reuters, AFP, DPA; AFP 6/12/09; NACLA 4/15/09)

http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/2009/06/wnu-993-haitian-students-protest-for.html

[Judi Lynn]

2. PERU: Families of Dead Native Protesters Tell Their Stories

PERU: Families of Dead Native Protesters Tell Their Stories
By Milagros Salazar

BAGUA, Peru, Jun 16 (IPS) - Sobbing, an indigenous woman dressed in black cries out as she sees us arrive: "My son, my son, they have killed my son!" She is Andrea Rocca, the mother of Felipe Sabio, a young man who died in a clash between police and indigenous protesters in the northern Peruvian region of Amazonas.

Men, women and children from the village of Wawas were gathered around the doorway of the Sabio family home when IPS and other journalists arrived on Saturday Jun. 13.

Fear and consternation have been aroused by the death of Sabio, who was regarded as one of the few educated men in this village, a four-hour drive from the town of Bagua, where the violent clash took place on Friday, Jun. 5.

"He was a defender of indigenous rights and he gave his life to defend our territories," said Germán Llagkuag, Sabio's uncle, who told journalists they must publish the indigenous people's side of the story, as they are being blamed by the government of President Alan García for the violence and bloodshed that put an end to their two-month protest and roadblock near Bagua.

The indigenous groups are protesting decrees issued by the government for the implementation of the free trade agreement (FTA) signed with the United States, which promote private investment in their territories and open up the Amazon jungle to oil, mining, agribusiness and logging companies.

A multi-party congressional committee had declared in December that the decrees were unconstitutional.

~snip~
On Jun. 6 they brought her the body of her dead husband from Bagua with a bullet wound on the left side of his chest, and five days later her daughter was born. She also has three other young children.

"My children cry all day and ask me, 'Where's daddy?' How am I going to look after them now without my husband? Here I am, absorbed with this thought and this suffering," she said between sobs, her baby in her arms and her three other children, ages two to four, clustered around her.

Her husband Sabio, a correspondent for a local radio station, was reporting on the indigenous protest to the communities in coordination with the Regional Organisation of the Indigenous Peoples of the Northern Amazon (ORPIAN).

He was shot near the main square of Bagua on Jun. 5, when the police were trying to disperse local people who were angrily protesting the deaths of the indigenous demonstrators a few hours earlier on the Fernando Belaúnde Terry highway and in nearby ravines.

"We were about to leave"

Aguanash told IPS that 15 days before the bloody events of Jun. 5, some 2,600 indigenous people from five villages in the district of Condorcanqui went to Curva del Diablo, where they were joined by 140 more from San Ignacio in the province of Cajamarca region, and another 1,000 from Paután in the Nievas district in Amazonas province.

Among the demonstrators on the highway was 19-year-old David Jausito, an Awajun Indian from the village of La Curva, who was the first to die in the clashes at Curva del Diablo, according to Aguanash.

"The police fired first from the helicopters, and then two armoured cars came toward us along the highway. There were bullets everywhere, and several of our brothers fell, but David was the first," the indigenous leader told IPS.

More:
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=47242

[Vidar]

3. I hope Obama and/or Hillary will respond to this favorably.

[Judi Lynn]

4. Trade Agreement Kills Amazon Indians

Published on Friday, June 19, 2009 by Foreign Policy In Focus
Trade Agreement Kills Amazon Indians
by Laura Carlsen

The recent clash between indigenous peoples and Peruvian national police sends a powerful message from the Amazon jungle straight to Washington: The enormous social, political, and environmental costs of the free-trade model are no longer acceptable.

Using a combined offensive of helicopter and ground forces, the police attacked a peaceful demonstration of 2,000 Wampi and Aguaruna indigenous people near the town of Bagua. The protesters belong to the interethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Jungle, an organization of about 300,000 members and 1,350 communities in the region. They blocked roads and occupied oil facilities to protest the executive decrees of President Alan García to implement the U.S.-Peru Trade Promotion Agreement (TPA). The decrees open up the Amazon to foreign investment, particularly gas and oil extraction.

Graphic Violence
In the police attack and counterattack by protestors and nearby residents of Bagua, indigenous organizations and international news reports count over 50 dead and hundreds missing. The Peruvian government claims that 24 police officers and nine civilians died in the violence.

Reports that police threw the bodies of protestors in the river to hide the real death toll have begun to circulate on the Internet and in the international press. International human rights and advocacy organizations such as the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Survival International and Amazon Watch, have deplored the violence, the subsequent crackdown on NGOs in Peru, and the role that the free-trade agreement has played in the crisis.

More:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/06/19-10

[Judi Lynn]

5. Your tax dollars were spend on this massacre:

On June 5, the Peruvian National Police (PNP) massacred up to fifty unarmed Awajún and Wampi indigenous people in Bagua who had blockaded roads in protest of land reforms related to a recently implemented US-Peru free trade agreement. Witnesses report that the PNP shot live ammunition from the ground, rooftops, and police helicopters. Anywhere between 61-400 people are reported missing following the attack.

Narco News has discovered that US drug war money is all over the massacre. The US government has not only spent the past two decades funding the helicopters used in the massacre, it also trained the PNP in "riot control."
...
The Peruvian National Police is a militarized police force and Peru's only national police force, meaning that Peru lacks a civilian federal police force. For this reason, the militarized PNP carries out regular policing functions in Peru, such as maintaining the peace and providing public security. Furthermore, "Counternarcotics operations in Peru are implemented primarily through the Ministry of the Interior by the Peruvian National Police," according to the US Government Accounting Office (GOA, now known as the Government Accountability Office
). For this reason, the PNP receives a significant chunk of US drug war aid to Peru.

Basic details of the Bagua massacre such as exactly which police departments participated and how many indigenous protesters died remain unavailable two weeks after the massacre. Peru's La Primera newspaper--the only news outlet to provide information on specific police departments that participated in the massacre--writes, "The police operation was carried out by about 600 armed police from the Dinoes and from the Anti-Drugs Department (DINANDRO), who shot head-on at protesters' bodies." Dinoes and DINANDRO are two forces within the Peruvian National Police.

Of particular interest is the participation of the anti-drugs police force, known as DINANDRO in its Spanish abbreviation. Between 2002 and 2007, the United States spent over $79 million on the PNP. 2002-2004 funds were for "training and field exercises to enhance the capabilities of DIRANDRO to conduct basic road and riverine exercises, as well as to provide security for eradication teams in outlying areas. These enhanced law enforcement efforts will require additional vehicles, communications, field gear, emergency/safety reaction gear, and drug detector canines." In 2007, the US government's funding for the DIRANDRO was expanded to "enhance the capabilities of DIRANDRO to conduct advanced road interdiction, riot control, greater security for eradication teams, and interdiction in hard-core areas." . In 2007 the US government also debuted the first of at least four "Pre-Police Schools" for students that have completed secondary school education (that is, these schools are an alternative to high school).

More:
http://agonist.org/nat_wilson_turner/20090622/us_drug_war_money_linked_to_massacre_in_peru

[Judi Lynn]

6. Amazon radio taken off air for bogus reasons after reporting on Peruvian riots

Amazon radio taken off air for bogus reasons after reporting on Peruvian riots
Date: June 16, 2009 Author: Newswatch Desk

Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has condemned as “bogus” and “dishonest” technical and official explanations given by the Ministry of Transport and Communications for banning broadcasting by the radio station La Voz de Bagua Grande in the town of the same name in Peru’s north-west.

Paris-based RSF called on the government, unhappy at the media’s support for recent indigenous peoples’ demonstrations, to respect rules for the station’s approval including time limits fixed by itself.

“No-body is fooled by the reasons advanced by the government for silencing La Voz de Bagua Grande. This comes after recent clashes in the Amazonian region between government forces and the indigenous population,” RSF said.

“Several voices, both within the police and the government, have accused the station of encouraging the riots. If this accusation was well-founded, why resort to administrative and technical arguments to justify revoking the broadcast licence of La Voz de Bagua Grande? It is an act of censorship and intimidation. We call on the government to keep its own word and to allow the station the right to resume broadcasting”, it said.

More:
http://www.newswatch.in/newsblog/4290

[Judi Lynn]

7. Reporters Without Borders condemns closure of radio station in Peru

Reporters Without Borders condemns closure of radio station in Peru
15 June, 2009 < 12:06 >

LivinginPeru.com
Isabel Guerra

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has published a document in its website calling "misleading" and "dishonest" the technical and administrative reasons given for closing the Amazonian station "La Voz de Bagua Grande" (La Voz de Utcubamba).

The decision to close the station came days after the radio was accused of “fomenting the riots between the Armed Forces and native populations,” remarked RSF noted in its statement.

"If this accusation had grounds, why using administrative and technical arguments to justify the cancellation of the station's license?” adds the statement, stating that this is “an act of censorship and intimidation.”

The Peruvian Minister of Interior, Mercedes Cabanillas, had publicly threatened to shut down that station and "Radio Orient" for its alleged "support" of violence against law enforcement officials, recalls Reporters Without Borders.

"This is further evidence of a serious governmental prejudice against freedom of press,” says RSF.

http://www.livinginperu.com/news/9345