Peruvian Gas Line Threatens Indigenous South

American Tribes

June 27, 2014

 

Despite overwhelming international outrage, the

resignation of numerous ministers and condemnation by

the United Nations and international human rights

organizations, the Peruvian government recently approved

the highly controversial expansion of the CAMISEA GAS

PROJECT. The expansion will encroach onto the lands of numerous uncontacted Amazon tribes who rely on the

forest for their survival, potentially taking away their sustenance and exposing them to foreign bacteria and diseases which could prove to be a death sentence for the indigenous peoples.

 

Peru’s Ministry of Culture, whose MAIN task is protecting the country’s indigenous population, has sold old approved plans by oil and gas giants Pluspetrol (Argentina), Hunt Oil (U.S.) and Repsol (Spain) to detonate THOUSANDS of explosive charges, to drill exploratory wells and to allow HUNDREDS of foreign workers to flood into the Nahua-Nanti Reserve, located just 100km (~62 miles) from Machu Picchu. The expansion could decimate the uncontacted tribes who live in the reserve, as any contact between the workers and the Indians is likely to result in the spread of diseases or epidemics to which the Indians lack immunity.

 

Pluspetrol recognizes and acknowledges the devastating impact that the expansion could have on the environment and the people, but will willingly proceed. In its supposed “Anthropological Contingency Plan,” the company states that any diseases transmitted by workers could cause “prolonged periods of illness, massive deaths, and, in the best cases, long periods of recovery.”

 

 

~ MERIT