Flemish Centre for Indigenous Peoples

Santiago de Chile, Apr 20 (Prensa Latina) Special Police Forces violently burst into the Mapuche community of Temucuicui n the region of Chilean Araucania on Friday.

According to information uploaded to the blog of the community, from 10:00 local time (07:00 GMT), numerous soldiers burst into the community, even without knowing the reason for the raid.

The text added that the lonko (highest authority) of the community, Victor Queipul, was shot without any reason.
 

He further claimed that there were gas cannons in the attack, as it is customary in the area.

The werken (spokesman) of the community, Jorge Huenchullan stressed that they do not know the cause of such violent action. "We have no idea of the reasons. They burst without saying anything to anyone and

intimidate and humiliate our people," he said.

sgl/isa/mgt/tpa

Modificado el ( viernes, 20 de abril de 2012 )

Source : Mapuche mailinglist in English/Dutch

April 22, 2012: On Friday, April 20th, a historic consensus decision adopting strong language on Treaty Rights was taken by the States attending the 14th session of negotiations for the proposed American Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in Washington DC. The proposed American Declaration has been under negotiation by Indigenous Peoples and the 35 member States of the Organization of American States (OAS) since 1995.

Indigenous Peoples see the proposed American Declaration as an opportunity to further strengthen and supplement the recognition of rights affirmed in the United Nations (UN) Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which, since its adoption in 2007 has been the minimum standard and basis for these negotiations. When adopted, the American Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples will be applicable in North, Central and South America and the Caribbean.

The language in Article XXIII on Treaties, Agreements and other Constructive Arrangements has been under discussion for many years. Considerable progress was finally made in the last negotiating session in January 2011, leaving only the first paragraph still to be decided.

Strong pressure was exerted on the States to officially adopt the final remaining language for Article XXIII as proposed by Indigenous Peoples. It included all of the language in Article 37 of the UN Declaration, adding international redress for violations and recognizing the “true spirit and intent” and the understanding of Treaties by Indigenous Peoples. The final text of Article XXIII as officially adopted is as follows:

Article XXIII, Treaties, agreements and other constructive arrangements

1. Indigenous peoples have the right to the recognition, observance, and enforcement of the treaties, agreements and other constructive arrangements concluded with states and their successors in accordance with their true spirit and intent, in good faith, and to have the same be respected and honored by the States. States shall give due consideration to the understanding of the Indigenous Peoples in regards to treaties, agreements and other constructive arrangements.When disputes cannot be resolved between the parties in relation to such treaties, agreements and other constructive arrangements, these shall be submitted to competent bodies, including regional and international bodies, by the States or indigenous peoples concerned.

2. Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as diminishing or eliminating the rights of indigenous peoples contained in treaties, agreements and other constructive arrangements

Chief Wilton Littlechild, Ermineskin Cree Nation and International Chief for Treaties 6, 7 and 8, played a key role in the negotiations. He considers the adoption of Article XXIII as a major victory. It builds upon the strong language on Treaties in the UN Declaration, developed in a UN working group that he co-chaired, by strengthening important elements for the Cree Nation and its elders who began their work for international recognition of Treaty rights 39 years ago.

Chief Littlechild, who is also a member of the UN Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, stated: “It was an honor to secure the dreams and fulfill the original instructions of our elders through the wording that was adopted. This was a long and difficult journey but it was a goal well worth if for the Maskwacis Cree. The adopted language strengthens the UN Declaration by recognizing the true spirit and intent of Treaties, the understanding of Indigenous Peoples, and ensuing that disputes can be submitted to international bodies. Now we must ensure that all the other articles of the OAS Declaration are also fully adopted and implemented before the 2014 UN World Conference on Indigenous Peoples.” 

Francisco Cali Tzay, Mayan Kaqchikel, attended the session representing the government of Guatemala. Guatemala and Costa Rica were among the strongest proponents for the adoption of Article XXIII, despite the reluctance of some other States to move forward at this session. He stated: “Indigenous Peoples such as the Cree, Lakota and the International Indian Treaty Council began the work in the international arena many years ago to achieve recognition of their rights under the Treaties and Agreements they made with the States. It is very important that the OAS member States decided to take a strong position on this provision. The Guatemalan government was very committed to support the adoption of this Article without any further delay.”

Despite the historic strides made at this session with the adoption of Article XXIII, there was little other progress made overall, leaving a number of other provisions still undecided.  The Navajo Nation’s offer to host the next negotiating session was accepted by the OAS member States and strongly supported by the Indigenous delegations.

Source : IITC

Demonstrations were held in Jayapura on April 5 in support of a groundbreaking conference held in The Hague, The Netherlands, to examine  pathways to the reinstatement of the New Guinea Council or Nieuw-Guinea Raad, the original Parliament of West Papua from 1961 until Indonesia’s invasion.

Jayapura was again brought to a standstill by the demonstration organised by the West Papua National Committee (KNPB), where several thousand people gathered hear speeches and to voice their solidarity with the “Nieuw-Guinea Raad: the First Steps” Conference.

Indonesian security forces were in attendance in large numbers at the rally, but no act of violence or provocation were reported by rally organisers.

In The Hague, speakers at the conference organised by the International Parliamentarians for West Papua (IPWP) and held at the Dutch Parliament, included exiled UK-based independence figure Benny Wenda, Dutch Parliamentarians including Harry van Bommel, Cees van der Staaij, and Wim Kortenoeven.  International Lawyers for West Papua (IPWP) Co-ordinator and international human rights lawyer Jennifer Robinson also spoke, demanding The Netherlands honour its “sacred trust” of its promise of independence for the West Papuan people, and assist West Papuan to fulfil their human right to self-determination.

The New Guinea Council (Nieuw-Guinea Raad) was established on April 5 1961 whilst under Dutch administration as the concept of a more democratic mode of administration started to develop, as a body that was to be the basis for a independent West Papuan parliament.  According to the International Parliamentarians for West Papua, “The establishment of regional councils came from the requirement that the Charter of the United Nations imposed on the Netherlands: that the interests of the inhabitants of Dutch New Guinea had to be paramount.”

“The Netherlands was to respect the right to self-rule and had to take the political aspirations of the indigenous people into account. They were also meant to support the Papuan people with the gradual development of their own political institutions.  There are documents. We are not speaking of vague promises, but we are speaking of real firm commitments for the independence of the West Papuan people,” explained a spokesperson for IPWP.

“Unfortunately by signing the New York Agreement (1962) the Dutch governments abandoned the West Papuan people,” the spokesperson said.

source : Intercontinental Cry

Six Penan communities have sent letters to the Norwegian CEO of Sarawak Energy (SEB), the Malaysian power company behind the controversial dam projects in Sarawak, demanding that all work surrounding the proposed Baram mega-dam be halted.

If completed, the 1,200 MW dam would flood the Penan's ancestral lands and villages, affecting a total of 20,000 people and a rainforest area exceeding 400 km2.

Penan ask Norwegian manager to respect their rights

(SARAWAK, MALAYSIA) The six Penan communities of Long Lutin, Long Pakan, Long Lilim, Ba Abang, Long Kawi and Long Item have sent letters to Torstein Dale Sjotveit, CEO of Sarawak Energy (SEB), the Malaysian power supplier in charge of the implementation of Sarawak’s dam projects, demanding that a stop be put to all further work on the proposed Baram mega-dam. The people are against Torstein Dale Sjotveit’s plans for the dam, since the 1,200 MW Baram dam would flood their ancestral lands and villages, affecting a total of 20,000 natives and a rainforest area of over 400 km2.

“My husband, my children and my brothers and sisters, we will not survive if they build the Baram dam. It is better to kill us with a knife right away than to build the dam”, whispers an old woman at Long Lilim in despair. Another villager asks: “They tell us that the dam will bring development. But how can drowning us be development?”

Torstein Dale Sjotveit is going ahead with his dam projects despite these concerns. He seems to be prepared to violate international social and environmental standards: forcing such mega-projects through without the agreement of the affected communities runs counter to standards like the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the Equator Principles, which Torstein Dale Sjotveit himself claims to comply with.

The Penan communities of Middle Baram have never been given any information about the plan to flood their lands and displace those living there, and have certainly never been consulted on the matter. If they had had the chance to participate, Torstein Dale Sjotveit would be aware of the fact that the Penan want genuine development and not dams, as the headman of Long Pakan states: “If they want to develop us, they should build a proper road for us, clinics and schools, this is what we want. We don’t want to be flooded.”

Source : Intercontinental Cry

Two people have died and three others are injured following a confrontation (es) between indigenous peoples and loggers of an endangered tree in Panama.

