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PERU: Three Days of Anti-Government Protests
By Ángel Páez
LIMA (IPS) - Wednesday was the second day of a
three-day strike declared by trade unions and social
movements in Peru to protest the economic policies
of President Alan García.
According to the government, the strike has been a
complete failure. Labour Minister Jorge Villasante
said "work has continued as normal in Peru. The
protest has not caught on among the workers as the
organisers had hoped."
But Carmen Sifuentes, the president of the CGTP -
Peru's largest trade union federation – commented to
IPS: "If it's such a flop, if the unions do not
represent anyone, why are they offering 20 soles to
people who went to work? The government is lying to
the people."
The government offered workers who stayed on the job
an incentive of 20 soles (6.6 dollars).
Thousands of members of the security forces were
deployed Wednesday in Lima to keep order, and police
chief General José Sánchez reported that over 156
demonstrators were arrested, mainly in Lima. He also
said the strike had 100 percent adherence in the
southern provinces of Huancavelica, Puno and Cuzco.
The main protests took place in Puno, Ayacucho,
Apurímac, Cuzco and Huancavelica – southern Andean
highlands regions where García made a poor showing
in the 2006 presidential elections.
Activities around the country in support of the
strike included roadblocks and street marches and
protests.
The strike is taking place in the midst of a serious
government crisis that forced the president to move
forward a planned cabinet shuffle, initially
announced for Jul. 28.
The authorities have carried out an intense media
campaign to convince the public that foreign
"terrorist" organisations are behind the strike
which is aimed, they say, at fomenting "hatred and
violence among Peruvians."
A survey published Monday by the Public Opinion
Institute of Peru's Catholic University, indicates
that the president's popularity ratings plunged 11
percentage points - from 36 to 25 percent - since
the bloody Jun. 5 clash between police and
indigenous protesters in which at least 34 police
and demonstrators were killed near the town of Bagua
in the northern province of Amazonas.
The police brutally cracked down that day on a
two-month roadblock that was part of native protests
against government decrees that opened up indigenous
territories in the Amazon jungle to foreign mining,
oil and timber companies.
This week's strike and protests were called by the
National Front for Life and Sovereignty, an umbrella
group that has brought together the main trade union
federations, small farmers' associations, the
teachers union, the national association of local
communities affected by the mining industry, the
largest coalitions of indigenous organisations,
regional leaders and left-wing political parties.
Miguel Palacín, the leader in Peru of the Andean
Coordinator of Indigenous Organisations (CAOI), said
the actions are against the decrees passed by the
government in mid-2008 to facilitate implementation
of the free trade agreement signed with the United
States.
Two of the most controversial decrees were
overturned last month by Congress in the wake of the
tragic events at Bagua, and two more had been
repealed last year.
"We are also demanding changes to the economic model
that foments the granting of concessions for the
exploitation of natural resources in territories
that belong to native communities," Palacín told IPS.
More than 70 percent of Peru’s Amazon rainforest was
divided into concessions for oil and natural gas
investment between 2003 and 2008, according to a
March report by the local non-governmental
organisation Law, Environment and Natural Resources
(DAR), which was based on official data.
"Another important point is the protest against the
policy of criminalising social protest," Palacín
added. "The government has unleashed persecution
against anyone who rejects its economic policies."
Alberto Pizango, the president of the Peruvian
Rainforest Inter-Ethnic Development Association (AIDESEP)
– which groups 28 Amazon jungle indigenous
federations and forms part of the National Front for
Life and Sovereignty – fled into exile in Nicaragua
when the García administration accused him of
inciting violence in Bagua and a warrant was issued
for his arrest.
And on Tuesday, two other native leaders, brothers
Servando and Saúl Puerta, members of the Awajún
indigenous community, sought asylum in the
Nicaraguan embassy after charges were brought
against them in connection with the violence in
Bagua.
A 2008 report by the National Human Rights
Coordinator (CNDH), which groups 67 local NGOs, said
the government’s response to growing popular
discontent over its economic policies had been to
clamp down on protests and refuse to engage in
dialogue, a strategy that had merely generated
greater social conflict.
Interior Minister Mercedes Cabanillas has stated
that sectors with links to Venezuelan President Hugo
Chávez have infiltrated the protests.
"There is no Chavista (pro-Chávez) or any other kind
of infiltration," the CGTP's Sifuentes told IPS.
"They claim there is terrorist infiltration, which
is also false. The government, desperate over the
growth of the social protests, is trying to
discredit the organisations…The government, though,
IS infiltrated – by the interests of transnational
corporations that rake in the profits from our
natural resources," she added.
The state’s tax revenues shrank by nearly 2.7
billion dollars in 2006 and 2007 because of the
government's decision not to charge royalties or a
promised windfall tax, according to a report by the
Grupo Propuesta Ciudadana, a coalition of local
NGOs, which was based on official figures.
Twenty-five large mining companies operating in this
country pay no royalties.
Propuesta Ciudadana estimated that large mining
companies in Peru took in windfall earnings of
nearly 3.45 billion dollars in 2006 and close to
4.14 billion dollars in 2007.
Strikes and protest activities
In Puno protesters blocked highways leading to
neighbouring Bolivia, demanding the repeal of the
law on water resources, which they say paves the way
for privatisation of water. And in Ica, on the
Pacific coast, cotton farmers set up roadblocks to
protest the law.
Coca producers blocked traffic and held marches in
the central province of Huánuco. In Arequipa in the
south, public transport was restricted, making it
hard for people to get to work.
In Huamanga in the southern province of Ayacucho –
one of the poorest parts of Peru, which is demanding
heavier government social spending - demonstrators
from a number of trade unions and civil society
organisations cut off traffic along the main
highway. And the train running from Cuzco to Machu
Picchu was not running Wednesday.
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