unless it means to commit to it fully. They've stuck their neck out by being the first in South America to do this.
There have been unconscionable actions taken by previous Peruvian Presidents, deeply amoral, destructive behavior toward both the Peruvian citizens, and the land itself, with its amazing wildlife. They have thrown open the gates to mining and oil companies at the tragic expense of the lives of innocent Peruvian human beings.
It sounds as if there is a groundswell going on, easy to believe, when one remembers only a few years ago, President Alan "Two Breakfasts" Garcia commanded his national police, military to fire upon indigenous Peruvians who had gathered to protest the fact Garcia had sold their ancestral forest homelands right out from under them to oil interests, leaving them to go pound sand, apparently.
Well, the problem was solved for those of them who were simply killed outright. They don't need to worry where they will live, or how they will survive.
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US-Peru FTA Sparks Indigenous Massacre
Thursday, 11 June 2009 11:20
By Tom Loudon, Truthout
US-Peru FTA Sparks Indigenous Massacre
During the last week, deep in the Peruvian Amazon, confrontations between nonviolent indigenous protesters and police have left up to 100 people dead. The vast majority of the casualties are civilians, who have been conducting peaceful demonstrations in defense of the Amazon rain forest.
For almost two months, as many as 30,000 indigenous people have been blocking road and river traffic, demanding the repeal of presidential decrees issued last year to facilitate implementation of the US-Peru FTA. According to the indigenous leaders, several of these decrees directly threaten indigenous territories and rights. After having attempted several times to negotiate with the government the repeal of the most egregious of the decrees, and faced with a permanent influx of extraction equipment into the region, the people decided it was imperative to "put their bodies in front of the machines" in order to prevent this equipment from entering their territory.
On Friday, June 5, the government decided the protests needed to end and launched an aggressive assault against the people protesting on the road outside of Bagua. The dislocation was conducted from helicopters and the ground, with police and army using automatic weapons and heavy equipment against people armed with only rocks and spears. As videos, photos and testimonies from the region slowly emerge, it is clear that this was designed to inflict as many civilian casualties as possible, and deter those in other regions from continuing protests. Pictures circulating on the Internet depict snipers in uniform firing at protesters from the streets, tanks and from on top of buildings. On Saturday, in Lima, Peru's capital, a large spontaneous demonstration in support of the Amazonian indigenous was broken up by police.
In the wake of what appears to be a massacre perpetrated by the police, the government of President Alan Garcia is mounting a massive propaganda campaign, claiming that indigenous protesters attacked the police, and accusing them of being terrorists. Human rights lawyers have accused Peru's government of a cover-up, and have been impeded from getting in to investigate more fully. The Bishop's Vicariate for the Environment for Jaen, Nicanor Alvarado, said "The main problem is that injured and deceased civilians are being transferred to the "El Milagro" military base ... so, it's possible that a group of injured and deceased people are disappeared later on."
More:
http://truth-out.org/archive/component/k2/item/84542-usperu-fta-sparks-indigenous-massacre
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More photos:
https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4TSND_enUS566US566&q=peru+bagua+massacre&tbm=isch&gws_rd=ssl
On edit:
To add insult to murder, Alan Garcia claimed these people are "selfish" to think only of themselves, in wanting to keep their ancestral homes, instead of the financial benefit selling their land would be for the whole country.
Just the kind of behavior you'd expect from people like him. Glad he's gone. Hope he'll never be back.
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