The conflict began began on March 30, when a group of Wounaan attempted to burn logging equipment that was being used by a group of loggers working for Maderera company to cut Cocobolo timber, a type of rosewood that's prized around the world.

The endangered hardwood is often used to make gun grips, knife handles, police batons, high-end billiard cues, marine equipment, chess pieces and various musical instruments (marimbas, clarinets, xylophones, acoustic guitars). It is also sought after in China for use in furniture.

Details of the attack are still limited, but according to recent testimony (es), one of the loggers began firing a weapon at the Wounaan leader Aquilino Opúa was gravely injured during the attack.

The injured leader, it was said, walked through the mountains for at least an hour before making it back to his community, where he soon passed on. The enraged community quickly mobilized to confront the loggers. Upon their arrival, a second melee followed, which resulted in the death of Ezequiel Batista, one of the tractor drivers.

At least three other Wounaan were injured during the two confrontations.

Prior to these events, Wounaan leaders had issued a statement an ultimatum, giving the Panamanian government until April 19 to issue collective titles to their lands as guaranteed by Law 72 of 2008. They also demanded the complete removal of all settlers in the Chiman zone (who had already clashed with the Wounaan on two other occasions this year) and the end of all indiscriminate logging in the area.

"We demand the government to remove the settlers of our land and take responsibility for what happens, because we are willing to defend our land with blood," said Edilberto Dogirama, president of the Embera-Wounaan General Congress.

Panama's National Environmental Authority (ANAM) had then suspended all logging permits for two weeks to avoid any conflicts in the region. It had also ordered an eviction of all persons involved in the timber industry.

At least one logging group--that is, company--did not comply with the official order.

Javier Tejeira, Deputy Minister of Government, yesterday said that Police carried out a weekend raid to evict the remaining loggers.

An inquiry into these events is currently onoging. So far, no arrests have been made.

Source : Intercontinental Cry

Economically Empowering Indigenous Communities: The Case of the Mapuche in Chile

In 2011 at the first European Parliament conference on the Mapuche in Chile an urgent need was declared to ‘‘start a new phase in awareness raising on the problems of the Mapuche people, the situation, the criminalisation, the unfair trials in which they are sentenced, and the human rights situation…we want to open doors so that we can look for the alternative solutions.’’

Moving beyond awareness-raising and to develop a constructive agenda for change, Ana Miranda MEP (Greens/EFA) will convene the second European Parliament conference examining the situation of the Mapuche with the support of Izaskun Bilbao Barandica MEP (ALDE) and

Antonio Fernando Correia de Campos MEP (S&D). Entitled ‘Economically Empowering Indigenous Communities: The Case of the Mapuche in Chile’this second conference will open at the European Parliament in Brussels from 9.00–12.30 on Thursday, 26 April 2012 in collaboration with the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization.

Mapuche people in Chile remain a case study of an indigenous group marginalized by outdated and inefficient state policies. In spite of Chile’s ongoing democratisation, discrimination and social exclusion of the Mapuche continues. In a bid to debate and discuss these deep-rooted

problems, the conference will present constructive ideas on how indigenous people can economically empower their communities, preserve culture, identity and sustainable relation to their land.

Experts including Victor Naguil Gomez (International Delegate of Wallmapuwen) and Alexia Peyser (Education and Training Project Manager, BIEF) will discuss the socio-economic status quo of the Mapuche community in Chile, while Ellen Desmet (Research Fellow, K.U.

Leuven) and others will discuss solutions to sustainably empower indigenous communities. Along with economic empowerment, Arauco Chihualaf (Mapuche academic) and Francisca Quilaqueo Rapiman (Mapuche economist) will highlight the need of preserving the Mapuche identity in a changing Chilean economy.

The discussion of possible solutions to economically empower the Mapuche is particularly topical in 2012, given the upcoming EU-LAC Santiago Summit in May and the Rio+20 Conference in June, which will deal respectively with matters related to the Mapuche community and sustainable economic development.

Source : Mapuche mailinglist in English/Dutch

An oil spill in northern Russia from a joint venture between Lukoil and Bashneft has damaged fragile reindeer pastures in yet another blow to the indigenous Nenets people. Environmental activists have warned about such disasters for decades but few precautions have been taken by the oil companies.

Lukoil, which is now Russia’s largest oil company, and Bashneft are currently drilling for oil in the Trebs oil field in the Nenets Autonomous District which is estimated to hold 153 million tons of oil.

Vladimir Bezumov, chief of the local office of the Russian Environmental Agency, estimates that some 2,000 tons of oil gushed out of an exploratory well in the oil field this past weekend damaging as much as 14,000 square meters of land.

Oil exploration started in the region in the 1960s and expanded after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Activists warned that environmental problems were bound to get worse. "Western Siberia is already an ecological disaster area because of its many oil mishaps. Any oil accident would have serious consequences, that could reach upriver to the North Polar Sea," Ellen Schmidt wrote in a 1996 report for the World Wide Fund for Nature and a German environmental group called the Association for World Economy, Ecology and Development (AWEED) at the time.

Gail Osherenko, a Vermont-based anthropologist who works with the Nenets peoples, told IPS at the time that the idea oil drilling in the region would have only minimal impact was "wishful thinking."

And Russian and indigenous groups sent out an appeal in 1996 to ask the public to lobby the World Bank not to finance projects in the region. "We ask everyone to help us prevent an environmental nightmare. We ask you not to allow the use of your tax dollars, marks or kronor to facilitate further destruction of the environment," wrote Alexei Grigoriev of the Socio-Ecological Union in Russia in Taiga News.

The warnings were mostly ignored.

An Associated Press investigation by Nataliya Vasilyeva in late 2011 described some of the damage caused by the estimated half a million tons of oil spilled every year that make their way into the Arctic ocean, roughly two-thirds of the quantity of oil spilled in the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico. “On the bright yellow tundra outside this oil town near the Arctic Circle, a pitch-black pool of crude stretches toward the horizon. The source: a decommissioned well whose rusty screws ooze with oil, viscous like jam,” she wrote.

The indigenous communities say their traditional way of life has been devastated by the oil industry. “There is no future for us. People are dying. If oil companies behaved correctly, they would ask us, where drilling is possible and where not, which river is spawning, where fish comes for winter cabin. Fish comes to this bog in the autumn. And now all the rivers are blocked here, and fish has nowhere to go,” Valdimir Vello, a reindeer herder told Greenpeace recently for a report titled “Is there a life after oil?” “I think that there is no future. If the oil companies leave us, we can manage to save something here, to recover this place.”

Politicians are starting to pay attention. Last week, Yuri Trutnev, Russia’s minister for natural resources and ecology threatened to sue Lukoil rival, Anglo-Russian oil producer TNK-BP (owned jointly by British Petroleum and a consortium of the Alfa, Access and Renova groups) for numerous oil spills in Siberia. Trutnev said the company has 784 accidents last year.

"The land is practically flooded with oil," he said after a recent trip to the Khanty-Mansiisk region, according to a report by Gazeta.ru. "We didn't have to look for polluted places, we had to look for places that hadn't been touched by pollution."

The drilling ventures are hugely profitable so they are unlikely to be stopped but there is more than enough money to minimize some of the worst impacts. Since 2003, British Petroleum has paid out an estimated $19 billion in dividends, more than ten times more than it would cost to repair the aging infrastructure, according to an estimate by Gazprombank.

Source : Corpwatch

A group of Diné and Hopi people ( including traditional people and elders) upset by the latest colonial attack on indigenous peoples water rights, gathered to protest the visits of two US Senators to the Navajo Nation today.  The people had gathered to say “no deal” to s2109, the bill that would allow for more water to flow into Arizona for the benefit of companies and urban growth.

Protesters chanted “water is life”, “free indian water ends now”, “let the water flow”, “sewage water for McCain and Kyl”, other chants were said in Diné.

Protesters waited for Navajo president Ben Shelly and US senators McCain and Kyl to exit the meeting in Tuba City, on the Navajo Nation. Earlier protesters marched in the streets of Tuba City, as Navajo Nation president Ben Shelly met with the senators to discuss the further dismantling of Navajo and Hopi water rights.  Navajo Nation president Ben Shelly has left the meeting and said that there is no deal yet made, and that they are going to hear input from 7 of the 111 chapter houses (similar to districts) and council delegates.

Senators McCain and Kyl were in Tuba City to gain official support from the Tribal governments for their bill, Senate Bill 2109, described in a Native News Network article as:

Senate Bill 2109 45; the “Navajo-Hopi Little Colorado River Water Rights Settlement Act of 2012? was introduced by Kyl and McCain on February 14, 2012, and is on a fast track to give Arizona corporations and water interests a “100 th birthday present” that will close the door forever on Navajo and Hopi food and water sovereignty, security and self-reliance.

