Peru’s President requests action on indigenous peoples in 'isolation' in the Amazon
Industrial-scale logging in the remote rainforest deemed a devastating threat by indigenous federations
How often over the years has a Head of State ever stuck his or her neck out, so to speak, in a bid to help the indigenous peoples living in “isolation” in the most remote, most inaccessible corners of their respective countries? Certainly not in Colombia, Ecuador, India, Indonesia or Paraguay, and probably not in Brazil either, where there are more groups of such peoples than in any other country in the world.
And nor in Peru too, until this month at least, when increasingly embattled President Pedro Castillo appears to have taken personal interest in the plight of various groups of indigenous peoples in “isolation” in the north-east of the country, adjacent to the border with Brazil. The reason for his intervention was simple: the risks posed to them and their territories by loggers operating on an industrial scale deep in the Amazon.
The problem stems from 47 logging concessions illegally established by the Loreto region’s government (GOREL) - 43 of which overlap the long-proposed Yavari Mirím Reserve for indigenous peoples in “isolation”, and the remaining four which overlap the Yavari Tapiche Reserve established last year. Indigenous federations AIDESEP and ORPIO wrote to Castillo about the issue on 30 May, and within two days he had taken notice. The federations’ letter was quickly forwarded by the President’s Office “by special order of the President of the Republic” to the Cabinet’s Office for “attention, evaluation and review [and] corresponding actions.”
“We would appreciate that the response to [this letter] be addressed directly to [AIDESEP], with a copy to [us], so the President of the Republic can be informed of the actions taken by your institution,” the President’s Office wrote.
Both AIDESEP and ORPIO argue that the concessions violate Peruvian and international laws, and that if logging operations continue the consequences for the indigenous peoples in “isolation” could be catastrophic. The federations have effectively been bombarding GOREL as well as the national forests authority SERFOR with requests to annul the concessions - so far to no avail - and appealing to numerous other state agencies, including a Congressional Commission, the Public Prosecutors’ Office, the Defensoría del Pueblo, the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Culture and the Contraloría General de la República.
“GOREL is promoting and encouraging illegal activities that not only contravene the Forestry and Wildlife Law but also violate the fundamental rights to life and health of Indigenous Peoples in Isolation, thereby placing them at extreme risk of genocide,” ran AIDESEP’s and ORPIO’s letter to Castillo. “The presence of loggers and logging operations constitute a serious danger to the life, health and socio-cultural survival of our indigenous brothers and sisters in isolation.”
ORPIO, together with Peru’s Instituto de Defensa Legal and the UK-based NGO Forest Peoples Programme (FPP), has also just internationalised its strategy by appealing to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights about the issue. According to FPP, they are calling on the Commission to “request information from the Peruvian State, GOREL and its Forestry Development Department on actions taken to cancel the forestry concessions” overlapping the reserve and proposed reserve.
As that appeal to the Commission notes, a campaign has emerged in Loreto in recent months apparently intended to revoke a key 2006 law recognising the rights of indigenous peoples in “isolation” in Peru, with GOREL’s head, the regional governor Elisbán Ochoa, involved and publicly claiming such peoples don’t even exist. Given this kind of nonsense - to say nothing of Castillo’s forebear as President, Alan García, once infamously arguing that peoples in “isolation” were an invention of environmentalists opposed to the oil industry - the current Head of State’s apparent sympathy for the issue is welcome news indeed.