Indigenous Groups Occupy Airport Near Amazon Oil Reserves
Published on Wednesday, October 29, 2014
by Common Dreams
Indigenous Groups Occupy Airport Near Amazon Oil Reserves
'Without a satisfactory response to the interests of the Amazon Indians, the measures will get more radical,' community leader Hugo Perez Petza said
by Nadia Prupis, staff writer
A large group of indigenous Peruvian community members took control of an airport in the Andoas region of the Amazon on Monday to protest Argentine energy company Pluspetrol, which they say is polluting the land and exploiting resources in the region to build their oil drilling operations.
Indigenous rights group Aidesep told the Latin American Herald Tribune on Wednesday that the occupation had grown to 2,000 people, a significant increase from the days before.
On Tuesday, Nuevo Andoas community chief Tedy Guerra told Reuters, "Right now there are about 500 of us at the airport ... flights have stopped."
Nuevos Andoas residents occupied the airport along with other community leaders, including those from Alianza Capaguari.
Community members are calling for the government to overturn new laws regulating access to water and forest resources—laws which they say favor Pluspetrol at the expense of vulnerable land. Both Nuevos Andoas and Alianza Capaguari are in a region that was declared to be in a state of environmental emergency in recent years due to pollution, but leaders say the emergency declarations have done nothing to mitigate the effects of the oil drilling and reserves.
More:
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2014/10/29/indigenous-groups-occupy-airport-near-amazon-oil-reserves