In Peru, protests continued as thousands rallied yesterday in several cities of Peru during a National Protest Day. Meanwhile a new Indigenous uprise started today at the Andean region of Andahuaylas.
Dozens of thousands of people organized pacific marches, where students, workers, human rights advocates and political groups rallied in demonstrations demanding the government for justice, peace and respect for Indigenous peoples rights. Most of the protests were peaceful except in Lima, where police repressed civilians with tear gas bombs, when they were trying to approach the Congress building. Several students were injured and detained.
Servindi, the Indigenous news agency in Peru, reports that several protests occurred successfully in the cities of Iquitos, Yurimaguas, Satipo, Huanuco, Arequipa, Puno, Juliaca, Azangaro, Ayacucho, Huanta and Chiclayo, among others. Around the world also demonstrations of solidarity were held in front of Peruvian embassies and consulates including Brussels, Melbourne, Ottawa, Stockholm, Turin, Rome, Milan, Barcelona, Madrid, Paris, and Miami. Today there were protests in Montreal, Antwerp in Belgium and Wellington in New Zealand.
Sadly but as expected, another Indigenous uprising started today in the central Andean region of Andahuaylas, where thousands of locals took control of the airport and blocked access roads. The organizers said this was a protest demanding justice for the Bagua victims and their relatives. Dozens of injured civilians have been reported in a truck accident related to the protest.
Indigenous Congress members suspended
Tensions among Peruvian grass roots movements are raising as the Garcia-controlled Congress led by its president Javier Velasquez, decided to suspend 7 Indigenous Congress members for three months. The suspension was widely supported by the right-wing majority of Congress.
The punished officials were holding a protest to demand a final solution to the demands of Indigenous peoples of the Amazon regions. The suspended Congress members Juana Huancahuari, María Sumire, Hilaria Supa, Nancy Obregón, Yaneth Cajahuanca, Cayo Galindo and Rafael Vásquez, are all members of the leftist party Partido Nacionalista led by potential presidential candidate Ollanta Humala.
Based on phone conversations that I had this morning with Indigenous leaders living in Peru and overseas, there is a sense that the next plan of the government of Peru will be to classify the Indigenous uprising as a terrorist movement. This way the government may justify a possible increase on violent repression. Currently, Indigenous leaders in Lima are being followed around by secret government agents, their emails and cellular phones are being spied on, and their bank accounts are being shut down.
Media manipulation and government control
The government today has shut down a community radio station in Bagua. A message sent in Twitter by a Peruvian blogger said “urgent, they are trying to shut down La Voz de Bagua radio for being ‘social agitators’ … calling all journalists"
I got in communication with one of the independent journalists in the area who told me that this small radio station, and it was one of the most actives ways for Bagua civilians to communicate, especially during the attacks of Friday June 5. The station included information on how to assist the injured and rescue the dead bodies. They reported freely about the attacks unlike other stations that support the government –and thus get tax deductions and benefits from Lima. This is a small but very popular station that is totally independent and not involved with any political groups.
Also there is a public media strategy run by the Lima government and embraced by most Peruvian media. They show images of police men killed by a group of Natives, in an incident that occurred six hours away from Bagua last weekend. These killings were result of a very unfortunate action taken by desperate civilians of a remote Amazon village, who thought they were also next in the police attacks so they killed the police in charge of an oil pumping station deep in the forest.
A leader of AIDESEP the main Peruvian Indigenous civil rights organization said “Indigenous peoples didn’t start the violence at all, as opposed to what the government is saying” said this leader from Lima, who is now hiding because she is requested by the Peruvian Justice for sedition charges.
Actress and human rights activist Q’Orianka Kilcher traveled yesterdady to Lima to support the Indigenous movement. Today she held a press conference at the AIDESEP headquarters, where she cried out and demanded for the government and the media to stop violence and attacks “against my people” she said. Q’Orianka is in Peru also to create awareness on the need for dialogue, unity and respect among Peruvians, and to work with Indigenous children in a video community project.
Q’Orianka tells me by email that after arriving to Peru, she went to the protest in downtown Lima but it was very scary to see that police were violently repressing civilians with tear gas bombs. Q’Orianka said that Indigenous peoples believe they are not considered in Lima as capable to take their own decisions, to protect the Amazon, and to create their own models of development.
Today, right-wing newspaper El Comercio has started a nasty campaign against Q’Orianka, posting racist and xenophobic “comments” attacking her message "for young people to rise up against injustice" and to support Alberto Pizango, the leading Amazon organizer that the Garcia government has called "a terrorist".