S.2109 asks the Navajo and Hopi peoples to waive their priority Water Rights to the surface waters of the Little Colorado River “from time immemorial and thereafter, forever” in return for the shallow promise of uncertain federal appropriations to supply minimal amounts of drinking water to a handful of reservation communities.

The Bill – and the “Settlement Agreement” it ratifies – do not quantify Navajo and Hopi water rights – the foundation of all other southwestern Indian Water Rights settlements to date – thereby denying the Tribes the economic market value of their water rights, and forcing them into perpetual dependence on uncertain federal funding for any water projects. 

The fight for Diné and Hopi water rights continues as several indigenous struggles persist across Arizona to protect sacred sites, stop cultural genocide, and prevent further destruction of the earth and its people for corporate profit. 

Source : IndigenousAction.org.

A Chilean police officer has died after being shot in a Mapuche Indian community, and the government says it's taking measures aimed at boosting security.

The authorities said police Sgt. Hugo Albornoz died on Monday night after being shot in the neck following a raid in an indigenous community near the town of Ercilla.

Interior Minister Rodrigo Hinzpeter traveled to the region to discuss measures to control such violence.

During the raid, the authorities said a man and two women had been detained as part of an investigation into violent acts in the area.

The Mapuche organization Meli Wixan Mapu said that during the raid, police ransacked and damaged eight homes.

The police officer's death came after other violent incidents in recent days. On Friday, two logging trucks were burned by unidentified attackers.

Small groups of Mapuche Indians have periodically attacked police while demanding land rights and autonomy. Police have also been accused of violent abuses in the indigenous communities.

Hinzpeter didn't detail the government's plans for new security measures but said a committee was being formed in the region of Araucania to consider responses.

Source : Mapuche mailinglist in English/Dutch

Myanmar's new quasi-civilian government has pledged to end to forced labour in the Southeast Asia country by 2015. What's more, it is backing up the pledge with something tangible.

As the independent journal Mizzima observes, the government is also permitting the distribution of leaflets that will help thousands of people throughout the country learn to resist forced labour.

For decades, the Burmese military recruited 'ethnic' civilians to word under slave-like conditions, cleaning military camps, building military structures and walking ahead of troops in areas filled with landmines.

Despite the end of outright military rule last year, the problem with forced labour is ongoing, particularly in Karen state, where the military has set up close to 200 military camps.

Burma signs another one-year agreement to end forced labour

(Mizzima) - Burma has restated its committment to end forced labour in the country by signing another one-year agreement with the International Labour Organization, enabling the agency and government to move forward on efforts to cease the practice. 

Deputy Labour Minister Myint Thein signed the memorandum of understanding with an ILO liaison officer on Friday in the Naypyitaw, the state-run New Light of Myanmar reported.

“Myanmar has signed MoUs with the ILO and has been cooperating with the ILO in combating forced labour and is committed to eradicate it from the country,” the official newspaper said.

In June last year, the ILO Rangoon office said it had received 506 complaints related to forced labour since the start of 2010 – more than double the number during the previous three years.

It said the increase was because of an ILO-government campaign to raise awareness about human rights.

The ILO said that forced labour is sometimes caused by a lack of proper funding for projects demanded by rural authorities. However, most incidents male adults and youth conscripted into the military.

The ILO office has been engaged in distributing information and brochures and conducting workshops with government officials and civil society groups at all levels. The government has permitted the distribution of leaflets that will help thousands of people in the country’s ethnic enclaves learn to resist forced labour.

The leaflets offer residents in ethnic minority areas a chance to file complaints with the International Labour Organisation (ILO) about the human rights abuses they endure at the hands of government troops or local officials. 

The Shan ethnic minority is one of the first to benefit from this new education campaign. The one-page, A-4-size sheets of paper have been distributed since January in the local Shan language – stepping away from the policy of previous military regimes to suppress ethnic languages, according to a story this month by the Inter Press Service (IP).

Following the distribution of nearly 30,000 leaflets in the Shan state over the past two months, the ILO has set its sights on raising awareness about its "complaints mechanism for forced labour" in six other ethnic areas, according to the IPS.

Consequently, the plight of forced labour victims in the ethnic areas was not forgotten during the early round of peace talks that the country’s largest rebel groups – the Karen and the Shan – have had with the Thein Sein administration since late last year.

The Karen National Union (KNU) demanded an immediate end to forced labour as the sixth item in an 11-point plan for peace talks with Burma’s railway minister, Aung Min, head of the government negotiating team.

"Fighting in the Karen area has resulted in a lot of forced labour, so we wanted it included in the early round of talks," David Tharckbaw, KNU vice-president and head of the movement’s peace committee, told IPS. "They [the Burmese government] accepted these concerns in principle."

"As of February 2012, forced labour was ongoing in five villages in the Tantabin township," the Karen Human Rights Group said in a Mar. 12 field report.

In an interview in May 2010, Steve Marshall, the ILO liaison officer in Rangoon, told Mizzima: “Myanmar is a large country with a variety of communication constraints. The information brochure agreed to with government has and continues to be widely distributed though government departments, INGOs, NGOs and CBOs and its content is regularly promulgated through the media both internal and external.

“It would be expected, however, that still a large portion of society would not yet have access to that knowledge. It is hoped that an agreement to produce the brochure in other national (ethnic) languages will be reached as this would help considerably. Joint government/ILO awareness sessions of government officials (civilian and military) continue and the ILO has started running monthly workshops for community-based organizations.”

He said there are areas in the country, because of their geographic location, or their economic situation or their political situation, which have had more serious histories in respect of forced labour.

He said, “Chin [State], I would say, is an area that because of its geographic location, and possibly because of some of the political environment, has had serious issues in the past. I do not see it as necessarily being worse than any other similar part of the country, but again I have to say that we are working towards the future, and we are not concentrating purely on what has happened in the past.”

Source : Intercontinental Cry

Mexico's Supreme Court has ruled that a Tarahumara (Raramuri) community in the state of Chihuahua has the Constitution right to participate in the decision-making of any project that would affect them. The little-noticed decision could have far-reaching effects across the country.

Chihuahua News: Court Upholds Indigenous Rights

In a little-noticed decision with possible national repercussions, Mexico’s high court has come out in favour of an indigenous community in the state of Chihuahua. In a ruling publicized this month, Mexican Supreme Court justices determined that the community of Huitosachi has a right to participate in the decision-making of the Copper Canyon Trust Fund, an organization spearheading tourism development in Chihuahua’s Sierra Tarahumara region.

Huitosachi’s leaders earlier went to court to protect their lands from development in a zone adjoining the small indigenous community. Two federal judges initially ruled against Huitosachi before the Mexican Supreme Court agreed to hear the case in 2011.

The Supreme Court justices declared that the Mexican Constitution guarantees the participation of indigenous communities in the type of projects that would affect Huitosachi. The high court’s members also stated that relevant national law is similar to the International Labor Organization’s Convention No. 169, which protects the rights of indigenous communities and tribal peoples. Mexico is among 22 nations that have ratified the international agreement. The United States is not one of them.

Situated in the municipality of Urique, Huitosachi is part of a large zone that state and federal officials, in conjunction with Mexican and international investors, are gradually developing as one of Mexico’s next big tourist attractions. The so-called Copper Canyon-Sea of Cortez Tourist Circuit has proceeded in fits and starts, variously impacted by changing political administrations, outbreaks of narco-violence, declines in foreign tourism, fluxes in investment and periodic protests by indigenous Raramuri communities that claim exclusion or injury from the project.

Nonetheless, important parts of a tourism development strategy mapped out back in the 1990s move forward. This week, for example, Chihuahua Governor Cesar Duarte inaugurated a new highway aimed at inter-connecting mountain towns and increasing visitation to the Baseseachi Falls. Likewise, the Chihuahua state tourism department is promoting the 2012 International Adventure Tourism Festival, an event which is expected to include marathon races and bicycling in the Sierra Tarahumara as part of the roster of activities.

Source : Intercontinental Cry

While new techniques of hydrocarbon drilling, such as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in new areas are lauded by some as a solution to Argentina’s energy imports, the indigenous communities who live in areas where these resources can be found argue the activity is a threat to their communities.

Members of the Mapuche community say the Argentine government’s aggressive push to increase energy supplies by allowing oil companies to explore in their lands will cause irreversible environmental and social damage.

According to Argentina´s Energy Secretariat, close to 87 percent of Argentina’s energy is generated from fossil fuels. The government agency said that in 1988 Argentina had enough gas supplies for 36 years. But by 2009, this outlook was slashed to seven years. Oil supplies fell from 14 to nine in the same period.

