Update : Solidarity Action demo/protest for Amazonia Indigenous Peoples in Perú
When : Thursday, June 11, 12:30pm
Where : GPO, Corner Bourke and Elizabeth Streets, Melbourne
Bring banners, placards, flags, musical instruments — anything to display noisy solidarity. For more info call Sue Leigh on 0466 480 331. Call initiated by Latin American Solidarity Network (LASNET); endorsers are welcome. See also Peruanista, “A bilingual blog about Peru and the Abya Yala (Latin America) written from the United States”.
Up to 36 reported killed in Amazon land protest
Carla Salazar
APLIMA, Peru (AP) — Indians protesting government moves to develop oil, gas and other resources on their lands battled police in Peru’s Amazon on Friday, with authorities and Indian leaders separately reporting 11 police and 25 protester[‘]s deaths…
Er…
A few weeks ago, Amazon Indians declared that they were now insurgents… sorta. Actually, what they want — and the motivating force behind their quasi-insurgency — is the repeal of a new law (the so-called 1090 decree / ‘law of the jungle’) which, in accordance with a ‘free trade’ agreement, makes it easier for their lands to be confiscated and given over to corporations — “The protests, against decrees aligning Peruvian law with a free-trade deal with the United States, have affected production at oil wells owned by Argentina’s Pluspetrol, French-English Perenco, Petroperu and Talisman.”
Amazon Indians are bad for business.
The Peruvian government, on the other hand, loves business, and it appears that on Friday it ordered police to smash a roadblock on a highway (in the Bagua region of Amazonas province) established by indigenous groups engaged in various protest activities since April. In the process of doing so, police killed around two dozen indigenous protesters, while they themselves not only suffered a dozen or so casualties but had 38 officers taken hostage (Al Jazeera). Now (Sunday) it appears that at least 9 of these hostages were killed during the course of a rescue attempt, 22 being successfully freed while another 7 remain unaccounted for (BBC).
I smell another massacre.
For more background infos, see : Peru: The struggle of the Indigenous and Amazonian peoples, Unión Socialista Libertaria (Translation by FdCA-International Relations Office), anarkismo.net, June 4, 2009.
Shake of the balaclava:
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