Saturday, September 09, 2017

Land grab continues in Peru

Six farmers have been shot dead because they had refused to give up their land toby a criminal gang who wanted to seize their farms to muscle in on the lucrative palm oil trade, according to indigenous Amazon leaders in PeruAn eyewitness told the police the victims were attacked by up to 40 armed men who had their faces covered.

“It was a night-time ambush. They bound them by their hands and feet, then they killed them and threw them in a river,” Robert Guimaraes, president of the local indigenous federation Feconau, told the Guardian“These peasant farmers have paid the price for the inaction of the state and the local authorities in tackling land trafficking,” he added, warning that the nearby Santa Clara de Uchunya community had also been threatened by land traffickers.

Guimaraes accused the local agricultural authority of handing out falsified land titles and said it also bore “direct responsibility” for the crime. A local investigation alleges former officials colluded in the falsification of land titles which were then sold to highest bidder.

“Everything points to regional government people being involved in trafficking land,” said Jose Luis Guzmán, an environmental prosecutor in the Amazon region which is plagued by illegal logging.

After four years of investigations into land-grabbing and large scale agribusiness projects, the EIA had uncovered “chaos, abuses, violations of indigenous and local community rights as well as violations of environmental and forestry laws,” Julia Urrunaga, Peru director for the Environmental Investigation Agency(EIA), said. "All of this with impunity in an environment dominated by corruption that ends up favouring large scale investors,” she added.

Observers fear the emergence of palm oil will fuel a new surge in land grabbing, violence and deforestation. Yet the Peruvian government is promoting expansion, claiming its cultivation will not threaten forests

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