Peru's govt. partly backs down in standoff with indigenous groups

The Peruvian Congress repealed Thursday two of the most controversial decrees that sparked protests by indigenous groups which ended in bloodshed early this month. The decrees opened up native territories in the Amazon jungle to mining, oil drilling, logging and agribusiness. President Alan García admitted Wednesday that his government had made a mistake by failing to consult with indigenous communities before passing 10 decrees that modified Peru's legal and regulatory framework on access to and use of natural resources in the country's Amazon jungle region. The decrees, which were passed by the government in June 2008 under special powers granted by Congress to facilitate implementation of the U.S.-Peru free trade agreement, were declared unconstitutional in December 2008 by a multi-party parliamentary commission because they undermined the right of native people to prior consultation with respect to mining projects or other economic activities affecting their communities and their collectively-owned territories. The draft law to overturn decrees 1090 and 1064 - on forestry resources and wildlife, and on the legal framework for use of agricultural lands, respectively–was introduced by the García administration Wednesday and approved after heated debate Thursday. A total of 84 legislators from the opposition and from the governing party and its allies voted in favour of revoking the two laws. The 12 votes against came from the centre-right National Unity alliance, which refused to support the decision to overturn them on the argument that it would "set a terrible precedent," said the coalition's spokesman, Javier Bedoya. "We cannot endorse those who seize and block roads to protest," said the lawmaker, referring to blockades of highways and riverways in the country's northern rainforest by indigenous groups demanding the repeal of the decrees. Late Wednesday, García acknowledged that the "apus" - the traditional leaders of the 332,000 members of native Amazon jungle communities represented by the Peruvian Rainforest Inter-Ethnic Development Association (AIDESEP) - should have been consulted when the decrees were drawn up. "I recognise that no one talked to the heads of the native communities," said García. Nevertheless, the president insisted on defending the decrees passed to modify Peru's laws in order to put into effect the free trade agreement with the United States. He also reiterated the view that the indigenous groups were not acting on their own, but were manipulated by "political agitators." "Pro-violence political agitators convinced many natives of good faith that the law would take away their water and land…which wasn't true," said García. "That led to acts of violence and roadblocks, and criminals hiding behind the natives ambushed the police." The indigenous associations leading the protests near the northern town of Bagua "did not calculate that cruel criminals willing to kill policemen and to incite the police to kill many natives would hide behind the demonstrators," said the president. "Their leaders believed in the agitators and demagogues instead of studying the laws themselves." The Peruvian Congress is setting up an investigation commission to investigate the bloody events of Jun. 5, when the police reportedly opened fire on the roadblock near Bagua, killing an as yet uncertain number of protesters and apparently sparking reprisals by the demonstrators, who purportedly killed 24 policemen. While the authorities say six native protesters and four local townspeople were killed, eyewitnesses say the number of demonstrators shot may have been much higher, and that the police hid bodies by dumping them into a river out of a helicopter. The police operation to clear highway that links the northern coast with Bagua was carried out on orders from García. United Nations special rapporteur on the situation of human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous people, James Anaya, arrived in Peru Tuesday to help clarify the Jun. 5 events. On Monday, Prime Minister Yehude Simon met with "apus" of the Ashaninka community and took the president by surprise by signing an agreement promising to overturn decrees 1064 and 1090. But despite the repeal of the laws and Simon's announcement that he would resign after the crisis was under control, things have not entirely calmed down. Shortly after the decrees were revoked, the Ministry of Justice announced that it was preparing a request for the extradition of the president of AIDESEP, Alberto Pizango, who flew to Managua Thursday after being granted asylum from the Nicaraguan government. Pizango had taken shelter in the Nicaraguan Embassy when a warrant was issued for his arrest after the Jun. 5 bloodshed, for which the authorities hold him responsible. AIDESEP vice president Daysi Zapata applauded the repeal of the decrees. But, she told IPS, "the grave clashes could have been avoided if the indigenous people had been consulted as stipulated by International Labour Organisation (ILO) Convention 169, and now we would not be lamenting so many deaths." Immediately after Thursday's vote on