Action page for protest actions/letters/calls on the massacre in Peru!

[Peace Patriot]

I just came across this action page to write protest letters to Alan Garcia, the corrupt, scumbag, Bush buddy president of Peru who ordered the dreadful massacre of (most current estimate) 100 peaceful indigenous protesters in Bagua Chica, in the northern Amazon region of Peru yesterday. The indians were protesting the invasion of multinational corporate predators into the Amazon, for logging, mining and other environmental destruction, as the corrupt Garcia government turns Peru over to the capitalist monsters of the U.S. and Europe. This is where our "war on drugs" tax dollars are going--to slaughter the defenders of Mother Earth, the poor, the indigenous, those who have nothing except a healthy Earth to rely on for a living. Garcia is using U.S. military aid to nazify Peru the way U.S. "war on drugs" money has been used to nazify Colombia. In these two fascist dinosaurs of South America--Peru and Colombia--the fate of the poor who dare to raise their heads in protest is death. This is what our money is supporting. So we should also write to our own Congress members, news outlets and President Obama, to stop subsidizing mass murder and oppression with "war on drugs" funds, and to rescind the U.S./Peru "free trade" agreement--the environmental and labor protections of which are not being implemented, and likely were never meant to be implemented.

The first site, below, has photos of the dead, and lists protest sites tomorrow around the world (including Denver, CO, and New York), and numerous officials, embassies and other entities to be contacted. The second site is specifically set up for letters to Garcia.

http://peruanista.blogspot.com/
http://www.amazonwatch.org/peru-action-alert.php

[Judi Lynn]

1. Cover-up claim after Peru clashes

Page last updated at 00:51 GMT, Wednesday, 10 June 2009 01:51 UK
Cover-up claim after Peru clashes

Human rights lawyers have accused Peru's government of a cover-up, after clashes between police and indigenous protesters killed at least 50 people.

The lawyers say hundreds more may be missing, amid rumours that the police have hidden bodies. But they say rights groups cannot get in to investigate.

The government denies the claims and says police were the victims.

For two months Amazonians have rallied against laws which they say will open their lands to oil and gas drilling.

More:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8092453.stm

[EFerrari]

2. That's an interesting blog. Good find!

We've had calls for action up in LBN and GD up Monday and Tuesday using the AW page. Maybe we should give it another go today.

:hi:

[Judi Lynn]

3. Activists Urge Obama to Use Trade Pact as Leverage

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.

Analysts of U.S. policy towards Latin America describe the bloody incident in Bagua as the latest rendition of the discord that exists between the United States, Latin American governments and the indigenous people of the region.

"The increase in foreign direct investment since the 1980s has ignited countless humanitarian and environmental crises throughout Latin America as the leaders of developing world are being forced to choose between the perceived economic benefits of free trade," note researchers Arienna Grody and Lincoln Wheeler.

In a report for the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, a Washington-based think tank, they describe Garcia as "a robust ally of foreign investors and multinational corporations" who has strongly defended Peru's development initiatives by claiming that it was in the benefit of the poor.

But, to Grody and Wheeler, such an assertion is highly questionable.

"This grand scheme to uplift the poor, cynical it may seem, has significantly increased the disenfranchisement of the already underrepresented native people who have now seen themselves stripped of basic ownership rights of their traditional lands," they wrote.

The ownership rights to traditional lands are fully recognised by the majority of the international community. The U.N. General Assembly endorsed that principle in a resolution approving the adoption of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The resolution was passed in September 2007.

~snip~
He thinks that the U.S. government "can help by fostering a solution through dialogue, not force."

Concerned about the fact that the Peruvian government intends to clear protesters in other areas of the Amazon, he said the U.S. government must act quickly to work with Peru to address the issue of legislative decrees, and to clarify what relation, if any, these decrees have to compliance with the trade pact.

"We strongly urge the U.S. government to help bring an end to this crisis by supporting a dialogue that includes views of indigenous communities and protects the human rights of these citizens as guaranteed by national and international law," said Offenheiser.

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

[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.

Videos of the attack show well-armed police up against indigenous protesters with spears, and scenes of chaotic violence suffused in tear gas. The rage of the local communities can be seen in this video of an indigenous woman, even if one can't understand Spanish. Many images show indigenous women at the forefront of these protests.

Regional analyst Raul Zibechi points out that mobilization of these indigenous organizations didn't spring up overnight. Protests against the decrees began on April 9 and intensified on June 4, when the ruling party blocked discussion of repeal in Congress, although a commission had already declared them unconstitutional.

Background to the Events
The real back story dates from May 2004, when the U.S. and Peruvian governments began negotiations for a free-trade agreement as U.S. plans for a broader regional agreement broke down. Peru broke from the Andean group, some of whose members had balked at the demands of the United States, to sign its own bilateral agreement on December 8, 2005. The signing provoked the first round of widespread protests, led by small farmers. From then until the signing of the ratified version at the beginning of this year, demonstrations continued in various sectors, leading to four killed in 2008.

The connection between the protests, repudiated decrees, and the free-trade agreement is explicit, as even the Peruvian government describes in its chronology of events: "By Law 29157 published on Dec. 20, 2007 the Congress delegated legislative powers to the Executive branch on various subjects related to the Peru-U.S. Trade Promotion Agreement and to support improvements in economic competitiveness."

The resulting decrees include moves to privatize water and allow private investment in other sectors. The most controversial decree relates to forestry. Indigenous organizations warn that this ruling effectively opens up 45 million hectares to foreign investment and timber, oil, and mining exploitation. The decrees stipulate that a minority of communal land holders can push a vote to parcel off and privatize lands, much as constitutional reform in Mexico was a pre-condition to NAFTA and led to massive out-migration. Two decrees have been suspended for 90 days, but indigenous groups have called for repeal.

Washington's Role
The Amazon conflict presents an acid test for Congress and the Obama administration on trade. The Bush administration presented the Peru agreement as a model of compromise between free-trade Republicans and Democrats with growing anti-free-trade constituents. It incorporated environmental and labor standards into the text and was redubbed a "Trade Promotion Agreement." Obama and the Democratic leadership supported the U.S.-Peru free-trade agreement, although a majority of Democrats still voted against it. At the Pathways to Prosperity meeting, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hailed the agreement as "good environmental stewardship," just four days before Peruvian police shot indigenous activists protesting invasion of the Amazon jungle.

Some Washington organizations have now signed a letter asking the Obama administration to communicate to the Peruvian government that repeal of the decrees "does not conflict with the obligations of the U.S.-Peru TPA."

But even if the administration showed a new flexibility on free-trade agreements, the conflict wouldn't likely go away. This isn't just a battle over jungle lands and competing interests in the Amazon. As a planetary lung and a reserve of culture and biodiversity, the Amazon region provokes conflicting views of human progress.

For Peruvian President Alan García, in an editorial in El Comercio, the area considered a marvel by many is really just a big waste: "There are millions of hectares of timber lying idle, another millions of hectares that communities and associations have not and will not cultivate, hundreds of mineral deposits that are not dug up and millions of hectares of ocean not used for aquaculture. The rivers that run down both sides of the mountains represent a fortune that reaches the sea without producing electricity."

García argues that indigenous peoples born in the Amazon do not have special land-use rights on the area. Instead, the Amazon should be carved up into very large plots and sold to people with the capital to make use of it. The Peruvian government coveted the free-trade agreement with the United States because, with required changes in national legislation, it opens up the Amazon to foreign investment.

In contrast, indigenous communities and their supporters value the conservation of the Amazon. They want to preserve traditional knowledge and cultures, all of which would be threatened by bioprospecting and patent law changes under the FTA.

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