100+ Chilean NGOs Rally To Fight 1981 Privitazation Of Water For Mining, Logging Industries
SANTIAGO, Apr 23 2013 (IPS) - More than 100 environmental, social and indigenous organisations protested Monday in the Chilean capital to demand that the state regain control over the management of water, which was privatised by the dictatorship in 1981.
More than 6,000 people took part in the peaceful, colourful “great carnival march for the recovery and defence of water” in Santiago, according to the organisers, one of whom was former student leader Camila Vallejo, who plans to run for parliament for the Communist Party.
The demonstrators also delivered a letter to right-wing President Sebastián Piñera, complaining that the water shortages affecting local communities were not only due to persistent drought but also to structural problems in the policies governing the exploitation of natural resources.
“We have discovered that there is water in Chile, but that the wall that separates it from us is called ‘profit’ and was built by the (1981) water code, the constitution, international agreements like the Binational Mining Treaty (with Argentina) and, fundamentally, the imposition of a culture where it is seen as normal for the water that falls from the sky to have owners,” the letter says. “This wall is drying up our basins, it is devastating the water cycles that have sustained our valleys for centuries, it is sowing death in our territories and it must be torn down now,” it adds.
EDIT
http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/04/mining-and-logging-companies-leaving-chile-without-water/
EDIT
http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/04/mining-and-logging-companies-leaving-chile-without-water/