the decrees in Congress, AIDESEP ordered its members throughout the country's Amazon jungle region to lift the roadblocks and call off their protests. However, the leaders of the indigenous movement see the achievement as just one chapter in a long ongoing struggle. Two other decrees had already been repealed in August 2008 after weeks of protests and roadblocks led by AIDESEP. The two decrees, 1015 and 1073, had facilitated the purchase of communally owned indigenous land by foreign investors. Under the decrees, only 50 percent plus one of the members of any indigenous assembly were needed to approve the sale or lease of land to private investors, replacing a law that required the consent of two-thirds of the formal members of the general assembly in indigenous villages. "There are still other laws whose revocation is demanded by our brothers in the Amazon, and we hope they will be discussed at the negotiating table," said Zapata. AIDESEP is also calling for compensation and reparations for the families of the protesters killed in Bagua. Prime Minister Simon told the press that revoking the decrees would not jeopardise the U.S.-Peru free trade agreement. In the view of Alberto Barandiarán, an analyst of environmental policies and legislation, the government "has made it clear that the decrees were not necessary for the free trade agreement with the United States, and that it merely took advantage of the situation to push through an economic model that favours private investment." He told IPS that the government modified the legal framework for access to and use of natural resources in the Amazon jungle not only in one or two decrees, but by means of 10 decrees involving the rainforest, "which has complicated the analysis of the situation and the search for a solution." In 2007, the García administration had tried to combine all of these aspects in a single draft law to promote private investment in the Amazon. But due to the resistance faced by the initiative in Congress, the government sought special legislative powers to carry out the reforms that it argued were necessary for the application of the free trade accord. García had summed up the thinking behind the plan in two articles published in El Comercio, a Lima newspaper, in October and November 2007. The president described critics of his plan to foment foreign investment in Peru as "dogs in the manger" who were moved by the feeling that "if I can't do it, nobody should." Collectively-owned land in the Amazon is "idle land, because the owner has neither the training nor the economic resources (to develop it), which means it is owned merely in name. That same land sold in large plots would bring in technology," he argued. Decree 1090 would have enabled the sale of 60 percent - around 45 million hectares - of the country's primary rainforest. Concessions granted to oil and natural gas companies already cover more than 70 percent of the country's Amazon jungle. Decree 1064, which abolished the 1995 land use law, was needed in order to apply decree 1090. According to Barandiarán, decree 1064 was more damaging because of what it eliminated than what it created. For example, the 1995 land use law provided two options for authorising the activities of extractive industries: direct negotiations with local communities or a process by which the company could apply for a permit from the government to set up operations in a certain area for a given period of time in exchange for compensation for the communities that owned the land in question. Decree 1064 did away with the second option which, although it was the focus of criticism, at least offered a channel for local communities to express their position with regard to activities like oil drilling and mining, said the expert. That left a legal vacuum which oil and mining companies could take advantage of to seek permission to cut down trees in a certain area for their activities, said Barandiarán. In his view, "the communities are mainly complaining that their concept of development and their opinions have not been respected" and that their right to prior consultation, as guaranteed by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and ILO Convention 169 on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples, has been ignored. The events of the last few weeks demonstrate that "García's political model, based on private investment at any cost, is in crisis. The repeal of these decrees is a first step, but not the solution," historian Nelson Manrique at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, a private university in Lima, told IPS. Other decrees, like number 994, are opposed out of a sense of mistrust of the government, said Laureano del Castillo, an expert on natural resources at the Peruvian Centre for Social Studies. That decree promotes investment in irrigation projects for the expansion of the agricultural frontier on untilled land primarily along the coast, not in the Amazon jungle, he pointed out to IPS. But "because the government has consistently manipulated the sale of land in the jungle, there is a great deal of mistrust," said the analyst. * With additional reporting by Milagros Salazar.