(Peru) Despite Promised Reforms, Another Mine Resister Killed in Peru

Despite gov­ern­ment promis­es of reforms in the way nat­ur­al resource con­ces­sions are han­dled, anoth­er anti-mines pro­test­er has been killed in Peru. This marks the 19th per­son killed in a nat­ur­al resource-relat­ed con­flict since Pres­i­dent Ollan­ta Humala took office in July 2011.

Clash­es between police and pro­test­ers broke out in the Ancash region on Wednes­day Sep. 19, when police tried to break up a block­ade of a road lead­ing to Bar­rick Gold’s Pier­na mine.  Locals blame the mine for con­t­a­m­i­nat­ing their drink­ing water and using up their water sup­ply.

The com­pa­ny tem­porar­i­ly shut down the mine fol­low­ing the killing.

The vio­lence came even as Peru’s Con­gress debates reforms to the way min­ing con­ces­sions are han­dled, includ­ing the cre­ation of a new over­sight body to eval­u­ate min­ing con­ces­sions, sep­a­rate from the agency respon­si­ble for pro­mot­ing them.

The gov­ern­ment has also been tout­ing its new pol­i­cy of con­sult­ing with affect­ed com­mu­ni­ties regard­ing oil and gas con­ces­sions in the Ama­zon, but com­mu­ni­ties in resis­tance to such projects have expressed skep­ti­cism about what such con­sul­ta­tion will actu­al­ly mean.

“Which com­mu­ni­ties will be con­sult­ed? What are the terms and con­di­tions? Indige­nous peo­ples need answers to these ques­tions, because there is a great deal of mis­trust,” said con­gress­mem­ber Veróni­ka Men­doz.

“We think it is good that they will hold a con­sul­ta­tion. But how can they rem­e­dy all of the dam­age they have done to us in the last 40 years in just a short time? They need to explain that to us first,” said Achuar indige­nous leader Andrés San­ti, pres­i­dent of the Fed­er­a­tion of Native Com­mu­ni­ties of Cor­ri­entes.