Women gather in Guatemala to organize against devastating megaprojects

Women gather in Guatemala to organize against devastating megaprojects

By Patricia Ardón and Orfe Castillo

“In the struggle to defend our territory, our natural resources, what’s at stake is our very existence.” – Miriam Pixtún, Indigenous Women’s Movement Tz ́ununijá

In Guatemala, the policy of enclaves and extraction of natural resources fomented by the current development model and by the transnational corporations has a tremendous impact on the life of the communities, particularly on indigenous peoples and women.

With the aim of sharing experiences and analysis among women who lead organizing in defense of rights to land, territory and natural resources in Guatemala,   Sinergia No ́j, T ́zununijá, Just Associates (JASS), Uk ́Ux B ́e, Unit of Guatemalan Human Rights Defenders (UDEFEGUA), Association for Feminist Studies (AMEF) and the National Union of Guatemalan Women (UNAMG) held the national meeting “Women in Defense of of Water, Life and Territory” on Sept. 11-12, 2012. More than forty women from different parts of the country participated in the meeting.

“We resist due to the disadvantages of the megaprojects; the development that the companies offer just leaves more poverty, sickness, deaths–all kinds of problems. They use pesticides, strong chemical products. They pollute the water… our house are cracked, animals have died, now the corn doesn’t grow, it’s dried up. Water is scarce and polluted. What kind of development is this?” said one participant.

According to Carmen Lucía Pellecer, Co-Directora of Sinergia Noj, the forum enabled indigenous women to talk about experiences of resistance, the acts they carry out in their communities and in their daily lives.

Another participant pointed out, “The megaprojects represent a clash with our vision of the world, the natural resources are interconnected elements of life, we are part of it. What the capitalist companies do has consequences for our way of living together, they use impoverishment to manipulate people, they affect our health, they cause illnesses of the skin, of eyesight. The hydroelectric plants block the flow of the rivers, they cause droughts. We have been exposed to high tension wires, the looting of our lands… All the community has united to stop it but at the cost of being criminalized. They attack us for not giving in, they threaten us with prison, they don’t respect the consultation processes that are binding. For women, all this implies a heavier workload, persecution, facing militarization that revives the horrors of the war–we see soldiers and it generates terror because we know what happened to our mothers, our aunts.”

The gathering also served to present the report of the Nobel Women’s Initiative/JASS delegation, led by Nobel Laureates Jody Williams and Rigoberta Menchú. The delegation visited Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico in January of this year to examine violence against women; most of the women present at the September gathering presented testimony to the delegation in January. Many participants noted that the report helped build a regional view of the situation and of women’s struggles. These links give women a stronger voice and more political influence, they asserted.

Miriam Plxtún of the Movement of Indigeous Women Tz ́ununija identified several major achievements of the gathering, including the importance of creating their own space for recognizing and strengthening the peaceful struggle in defense of territory and natural resources, the discussion of alternatives, and the effort to build cross-border alliances that spread information on the effects of mega-projects.  She also stated that the group made specific commitments to continue the analysis on key issues.

The organizations that called the event agreed on the importance of strengthening access to timely, specialized and accurate information on the impact of megaprojects on societies and on women, and of broadening networks and alliances from the local to the international level, drawing in all actors who can contribute to prevent the death and looting of the peoples.

Finally, at the gathering several women described the work being done by the Mesoamerican Women Human Rights Defenders Initiative and the National Network of Women Human Rights Defenders of Guatemala. These organizing efforts, they said, have increased recognition of women’s struggles and awareness of the security challenges for women human rights defenders.

Pixtún recalled that in Guatemala, indigenous women have a long way to go to recuperate the fundamental meaning of democracy, which is the power of the people. Women contribute in an essential way to the construction of dignified lives, she told the group, and it’s time for others–men and women–to join in this effort from all over. Indigenous peoples and women have the right to live according to their own cosmovision, to be recognized as full rightsholders and as important political actors.

From Americas Program: http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/7992

200 indigenous people in Sarawak blockade construction shipment for dam

By Mongabay

200 indigenous men and women are blockading shipments of construction materials to a dam site in Malaysian Borneo to protest the impact of the hydroelectric project on their traditional forest home, reports the Bruno Manser Fund (BMF), a Switzerland-based group that campaigns on behalf of forest people of Sarawak.

According to the NGO, on the morning of September 26, 200 Penan and Kenyah set up a blockade on the road used by trucks to deliver supplies to Murum dam, a controversial project being built by China’s Three Gorges Corporation. The protesters say they will maintain the road block until Sarawak Energy, the agency behind the dam, meets with them and agrees to their demands relating to involuntary resettlement and their traditional land rights. The dam would flood up to 250 square kilometers of rainforest and farmland, affecting some 1,400 people, says BMF, which adds that the communities fear a repeat of the nearby Bakun dam.

“They have witnessed how the quality of life decreased for their neighboring communities affected by Bakun dam, one of the biggest dams in Asia, when they were forcefully displaced in 1998,” BMF said in a statement. “They do not want to face the same fate: loss of livelihood, poverty and loss of culture.”

