Peruvian Government Massacres Indigenous Protesters Prior to Conclusion of Negotiations

PERU: Native Protesters Search for Their Dead

By Milagros Salazar / IPS

BAGUA, Peru, Jun 11 (IPS) - Indigenous people taking part in protests near this town in the northern Peruvian province of Amazonas that ended in a bloody clash with the police last week are now focusing on drawing up a list of the dead and missing, amidst a climate of fear and mistrust.

Several eyewitnesses said they saw police load the bodies of dead protesters into a helicopter and dump them into the Marañón river, after the Friday, Jun. 5 incident in which both demonstrators and policemen were killed. But authorities from the prosecutors office failed to find any more bodies on their third search in the area, carried out on Wednesday.

For the past two months, native protesters have been blocking roads and access to oil industry installations to demand the repeal of a series of government decrees that violate their land rights, which are protected under the constitution and by international conventions signed by Peru.

"The helicopter stopped at least three times to pick up bodies," Luis Padilla, a member of the Awajun ethnic group from Río Santiago in Amazonas province, told IPS. "That was between eight and nine in the morning on Friday," added Padilla, who said it took three days to reach the town of Bagua from his village.

Padilla, who was wary of the camera, said that on Friday, Jun. 5 the police opened fire on the protesters manning the roadblock at a spot along the highway into Bagua called Curva del Diablo (Devil’s Curve), at around 6:00 AM, and that in response the indigenous demonstrators used their spears. "We defended ourselves," he said.

The police "picked up the bodies of our brothers and sisters and dumped them into the Marañón river," added Joel Tupicá, from the district of Nieva, who along with Padilla and another 24 Indians, including two women, were on their way back to their home villages on Wednesday, five days after the violent incident that left at least 30 protesters and policemen dead.

The number of victims is in dispute, with the authorities saying 10 civilians – including protesters and local residents - were killed and indigenous groups putting the total much higher.

A climate of fear and tension

Oswaldo Bautista, chief prosecutor of Amazonas province, told IPS that around 1,000 indigenous people have returned to their villages over the past few days, and that most of them had taken refuge in local churches for fear of reprisals by the state security forces.

Lawyers with the non-governmental Coordinadora de Derechos Humanos human rights group, who have come to Bagua to verify what happened last week, said more than 50 protesters are still under arrest in four different towns.

The incident, described by Amazon Watch programme coordinator Gregor MacLennan as a "massacre" of peaceful protesters, some of whom were still asleep at the roadblock when the police showed up, while others were shot as they fled, has heightened the tension in the area, because the army and police are still posted here and a curfew remains in place.

Several "apus" (traditional leaders of indigenous communities) have decided not to return to Curva del Diablo, for fear of being arrested. The authorities have blamed the violence on the leaders of the Peruvian Rainforest Inter-Ethnic Development Association (AIDESEP), an umbrella group of 28 federations of indigenous peoples that has led the protests.

AIDESEP’s top leader, Alberto Pizango, has been given asylum in the Nicaraguan Embassy in Lima.

"They burned the bodies of some protesters, over there," said Padilla, who was unable to provide the names of victims due to the chaos and confusion that reigned on Friday and the fact that the demonstrators came from more than 356 different villages and communities.

AIDESEP has set up committees in each community tasked with drawing up lists of people who have not returned to their homes, in order to demand that the state provide information on their fate.

"We want to recover the bodies of our missing people," said Edwin Montenegro, the local leader of Río Kanus in the Amazon district of Condorcanqui, who was directly involved in the Jun. 5 incident.

At the Curve of Death

Some 3,000 indigenous protesters were blocking the Fernando Belaúnde Terry highway at the Curva del Diablo when the police showed up to dismantle the roadblock early that morning and told them, just before opening fire, "you’ll leave here dead or alive," said Montenegro.

He told IPS that in the days leading up to the events of Jun. 5, protesters and local authorities had met with General Víctor Uribe, who was in charge of the operation to break up the traffic blockade, with a view to reaching a peaceful agreement.

Montenegro said a Thursday, Jun. 4 meeting with General Uribe failed to produce results. However, they had agreed to continue the talks on Friday at 10:00 AM – a meeting that never took place, because the attack on the protesters occurred four hours earlier.

The mayor of Condorcanqui, Héctor Requejo, confirmed to IPS that on Thursday they met with Uribe in the camp at the Petroperú oil refinery, and that the general said he himself could not make any decisions, but merely followed orders from Lima.

