Peru
EU Commission must break silence and suspend trade negotiations
On 5 June, Peruvian authorities embarked on a bloody crackdown on indigenous protests regarding exploitative legislative changes in the wake of a US-Peru trade agreement. Having refrained from commenting on the violence, the EU Commission is now negotiating a neoliberal 'Multiparty Commercial Agreement' with Peru, Colombia and Ecuador in Bogotá.
Green MEPs Raül Romeva and Bart Staes commented:
"It is unacceptable that almost two weeks after the massacre, the EU Commission and Council have still not issued any declaration - let alone condemnation - of the brutal suppression of protests. While the Commission remains silent on the dozens of killed and scores of missing indigenous protestors, it is pursuing negotiations for a free trade agreement with Peru that will have damaging human and environmental consequences.
Aggressive neoliberal trade practices were the very subject of the indigenous people's protests, whose lands face massive overexposure to deforestation, mining and oil extraction. Once again, the Barroso Commission is exposed for favouring big business profits of European companies over the environment and human rights of local populations.
The EU Commission should suspend negotiations for the free trade agreement with Peru and comprehensively revise the negotiating guidelines of any future agreement with the whole of the Andean Community. Given that President Alan Garcia has consistently ignored Peru's commitments to the rights of indigenous people, for example ILO Convention 169, any EU deal must guarantee the rights of local communities."