The government of Sarawak is planning to build at least a dozen dams over the next twenty years, well exceeding the state’s demand for electricity. But Sarawak says it aims to attract energy-intensive industries like mining. Critics argue that the primary motivation is corruption: large infrastructure offer big opportunities for officials to line their pockets using state funds. Sarawak’s Chief Minister Abdul Taib Mahmud is accused of amassing a personal fortune of some $15 billion through such approaches as well as control over the state’s forest resources.

Victory for Dongria Kondh as Vedanta abandons bauxite refinery on sacred land

Victory for Dongria Kondh as Vedanta abandons bauxite refinery on sacred land

By Survival International

Supporters of India’s Dongria Kondh tribe are celebrating after controversial British mining company Vedanta Resources declared it will close its bauxite refinery in the state of Orissa, this December.

The news is a major breakthrough for the tribe, who have fought a David and Goliath battle against Vedanta’s plans to extract bauxite from their land.

Dongria leader, Lodu Sikaka, said today, ‘We will be happy if the company leaves. If the refinery is there, they will keep trying to take our mountain, if not today, then tomorrow, or two years, 10 years from now.’

The Lanjigarh refinery sits at the base of the Dongria Kondh’s Niyamgiri Hills, which are home to the 8,000-strong tribe, and the seat of their god Niyam Raja. The company has spent more than one billion US dollars expanding the site without securing all the required clearances, as well as knowing it was unable to source enough bauxite to run the refinery at capacity.

Vedanta has now blamed the closure on a ‘depleting stock position of bauxite’. But, there are concerns the company’s announcement is intended to pressure the government into allowing it to mine the Niyamgiri Hills. The issue has returned to India’s Supreme Court, but the case is currently adjourned.

Opposition to Vedanta’s push to mine the mountains has embroiled the company in a near decade-long dispute, and forced the Lanjigarh refinery to be run with bauxite from different mines across India. A Vedanta spokesman claimed this has cost the company half a billion dollars.

Survival International’s Director Stephen Corry said today, ‘When we started our campaign for the Dongria Kondh, we were repeatedly told it was a hopeless case and the mine would be built. It hasn’t been. The infrastructure is rusting away and now Vedanta says it will shelve its refinery. This is a fantastic vindication of the tribal people’s determination to keep the lands which are rightfully theirs, and the pressure brought to bear by thousands of their and our supporters around the world. Public pressure is the only thing which can save tribal peoples in the long-term, and it works.’

From Survival International: http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/8670

Victory for Achuar people as Talisman Energy retreats from Peruvian Amazon

Victory for Achuar people as Talisman Energy retreats from Peruvian Amazon

By Amazon Watch

Today Talisman Energy (TLM) announced its decision to cease oil exploration activities in the Peruvian Amazon and to exit the country upon completion of ongoing commercial transactions.

“We have fought long and hard against Talisman’s drilling in our territory because of the negative environmental and social impacts we have seen from oil drilling around the world,” said Peas Peas Ayui, President of the National Achuar Federation of Peru (FENAP). “Now that Talisman is leaving we can focus on achieving our own vision for development and leave a healthy territory for future generations.”

Talisman is the fifth oil company to withdraw from controversial Block 64, located in the heart of indigenous Achuar territory in a remote and bio diverse region of the Amazon rainforest. Talisman has been exploring in Peru since 2004 and has come under increased pressure by human rights groups and shareholders for operating without Achuar consent.

“Talisman has had to face up to what the Achuar told them when they first invested in Block 64: The company cannot drill without the consent of the Achuar people,” said Gregor MacLennan, Peru Program Coordinator at Amazon Watch. “Talisman’s exit sends a clear message to the oil industry: Trampling indigenous rights in the rush to exploit marginal oil reserves in the Amazon rainforest is not an option.”

Despite Talisman’s claim of attaining local support from communities and signing good neighbor agreements with 66 communities downriver from their operations, the company never had the consent of the majority of communities living within Block 64. Talisman first invested in Peru one year after leaving Sudan and became sole operator in 2007, shortly after John Manzoni’s appointment as CEO. Manzoni was replaced by ex-TransCanada CEO Hans Kvisle on Monday this week.

“We are the owners and the original people of this land,” said Peas Ayui. “No outside person or company may enter our territory by force, without consultation and without asking us. We have been fighting against oil development on our land for 17 years and we maintain the same vision to protect our territory and resources for future generations. Let this be a clear message to all oil, mining and logging companies: we will never offer up our natural wealth so that they can extract our resources and contaminate our land.”

Block 64 is just one of several new efforts to extract oil from the headwaters of the Amazon in Northern Peru and Southern Ecuador, among the most bio diverse places on earth. Anglo-French company Perenco was recently awarded a production license to operate in Block 67 in Peru despite a legal case against them for drilling in isolated peoples’ territory. ConocoPhilliips has faced mass protests in Iquitos, Peru over plans to drill wells in a protected area in the Nanay river basin east of Block 64. In Ecuador, the government plans to auction new oil blocks on the Peruvian border despite strong indigenous opposition. The Kichwa community of Sarayaku recently won a case in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights against the Ecuadorian government for signing an oil contract without their consent or consultation.

