Mass Trial of Indigenous Leaders Set to Begin this Week in Peru

12th May 2014 A mas­sive tri­al involv­ing 53 Indige­nous lead­ers and activists is set to begin this week, reviv­ing the trag­ic events that took place four years ago in the Ama­zonas Region of Peru.

In April 2009, a nation­al indige­nous mobi­liza­tion was orga­nized to stop a plan by the Peru­vian gov­ern­ment to roll-back indige­nous land rights and make it eas­i­er for indus­try to exploit the Ama­zon rain­for­est.

The first month of the mobi­liza­tion, led by more than 1200 com­mu­ni­ties, was large­ly peace­ful. How­ev­er, that began to change on May 9, 2009, when the Peru­vian gov­ern­ment declared a state of emer­gency in the regions of Lore­to, Ama­zonas, Cus­co, and Ucayali–where thou­sands of Indige­nous Peo­ples were con­cen­trat­ing their efforts.

Once the state of emer­gency was declared, the num­ber of con­fronta­tions with police and mil­i­tary began to climb. Nev­er­the­less, the mobi­liza­tion pressed on, with Indige­nous Peo­ples car­ry­ing out dai­ly protest actions across the coun­try.

With the Indige­nous Peo­ples show­ing no signs of back­ing down, on May 20, Peru’s Con­gress took a pos­i­tive step for­ward by repeal­ing one of four laws that sparked the mobi­liza­tion: Leg­isla­tive Decree 1090, a new forestry law that removed the pro­tect­ed sta­tus of some 45 mil­lion hectares of rain­for­est. Six days lat­er, a sec­ond leg­isla­tive decree, aimed at pro­mot­ing pri­vate invest­ment in irri­ga­tion projects, was declared uncon­sti­tu­tion­al.

 

While there was enor­mous relief over the removal of the two decrees, two oth­ers remained:

• Leg­isla­tive Decree 1064 removed a require­ment that oblig­ed com­pa­nies to come to an agree­ment with indige­nous com­mu­ni­ties over land com­pen­sa­tion and land use before enter­ing their lands (effec­tive­ly giv­ing min­ing, oil & gas, log­ging, and hydro com­pa­nies free access to enter any Indige­nous ter­ri­to­ry).
• Leg­isla­tive Decree 1089, mean­while, gave unre­strict­ed pow­ers for land titling to COFOPRI, the gov­ern­ment body that spe­cial­izes in grant­i­ng indi­vid­ual land titles.

With both decrees pos­ing a sig­nif­i­cant threat to the secu­ri­ty of Indige­nous land rights, in addi­tion to the fact that the gov­ern­ment failed to car­ry out a process of con­sult­ing or seek­ing the con­sent of effect­ed Indige­nous Peoples–in vio­la­tion of ILO Con­ven­tion 169 and the Unit­ed Nations Dec­la­ra­tion on the Rights of Indige­nous Peoples–the mobi­liza­tion pressed on.

After a few more weeks of protest, it looked as if a res­o­lu­tion was at hand. Sev­er­al thou­sand Awa­jun and Wamp­is Peo­ples had set up a series of strate­gic block­ades on Fer­nan­do Belaúnde Ter­ry road in Bagua, Ama­zonas Region. Hav­ing so effec­tive­ly seized the impor­tant road, the gov­ern­ment sought to strike a deal with the Awa­jun and Wamp­is, ulti­mate­ly con­vinc­ing the Indige­nous Peo­ples to begin tak­ing down their block­ades. Many of the Awa­jun and Wamp­is were long gone by the time June 5 rolled around.

In the ear­ly morn­ing hours of June 5, the Peru­vian mil­i­tary police made their move.

When the dust final­ly set­tled, 38 peo­ple were dead and more than 200 were injured.

Two weeks after the bru­tal con­fronta­tion, Peru’s Con­gress over­whelm­ing­ly vot­ed to strike down both Leg­isla­tive Decree 1064 and 1089.

Fol­low­ing Con­gress’ vote, Daysi Zap­a­ta, vice pres­i­dent of the Intereth­nic Asso­ci­a­tion for Devel­op­ment of the Peru­vian Jun­gle (AIDESEP), the orga­ni­za­tion that start­ed the mobi­liza­tion, offi­cial­ly called for an end to all protests, stat­ing, “Today is an his­toric day, we are grate­ful that the will of indige­nous peo­ples has been heard, and only hope that in future, gov­ern­ments meet and lis­ten to the peo­ple, and not leg­is­late the laws back in.”

Four years lat­er, the decrees have remained off the books; the gov­ern­ment tak­ing judi­cial aim at many of the Indige­nous Peo­ples who took part (or alleged­ly took part) in the mobi­liza­tion. Since 2009, more 100 sep­a­rate law­suits have been filed involv­ing at least 350 Indige­nous men and women.

The upcom­ing law­suit, known as the “Cur­va del Dia­blo”, will be the largest of them all. In fact, with 53 indige­nous lead­ers fac­ing any­where between 35 years to life in prison, it is going to be the largest tri­al in Peru’s his­to­ry.

AIDESEP Pres­i­dent Alber­to Pizan­go, who is among the 53 named defen­dants, recent­ly com­ment­ed in an inter­nal AIDESEP inter­view:

There’s a “Before Bagua” and an “After Bagua”. A before in which the Peru­vian State didn’t want to and didn’t know how to lis­ten to the pro­pos­als of indige­nous peo­ples. This exac­er­bat­ed the sit­u­a­tion until things came to what hap­pened, which unfor­tu­nate­ly took so many lives unnec­es­sar­i­ly. I’d say an “After Bagua” because thanks to the Ama­zon­ian mobi­liza­tions I can say that today the indige­nous agen­da is not only insert­ed in the nation­al lev­el and with­in the State, but on the inter­na­tion­al lev­el.

Pizan­go con­tin­ues:

I’d just say to the indige­nous peo­ples and my indige­nous broth­ers who are being tried for these regret­table events that they should stay firm in con­tin­u­ing to lift up the voice of indige­nous peo­ples. All we have done is com­ply with our role as being the offi­cial spokes­peo­ple and work to insert in the nation­al pub­lic agen­da the dif­fer­ent claims as man­dat­ed to us by our peo­ples. I’d reit­er­ate to my broth­ers that they should stay firm in the sig­nif­i­cance of indige­nous peo­ples rights. We’re going to over­come these accu­sa­tions, we should be con­scious of the fact that we haven’t com­mit­ted any crimes. Per­haps our only crime was to car­ry the voice of the peo­ple, which is what we’ll be judged for start­ing May 14th….