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PERU: Miners Call Off Protests for Talks; Six Killed in Clashes

Milagros Salazar

LIMA, Apr 7 2010 (IPS) - In response to a government promise to negotiate, small-scale gold miners in southern Peru temporarily called off protests Wednesday in which six people were killed and as many as 30 injured when the police attempted to clear a roadblock.

Small-scale miner next to cyanide leaching pit. Credit: Milagros Salazar/IPS

Small-scale miner next to cyanide leaching pit. Credit: Milagros Salazar/IPS

The New York-based Human Rights Watch demanded on Tuesday a swift investigation into the deaths, which it blamed on the police.

Some 6,000 unlicensed miners were blocking the Pan-American highway and two bridges near Chala in the southern region of Arequipa since Sunday, as part of a national strike demanding passage of a draft law that would make it possible for them to work legally.

The new bill, negotiated with the government in May 2009, has been stalled in Congress since last June.

On Sunday morning, the miners clashed with the police when the latter tried to clear the traffic blockade on the Pan-American highway, the main coastal road. Five demonstrators were shot and killed, and a woman riding a bus that was stopped by the roadblock died of a heart attack.

Of the 28 demonstrators who were arrested, 27 were released Monday, in exchange for allowing stalled traffic through the roadblock for two hours. One miner is under investigation for illegal possession of explosives.


Leaders of the National Federation of Artisanal Miners of Peru (FENAMARPE), which called the protests, told IPS that between 10 and 20 demonstrators are still missing. They also maintain that the miners’ demands have been misrepresented by the government, which claims they are fighting increased environmental controls.

Peru’s human rights ombudswoman Beatriz Merino said Tuesday that “nothing justifies people being killed” in an avoidable conflict. She also said that although roadblocks are illegal in Peru, the police are not allowed to use excessive force.

The clash between the police and demonstrators in Chala has similarities with a June 2009 incident in Bagua in Peru’s northern Amazon jungle region, where 33 indigenous demonstrators and police were killed when the security forces attempted to lift a roadblock.

On that occasion, the native demonstrators were demanding the repeal of laws that opened up their territories in the jungle to oil, mining and logging companies and undermined indigenous rights.

Peru produces 170 tons of gold a year. Of that total, 44 tons, worth 1.3 billion dollars, come from unlicensed miners in the regions of Madre de Dios in the southeast, Piura in the extreme northwest, Nasca in the southwest and Puno in the southeast, according to the Ministry of Energy and Mines.

In this South American country of enormous mineral wealth, where mining is the main foreign exchange earner, there are an estimated 300,000 small-scale gold miners, although precise statistics are not available.

But only 5,350 artisanal miners have permits, the Ministry of Energy and Mines informed IPS. Most of them hold several concessions for operating mines, and hire informal miners under subcontracting arrangements.

The concession-holders take a 10 percent cut of the informal miners’ profits, and can rake in thousands of dollars while paying the state just 300 dollars a year for a concession giving them the rights to work a 100-hectare area, FENAMARPE’s director of legal affairs, Rafael Seminario, told IPS.

He said that around 80 percent of the union’s members work illegally, without a permit.

FENAMARPE, which has a total of 60,000 members, has branches in 17 of the country’s 25 regions. The biggest branch, made up of 17,000 miners, is in Chala and is leading the protests in the south, where the largest mineral marketing companies are located.

President Alan García described the work of the informal sector miners as “savage mining” that destroys the environment and exploits workers.

“The government calls us savages, but we want to formalise our situation to avoid being exploited by the concession-holders,” said Seminario.

The small-scale miners are asking the government to grant them concessions to “idle land.” But most of the land has already been granted in concessions.

García and his ministers told the press that the main demand of the protesters is the repeal of emergency decree 012 issued on Feb. 18 to control mining activity in Madre de Dios, where the mining industry has already destroyed 18,000 hectares of jungle.

But the mining union leaders explained to IPS that their main demand is the revocation of two other decrees, 1.010 and 1.040, passed in order to implement the free trade agreement with the United States.

The two decrees favour large mining companies and stand in the way of the legalisation of the activity of small-scale miners, FENAMARPE complains.

Decree 1.010 modified the general mining law to promote investment in mining on “barren land,” while 1.040 amended law 27.651 on the “formalisation and promotion of small-scale and artisanal mining”.

In response to the miners’ protests, the authorities agreed to talks in late May and June 2009 to draft a new law that would cover all aspects involved in enabling small-scale miners to work legally.

The talks gave rise to draft law 2.306, which was approved by the congressional commission on energy and mines and was ready for a full vote in June 2009.

“Parliament has had more than nine months to vote on the bill but, just as in the case of Bagua, it only legislates once people have been killed,” said Congresswoman Juana Huancahuari of the opposition Peruvian Nationalist Party.

In the wake of the violence in Bagua, Congress struck down several controversial decrees.

The small-scale mining bill was to go to the floor Tuesday, but the debate was suspended.

When decree 012 was issued in February, FENAMARPE did call for its repeal, at the request of its members in Madre de Dios and to prevent the adoption of similar measures in other regions.

The decree established off-limits areas where small-scale gold miners are not allowed to work in Madre de Dios, and suspended the granting of new concessions, environmentalist Julia Cuadros, with CooperAcción, a local social development organisation, told IPS.

However, applications for concessions that have already begun to be processed – 600 of a total of 2,200 requests in that region, according to the government’s general office on mining – will still go ahead.

The decree also banned dredging, which destroys riverbeds to extract rocks containing gold. The government says there are 15 gold dredges, machines that cost up to half a million dollars, operating in Madre de Dios. Some of them are owned by Russian and Brazilian companies.

Cuadros said decree 012 was positive, because it provides for environmental controls. But she added that without adequate enforcement and oversight, it will not work. Nor does it offer employment alternatives to communities that depend on mining for a livelihood, she said.

She also stressed that “it was the state itself that promoted artisanal mining in Madre de Dios in the first place, years ago.”

Miners in Madre de Dios suspended their protests late Tuesday, while the demonstrators in Chala did so early Wednesday.

 
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