From Amazon Watch: http://amazonwatch.org/news/2012/0913-talisman-energy-withdraws-from-peruvian-amazon

Indigenous community in Peru takes control of nine oil wells in response to water pollution

Indigenous community in Peru takes control of nine oil wells in response to water pollution

 

By Ronald Suarez, Network of Peruvian Indigenous Communicators, Ucayali

Over 400 villagers in the Native Community of Canan de Cachiaco in the Ucayali region of the Peruvian Amazon have taken control of nine oil wells, belonging to oil company, Maple Gas, in oil lot 31B.

Community members took over the oil wells on September 2nd, and continue to hold them as a result of 37 years of oil contamination in their territory by the company.

The community leader, Basilio Rodriguez Venancio, said the action was made necessary because the company did not consider the environmental impact assessment carried out by an independent consultant.

The community is demanding that the company pay them compensation for the use of their lands and for the environmental damage they have suffered for 37 years. Such damage includes the contamination of their rivers, their only source of drinking water, and the contamination of their soils due to the company’s use of chemicals and heavy minerals, which the population says has significantly affected the productivity of their land.

Several community members testified that they have become sick due to the company’s negligence and contamination of their drinking water. There have been several instances in the past years of cancer and ¨unknown deaths¨ that the community attributes to company abuses.

The community awaits the arrival of state representatives from the Ministry of Energy and Mines and Ministry of Environment, scheduled for Thursday, September 13th, to resolve this conflict.

Meanwhile the villagers are still stationed in the camp until authorities settle their claims.

From Alianza Arkana

Large landowners in southwestern Brazil have killed 279 indigenous people since 2003

Large landowners in southwestern Brazil have killed 279 indigenous people since 2003

By Inter-Press Service

The land conflict between the Guaraní-Kaiowá indigenous people and large landowners in the southwestern Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul is a powder keg ready to explode, say observers.

Nísio Gomes, Jenivaldo Vera, Rolindo Vera, Teodoro Ricardi, Ortiz and Xurete Lopes are just a few of the names on a long list of people murdered in this state in recent years, according to the Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI).

The statistics gathered by the Council, founded in 1972 by the Brazilian National Bishops’ Conference, reveal that 279 indigenous people have been killed since 2003 in land disputes with landowners and ranchers.

The most recent case is that of Eduardo Pires, who disappeared on Aug. 10 when armed men attacked a group of Kaiowá people in the Arroio Korá indigenous reserve, located in the municipality of Paranhos in the south of the state, near the border with Paraguay.

Arroio Korá, an area of roughly 7,000 hectares, was officially recognized as indigenous land on Dec. 21, 2009 by then president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. But one week later, a Federal Supreme Court ruling on an appeal filed by a landowner exempted a 184-hectare section of the land from this status.

“Even with this partial embargo, the government did not foresee that the rest would be effectively turned over to the Guaraní-Kaiowá,” said Flávio Machado, the CIMI regional coordinator in Mato Grosso do Sul. “The community, which is made up of around 600 members, currently occupies around 700 hectares. When they decided to retake control over the rest of the land, they met with a violent response,” he told Tierramérica*.

According to Eliseu, a Kaiowá leader who was present when the attack took place, on the morning of Aug. 10 some 400 members of the community set up a camp on a section of the officially recognised reserve land where a ranch is located.

A short time later, a number of armed men arrived. “I heard the gunshots and took off running. We are a people with a culture of peace, we have no weapons, but we are not going to give up fighting for our land. If we are going to die, we would rather die on our own land,” he told Tierramérica.

No one has seen Eduardo Pires since the attack. “I believe he is dead,” said Eliseu.

The Federal Police of Mato Grosso do Sul are in charge of the case. “The indigenous people say that one of them is missing. We are investigating, but we have nothing concrete. We have to be impartial,” Federal Police Superintendent Edgar Paulo Marcon commented to Tierramérica.

The following week, CIMI reports, the police removed a number of ranchers and their cattle from the area. Since then, the Kaiowá have been targeted by threats, the most explicit of which is a filmed declaration by Luis Carlos da Silva Vieira, known as Lenço Preto (“Black Kerchief”), posted on YouTube.

“We are going to organize and prepare for confrontation…They only want the land to be bothersome. We have weapons. If they want war, they’ll get war,” he states repeatedly.

In response, the Kaiowá community published a letter calling for urgent attention from the government. “Faced with a collective death threat, made publicly in the press by the landowners, we request an investigation and severe punishment of these promoters of the genocide/ethnocide of indigenous peoples.”

“Everyone knows that they have sophisticated and fearsome weapons, that they have money obtained at the expense of indigenous blood to buy more weapons and to hire gunmen… We do not have guns and, above all, we do not know how to use them,” the letter continues.

“We want to reiterate and highlight the fact that our fight for our ancestral lands is aimed solely at protecting human life and the fauna and flora of the planet Earth; it is not our intention to kill anyone.”

From Upside-Down World: http://upsidedownworld.org/main/brazil-archives-63/3844-brazil-landowners-declare-war-against-indigenous-guarani-kaiowa-in-mato-grosso-do-sul