Iconic Amazon defenders case hit by devastating legal u-turn
Appeals court in Peru overturns 28-years-in-prison sentences for five men found guilty earlier this year
Nine years ago to this day, 1 September 2014, four men from an indigenous Ashéninka community in one of the remotest parts of the Peruvian Amazon, Alto Tamaya-Saweto, were ambushed and killed on their way to a meeting with another Ashéninka community across the border in Brazil. The murders - or assassinations - made international headlines and were widely attributed to Saweto’s years-long struggle to obtain legal title to their land as well as their opposition to illegal loggers and logging concessions operating there. Some people also suspected that the murders were connected to the cocaine trade, with regional indigenous federation Organización Regional de AIDESEP-Ucayali (ORAU) stating at the time that “narco-traffickers” may have been responsible too.
Earlier this year, in February, the surviving widows, other family members and Saweto residents thought that a measure of justice had been served when a judge from the Ucayali region’s Superior Court of Justice found five men guilty and ruled that they will each face 28 years and three months in prison. Those men were Hugo Soria Flores, José Carlos Estrada Huayta, Eurico Mapes Gómes, Josimar Atachi Félix and his brother Segundo Euclides Atachi Félix.
But that ruling no longer stands. This week - in a devastating blow to the Sawetinos in particular, the integrity of the country’s justice system in general, and land and human rights defenders across the Peruvian Amazon as a whole - an Ucayali Appeals Court overturned the February sentence and ruled that there should be a new oral hearing.
The public prosecutor’s investigation was “deficient”, the Appeals Court concluded, because it “did not provide the necessary proof to connect, beyond all reasonable doubt, the events being investigated to the accused.”
The four murdered men were Jorge Ríos Pérez, Francisco Pinedo Ramírez, Leoncio Quintisima Meléndez and Edwin Chota Valera, the latter the most well-known internationally. Their three surviving widows and the daughter of Pinedo Ramírez, Lina Ruiz Santillán, all spoke at a press conference held in the offices of Peru’s national indigenous federation Asociación Interétnica de Desarrollo de la Selva Peruana (AIDESEP) yesterday, as did AIDESEP’s president Jorge Perez.
“It is important to point out that they had tried to do everything they could to protect their territory from illegal logging,” said Perez, referring to Chota Valera et al. “However, they were cruelly killed. So this should be emphasised: that indigenous leaders fighting against people invading their land are being assassinated. Justice here is unreliable and many cases end in total impunity.”
The Appeals Court ruled that the new oral hearing should be held “as soon as possible”, which in Peru could mean anything. Meanwhile, the Sawetinos continue to receive threats and live in fear for their lives - and yet the government does little or nothing to support them.