Additionally, starting in 2003, when the economy was stabilizing after its financial collapse two years earlier, consumption of fossil fuels increased sharply. A report of the US Energy Information Administration said that the use of oil and oil products increased more than 37 percent between 2003 and 2010 in Argentina, while gas consumption increased 23 percent in the same period. To cover its energy needs, Argentina’s fuel imports, mainly of liquefied natural gas, gasoil and fuel oil, increased more than seven times, from US$549 million to US$4.5 billion, according to Argentina’s Economy Ministry.

In December 2010, Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales, or YPF, owned by the Spanish firm Repsol, announced it found a large shale gas reserve, in Loma de la Lata in the southern Neuquen province, and then it found an even bigger one in the same site.

Now other oil companies, including the US-based Chevron, Exxon and Apache, and the France´s Total, are exploring in Neuquen.

According to the US Department of Energy, Argentina is home to the world’s third-largest potential reserves of unconventional gas, with a potential 774 trillion cubic feet, behind only to China with 1.28 trillion cubic feet and the United States with 862 trillion cubic feet.

There is also hydrocarbon exploration in Rio Negro province. The provincial governments of Mendoza and Chubut are evaluating whether to allow for exploration there, too. The Entre Rios province, which has no history of gas exploration, signed an agreement with Repsol-YPF in 2009 for unconventional hydrocarbon exploration, and established an agreement with Uruguay for cross-border exploration with the state oil company Ancap.

New conflicts emerge

But there are consequences for the indigenous groups who live in the path of the expansion.

“There is no doubt that all of the official announcements about these mega-fields are a direct and clear threat to the life and culture of the affected Mapuche communities,” said Jorge Nahuel, a member of the Xawvnko Area Council of the Neuquen Mapuche Confederation.

Last November, members of the Gelay Ko community in Neuquen blocked work on a gas well on their land that US oil company Apache had been drilling, saying that they were not previously consulted of the project. They demanded that the provincial government create two commissions, one to evaluate the social, cultural and environmental impact, and the other for control and monitoring.

Fracking uses millions of gallons of water mixed with chemicals and sand at high pressure, to break through rock like shale to free natural gas and oil.

“There is no policy in place to measure the impact of this new technology,” said Nahuel. “That is what the communities are reacting to, in Loma de la Lata and in the central part of the province.”

Oil and gas exploration began 60 years ago, and indigenous residents estimate that there are 200 wells there and they have been demanding an end to the activity in the area for the last decade.

Mapuche community authority Cristina Lincopán of the village, said the government brings water each month in trucks to the area from Zapala, a city 60 kilometers (38 miles), because the water is so contaminated from the oil industry.

She said that community members are suffering from blindness, skin diseases and diarrhea.

“The truth is the company Apache is killing us day after day,” she said.

In September 2001, German consultancy Umweltshutz provided the Kaxipayiñ and Paynemil communities an environmental impact study that found 630,000 cubic meters of soil contaminated with chromium, lead, arsenic, naphtaline and pyrene, as well as other heavy metals in the water above legally accepted levels.

Gabriel Cherqui, a werken, or spokesman from the Kaxipayíñ community, said that since early 2011, they blocked YFP from exploring in the region because local government officials failed to clean up the current environmental damage. In 2002, his community, along with the neighboring Paynemil village filed a lawsuit against Repsol-YPF for social-environmental and cultural damage. Back then the cleanup cost was estimated at US$445 million, and is now at US$1.6 billion, according to Cherqui.

Even though Argentina ratified Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization on indigenous peoples, one of whose main points is the previous consultation of indigenous groups, the state has not ensured this.

Now it is an issue local courts are evaluating. In February, Judge Mario Tommasi in Cutral Có town in Neuquen rejected an injunction request by Petrolera Piedra del Águila to do seismic testing in the Huenctru Trawel Leufú Mapuche community. Meanwhile, in March, the provincial Supreme Court approved an injunction against Chinese company Emprendimientos Mineros for copper exploration in the Mellao Morales community.

James Anaya, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Indigenous Peoples, who visited Argentina in late 2011, said the country’s institutions need to do more to defend indigenous peoples’ human rights.

In a press conference, he said the government needs to regulate the consultation process before extractive industry projects can receive a green light.

Other encroachments on indigenous lands

According to figures from the Neuquen Observatory on Indigenous Peoples’ Indigenous Rights, there are 59 Mapuche communities in the region, 19 of them affected by the oil industry or on the radar of companies looking to expand exploration.

Five of them – Logko Purrán, Gelay Ko, Antipan, Kaxipayiñ and Paynemil – are home to gas exploitation. Oil is being extracted from Wiñoy Folil, Maliqueo and Marifil; and in 11 others, there are concessions for exploration of either.

Salta, in northern Argentina, is also the scene of conflicts over extractive industry in or near the lands of indigenous peoples. In October and November of 2011, the Wichí Lewetes Kalehi and Lote 6 communities in the municipality of Rivadavia Banda Norte tried to stop seismic testing on their lands and reported being harassed by the company Wicap, which was contracted by the Unión Transitoria de Empresas Maxipetrol, as well as by police.

In the Chubut province, in Patagonia, an exploration/exploitation concession in Ñirihuau Sur, in June 2011, put Mapuche Tehuelche communities on alert. In mid-October, they held a trawun, or parliament, to evaluate the impacts of the industry, in which Neuquen Mapuche also participated.

It was a similar story in Chaco, where the province was divided into 12 blocks, some of them including Wichi, Qom and Moquit lands. In mid-2011, the Servicios Energéticos del Chaco-Empresa del Estado Provincial and Argentina Energy Service, a state-owned company, started exploring for hydrocarbons.

Source : Intercontinental Cry

If the Namibian government thought it had enough on its hands after indigenous Himba leaders issued a powerful statement listing a host of human rights violations and calling on the UN to intervene, it now has another campaign by indigenous groups to worry about - and a real fight on its hands over plans to build a new dam in the Baynes Mountains.

The Namibian government was forced to back down the last time it tried to construct a dam - the notorious Epupa hydroelectric dam - after widespread oppostion and a concerted campaign by indigenous groups, which helped to convince the World Bank and other backers to withdraw their support. But it seems as if the government did not learn its lesson - and now it is trying to bulldoze through another dam just downstream from Epupa in the Baynes mountains.

And once again, indigenous groups are up in arms - particularly the most affected groups, the Ovahimba, Ovatwa, Ovatjimb and Ovazemba.

Leaders of the four groups signed a statement cataloguing the government's disregard for their rights and demanding that the project be axed. The statement … reads:

"When Namibia wanted to build the Epupa Dam, we objected. Today, we object again, this time against the new plans of the government to build a dam, this time at Orokawe in our Baynes Mountains. We, the most directly affected Indigenous Peoples say NO!

In several meetings between us and the government, we made our refusal to this dam very clear. We don't understand why we have to repeat ourselves over and over again, and the government is still not listening to us, and is continuing to push for the construction of the dam without our consent.

We collectively refused the money offered to those communities and families that would have to relocate if the government is going to build the dam; they better kill us first before they do that. This is our land. We are the original inhabitants and the owners of the area that would be destroyed and flooded by the dam.

But since independence, the Government has dispossessed us from our rights to our land and our rights to decide what is being with and on it. Our traditional leaders, our representatives that we choose, are not recognized by the government, violating the UN Declaration on Rights of Indigenous Peoples. If they build the dam, many of us will drown ourselves in the dam. Other of us will fight, and Namibia will have civil war in our area.

We don't want to face the negative impact that comes with such a large scale construction i.e. large trucks, shops owned by strangers, foreign traders, big town, prostitution, theft, crime, diseases, the loss and destruction of land, and the flooding of our grave sites of our ancestors. We don't want the river being blocked. Water is life. It is not only us objecting to this dam. The people in Angola that would also be affected by the dam strongly object to it as well.

We demand that the government halts immediately any further plans to construct Baynes Site dam without our free, prior informed consent.

We request that Namibia allows the Special Rapporteur on the rights and fundamental freedoms of Indigenous Peoples to visit us in Namibia.

We insist that the president of Namibia, the Minister of Mines and Energy, the Ombudsman and other relevant high level officials conduct a meeting with us, in our area, on our soil - but without the police and military forces that we don't want here (UNDRIP Article 30).

Source : © 2012 AllAfrica

The Wixarika people, after campaigning for seventeen straight months to protect their sacred territory, have been granted a major reprieve by the federal courts in Mexico.

As of this moment, The intention to exploit natural resources through 38 mineral concessions in the sacred territory of Wirikuta is suspended.

