Sign on letter–Peru: Anti-gold mining protests lead to violent repression

With three provinces of Peru’s northern Cajamarca region under a state of emergency, police again fired on protesters July 4 in Bambamarca, seat of Hualgayoc province, leaving one man dead. Another six were wounded, at least some gravely, although accounts do not make clear if the wounds are from bullets. Authorities said one National Police officer was also injured in the confrontation in the town’s Plaza de Armas. (Perú21, Peru.com, Sociedad Política, July 4) Meanwhile in Cajamarca’s regional capital, protest leader Marco Arana was detained by police troops for continuing to call public meetings despite emergency measures restricting freedom of assembly. Arana was reportedly accosted by police while sitting on a bench in the city’s central square, the Plaza de Armas. He is still being held at the city’s National Police headquarters, but did manage to get out a Twitter message saying he had been badly roughed up in custody—struck in the face and kidneys, and verbally insulted. (La Republica, 24 Horas, Radio Nacional, El Comercio, RPP, July 4)

The day before his arrest, Arana’s political organization Tierra y Libertad had issued a statement in response to that day’s killing of three protesters in Celendín province, expressing solidarity with the families of the slain, and pointing out that a total of 15 have been killed in social conflicts nationwide since President Ollanta Humala took power last year. Refering to the gold-mining project that has occasioned the Cajamarca protests, the statement warned Humala: “You cannot impose the Conga project with deaths, injuries, detentions, states of emergency and more violence.” (La Republica, July 4)

Please add your organization/collective and disseminate the statement that is in the link below in protest and solidarity with the repression in Peru around the social and environmental conflicts generated by mining.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dGtIVE9zZnU1eFNSU1l1RDFFTTJIcHc6MQ
The text is in spanish, so here it is a quick self-translation of the main part:

We the undersigned  want to express our disgust for the alarming increase of repression and the violation of fundamental rights happening in Peru as a governmental response to the environemntal conflicts in the last months.

For weeks this totally irresponsible and disproportionate response including undiscriminate use of firearms, even from helicopters, against protesters has caused:

• five people to be dead and dozens of wounded at the Celendín conflict in the Cuzco department;

• one person dead and several wounded by bullets in Bambamarca;

• five more deaths and several bullet wounded during the movilizations of the Celendín population (Cajamarca) against the mining project called Conga, which threats high contamination and the disappearance of water sources in the region.

In this context, we denounce the violation of the rights of Mr. Marco Arana, member of the environmental colective Grupo de Formación e Intervención para el Desarrollo Sostenible (GRUFIDES), one of the groups organizing the mining resistance and leader of the political force “Tierra y Libertad”. All of this together with state of emergency measures and preventing liberties in both conflicts.

With the precedents of Honduras first and recently Paraguay, we are afraid that these conflicts are part of an increasing dynamic of crushing liberties and civil rights of the people in several countries in Latin America, for the defense of the different multinational interests and extractive businesses.