Peru: Indigenous defenders to denounce the corruption and killings facilitating Amazon forest destruction to the IACHR

After experiencing displacement due to Peru’s internal armed conflict during the 1980s and 90s, for the past two decades the Ashaninka community of Nuevo Amanecer Hawai have been resisting attempts by loggers to invade and deforest their lands. Community chief Mauro Pío was murdered with impunity in 2013. In May 2020, Pío’s son, Gonzalo, was tortured and killed in front of his wife, Maribel Casancho Flores, who survived and continues the community’s fight for justice.

The Shipibo-Konibo community of Santa Clara de Uchunya are struggling against the dispossession and devastation of their ancestral lands due to the aggressive expansion of oil palm. Community members, leaders and allies who have made a stand to protect their territory against the spread of land grabbing and forest destruction have been subjected to verbal abuse, threatened and warned to abandon their homes, received death threats and been shot at on multiple occasions.

All three communities are calling upon the Peruvian State to fully title their ancestral lands. At the same time, they demand that the State revoke rights granted to third parties over Indigenous lands and guarantee the peaceful withdrawal of land invaders.

A fourth community, Alto Tamaya-Saweto, are calling upon the State to support their efforts to protect and control their territory. In September 2014, community leaders Edwin Chota, Jorge Ríos, Leoncio Quintisima and Francisco Pinedo were brutally murdered by illegal loggers. The leaders had repeatedly denounced the environmental crimes and threats they received for defending their territory to the State, without receiving any response. 

The communities will also call upon the State to:

• suspend all economic activities - legal and illegal - which are taking place on their lands in violation of their rights and causing environmental damages. This includes enforcing a court injunction suspending the operations of the palm oil company operating on Santa Clara de Uchunya’s lands.
• provide effective protection for community members and prevent further attacks against community members and leaders. This includes fully implementing personal safety guarantees issued by the Ministry of the Interior to the widow and young children of the assassinated Indigenous leader Arbildo Melendez of Unipacuyacu.

The communities will also request that the IACHR:

•  raise their concerns with the Peruvian Government about how corruption is facilitating attacks against Indigenous defenders;
• request that the Government evaluate the impacts of corruption and impunity on the communities’ human rights and territories;
• request information about the status of the various ongoing judicial processes relating to their cases from the National Prosecutor, judiciary and Constitutional Tribunal, which have been subject to lengthy delays;
• undertake official visits to the ancestral territories of the four communities. 

Earlier this week, Forest Peoples Programme published a new report which identifies the principal direct and underlying drivers of violence against human rights and environmental defenders and forest destruction in the Peruvian Amazon. Ending Impunity includes a series of recommendations to the Peruvian Government, as well as national and international companies and investors, on actions required to address the root causes of violence and put an end to impunity for those responsible for driving violence against communities and the destruction of the Peruvian Amazon.

You can register to attend the virtual hearing here.