Nicaragua Grant Asylum to Peruvian Indigenous Leader

By Nima Nayebi

Impunity Watch Reporter, North America

Alberto Pinzango - Photo: Correo Huanuco

MANAGUA, Nicaragua - Nicaragua has granted asylum to exiled Peruvian Indian political leader Alberto Pizango, after he requested shelter at the Nicaraguan Embassy in Peru earlier this week.

The Peruvian government has accused Pizango, and indigenous political leader, of instigating a series of clashes in the Amazon that left at least 33 dead. He is wanted for sedition, conspiracy and rebellion.

Tomas Borge, the Nicaraguan ambassador to Peru stated: “Our only choice, keeping in mind the spirit of solidarity that [Nicaraguan] President Daniel Ortega has [with] those thought to be politically persecuted, was to grant political asylum to Mr. Alberto Pizango. We have no other choice and no other alternative than to grant Pizango asylum since this is a strictly political case and this is a person being politically persecuted.”

The controversy arose when the Peruvian government passed Decree 1090, a law that indigenous people contend undermines their control over ancestral lands by empowering Lima to grant mining, logging and drilling permits without consulting area residents. The plans would also effectively ease environmental and developmental restrictions in the area.

In protest, indigenous people blocked main arteries of traffic and shut down a crude oil pipeline that traverses the Amazon and ends in Peru’s north coast. Police forcefully removed protesters from a highway last Friday, triggering an outbreak of violence between Peruvian authorities and the indigenous population. Peru maintains that 24 police officers and nine protesters died during the clash, while indigenous groups claim that 30 to 40 protesters were killed by police.

For more information, please see:

ABC - Nicaragua grants asylum to wanted Indian leader - 10 June 2009

Impunity Watch - Peruvian Government Seeks to Arrest Peruvian Indigenous Leader - 10 June 2009

Latin American Herald Tribune - Nicaragua Grants Peruvian Indian Leader Asylum - 10 June 2009

Guardian UK - Peruvian indigenous leader seeks asylum in Nicaragua's embassy - 9 June 2009

Comments

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Alberto Pizango Chota is the current president of AIDESEP, the premier indigenous rights organization in Peru. Most notably, Pizango has been actively resisting the government of Peru's selling of petroleum concessions to foreign companies of lands legally titled to indigenous people.

In August 2008, Pizango supported protests by indigenous Amazonians in which the tribal groups seized control of two energy installations -- a natural gas field being developed in southern Peru by the Argentine company Pluspetrol, and a petroleum pipeline in northern Peru owned by PetroPeru. During the protests, the natives took two police officers hostage. In response, the government declared a state of emergency in the departments of Cusco, Loreto and Amazonas, a move that gave it the power to send in the army to forcibly remove and arrest the protesters. Tensions peaked when Pizango responded to the government's threat to send in troops by stating that "Indigenous people are defending themselves against government aggression."
Subsequently the protests ended when Alberto Pizango and his AIDESEP organization persuaded Congress to repeal two land laws aimed at opening up Amazonian tribal areas to petroleum companies, which had originally led to the protests by the indigenous tribes. On Friday, September 6, 2008, Congress repealed the laws created by President Alan García, who had created the laws by special presidential decree. Alberto Pizango stated that his victory was "A new dawn for the country's indigenous peoples."After his planned arrest was announced in Lima he sought asylum in Bolivia without success, and was then granted asylum by Nicaragua. As of June 10, 2009 he remains in the Nicaraguan embassy in Lima