Category: Action Reports

24th May 2011
For more than two weeks, thou­sands of peo­ple have blocked an inter­na­tion­al bor­der in Peru — and almost no one in the Eng­lish-speak­ing world seems to have noticed.

The sto­ry has fall­en through the cracks, but here’s what’s hap­pen­ing:

A pro­posed min­ing project on the shores of Lake Tit­i­ca­ca has pro­voked out­rage among Peru­vians. Protests are grow­ing in the south­east­ern part of the coun­try.

About 10,000 peo­ple gath­ered in the city of Puno this week, shout­ing “Mina no, agro si” (rough­ly “Mines no, farms yes”). Shops, schools and pub­lic tran­sit all shut down.

The protests were sparked by the announce­ment that a sub­sidiary of the Cana­di­an min­ing com­pa­ny Bear Creek would be allowed to build a sil­ver mine near Lake Tit­i­ca­ca.

Tit­i­ca­ca is the high­est nav­i­ga­ble lake in the world and the largest lake in South Amer­i­ca. The lake was con­sid­ered sacred by the Incas and is a major tourist draw today.

The pro­test­ers say min­ing would pol­lute Lake Tit­i­ca­ca, the Desaguadero Riv­er and its trib­u­taries. They are demand­ing the can­cel­la­tion of all min­ing and oil con­ces­sions and the repeal of the decree that allows min­ing in the bor­der area.

Bear Creek says the pro­posed project offers a “low-cost ‘pure sil­ver’ mine” in a “min­er­al-rich nation with a favor­able invest­ment cli­mate.”

The Peru­vian gov­ern­ment said it would dis­patch the mil­i­tary to con­trol the protest and clear the road link­ing the two coun­tries.

Boli­vian busi­ness­men esti­mate they have lost between $7 mil­lion and $16 mil­lion because of the block­ade. The pres­i­dent of the Cham­ber of Exporters of Bolivia, Goran Vrani­cic, told Efe that dai­ly loss­es total $1 mil­lion.

The protest began on May 9 with the clos­ing of the Desaguadero bor­der cross­ing. The route is still blocked with large rocks, logs and barbed wire.

About 600 trucks are stuck on the Boli­vian side of the bor­der, and in the last cou­ple of hours, many of the trapped truck­ers have begun return­ing to the Boli­vian cap­i­tal of La Paz. The clo­sure large­ly affects Boli­vian car­go head­ed to Peru or to third coun­tries through Peru­vian ports (Bolivia does­n’t have access to the sea).

In April, after a protest left three dead in the near­by region of Are­quipa, the Peru­vian gov­ern­ment can­celed the Tia Maria min­ing project.

May 22, 2011
The land acqui­si­tion for the pro­posed mega steel project of Posco in Orissa’s Jagats­ingh­pur dis­trict has been post­poned fol­low­ing stiff resis­tance from vil­lagers sup­port­ing as well as oppos­ing the ven­ture.

The State Gov­ern­ment had to stop the land acqui­si­tion work on Fri­day after the vil­lagers sup­port­ing the ven­ture protest­ed, demand­ing that the process be com­plete­ly stopped till their six-point demands are met.

As many as 33 mem­bers of the Unit­ed Action Com­mit­tee (UAC), the group sup­port­ing the project, were arrest­ed on Thurs­day when they blocked the entry of offi­cials engaged in the land acqui­si­tion work. On Sun­day, a large num­ber of vil­lagers sup­port­ing the UAC organ­ised a ral­ly in the area ear­marked for the project reit­er­at­ing their demands.

Mean­while, Posco Pratirodh San­gram Sami­ti, the out­fit that has been strong­ly oppos­ing land acqui­si­tion for the project since 2005, has also decid­ed to inten­si­fy its agi­ta­tion in the com­ing days.

The Sami­ti has been demand­ing that the Gov­ern­ment not acquire any land till the author­i­ties organ­ised Pal­li Sab­ha meet­ings in var­i­ous vil­lages to take the con­sent of the thou­sands of fam­i­lies that were to lose their land and liveli­hood sources.

The agi­tat­ing vil­lagers, who had staged a protest on May 18 when the author­i­ties resumed land acqui­si­tion, have termed the Gov­ern­ment action “ille­gal”.

The land acqui­si­tion work had shown lit­tle progress dur­ing the three days when admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials entered the area amid heavy police pres­ence to car­ry out the exer­cise. While the 1.52 acres of for­est land was acquired by demol­ish­ing betel vine­yards on May 18, it dropped to 72 dec­i­mals on May 19 and .27 acres on May 20.

In anoth­er devel­op­ment, the High Court has issued notices to the State Gov­ern­ment and oth­ers on a peti­tion chal­leng­ing land acqui­si­tion for the project. The peti­tion will come up for fur­ther hear­ing on May 25.

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/companies/article2040318.ece?homepage=true

On April 15, Purepe­chas from the indige­nous com­mu­ni­ty of Cherán detained a group of five log­gers who were attempt­ing to trans­port ille­gal­ly-logged tim­ber from their land.

Hop­ing to turn the log­gers in, the Purepe­chas lat­er informed local author­i­ties about what had hap­pened. But, two hours after doing so, a police car arrived in the com­mu­ni­ty with two pick-ups that were occu­pied by more than a dozen heav­i­ly-armed men.

The armed men pro­ceed­ed to open fire on the com­mu­ni­ty, seri­ous­ly injur­ing one per­son, Euge­nio Sánchez Tiandón, who was shot in the head and remains in a coma.

Fol­low­ing the attack, the Purepecha, with few oth­er options, declared an emer­gency “state of siege” and closed off all access points to the com­mu­ni­ty.

The self-imposed state of siege is ongo­ing.

Accord­ing to a May 5 report by Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al, on April 23, “the com­mu­ni­ty pre­sent­ed the five ille­gal log­gers to rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Fed­er­al Attor­ney General’s Office (Procu­raduría Gen­er­al de la Repúbli­ca, PGR) along with 140 com­plaints from res­i­dents.”

Four days lat­er, anoth­er group of ille­gal log­gers tried to gain access to the com­mu­ni­ty; but they, too, were stopped by the Purepecha.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the com­mu­ni­ty came under fire once more–only this time, the armed men did­n’t have a police escort. Two com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers, Pedro Juárez Urbina and Arman­do Hernán­dez Estra­da, were killed in the attack.

It has been over three weeks since the two Purepecha men were killed on April 27; how­ev­er, the com­mu­ni­ty reports that warn­ings of reprisals have been sent to com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers by the armed gang, which is believed to have ties to the main drug car­tel in Michoa­can.

Accord­ing to the very lat­est reports on the “Cher­an rebel­lion” as it’s been labelled by the press, the Mex­i­can gov­ern­ment has sent troops and fed­er­al police to patrol the out­skirts of the com­mu­ni­ty; some­thing the Purepecha had been call­ing for since the state of siege began. But it remains to be see if they’ll actu­al­ly do any­thing.

Pro­vid­ing some back­ground, a com­mu­ni­ty spokesper­son recent­ly told reporters that Cher­an has been under attack for the past three years. Speak­ing on the con­di­tion that he remain anony­mous, the spokesper­son said that, since 2008, a total of nine peo­ple have been killed and five oth­ers have been dis­ap­peared.

In that same amount of time, Ille­gal log­gers have defor­est­ed near­ly 80 per­cent of the region’s 30,000-acre for­est. “But dur­ing the past year, the groups seem to be sup­port­ed by orga­nized crime groups,” the spokesper­son said.

Video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEHuoEdI1Kc