Peru Congress Suspends Laws for 90 Days

Peru’s congress has finally suspended for at least 90 days some of the nine laws which have caused widespread protests and demonstrations across the Peruvian Amazon region which climaxed in the massacre of at least 50, and possibly many more protestors, largely from native amerindian tribes. The series of laws are designed to throw native populations off of their ancestoral lands and sell them off to oil, gas and timber corporations. The government’s proposals will leave the native people’s with just 13% of their current lands.

All nine laws are currently being challeneged as unconstitutional since although Peru’s constitution declares hydrocarbon resources to be the property of the state, international conventions which the same constituion requires Peru’s compiance with international conventions which unambigously guarantee the indigenous population’s rights. If these challeneges are successful is yet to be seen. Peru’s government claims the land reforms are necessarry to comply with Peru’s Free Trade Agreement with the United States.

Protests are continuing in Peru in the face of President Alan Garcia’s neo-imperialist attitude to the jungle and it’s inhabitants. The President recently described the protestors saying “These people don’t wear a crown, they are not first class citizens who can tell us, 400,000 natives to 28 million Peruvians, ‘you don’t have the right to come here at all’; this is a very grave error and anyone who thinks that wants to lead us into irrationality and a primitive retreat“