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Four indigenous leaders of the Peruvian Amazon have been killed since the government declared a state of emergency because of COVID-19, revealing how their opposition to illegal logging, mining and drug trafficking often exposes them when the focus is elsewhere.
On 9/11, Roberto Carlos Pacheco Villanueva’s painting found out in Madre de Dios, a region of the Amazon rainforest where he and his father had long fought illegal gold mining. Peru’s National Human Rights Coordinator (CNDDHH), “but the government has done very little to protect it. “
Pacheco’s fourth homicide through an indigenous leader in the seven months following the nation’s state of emergency declaration and lockout in March to combat the coronavirus. The government recently expanded the closure until the end of September in some of the hardest-hit areas, AFP reported.
Lorenzo Wampagkit Yamil, who served for 8 years as land defender in the Chayu Nain reserve, killed in July; Gonzalo Pio Flores, leader of the Ashinka ethnic group, killed in May.
In April, Arbildo Meléndez Grandes, leader of the Unipacuyacu indigenous community, was shot dead in Puerto Inca. Melendez Grandes had long sought the name of the tribe’s lands, which bordered Ucayali and Husnuco, and fought illegal activities there.
Land in remote spaces around Puerto Inca is being invaded for the cultivation of illegal coca, said Sandra Jess Olivera Lara, legal suggestive of the Regional Organization Aidesep Ucayali (Regional Organization Aidesep Ucayali – ORAU) on the case of Meléndez Grandes.
“The center of this case is land trafficking and drug trafficking,” he told Mongabay.
The recent killings of Peruvian indigenous leaders have raised fears that the pandemic has further turned them into attacks through criminal groups.
Twenty environmental activists have been killed in Peru since 2013, 12 of whom were indigenous leaders of the Amazon region, to OjoP-blico, which brings data from THE CNDDHH.
The last time so many militants were killed in a year in 2014, when five were killed. Four were shot dead on their way to an assembly on illegal logging in a blood bath that provoked foreign outrage. Over the next five years, only two indigenous leaders were killed, according to OjoP-blico,
No convictions were handed down for any of the 12 murders, prosecutors charged five timber men in the 2014 massacre and a key witness in one case was even killed in 2018.
Pacheco Villanueva’s brazen murder in September in Madre de Dios indicates that illegal gold mining remains ingrained there, even after the government army’s efforts to expel miners last year. gold prices.
The Latin American country most affected by the deaths of social leaders is neighboring Colombia, which recorded an impressive 872 murders between January 2016 and September 2019, according to the Institute for Development Studies and Peace Studies (Institute for Studies for Development and Peace Angels – INDEPAZ), the country has already noticed the deaths of 214 social leaders and human rights defenders this year alone.