Montenegro said that when they opened fire on the crowd, the police aimed directly at the protesters, and that people were shot from a helicopter as well, which also launched tear gas canisters.

In the confusion, he was able to save his brother-in-law, prominent Aguaruna leader Santiago Manuin, president of the Condorcanqui Provincial Protest Committee (Comité de Lucha Provincial de Condorcanqui), who was seriously wounded.

Three young indigenous men who are being treated for bullet wounds at the Gustavo Lanatta Hospital in Bagua confirmed that the police launched the attack, without warning.

The three young men are all former members of the army. One of them, 24-year-old Paulo Bitap López from the village of Shusug, told IPS that a group of former soldiers decided to approach the police before the operation to break up the roadblock, to attempt to dissuade them, but that they found themselves caught up in a rain of bullets.

Rosa Mondragón, a 54-year-old woman who lives near the spot where the incident took place, said she saw tear gas being thrown from a helicopter, and showed prosecutor Bautista bullet marks on the walls of her house, as well as more than 20 backpacks and bags of utensils of indigenous protesters who slept overnight at her house for a week but fled after the attack.

The prosecutor searched gullies and ravines near the Curva del Diablo on Wednesday, after doing the same in other areas on Sunday and Monday in response to reports by local residents that bodies had been hidden there.

Bautista told IPS that no bodies were found in the latest search, only clothing and bottles of chicha, a traditional corn liquor.

Shots in the square

One of the wounded interviewed by IPS in the hospital was Daniel Torres Manay, a 55-year-old resident of Bagua who was hit in the stomach by a police bullet on Friday Jun. 5 when he was near the square where the police station is located.

Torres and his wife Amelia Delgado said the police began to shoot that day at around 11:00 AM when a group of people gathered outside the police station, after they heard that the indigenous protesters had been attacked.

According to the head of the Amazonas ombudsman’s office, Roberto Guevara, five of the nine victims acknowledged by the authorities were local residents, not indigenous people, killed by police bullets in the streets around the square.

"President Alan García committed this crime," complained Torres, who has undergone two unsuccessful operations to extract the bullet, and is waiting to be transferred to the northern city of Chiclayo for life-saving surgery.

"After we draw up a list of our brothers and sisters who were killed, we will continue our protest," said Montenegro. "The government thinks that we have chickened out, but that will never happen. The blood of their brothers and sisters is an incentive to the Awajun people. The state has provoked us. We don’t want to talk to either (Prime Minister) Yehude Simon or (Interior Minister Mercedes) Cabanillas."

Two decrees suspended

In a 57 to 47 vote Wednesday, Congress decided to suspend the implementation of two of the decrees protested by the native groups, which according to experts and legislators affect the rights of indigenous people and violate the constitution and International Labour Organisation (ILO) Convention 169 on indigenous people.

The government decrees, which are aimed at promoting foreign investment in the framework of the free trade agreement signed with the United States, open up indigenous land to private investment by oil, mining and logging companies.

Indigenous people in Peru’s Amazon jungle region, where oil companies are increasingly active, began last year to hold protests to demand that the decrees be revoked.

A multi-party legislative committee also recommended last December that they be overturned.

But AIDESEP vice president Daysi Zapata criticised the legislature’s decision to suspend the two decrees, because her organisation is demanding that they be struck down.

On Thursday, social movements held national demonstrations in solidarity with the indigenous protesters, and an indefinite strike was declared in several areas in the country’s northeastern Amazon region.

"The Amazon represents our market, our pharmacy, our home, our survival; we are defending it for the good of our people and of humanity," said Montenegro.

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Copyright 2009: IPS-Inter Press Service

Native Rights News is making this material from IPS: The Story Underneath available in accordance with the Fair Use Doctrine codified at Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107: This article is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information. Distribution of this material is for research and educational purposes that will promote social and economic justice and benefit society.
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Canadian Copper Mining Firm Uses Violence to Deal with Indigenous Resistance in Equador

Canadian Mining Firm Financed Violence in Ecuador: Lawsuit

TMX Group denies claim. Win could affect thousands of other projects by Canadian companies.

TheTyee.ca
By Jennifer Moore

Published: March 3, 2009

"Financing being raised in Canada is travelling across borders to do harm," said lawyer Murray Klippenstein by phone from his office in Toronto. "We want to find out if our legal system can respond to this."

