Tribes and opposition leaders sharply criticized Peruvian President Alan Garcia on Wednesday for rejecting a law that would have given Indians more power to halt mining, oil and road projects on their native lands.
Congress had passed the law to try to calm tensions that have lingered since more than 30 people died last year in a clash between police and Amazon tribes. It was the worst violence of Garcia’s term.
Indigenous groups say Garcia’s drive to lure foreign investment to the rain forest would undermine their traditional way of life and speed up logging in the Amazon basin.
“It’s clear that Garcia doesn’t understand or respect the rights of native communities,” said Edgard Reymundo, a Congressman from the Bloque Popular political group.
By approving the bill, Congress was attempting to codify in local legislation parts of the UN convention on indigenous peoples, which Peru signed in 1994. It says that tribes must be consulted when governments plan projects on their lands.
However, Garcia, who sent the law back to Congress just a few days before it is to go into a two-month recess today, said the law went too far.
“The law approved by Congress goes beyond the UN convention because it doesn’t just include tribal communities in the Amazon but also peasant communities,” Garcia told reporters.
“So if you want to build a road or gas pipeline and the locals say ‘no,’ then there is no road or electricity,” he said.
The law might tie the hands of future administrations and give some Peruvians more rights than others, he said.
“Peru is for all Peruvians ... and for there to be democracy we can’t place limits on future legislatures or governments,” he said.
The Andean country has been one of the world’s fastest-growing economies for much of the past decade, riding a wave of demand for its mineral exports, especially from China.
Garcia has lined up US$35 billion in investments for Peru’s mining sector for the next decade and foreign companies are pouring millions more into its natural gas and oil sector.
“This law represented a critical opportunity for the Peruvian government to demonstrate that it is serious about resolving the kind of social conflict that led to the tragedy,” said Gregor MacLennan of Amazon Watch, which works with tribes in Peru, referring to last year’s deadly clash.
The tribes said Garcia is afraid they would hold up big mining or oil projects.
“This means the government can do what it wants on ancestral indigenous lands, even if tribes disagree with an extractive transnational company going into our communities to deforest Mother Earth,” Aidesep, a group representing dozens of Amazon tribal communities, said in a statement.
AFGHAN CHILD: A court battle is ongoing over if the toddler can stay with Joshua Mast and his wife, who wanted ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ for her Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military. Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan
EYEING THE US ELECTION: Analysts say that Pyongyang would likely leverage its enlarged nuclear arsenal for concessions after a new US administration is inaugurated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned again that he could use nuclear weapons in potential conflicts with South Korea and the US, as he accused them of provoking North Korea and raising animosities on the Korean Peninsula, state media reported yesterday. Kim has issued threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively numerous times, but his latest warning came as experts said that North Korea could ramp up hostilities ahead of next month’s US presidential election. In a Monday speech at a university named after him, the Kim Jong-un National Defense University, he said that North Korea “will without hesitation use all its attack
US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris is in “excellent health” and fit for the presidency, according to a medical report published by the White House on Saturday as she challenged her rival, former US president Donald Trump, to publish his own health records. “Vice President Harris remains in excellent health,” her physician Joshua Simmons said in the report, adding that she “possesses the physical and mental resiliency required to successfully execute the duties of the presidency.” Speaking to reporters ahead of a trip to North Carolina, Harris called Trump’s unwillingness to publish his records “a further example
RUSSIAN INPUT: Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov called Washington’s actions in Asia ‘destructive,’ accusing it of being the reason for the ‘militarization’ of Japan The US is concerned about China’s “increasingly dangerous and unlawful” activities in the disputed South China Sea, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told ASEAN leaders yesterday during an annual summit, and pledged that Washington would continue to uphold freedom of navigation in the region. The 10-member ASEAN meeting with Blinken followed a series of confrontations at sea between China and ASEAN members Philippines and Vietnam. “We are very concerned about China’s increasingly dangerous and unlawful activities in the South China Sea which have injured people, harm vessels from ASEAN nations and contradict commitments to peaceful resolutions of disputes,” said Blinken, who
RSS