No further mining permits can be granted as long as the core of the matter remains unresolved.

Below, a statement by the Wirikuta Defense Front

The judiciary grants the Wixarika people a suspension to detain mineral exploitation by the La Luz project in the Catorce municipality of San Luis Potosí

Feb. 26, 2012 - The federal courts have definitively granted the suspension of the violations claimed by the Wixarika (Huichol) People in order that no exploitation permit be granted for the La Luz mining project, in the Municipality of Catorce in San Luis Potosí, so long as the core issue remains unresolved.

Given the failure of the Mexican government to guarantee their human rights and with the immovable objective of the integral protection of the sacred territory of Wirikuta, given the agroindustrial and metalurgical mining threats, the Wixarika people presented the judiciary with an injunction for legal protection demanding respect for the rights that the Mexican government had committed itself to protect at the national and international levels.

Wirikuta, sacred territory of the Wixaritari (Huichols), covers the municipalities of Catorce, Charcas, Matehuala, Villa de Ramos, Villa de Guadalupe y Villa de la Paz en el Estado de San Luis Potosí, was declared in 1994 a Natural Protected Area and Natural Sacred Site by the government of San Luis Potosí and includes approximately 140,000 hectares, a place where the federal government has granted at least 38 mineral concessions to exploit the mineral resources, putting at risk the biodiversity, the continuity of the Chihuahua Desert ecosystem, the water quality, the health of the population and the Wixarika people.

The territorial rights of the indigenous people recognizes not only the lands or surfaces in which the peoples are established, but also contemplates the spaces and territories where they traditionally have access, which includes the habitat and surroundings, meaning the integrity of the natural elements that conform the ecosystem.

The territory of Wirikuta represents for the Wixarika cosmogony the place where the essences of life and the birth of the sun are founded, which represents and indispensable element of their cultural identity and for their subsistence as a native people. In this context it is indispensable that the Mexican government consult with the Wixarika people to obtain their free, previous and informed consent in agreement with the current legislation, in order to guarantee in an effective manner their fundamental rights.

The demand for the rights of the Wixarika people has been accompanied by the National Commission for Human Rights and the Office of the UN High Commission for Human Rights in Mexico, who have shown their interest and disposition for the defense of the sacred territory.

Source : Intercontinental Cry

Judges in Brazil have allowed a Guarani community to stay on its ancestral land, which it reoccupied having been forced to live in a makeshift camp for over a year and a half.

The judges have suspended an eviction order which threatened to force the Indians to leave their land and face appalling living conditions on the side of a road or in an overcrowded reserve.

The 170 Guarani of Laranjeira Nanderu community can now remain on a small patch of their land, until further land studies are carried out. Their territory is currently being occupied by a ranch.

Ten Guarani representatives traveled to São Paulo to attend the meeting where the judges made their decision.

A Guarani man from Laranjeira Nanderu said, ‘This is our dream, nothing else. Just for the studies to be done to show that we have the right to our ancestral lands’.

The ruling follows interventions from the Guarani, as well as Survival International, Brazilian NGO CIMI, and other organizations.

The Brazilian authorities are responsible for mapping out and protecting all Guarani land for the Indians’ exclusive use.

source : Survival International

Peru has raided an illegal logging site in the Manú National Park, just days after the world caught its first detailed glimpse of the uncontacted Mashco-Piro tribe.

The discovery followed Survival’s release of close-up pictures of the tribe to raise awareness of the threats illegal logging poses to their survival.

In an operation led by SERNANP, Peru’s Department for Protected Areas, park guards and police uncovered more than 3,000 feet of illegally harvested timber.

SERNANP’s two-day operation led to the arrest of a group of men and confiscation of their tools. The men face prison terms of three to six years.

Sightings of the Mashco-Piro have risen in recent months, with many blaming illegal loggers for pushing the tribe out of their forest homes.
 
FENAMAD, the regional indigenous organization, is now working with local communities to set up a guard post close by, to help protect the Mashco-Piro from intruders, and has criticized tour operators for taking tourists close to where the sightings have been reported.

FENAMAD also welcomed the results of the raid, saying it was, ‘working with national and local authorities, including SERNANP, to ensure security for uncontacted tribes.’

More than 100,000 people have already signed a Survival petition calling on Peru’s government to do more to protect uncontacted tribes from illegal logging on their land.

Petition at:
www.survivalinternational.org/news/8078?utm_source=Survival+International&utm_campaign=0706b47a07-E_news_Feb_20122_15_2012&utm_medium=email

Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said today, ‘A week ago very few people had heard of the uncontacted Mashco-Piro. Now their faces are recognised worldwide, and the dangers facing them are known. Catching illegal loggers red handed clearly shows the very real threats facing uncontacted tribes in Peru.’

source : Survival International

Lack of inclusion on equal terms with states has resulted in the descision of the delegates of indigenous peoples to withdraw from active participation in the World Intellectual Property Oragnization (WIPO) Inter Governmental Committee

FINAL STATEMENT OF THE INTERNATIONAL INDIGENOUS FORUM AT WIPO

WORLD INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY ORGANISATION
Intergovernmental Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and FolkloreTwentieth Session, Geneva, February 14 to 22, 2012

We, the Indigenous Peoples and Nations present at the International Indigenous Forum during WIPO IGC 20, have evaluated our participation in all of the proceedings of this Committee, and we note with concern the continued reduction of the amount and level of our participation in this process.

We Indigenous Peoples have participated as experts in the IGC sessions, we have worked in good faith, and we have made efforts over the years to submit to the IGC sessions our collectively developed and sound proposals, which have been ignored or left in brackets in negotiation texts.The IGC, in its overall procedures, has systematically ignored our rights, as Indigenous Peoples and as Nations with internationally recognized collective rights, to self-determination and full and equitable participation at all levels.The draft study of the Secretariat on the participation of observers before the IGC does not contain modifications proposed by the Indigenous Peoples to WIPO’s rules of procedure. The States have obligations under their constitutions that have not been observed in the IGC, nor have they submitted proposals that could resolve the existing deficiencies in order to improve our participation.

Distinguished delegates: we, the Indigenous Peoples, are the titleholders, proprietors and ancestral owners of traditional knowledge that is inalienable, nonforfeitable and inherent to the genetic resources that we have conserved and utilized in a sustainable manner within our territories. For this reason, we appeal to the States to acknowledge that the discussion on intellectual property rights and genetic resources should include Indigenous Peoples on equal terms with the States since the work will directly impact our lives, our lands, our territories and resources, and will reach to the very heart of our cultures, which are the inheritance of future generations.

Therefore, the Indigenous Peoples present at IGC 20 have reflected seriously on our role in this process and have decided, unanimously, to withdraw our active participation in the work developed by this Committee until the States change the rules of procedure to permit our full and equitable participation at all levels of the IGC and until the instruments recognize and are consistent with the existing international frameworks for the rights and interests of Indigenous Peoples within the scope of the IGC.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
February 21, 2012
Source: The website of AIPP - IWGIA

The Ethiopian peripheries, with their abundant, fertile farmlands and water reserves, have become centres of land grabbing, forcing tens of thousands of indigenous people to relocate their ancestral villages, farmlands and grazing areas without proper legal remedies and without their prior consent or consultation. The livelihoods of indigenous people are under threat, as are their traditional ways of life and the environments they have protected and preserved for generations. The government has so far leased out about 3.6 million hectares to national companies and foreign private and state-backed investors, mainly in the regions of Gambela, Omo Valley, Benishangul Gumuz and Oromia.

The policy has drawn critical attention from international media, research institutions and NGOs. In response to widespread grave human rights violations-- systematic genocide, arbitrary detentions, rape, forceful relocations of indigenous people from their ancestral lands to make way for large scale agricultural investments-- insecurity, mistrust and fear has once again returned to Gambela region, one of the major targets of land grabbing, towards the newly independent state of South Sudan.

Since the 2003 genocide committed against indigenous Anywaa people by Ethiopian national defence forces alongside some members of  the Ethiopian highland community, the region has been seeing and experiencing increased tension, insecurity, displacement and unspeakable human misery. Various organisations that support the indigenous people in Gambela, including the Anywaa Survival Organisation (ASO), are drawing attention to the impacts of the government's inconsiderate and deliberate destruction of the cultural identities and traditional ways of life of the indigenous people in the country.