Klippenstein is perhaps best known for his representation of the estate and family of native activist Dudley George, who was shot and killed by police in Ipperwash Provincial Park in Ontario in 1995. This lawsuit revealed deep political involvement from the premier's office and resulted in a landmark public inquiry.

In another ambitious and possibly precedent-setting case, Klippenstein is representing three villagers from the valley of Intag in northwestern Ecuador who are suing Copper Mesa Mining Corporation (TSX:CUX) and the Toronto Stock Exchange. They allege that company directors and the TMX Group have not done enough to reduce the risk of harm being faced by farmers and community leaders in Intag who have faced violent threats and attacks for opposition to a large open-pit copper mine in their pristine cloud forests.

Still, they hope to go further. "What is happening in Intag is illustrative of a wider problem," a summary of the legal claim states, "the corporate and financial unaccountability of the Canadian mining industry." So while the case uses established legal principles, the plaintiffs hope it will lead to long-awaited legal reforms to help better control thousands of Canadian financed projects abroad.

Klippenstein, who said he "has learned to go miles on very little," acknowledges the "staggering financial mismatch" and says that companies have hundreds of millions of dollars to gain, so it won't surprise him if they spend tens of millions on the case. He also anticipates years of counterattacks, including motions and appeals on technicalities.

But he emphasized that the basics of the case are straightforward. "There's a simple fundamental legal point that you shouldn't harm somebody and that you shouldn't use your money to hire someone who you know is likely to do harm."

Conflict escalates

Marcia Ramírez is secretary of the Intag Community Development Committee. She lives near the end of the road in an isolated village in one of the most biodiverse places on earth. Her community of Chalguayaco Alto sits at the crossroads of two biodiversity hotspots, the Tumbes-Chocó-Magdalena and the Tropical Andes.

"It isn't fair," she told The Tyee, "that a foreign company can come here and contract people who attack us for defending our rights, for wanting to live in a healthy environment, for defending our land and our water." She added, "We'd like the stock exchange to listen to us and to understand that we've been very hurt by one of their companies."

Now 25 years old, the fight against large scale copper mining has marked daily life for the diplomatic and dedicated leader since she was about 12.
Broad-based opposition to large scale copper mining arose when a Japanese company was initially carrying out mineral exploration a short distance away. When the company released its Environmental Impact Assessment report for the proposed mine, the news that four communities would be displaced, as well as massive deforestation, local desertification, river contamination and harm to endangered species sparked vociferous opposition that persists.

Since Copper Mesa, who has a strategic alliance with the giant Rio Tinto, took over the project in 2004, new issues have emerged with apparent attempts to break the opposition. Now land trafficking, threats of violence, as well as relatively high-paying job offers have been driving a wedge between neighbours and families in these rural communities.

"But," commented Ramírez, "what most hurt is when they came... with armed men and sprayed us with gas."

In early December 2006, over 50 heavily armed security guards, mostly ex-soldiers, were hired to reach company concessions and set up camp. Local residents had been tipped off and gathered along the narrow dirt road that the company-hired trucks would have to pass. When they arrived, Ramírez and others tried to urge the armed men to turn around. But instead, the security agents sprayed tear gas into their faces from only a metre away and fired their weapons into the air, injuring one man, also a plaintiff in the case.

When the residents didn't back down, the guards finally retreated.

The incident was caught on film by a European student researching the controversy and is retold as part of the recent film Under Rich Earth by director Malcolm Rogge that debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. It has also been denounced in a complaint to the Inter-American Human Rights Commission.

Prior warning

Canadian authorities were warned that such an incident could arise.

On March 8th, 2005, three months before Copper Mesa (then Ascendant Copper) was listed on the TSX, County Mayor Auki Tituaña wrote to the Finance and Audit Committee of the Toronto Stock Exchange: "We consider it to be appropriate and fair that before accepting open "trade" of Ascendant Copper Corporation's stocks in the Stock Market, you evaluate in depth the "new" company's merits..."

Included in his list of 14 concerns were lack of prior community consultation, lack of legally required municipal approval, violation of a municipal ordinance that declares the area an "Ecological County," as well as attempts to foster divisions as a "means to achieve company profits against the citizen's will and at a cost of the loss of unique biodiversity in our territory."

