Peruvian tribe receive title to ancestral lands after murder of their leaders

[Judi Lynn]

Peruvian tribe receive title to ancestral lands after murder of their leaders
By agency reporter
2 Sep 2015

Ashéninka Indians in Peru have obtained title of their ancestral land on the anniversary of the murders of four of their most prominent leaders.

Edwin Chota, Jorge Ríos Pérez, Leoncio Quinticima Melendez and Francisco Pinedo were murdered by illegal loggers near their home in the eastern Peruvian Amazon on 1 September 2014.

Three men have been charged for the murders of the indigenous leaders, but a further three suspects have not yet been arrested, says Survivial International, the global movement for tribal peoples' rights.

The Ashéninka have been fighting for their right to their ancestral land for more than ten years. Community members have received numerous death threats from loggers who have invaded their land.

More:
http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/22036

LBN:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10141195816#op

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Edwin Chota[/center]

[Judi Lynn]

1. Quadruple Homicide in Peruvian Amazon Puts Criminal Logging in Spotlight

Quadruple Homicide in Peruvian Amazon Puts Criminal Logging in Spotlight

Peru's president announces investigation into murder of a community leader who foretold his own killing by criminal loggers.

By Scott Wallace, for National Geographic
PUBLISHED Fri Sep 12 16:04:00 EDT 2014

PUCALLPA, Peru—Tribal people in a remote headwaters region in the Peruvian Amazon are reacting with defiance and despair to the recent brutal murders of four community leaders who were ambushed on a jungle trail near the border with Brazil.

Among those slain last week was Edwin Chota Valero, 54, the president of the Ashéninka indigenous settlement of Saweto.

Chota was a charismatic activist who opposed drug traffickers and criminal timber syndicates that have come to operate with a sense of near-total impunity across broad swaths of Peru's isolated borderlands.

Three of the victims' widows, along with eight of their younger children, arrived in the Amazonian timber hub of Pucallpa on Monday night after traveling three days and nights from Saweto by motorized dugout canoe.

More:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/09/140911-peru-amazon-illegal-logging-chota-alto-tamaya/