A number of recent calls have been made to increase awareness on land grabbing and the associated human rights issues and potential conflicts in remote regions that have been underdeveloped and marginalised for centuries. They have come in the form of documentary videos (Grabbing Gambela: a joint video by ASO, GRAIN, and EJOLT) and written reports (Peace, Bread and Land: Agricultural Investment in Ethiopia and the Sudans by the Chatham House, Understanding Land Investment in Africa-Ethiopia by the Oakland Institute, Waiting Here for Death: “Villagisation in Ethiopia’s Gambela Region by Human Rights Watch, etc.). Yet the Ethiopian authorities have ignored the genuine concerns over human suffering, displacement, environmental impacts, and instability.

In Gambela region where indigenous people are threatened to the point of extinction, despite the return of relative normalisation and stability in the region since the 2003 indiscriminate killings of Anywaa indigenous people in their own traditional homeland, the government has failed to bring perpetrators to a court of law and justice, and categorically refused to serve apologies and compensation to families of victims.

The authorities instead prevent indigenous people from achieving decent livelihoods by leasing out their traditional farmlands, hunting and fishing grounds, forests and woodlands. Since the 2008 international financial crisis and rising commodity prices in the world market, the Ethiopian authorities have, without concern for the ways of life of indigenous people or the environment, allocated the lands of these people to foreign and national investors. India's Karuturi Global was allocated 100,000 hectares of land, with an option to increase to 300,000 hectares. This land lease deprives about 5000 Ilea indigenous people from the lands they use for farming and from their sacred village along the Openo River, which they have protected in accordance with their traditional customs and beliefs for generations. The Ilea people were not even consulted about the deal.

Similarly, the Saudi business tycoon Al Amoudi was given 10,000 hectares of farmland in Gambela which his company intends to increase to 500,000 hectares. This land deal deprives the people of Pokedi village, along the Alworo River in the Abwobo district, of their traditional farmlands and environment.

The land deals are undermining the survival and cultural identities of indigenous peoples on a similar scale to the 2003 genocidal massacre of  the Anywaa, and they are fueling anger among local farmers and young men across the region, thus increasing tension and insecurity.

The last few months have seen a return of sporadic attacks on government institutions in Gambela, such as an attack on the police station at the Gog and Abwod checkpoints, Pinyudo town, in the Jor district, 30 km from Gambela town.

The attack in Jor district destroyed the police station and communication infrastructures. The attackers took cash and ammunitions belonging to the administration. This was followed by another attack in Pinyudo town leaving an Ethiopian highland woman dead and one Anywaa person and Ethiopian highlander wounded.

A recent incident on 16 February 2012 at about 8:00pm at Abwod checkpoint claimed the life of police officer Opiew Ojulu and Obang Amau Ochudho, a member of the Ethiopian special forces. At around the same time, an Ethiopian highlander, reported to be a staff of the Al Moudi operation, sustained serious injuries when the car he was travelling in was ambushed at the Abwod checkpoint. He was airlifted by Al Amoudi to Addis Ababa for treatment.

Though not directly linked with land grabbing and human rights issues in the region, an Ethiopian highlander, working for Gambela town municipality in charge of finance and administrative affairs, Getachew Ankore, was gunned down by an unidentified group of people last month. Investigations suggest a personal dispute with an Ethiopian highlander who gave himself up to the authorities, but growing tensions and suspicions among the communities in teh region likely contributed to the incident.

The growing insecurity and violence in Gambela, seen in the recent loss of innocent human lives and the attacks on government institutions by unidentified groups, should be seen as a clear warning to foreign and national investors about the dangers involved in the large scale agricultural investments taking place in Ethiopia and elsewhere in Africa.  

Source: ASO

During Canadas periodic review in February over 20 Indigenous nations and organizations, are holding Canada accountable and CERD has delivered scathing criticisms over the government's treatment of First Nations and recent changes to the country's immigration system. Members on the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, questioned why headway has not been made in resolving the ongoing disparities between First Nations communities and the rest of the country.

An "Alternate Report" was submitted by the Chiefs of Ontario to identify gaps, misrepresentations, and assumptions made in Canada's official report. It is stressed that the observations and recommendations made within the Alternate report are by no means new. Indigenous nations and organizations have been raising awareness and advocating action on these priorities for years.

Source : IWGIA

 Six men are being brought to trial for the murder of two Guarani Indians who were killed in Brazil’s Mato Grosso do Sul state in 2009.

The case has been described as ‘an important milestone’ by a public prosecutor.

Genivaldo Verá and Rolindo Verá were victims of an armed attack, after their Y’poi community attempted to reclaim its ancestral land from ranchers.

Brazil’s Public Ministry has announced that ranchers and politicians are among those facing prosecution. The charges they face include: homicide; hiding a body; shooting a firearm; and bodily harm against an elderly person.

One of the men under investigation, cattle rancher Firmino Escobar, also held the Guarani of Y’poi hostage in 2010, imprisoning them on their land and cutting off food and medical supplies.

Survival International has a recording of him refusing an undercover Survival campaigner entry to the site. He also falsely denied any Indians were on the land.

The Public Ministry is considering opening another police investigation into other people who may have been involved in the fatal attack in 2009.

Speaking to Survival, a Guarani man from Y’poi community said, ‘This is really good news. That is what we were hoping for.’

Guarani communities face regular attacks from gunmen employed by ranchers to evict them from their land, but the perpetrators are rarely apprehended.

Public Prosecutor Thiago dos Santos Luz described the decision as a crucial step in ‘the fight for the effective protection of the fundamental rights of the Guarani Indians of Mato Grosso do Sul state, who are victims of constant violence.'

One of the few previous times a Guarani murder case went to court was in 2011. It related to the murder of Marcos Veron, an internationally respected Guarani leader who was beaten to death in 2003.

Survival’s Director Stephen Corry said today, ‘This investigation is encouraging, but the Brazilian government should remember that there are many more Guarani deaths that go uninvestigated. Ranchers have long attacked the Guarani with impunity – the tribe should not be under threat of murder for taking back land that is rightfully theirs.’

Source : Survival International

A land deal finalized this week between Paraguayan authorities and a land owner in the country’s central region will allow a long-displaced indigenous community to rebuild in safety and dignity, Amnesty International said today. 

For almost two decades, the Yakye Axa indigenous community have fought a legal battle to return to their ancestral lands while around 90 families were forced to live in destitute conditions alongside a nearby highway. 

Years ago, private landowners moved in and took over their lands. Indigenous families were dispersed among privately owned cattle ranches, where many were mistreated and exploited.

A lawyer representing the Yakye Axa yesterday told Amnesty International that the families in the community will soon move to the newly acquired land, comprising more than 12,000 hectares within the ancestral lands of the Enxet ethnic group 

“The community is very happy. The young people, who can now build a new future, and the elderly, who fought for so many years, are in high spirits,” said Julia Cabello, a lawyer and director of the Paraguayan NGO Tierraviva, which works with the Yakye Axa and other communities of the Enxet ethnic group. 

In 1993, the Yakye Axa community started the legal process to reclaim a portion of their ancestral lands.

In 2005, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ordered Paraguay to restore the Yakye Axa’s lands.

Meanwhile the conditions in the roadside encampments remained dire, with the lack of access to basic services contributing to illness and a series of preventable deaths in the community. 

Once the Yakye Axa community is resettled, under the terms of the Inter-American Court ruling, the Paraguayan authorities must also set up a US$950,000 fund aimed at community development. 

The fund is destined towards educational, housing, agricultural and health projects, as well as the provision of drinking water and sanitation.

“The Yakye Axa can now rebuild a secure and stable community and live in accordance with their culture, free from the dangers they have faced for too long in the precarious roadside camps,” said Guadalupe Marengo, Deputy Americas Programme Director at Amnesty International.

This latest indigenous land deal comes several months after another Enxet indigenous community, the Sawhoyamaxa, negotiated an agreement in September 2011 to return to their ancestral lands. The negotiations are still ongoing. 

For more than two decades, Tierraviva has been supporting indigenous communities like the Yakye Axa and the Sawhoyamaxa to return to their ancestral lands, which are vital to their cultural identity and way of life. 

“We hope the Yakye Axa case becomes a positive example of the direction the Paraguayan authorities intend to take with all the unresolved indigenous land claims in the country and that the authorities will establish an effective mechanism to process such claims and make indigenous rights a key priority,” said Guadalupe Marengo.
Source : © 2012 Amnesty International USA

European leaders have mapped out a bold agenda ahead of the Rio summit, vowing to transform development aid, help provide renewable electricity to the world’s neediest people, and bulk up the United Nations environment body.

The European Union’s ‘Agenda for Change’ proposal calls for pumping foreign aid into sustainable growth and energy access, while European Union officials have also floated the idea of transforming the U.N. Environmental Programme into an agency with expanded influence and greater power to promote research and development.