Then in May, Carlos Zorrilla, executive director of the Ecological Defense and Conservation of Intag (DECOIN), travelled to Ottawa to present a complaint to the Department of Foreign Affairs claiming that Copper Mesa had violated the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD) Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises. Mining Watch and Friends of the Earth Canada supported the claim.

"I'm here," he says in a press release, "because Canadians need to understand the real risk of violence that is emerging as a result of this company's activities." He added, "The Canadian government must take action to curb the excesses of Canadian mining companies operating and exploring overseas."

The complaint was withdrawn after eight months when it was apparent that the appropriate authorities would not apply the relevant procedures. The legal summary notes that "the TSX stock market listing of Copper Mesa has allowed the company to obtain over $25 million in capital funds -- some of which paid for the armed attackers" in December 2006.

Carolyn Quick, director of corporate communications for the TMX Group, told The Tyee her firm considers the case to be "entirely without merit" and that they will "vigorously defend this position." She would give no further comment about the letter from Mayor Tituaña nor the complaint made to DFAIT. No one from Copper Mesa was available to speak with The Tyee.

Globalization of legal accountability

Another challenge in holding companies to account in Canada, where the bulk of the world's mining companies are based, are complicated corporate structures that criss-cross continents.

"By dispersing their actions across borders and saying that 'Well, we didn't do that in Canada or Ecuador, that decision was made in the U.S.,' they can evade accountability. The courts can respond and say 'Take this case somewhere else,'" says Klippenstein.

Copper Mesa whose headquarters in Colorado, "has connections to some nine different legal jurisdictions, making it difficult to identify which jurisdiction is the proper one in which to hold the corporation accountable," says the legal summary of the case.

The former website of Copper Mesa (then Ascendant Copper) acknowledged that its corporate structure makes suing directors difficult: "All of the directors of Ascendant and substantially all of their assets and those of Ascendant are located outside of Canada. It may not be possible for purchasers of securities being qualified for distribution under this prospectus to effect service of process within Canada upon directors who reside outside of Canada..."

It is for this reason that the lawsuit focuses on decisions allegedly made in Ontario.

'Establish clear legal norms in Canada'

However, one possible advantage for rural residents of Intag preparing for a lengthy legal battle on tricky Canadian territory is that they are not alone in their concern.

Their broader goals for legal regulations of Canadian mining companies echo what the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade (SCFAIT) and the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and other civil society groups have already been saying.

While Carlos Zorrilla was in Ottawa in 2005, the SCFAIT was writing its 14th report, which recommended that the government "Establish clear legal norms in Canada to ensure that Canadian companies and residents are held accountable when there is evidence of environmental and/or human rights violations associated with the activities of Canadian mining companies."

The government responded saying that it "will continue to examine the best practices of other states attempting to address the accountability of businesses for activities conducted abroad." But it has yet to implement mandatory rules.

Still Klippenstein is hopeful in the face of tough odds. "One has to trust in the promise of a certain amount of fairness and independence that the justice system can provide. It has been shown that powerful people can be brought to kneel this way before."

It took eight years of legal proceedings before a public inquiry was called in the Dudley George case. They never even made it to court, but a long list of recommendations was implemented.

Ramírez is also optimistic that they have a chance at justice through Canadian courts as part of their fight to leave Intag's cloud forests intact.

She points out the variety of sustainable development projects that they have been working on as alternatives to large scale mining, including community owned watersheds, a mixed mini-hydroelectric company, as well as agricultural and tourism initiatives. She urges Canadians to see the benefits: "We want future generations to have what we have."
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copyright thetyee.ca © 2003 - 2008

Native Rights News is making this material from The Tyee available in accordance with the Fair Use Doctrine codified at Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107: This article is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information. Distribution of this material is for research and educational purposes that will promote social and economic justice and benefit society.

Indigenous Peoples Educate, Inform & Warn at Largest Climate Change Demonstration in U.S. History

First Nation Delegates Deliver Letter to Senator Kerry in Advance of Visit from Canadian Environment Minister

More than 12,000 young people from all corners of the continent gathered in Washington, D.C. over the weekend to take part in today’s second Power Shift Conference.

The blizzard pounding the nation’s capitol apparently has not cooled the ardor of the young climate activists, who seek to change Washington’s "business as usual" attitude toward climate change and clean energy.

Various groups have scheduled more than 350 lobbying meetings with U.S. Congressmen and Senators and their staffs. An estimated 2,500 demonstrators organized by Capitol Climate Action, successfully blocked the five gates leading to the Capitol Power Plant.