Also a community leader in Peru who asked me not to reveal her name, told me today that in the 20 years of internal conflict in the 1980’s and 1990’s decades, the military and police used to kill, rape and torture Indigenous civilians of the Andes, and then blame insurgent groups Shining Path and MRTA for those crimes. She said "nowadays, they are trying to use that same strategy to blame Amazonian indigenous peoples of the crimes they have committed." This only leads to distrust of civilians on the government, she added.
Meanwhile the government has created a “National Group of Coordination for the Development of Indigenous Peoples”, a group of dialogue that includes leaders of some Indigenous groups, the Ombudsman office, the Catholic church, the Evangelical church, regional presidents, and the Executive, but has kept AIDESEP out of the group. Prime Minister Yehude Simon has said later on that everyone is welcomed.
Shock and time for the truth
While I was interviewed this morning by a Native radio station in Houston, a volunteer for a NGO working in Bagua, called from Lima. He said that most people in Peru -and recently in Lima- are in shock. They don’t understand why after 56 days of pacific protest and dialogue this had to be replied with such violence. This volunteer arrived to Bagua a day after the attacks, and by speaking to local journalists on what happened, he got a different version from what the Lima press was reporting, that police members were killed by Indigenous savages barbarians.
The locals in Bagua told him that police approached civilians early morning on Friday and opened fire, first with tear gas bombs and then weapons. Police chased protesters into the hills and roads outside of Bagua and shot them directly. Nine police died that day but there is uncertainty on how many civilians were killed. In a separate incident occurred six hours away at oil pumping station #6, Indigenous peoples kidnapped and killed dozens of policemen as revenge but also in fear that they were going to be attacked next.
Very little information is provided on how local Indigenous peoples died, but pictures show them burned, beyond recognition. There are still lots of missing people, and about 157 injured with bullets. Many questions are raised right now but the information being covered by national press is slowly catching up with that initially provided by foreign press. He said that hopefully the truth will come out soon.
Also he said that even police in Peru are beginning to question what really went down that day, why they were not better prepared (with information) and what the plan really was. He said that now this is not about police, is about government, people want a full investigation on how indigenous peoples were killed, they wonder how a President can use such racist terms. During yesterday protests in Lima young students were demanding for peace, justice, and to an end of the violence.
Testimony from Bagua: anger on the government
This afternoon I also spoke to Fernando Valdivia over the phone. He is an independent filmmaker who is in Bagua for the last two months, working in a documentary financed by a Spanish media company. Fernando tells me that people in Bagua are returning to normality in their lives, but everyone is angry at the government who they blame for the violence.
They don’t blame the police or the Indigenous protesters, they want Alan Garcia to resign, he said. Also Valdivia has visited the remote villages where the Indigenous protesters relatives live, and the current leaders told him that they are too tired already, they want to reorganize their strategies before joining any other protest.
About the rumors of 250 people killed last weekend, he said that is possible because he has heard so many stories of people seeing others being killed in front of them, but no one knows where the remains are. In the site of the violent attacks of Curva del Diablo, the military has cleaned up the whole area. He said that in the very same night of the attack, helicopters arrived and they where doing some work there.
Fernando mentioned several times that “all the injured people I’ve met were shot, everyone I’ve seeing injured has gun shots in their bodies, even a 7 years old girl named Leslie whom I met this morning was shot in the stomach, but she is now recovering.”
Indigenous soldiers of the Peruvian Army
Valdivia also visited the local Peruvian Army base of Milagros, and he said that most of soldiers there are Indigenous men as well. The locals take pride when they send their sons to fight for the country, like it happened during the war with Ecuador (Cenepa) in the 1990’s when Fujimori was president.
At the base Fernando met with Indigenous soldiers who said that when the attacks occurred, all of them were taken by the officers to a room and kept there without TV or radio, and their guns were confiscated. They said they would have joined the Indigenous uprising if they knew about the attacks, like some Cenepa veterans did and shot some policemen before being captured. Also civilians in the city of Bagua tried to join the fight with stones and anything they could, but police had blocked the access to Curva del Diablo already. A very well designed plan.
Finally Valdivia tells me that he has walked into the forest and met Awakun and Wampi Indigenous peoples, who said that right now they are embarrassed of being Peruvians, and that they will never send their children to join the Peruvian military again. They feel betrayed, disgusted by even mentioning the name of president Garcia. A sense of abandonment filled their expressions.
Seven days after the police attack, another emergency crisis is coming to Bagua in the near future, said Valdivia. Hundreds of injured men are now jobless and their families are unemployed. The area is controlled by military and police forces that are making it difficult for these workers to mobilize, and there are very few trying to help them right now.
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