Janez Potočnik, the EU environment commissioner, on Tuesday reaffirmed the 27-nation block’s pledge to provide the equivalent of 0.7 percent of gross national income (GNI) for aid to the world’s poorest countries, while urging that there be a focus on sustainable growth.

"The potential for investment and gains are massive compared to official development assistance," he said in a speech. "But at the same time the poorest countries need help, to make this promise good.

"That is why the European Union intends to fully meet our commitments to the poorest countries and will meet the Millennium Development Goal of 0.7 (percent) in 2015."

Meanwhile, Development Commissioner Andris Piebalgs was expected on Wednesday to offer fresh support to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s energy-access initiative.

"Through the promotion of our technology and expertise combined with a targeted use of our aid funding, we will aim to increase access to modern energy services for the world's poorest," Piebalgs said on the eve of an address at the European Parliament.

The pledges reflect officials’ hopes that the EU can be a catalyst in turning the UN Conference on Sustainable Development into a ground-breaking shift towards low-carbon, resource-efficient economic growth after disappointments at recent climate and development summits. The conference is to take place Jun. 20-22 in Rio de Janeiro, 20 years after the Brazilian city hosted the first ‘Earth Summit’.

"We are trying to work hard to ensure that we will obtain concrete results," Potočnik said, adding that "a day will not pass by in the coming months where the Rio outcome will not be discussed in our contacts with international partners."

EU officials cite Europe’s commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions, boost the use of renewable energy and improve energy efficiency as a way to tackle climate change while transforming economies and creating jobs.

Potočnik also said it was a European priority to give the Nairobi-based UNEP more influence and resources.

But the European Commission, the EU’s executive, faces tall hurdles if it is to achieve some of these goals.

Many EU countries are economically stagnant and face rising unemployment. At a summit on Jan. 30, EU leaders pledged to create more jobs and spur growth to address a continent-wide malaise and sovereign debt problems that have forced EU leaders to ask for help from China and other countries with deep cash reserves.

EU leaders have traditionally seen overseas aid as an extension of their ‘soft power’, agreeing in 2002 to provide annual development aid equivalent to 0.51 percent of GNI by 2010, and 0.7 percent by 2015 for the 15 richest EU nations.

Yet there are doubts about whether the EU can really live up to its aid commitments.

A 2011 study by the CONCORD coalition of advocacy organisations said that despite the 54 billion euros (71.5 billion dollars) in aid provided by the EU in 2010, only nine of the bloc’s 27 countries kept or exceeded their promises on aid in 2010. The overall rate is 0.43 percent of GNI. The CONCORD group warns that at current levels of spending, aid will barely move beyond that, to 0.45 percent, by 2015.

"To succeed, Rio will need to put more money on the table to fund the move towards an economy based on sustainable development," Felix Dodds, executive director of the London-based Stakeholder Forum said Tuesday at a development conference organised by the European Economic and Social Committee, an EU body.

Dodds, whose organisation promotes sustainable development, suggests ways in addition to development aid to create greener growth: a tax on financial transactions - backed by the European Commission but opposed by Britain and Ireland - and shifting the estimated 4.7 trillion dollars held by global sovereign wealth funds into green investments.

Dodds said the consequences of inaction are high. Referring to the EU’s aid commitment, he said: "If they do not do that, then seriously we are in danger of losing any trust with developing countries." (END) IPS

When President Juan Manuel Santos was elected in 2010, there was an immediate shift in the country's policy toward Indigenous Peoples. It was welcomed to say the least. However, the despite a handful of good advances, nothing had really changed on the ground, where change is needed most. As Real World Radio observed this week, Indigenous leaders and community members throughout the country are still being murdered and terrorized with impunity.

More murders and attacks against Colombian indigenous people

The Colombian National Indigenous Organization (ONIC) made up by the native peoples of the country is denouncing and rejecting the serious attacks and human rights violations suffered by their communities. Several leaders were murdered these past days, following an end of 2011 and beginning of 2012 with many murders and attacks.

On January 15th, members of the Embera community Herminson and Alexander de Jesus Morales Zamora were murdered in Riosucio, Caldas department.

“We reject this act of violence and demand that our rights and integrity as human beings, as communities, as peoples representing different cultures are ensured”, reads a statement by the Indigenous Government Council of ONIC.

The denunciation by indigenous organizations is addressed to different justice and human rights advocacy groups, NGOs, the civil society and international organizations.

According to the statement, the Embera people is one of the most affected by the armed conflict in Colombia. According to authorities of the Indigenous Council Nuestra Señora Candelaria de la Montaña, Herminson and Alexander de Jesus Morales Zamora (29 and 24 years old respectively) disappeared on January 14th. They were members of the Ubarbá and El Rebaño communities. On January 16th, the families of the victims received a note indicating where they were. Their bodies were found n Cerro El Tigre, La Palma community, in a common burial site. They had been shot several times.

“ONIC and the Council denounce these violent acts against our indigenous population and the presence of armed groups outside the law in the communities, who murder and threaten the indigenous people”, reads the statement. “We ask the national authorities to ensure and protect our rights, our lives and integrity of the indigenous population”, read the statement.

A few days before, on January 12th, Jambalo Milciades Trochez Conda was murdered in Cauca department. "It’s not the first time our ancestral territories are attacked by armed groups operating in the region, and it is not the first time we mourn members of our families", reads the statement.

Milciades was shot to death on his way to his car in Santander de Quilichao, in company of another community member. The 39-year-old indigenous leader lived in Loma Gruesa, Jambalo. He was married and he was the father of seven children. He was also an active member of the Indigenous Watch. According to people who witnessed the attack, the indigenous leader was attacked by people riding two motorbikes in Caloto municipality. He was shot ten times.

The Jambalo Indigenous Council and ACIN wrote that in 2001, Milciades was persecuted by armed groups of the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC). Since then, the leader received death threats by that group.

The Cauca Indigenous Regional Council (CRIC) and ACIN consider that it is extremely serious that the Colombian government hasn’t taken the necessary measures to protect the lives and integrity of the indigenous communities of the North of Cauca. There are precautionary measures in force granted by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IAHRC) due to the continuous threats and harassment suffered by these communities. The CRIC and ACIN demanded “immediate measures to ensure the right to life, the integrity and security of the indigenous community members of Cauca”.

The end of 2011 and the beginning of this year was as violent in the South of the country, according to information provided by the Indigenous Government Council of ONIC. On December 31st, in Santa Cruz de Guachavez municipality, Nariño, two gunmen murdered Jaime Chazatar, indigenous leader. A few days later, a member of the Awá people was tortured and then murdered, and three women from the same community, among them a 12-year-old, were raped. Other two leaders, Abran Mitis, from De los pastos town, and Hernando Chindoy, from Inga de Aponte, were attacked and "miraculously saved their lives".

Source : Intercontinental Cry
 

Loggers have invaded the Amazon home of uncontacted Awá Indians, one of whom has reportedly been ‘burned alive’.

Members of the Guajajara tribe, which also inhabits the area, have said that they came across the burned remains of an Awá child in the forest, following an attack by loggers, according to Brazilian NGO CIMI.

Clovis Guajajara, who sometimes sees the Awá in the forest whilst hunting, has reportedly said that he has not seen them since the alleged attack, and he believes they have fled.

The Brazilian government’s Indian Affairs Department, FUNAI, has told Survival International that it is conducting an investigation into the reports, and that the child’s death has not been confirmed.

At least 60 uncontacted Awá Indians are thought to live in this part of the north-eastern Brazilian Amazon – they are one of the last nomadic hunter-gatherer tribes in Brazil. The Awá rely on their forest to survive, but vast numbers of loggers are illegally invading their land, which now suffers one of the highest deforestation rates in the Amazon.

More than 30% of one of the Awá’s territories has already been destroyed.

Luis Carlos Guajajara told Survival today, ‘There are uncontacted Awá in the area and the loggers are pressurising them. The loggers' presence is very dangerous. Indians in the area are scared.’

The Awá have recently suffered a series of brutal attacks, and loggers have warned that the Indians will be killed if they go into their forest.

Survival is lobbying the Brazilian authorities to evict the invaders from the Awá’s land before the devastation puts the Indians’ lives further at risk.   

source : Survival International

The communities of the Makewe territories, who reject the construction of new regional airport in our territory, state the following:

1-.Once again, we begin the claims against this project that invades Mapuche land and life as a true dialogue with affected communities has never been started or continued. We ​​are opposed with our lives to such transnational initiatives.