Activists targeted the plant as a symbol of what is wrong with government because it burns coal and natural gas and is used to heat the Capitol’s buildings. No arrests were reported, and after four hours, the activists declared victory and raised the blockade.

Among the activists were Indigenous Peoples delegations sent by several Canadian First Nations and Native American tribes from Alaska and the "lower 48" states. One of the major purposes of the Indigenous delegations was to educate, inform and warn both the young climate activists and members of Congress about the catastrophic effects the extraction and burning of fossil fuels is having on their people and their environments.

Jessica Lee, in a post to the Indy Blog this morning reports:

"You have come here to have a voice about the environment. Our ancestors have been telling the government for 200 years to protect the environment," said Travis Brown, a student at Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kansas, to a room of more than 175 students who attended a workshop titled, "Decolonizing Our Minds: How Colonization Affects Us Today." Brown noted that native communities across the continent are being adversely impacted not only by mineral and fuel extraction companies, but now are also suffering the effects of climate change on the landscape and eco-systems. "Our people are at the risk of being exterminated."

"Representatives from several Arctic region indigenous communities explained about how the effects of climate change — which are more extreme at the earth’s poles — including melting sea ice, eroding shorelines, thawing tundra and changes to fish, seal, whale and caribou migrations are threatening their entire way of life."

And Mike, in a post to the Environmental Age Dot Com blog, also this morning, reports:

"A delegation of Indigenous youth from Alberta went to Senator Kerry’s office outlining the devastation that is tar sands and rallied with supporters today ahead of Canad’s Environmental Minister, Jim Prentice’s visit to Capitol Hill today and tomorrow.

"They hand delivered a . . . letter express[ing] concern that Canada's Environment Minister Jim Prentice will misrepresent the disastrous environmental and human rights record of the tar sands to US Congressional leaders."

Following is the letter.

March 2, 2009

Senator John Kerry
Chairman of Foreign Relations Committee
218 Russell Bldg.
Second Floor
Washington D.C. 20510

Dear Senator Kerry,

Please allow us to present you with a different perspective on Canada’s tar sands than you are likely to hear from Canadian Minister of the Environment, Jim Prentice.

We came together this year at the Powershift gathering in Washington, DC, as members of Beaver Lake Cree Nation, Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation and Lubicon Cree Nation to share our stories with 11,000 youth from across North America. We came with messages of destruction and devastation wrought by the tar sands in our communities, but also feelings of hope that together we can contribute to building a more sustainable world for our communities and future generations. These ideas of a greener sustainable world are familiar to us as an ancient First Nations way of life.

Dangerous toxic chemicals used in the extraction of tar sands are contaminating water systems stretching all the way to the arctic basin and adversely affecting communities along the way including Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation. Expansion of the tar sands is a direct attack on who we are as a people. Many First Nation peoples believe in the medicine wheel with four elements: earth, water, air and fire—three are polluted by these projects. Destroying these elements destroys who we are. The tar sands are killing us.

Beaver Lake Cree Nation is also being encroached upon by rapidly expanding tar sands infrastructure and development. Natural gas wells used to power oil production in the tar sands are almost literally in the community’s backyards. Pollution from these projects adversely affecting peoples’ health, way of life and violate established treaty rights. Animals are dying, disappearing, and being mutated by the poisons dumped into our river systems. If there is no fish, we cannot fish, if there is no more game, we cannot hunt. Our traditional lands and water houses our culture. They are one and the same. Once we have destroyed these fragile eco-systems we will have also destroyed our peoples and trampled our treaty rights.

Construction of the Transcanada North Central Corridor pipeline, set to cross through the traditional territory of Lubicon Lake First Nation without the consent of the community is an outright violation of human rights and inherent rights of the community as Indigenous peoples. With oil and logging already impacting this territory, expansion of oil infrastructure will continue to wreck havoc on the land and displace even more wildlife.

Our communities are looking for energy solutions that provide a healthy sustainable community for our future generations. The sustainable future for First Nations in Alberta, Canada and the United States of America alike, cannot be achieved by further exploiting one of the dirtiest, most energy intensive and destructive sources of oil on the planet. It's time we focus our efforts on building a clean sustainable future that puts our people to work in a safe, green energy economy.

