Five killed in Peru’s anti-mining clashes

25.6.11
At least five peo­ple have died and more than 30 were injured in clash­es between police and anti-min­ing demon­stra­tors in south­ern Peru, hos­pi­tal offi­cials say.

Vio­lence in the Puno region start­ed when about 1,000 peo­ple were pre­vent­ed from breach­ing a secu­ri­ty fence around the inter­na­tion­al air­port in Juli­a­ca.

The protest was part of a two-day strike over a sil­ver-min­ing con­tract giv­en to a Cana­di­an cor­po­ra­tion.

The gov­ern­ment can­celled the project as the protests were going on.

Demon­stra­tors feared that it would increase pol­lu­tion, while bring­ing few ben­e­fits to the local pop­u­la­tion.
Locals v multi­na­tion­als

Flights were can­celled dur­ing the protest, strand­ing hun­dreds of tourists who had been vis­it­ing the town on the shores of the world’s high­est nav­i­ga­ble lake, Lake Tit­i­ca­ca.

The pro­test­ers attempt­ed to storm Juli­a­ca air­port twice.

They lat­er attacked a police sta­tion in the near­by town of Azan­garo, Inte­ri­or Min­is­ter Miguel Hidal­go said, adding that police there were in a “dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion”.

The BBC’s Dan Col­lyns in Lima says the Puno region on the bor­der with Bolivia has been in the grip of a gen­er­alised protest against all min­ing activ­i­ty for more than a month.

In May, indige­nous Aymara pro­test­ers blocked roads between the two coun­tries for three weeks.

The dis­putes over nat­ur­al resources pit poor locals against multi­na­tion­al com­pa­nies, our cor­re­spon­dent says.

The social con­flicts have come to char­ac­terise the out­go­ing gov­ern­ment of Pres­i­dent Alan Gar­cia, with crit­ics say­ing he often took the side of the large com­pa­nies, he adds.

Incom­ing Pres­i­dent Ollan­ta Humala also has promised to bring an end to such dis­putes.