Dan Collyns - Six farmers shot dead over land rights battle in Peru
Six farmers have been
shot dead by a criminal gang who wanted to seize their farms to muscle in on
the lucrative palm oil trade, according to indigenous Amazon leaders in Peru. Local leaders in the
central Amazon region of Ucayali say the victims were targeted last Friday
because they had refused to give up their land. A police report seen
by the Guardian details how the farmers’ bodies were found early on Saturday
dumped in a stream near the Bajo Rayal hamlet where the men had lived.
“It was a night-time ambush. They bound them
by their hands and feet, then they killed them and threw them in a river,”
Robert Guimaraes, president of the local indigenous federation Feconau, told
the Guardian by phone. The police report says
most of the men had shotgun wounds to the neck and at least one was found bound
by the hands and feet. An eyewitness told the
police the victims were attacked by up to 40 armed men who had their faces
covered.
“We have received
death threats from the same land
trafficking gang,” Guimaraes said. “We are afraid for our families and
we are asking the state for protection.” “These peasant farmers
have paid the price for the inaction of the state and the local authorities in
tackling land trafficking,” he added, warning that the nearby Santa Clara de
Uchunya community had also been threatened by land traffickers. Guimaraes accused the
local agricultural authority of handing out falsified land titles and said it
also bore “direct responsibility” for the crime. A local investigation alleges
former officials colluded in the falsification of land titles which were
then sold to highest bidder.
“Everything points to regional government
people being involved in trafficking land,” said Jose Luis Guzmán, an
environmental prosecutor in the Amazon region which is plagued by illegal
logging.
Julia Urrunaga, Peru
director for the Environmental
Investigation Agency(EIA), said: “The lack of clarity and consistency of
land titling in the Peruvian Amazon has long been a ticking bomb for violent
social conflict.” After four years of
investigations into land-grabbing and large scale agribusiness projects, the
EIA had uncovered “chaos, abuses, violations of indigenous and local community
rights as well as violations of environmental and forestry laws,” Urrunaga
said.
“All of this with
impunity in an environment dominated by corruption that ends up favouring large
scale investors,” she added.
Observers fear the
emergence of palm oil will fuel a new surge in land grabbing, violence and
deforestation. Yet the Peruvian government is promoting expansion, claiming its
cultivation will not threaten forests. At a UN climate change summit in
September 2014, Peru signed a $300m (£191m) deal with Norway to reduce net
deforestation to zero by 2021. More than 120
environmental and land defenders have
been killed around the world in 2017 so far, with many of the deaths
linked to deforestation and industry.
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