Senator Kerry, we urge your leadership in the Congress to:

• 
  Respect and recognize established treaty rights during the Clean Energy Dialogue: These discussions will surely frame the future of energy in our countries. They will also determine the whether culturally significant and bio-diverse regions of our respective countries, as well as the livelihoods of the Indigenous peoples that inhabit this turtle island, are preserved.
• 
  Focus the Clean Energy Dialogue on renewable energy and energy efficiency: The main focus of the dialogue should be on clean energy efforts and include wind, solar, and other renewable fuels and on transportation solutions such as electrified transportation and high speed rail.

Sincerely,

Melina Laboucan-Massimo, Lubicon Cree Nation
Gitz Crazyboy, Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation
Myron Lameman, Beaver Lake Cree Nation

cc:
Minister Jim Prentice
Secretary Steven Chu
Secretary Kenneth Salazar
Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton
EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson
CEQ Chair Nancy Sutley
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News Sources: Environment News Service, The Indypendent, The Environmental Age Dot Com

Image Source: Capitol Climate Action

Native Rights News is making this material from the news oganizations and blogs listed above available in accordance with the Fair Use Doctrine codified at Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107: This article is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information. Distribution of this material is for research and educational purposes that will promote social and economic justice and benefit society.

Residential School Survivors Occupy Vancouver Church

International Media Statement, For Immediate Release

The Friends and Relatives of the Disappeared (Vancouver)

Sunday, February 15, 2009 - on Squamish Nation territory ("Vancouver, Canada")

Residential School Survivors Occupy St. Andrew's Wesley United Church to Protect the Remains of Children Killed at the Alberni Residential School

Two dozen aboriginal survivors of the Indian residential schools non-violently occupied St. Andrew's Wesley United Church in Vancouver today to stop the destruction of the grave sites of children who died at the former Alberni Indian Residential School.

The protestors entered the church sanctuary as the worship service commenced and unfurled a banner declaring "All The Children Need A Proper Burial". After leafletting the congregation and making a statement, the protestors left, vowing to return if the United Church did not surrender the remains of native children who died under their care and halt further destruction of their burial sites.

The occupation was prompted by the partial destruction this week of the last building of the United Church's former Alberni Indian residential school, where eyewitnesses claim that the remains of former students are buried.

"They're destroying the evidence of their crime, and under the law, that's a crime" said Bingo, a survivor of the Alert Bay residential school. "We're not listening to their bullshit anymore. We'll be back with more people next time."

Squamish hereditary Chief Kiapilano, who legally evicted the United Church from his territory last March, endorsed the occupation and called for similar actions by other residential school survivors. These occupations of United Churches during their Sunday services will continue and will escalate until the fallen children are brought home, their killers are brought to justice, and the residential school crime sites are all protected.

Issued by The Friends and Relatives of the Disappeared (Vancouver)

Contact: 1-888-265-1007 or 250-753-3345 http://www.blogger.com/www.hiddenfromhistory.org

Note: A video transcript of today's occupation will be posted this week on the website, above, and is available on request.

Read and Hear the truth of Genocide in Canada, past and present, at thiswebsite: http://www.blogger.com/www.hiddenfromhistory.org

"Kevin [Annett] is more deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize than many who have received it in the past."- Dr. Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor Emeritus, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

"A courageous and inspiring man." (referring to Kevin Annett)- Mairead Corrigan-Maguire, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Belfast, Northern Ireland"

The very lands we all along enjoyed

they ravished from the people they destroyed ...

All the long pretenses of descent

are shams of right to prop up government.

'Tis all invasion, usurpation all;

'Tis all by fraud and force that we possess,

and length of time can make no crime the less;

Religion's always on the strongest side."

- Daniel Defoe, Jure Divino (England, 1706) From: Eagle Strong Voice

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Story Source: The Friends and Relatives of the Disappeared (Vancouver)

Image Source: www.hiddenfromhistory.org

Native Rights News is making this material available as the result of a press release issued by The Friends and Relatives of the Disappeared (Vancouver). We are publishing the image from http://www.hiddenfromhistory.org in accordance with the Fair Use Doctrine codified at Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107: This article is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information. Distribution of this material is for research and educational purposes that will promote social and economic justice and benefit society.

