Farid Bakht - International Day of Protest by Indigenous People
09 October 2009
Farid Bakht, joint international coordinator for the Green Party, gave this statement on the dispute over South American indigenous communities and resource concessions:
On Monday, 12th October, protests will be held in central London outside the embassies of Colombia, Peru and Spain, followed by the Foreign Office. The European Union (EU) plans to open up the Andean region's services and natural resources through Free Trade Agreements that favour multinational corporations.
Indigenous peoples were never consulted over the negotiation process. They do not recognise the EU agreements because they will destroy ancestral territorial rights and collective knowledge. Former EU Trade Commissioner, Peter Mandelson, was prominent in pushing these agreements. It is shocking that Gordon Brown's government and the Conservative opposition support Alan Garcia's efforts to open up the Amazon.
Derek Wall, Green Party Parliamentary candidate for Windsor and former Principal Speaker, said: "When it comes to the crunch, the indigenous are doing a fantastic job in fighting climbing change, I will be joining the protest events they have organised on Monday."
Recently, an alliance of Peru's indigenous tribes, AIDESEP, filed a lawsuit against an Anglo-French energy company, Perrenco. This company was given approval for a vast oil concession only 13 days after the "Amazon's Tianenmen" - where dozens were killed and many more wounded when Peruvian police fired upon defenceless tribesmen near the town of Bagua Grande.
The UN has recently called for an investigation into the Bagua massacre.
We agree with the statement by the UN Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) where it called for Peru's government not to allow oil and gas drilling on indigenous peoples' land without their "informed consent."
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