2 -. We also denounce that various media has bee used by government delegations to hide the true magnitude of the rejection of its new regional airport. Without going further, during yesterday Monday 09

January, Minister Lavin announced a dialogue with communities in the area. This was in a secret conversation, hidden from the communities that truly represent the territory. This media manipulation seems outrageous and even more when it is made out of money itself

3-.As a rejection of these actions, the Makewe territory mobilized since yesterday and we are expressing ourselves by cutting the main road access routes to Temuco. Today however, we have seen the repression of the communities of the area, who were not participating in the demonstrations, went too far: Members of the GOPE and police, entered without warrants to whichever houses they wanted, surrounding the

community with two helicopters that tried countless times to land in our yards, reeking with more than 200 police officers surrounding our homes and even detained two women who were guarding their home from tear gas and police shooting their animals.

4 -. Our lamgen (sisters) were attacked receiving butts in various parts of the faces and bodies INSIDE THEIR OWN YARD, and when they did not allow the police into their land, they were arrested, tearing a child of a year and a half from the arms of his mother leaving him without anyone to care for him and his two siblings, both minors, who witnessed and tried to resist the violent beating and arrest of their mother and sister.

5 -. At this time, the 2 sisters are being held in the third commission of Padre las Casas, awaiting their formalization which will be tomorrow. Even police officers in command, addressed the issue in the national press, declaring that these women had escaped along with hooded protesters who started the rally. These are irresponsible words by the executors of genocide in Mapuche territory.

6 -. We declare that all these accusations are part of a desperate government attempt to criminalize the struggle for the defence of land throughout the Wallmapu(Mapuche territory), first, accusing the Mapuche

movement of being responsible for igniting the forest fires that plague our area and now, by accusing our sisters who this time were the real victims of police repression in the Territory of Makewe that rejects the

airport.

7 - However, these measures of repression against the Mapuche people defending their territory do not frighten us and instead, give us more strength to continue in the defense of our life, our sacred natural

spaces and our self-determination within Mapuche communities

Marichiwew!

Makewe-Rofue Territory

Source : Mapuche mailinglist in English/Dutch

Leaders of an activist group of Chilean indigenous Mapuche people Tuesday denied government accusations they might have set a forest fire that killed seven firefighters last week.

The fire started Thursday at a private estate in the Mininco Forest about 700 kilometers (440 miles) south of the capital, Santiago, in the Carahue commune area.

"In the face of accusations issued by persons from the current government and right-wing members of Parliament, we say -- emphatically -- that the CAM (Coordinadora Arauco Malleco) had nothing to do with events that occurred at the House of Stone estate in Carahue," a statement by the group said.

The Coordinadora Arauco-Malleco is an organization of the Mapuche indigenous people that seeks to reclaim lands in southern Chile they say were taken from them by the government or private owners, such as forestry companies. The Mapuche are Chile's largest indigenous population, making up about four percent of the population.

The group posted the statement on an Internet blog often used by the Mapuche movement. It was picked up by the local media.

Nevertheless, the Mapuche still claim the forest land as their own property.

"We claim this land as ancestral Mapuche territory taken over by the forestry business, which is why we hold them responsible as the only cause of this tragedy," said the statement signed by Hector Llaitul,

political spokesman for CAM.

He is serving a 14-year prison sentence for assaulting a prosecutor in 2008.

The CAM has been blamed for other arson attacks against property or agricultural machinery in the same area, where most of Chile's indigenous communities reside and claim they should be paid restitution

for lands they consider their own under ancestral rights.

Immediately after the deaths of the seven firefighters were confirmed, Chilean President Sebastian Pinera said the incident demonstrated "criminal intent" and conduct of a "terrorist nature."

Afterward, Interior Minister Rodrigo Hinzpeter directed suspicions at Coordinadora Arauco-Malleco and filed a complaint under Chile's anti-terrorism law against the alleged perpetrators of the crime.

Llaitul said invoking the law was a "political strategy" directed "against the Mapuches."

Meanwhile, the US State Department renewed a travel alert Tuesday to American citizens traveling in Chile to beware of regions that have been struck by forest fires in recent days.

The travel alert mentioned the Magallanes, Maule and Bio Bio regions as the areas of greatest concern. The Magallanes region was the site of a devastating fire last week in the Torres del Paine National Park.

The statement urges US citizens "to exercise caution" when traveling to the Torres del Paine National Park or any other affected region.

Source : Mapuche mailinglist in English/Dutch

Santiago de Chile, Jan 3 (Prensa Latina) Social organizations and indigenous representatives on Tuesday will begin demonstrations in several cities around the country, in honor of the Mapuche student

Matías Catrileo, on the occasion of the fourth anniversary of his death.

On January 3, 2008, Catrileo, 23, was shot in the back by a soldier, while participating in a demonstration demanding the Mapuche people's ancestral lands in the Araucanian region.

A military prosecutor found guilty the policeman who shot him and asked the military court to sentence him to 10 years in prison, but the Martial Court in the southern city of Valdivia sentenced the policeman

to three years and one day with the benefit of probation.

On December, the Supreme Court upheld the local court's decision and accordingly endorsed the benefit of probation for Second Corporal Walter Ramirez, a ruling that caused outrage in indigenous communities.

On Tuesday, the victim's family will participate in a march with the Mapuche in Temuco, capital of the Araucanian region, and other similar demonstrations in memory of Matias Catrileo will take place in the

regions of Bio Bio, O Higgins and in the capital city.

According to the Mapuexpress website, a candle vigil will also be held in Stockholm, Sweden, to demand the trial and punishment of those guilty of crimes against the Mapuche people in Chile.

Source : Mapuche mailinglist in English/Dutch

Chile's government has suggested indigenous Mapuche activists may have been responsible for a forest fire that killed seven firefighters on Thursday.

The interior minister named a Mapuche group involved in land disputes with forestry companies.

President Sebastian Pinera has invoked an anti-terror law to pursue those responsible.

Mapuche activists have accused the government of trying to criminalise their movement.

President Pinera reaffirmed that many of the recent fires appeared to have been started deliberately.

"Behind this premeditated and criminal conduct there activity of a terrorist nature," he said.

The worst of the fires have been in the Bio Bio and Araucania regions, where indigenous Mapuche groups have been campaigning to recover ancestral lands from forestry companies.

Interior Minister Rodrigo Hinzpeter said radical Mapuche group Coordinadora Arauco Malleco (CAM) may have been responsible.

The group has previously been accused of arson attacks, and some of its leaders are in jail.

'No evidence'

Other Mapuche activists immediately rejected the link.

The Mapuche Student's Federation accused Mr Hinzpeter of conducting a "media trial" without any evidence and of trying to "delegitimise" the indigenous movement.

The Mapuche say the fires are partly due to the introduction of exotic tree species that have worsened seasonal drought.

The seven firefighters who died in the Araucania region, south of the capital Santiago, were employees of a forestry company.

The forestry workers' union says they were not properly trained or equipped for the job.

Across Chile, wildfires have burned about 500 sq km (190 square miles) of forest and farmland over the past week.

As well as Bio Bio and Araucania, Torres del Paine National Park in the far south of Patagonia has also been badly affected.

source : http://mapuche.nl/mailman/listinfo/nieuws-l

The Flemish Centre for Indigenous Peoples -
Wishes you a joyful 2012,

One of the very few hunter-gatherer tribes in east Africa has been celebrating the recognition of its land rights.

The land titles were formally handed over at a special ceremony held last month in the Hadza community of Domongo.

It is the first time that a Tanzanian government has formally recognized a minority tribe’s land rights.

Doroth Wanzala, the Assistant Commissioner for Land in the Northern Zone told those attending the ceremony, ‘We have resolved that the Hadza should be given official title deeds to ensure that the country’s last hunter-gatherers are not troubled by land-hungry-invaders, particularly in the wake of scramble for land.’

Naftali Kitandu, a Hadza representative said, ‘Invasion by other tribes who bring along herds of cattle and introduce farming in the valley has been threatening the survival of Hadza people who only depend on fruits, roots, honey and small animals for survival.’

Following the ceremony, one Hadza told Survival, ‘We are very happy. Now we need to make sure we get land titles for other Hadza communities.’

The Hadza are a small tribe of about 1,500 hunter gatherers living in north-west Tanzania. They speak a click language.

Until the 1950s they survived entirely by hunting and gathering. Living in small mobile camps, they had no ‘chiefs’ or formal political organization. Since then life has become increasingly hard as larger pastoralist tribes have encroached on much of their land, destroying much of the wildlife and plants on which the Hadza rely for their livelihoods.

A number of NGOs, including the Ujamaa Community Resource Team, supported the Hadza’s long quest for land rights. The organization’s lawyer, Edward ole Lekaita, said: ‘Indeed, this is a great achievement and successful story in the struggle of protecting Hadza’s livelihood for a promising future.’
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