Columbian Tribes Employ Principles of Nonviolence in Midst of FARC Insurgency

Colombia Indians face down violence

Rebels, drug traffickers and soldiers may battle around them and encroach on their lands, but tribes hold on to their peaceful ways to resolve conflicts.
By Chris Kraul
January 11, 2009

Reporting from Jambalo, Colombia -- After word spread across this Indian reservation that seven people had been kidnapped by leftist rebels, the community's unarmed "indigenous guard" sprang into action.

Within minutes, hundreds of men, women and children were out on roads and pathways searching for the hostages, communicating by radio, cellphone and shouts. Many held lanterns that, as the search continued after nightfall, made the rescue party seem an eerily glowing centipede snaking up and down hillsides.

Soon, the guards had found the hostages. The rebels were holding them in a school, which was quickly surrounded by hundreds of Indians, who, lanterns held high, kept a silent vigil. A guerrilla leader threatened violence and fired his weapon into the air, but no one budged.

After a brief standoff, the unarmed Indians secured the hostages' release.

The incident in November was a dramatic example of how many of Colombia's 92 indigenous communities use a common front and an almost Gandhian stance of nonviolence to coexist with, and sometimes prevail over, the rebels, drug traffickers, paramilitary fighters and government soldiers who for decades have battled one another in the country.

"We forbid violence. All we have is the power to convene," Rodrigo Dagua, leader of the Jambalo tribe, said as he held the so-called staff of command, a ceremonial rod that confers authority on its holder. "It's what keeps us alive."

The peaceful approach doesn't always work for Colombia's indigenous people, who number about 1.4 million, or 3% of the population.

For the last decade, the Wayuu tribe in northeastern Colombia has suffered killings and extortion at the hands of paramilitary bands who covet the Caribbean coastline bordering their reservation. Indians in Putumayo state's Sibundoy Valley have been chased off their ancestral lands to make way for coca plantations.

In October, an Indian marcher here in Cauca state in Colombia's southwest was shot and killed by police as he took part in a protest against the government's failure to deliver 45,000 acres to local tribes as promised in a 1991 land reform plan. Cauca's 18 indigenous communities had declared a minga, or collective movement, and had shut down the Panamerican Highway.

Tensions in Cauca rose last month after soldiers killed Edwin Legarda, the husband of minga leader Aida Quilcue of the neighboring Totoro reservation. The military said the shooting at a checkpoint a few miles north of here was an accident. The Indians and some human rights groups contend that it was a criminal attack and an effort to silence Quilcue.

But nonviolence remains the watchword for how the indigenous deal with the outside world, as shown by the foiled kidnapping by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, in November.

The kidnapping victims included four consultants from the state capital, Popayan, who had driven up to this isolated town in Colombia's central mountain range to assist Jambalo leaders with administrative and bookkeeping matters.

The consultants were returning to Popayan with three locals when half a dozen guerrillas stopped their van and took them all hostage. The kidnappers and their captives began marching east up a rugged mountainside toward an area where FARC leaders are known to hide out.

One of the victims managed to make a cellphone call to Jambalo leaders, who ordered out the indigenous guards, a 360-member phalanx of mostly young leaders whose job is to spread the alarm at times of crisis and to organize a community response.

Guard leader Fermin Jembuel said the kidnappings violated a tacit decades-long agreement with the FARC that the rebels leave Jambalo alone in exchange for the community's neutrality in the FARC's quarrel with the government.

"We have 36 villages on the reservation, and all were activated under our emergency plan," Jembuel said. "Checkpoints were set up on every road and path."

After the hostages were released, the guerrillas were allowed to flee. All except for one: a member of the Jambalo community who was a FARC collaborator. In a subsequent trial, he was banished from the reservation for 15 years as punishment, said Dagua, the tribe's leader.

"The level of organization and commitment that the communities have, and how much they resist all external threats to their land, is a clear example of strength," said Mario Murillo, a Hofstra University professor who is writing a book on Colombia's indigenous communities.

"But it also points up the challenges they face, surrounded as they are by forces that pose a severe threat."

It was hardly the first time the Jambalo tribe has had to look down the rifle barrels of armed groups encroaching on its domain. Several years ago, tribe members destroyed five "kitchens" set up by drug traffickers on their land to process cocaine. More recently, they repeatedly have escorted army patrols off their 1,500-acre reservation.

"The army offers to come and deal with the FARC and the traffickers, but we don't want them involved," Dagua said, adding that the presence of armed groups would only ignite a cycle of violence. "We'll take care of our problems our way."

chris.kraul@latimes.com

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Copyright 2009 Los Angeles Times

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