[Lasa] Indigenous resistance is the new 'terrorism'

[Marc Becker]

Indigenous resistance is the new 'terrorism'

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/06/201162995115833636.html

In Ecuador, protesting for the rights of the Earth and trying to 
preserve natural resources may make you a "terrorist".

Manuela Picq Last Modified: 10 Jul 2011 12:44
	
If you thought there was anything romantic about environmental activism 
or indigenous rights, think twice.  Socialist ideas about nature - such 
as keeping water a public good - can get you facing charges of sabotage 
by a leftist government. In the land of the Incas, if you protect the 
pachamama ["Mother World"], you might just be a "terrorist".

It's becoming tricky to identify "terrorists", at least in Ecuador. They 
are not members of criminal organisations, they don't spread fear or 
target civilians, nor have a politically motivated agenda. According to 
President Correa, "terrorists" are those opposing Ecuador's development. 
So today's "terrorism" might just look like indigenous peoples 
peacefully taking over the streets, with their ancestral knowledge and 
values, to demand environmental and social rights.

In Ecuador, "terrorists" are indigenous peoples from the Amazon and the 
Andean highlands fighting to preserve access to water in their 
communities. Old penal codes written in times of dictatorship are being 
revived by leftist presidents to repress indigenous activists. As 
"terrorists", they are labelled as enemies of the state, and arrested - 
by the very president that claimed leftist credentials and staged his 
inauguration in overtly ethnic style.

When the Continental Summit of Indigenous Peoples and Nationalities of 
Abya Yala gathered delegations from the entire hemisphere in Ecuador 
last month, the focus was on the criminalisation of environmental protest.

Abya Yala, which means "continent of life" in the language of the 
Panamanian Kuna peoples, refers to the Americas. The summit has 
consolidated ethnic organising capacity across borders since it first 
organised in 1990, maintaining a diversity of indigenous voices from 
Canada and the US all the way to Honduras, Guatemala, Argentina and Chile.

This fifth meeting was symbolically held in Cuenca, where the last Inca 
died of smallpox - brought from Europe - years before the Spaniards 
themselves made it to the Andes. This year's topic was water - yakumama 
in Quechua, and the earth - pachamama, echoing the growing environmental 
pressures on rural communities.

But the week's true highlight was the establishment of an independent, 
transnational Ethics Tribunal.

Modelled on a "truth commission", the Ethics Tribunal was designed as a 
public court to bring visibility to injustices and foster government 
accountability towards international human and indigenous rights. It was 
specifically established to address cases of criminalisation of 
indigenous protest for environmental justice.

On June 22, a four-judge tribunal heard multiple expert reports - as 
well as 17 personal testimonies - taking more than four hours on the 
issue.

According to Ecuador's Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities, there 
are currently 189 cases of people accused of sabotage and terrorism by 
the Ecuadorian government, for protesting the privatisation of natural 
resources. The situation is so critical that Amnesty International 
issued a statement denouncing it as an attempt to silence opposition to 
government policies.

Cases vary in context, but not in substance. In Cochapata, community 
members were condemned to eight years in jail on charges of terrorism 
for opposing mining - the government has so far ignored the amnesty 
granted by the constitutional assembly. A radio station in the Amazon 
province of Morona Santiago, Radio Canela, was shut down in April for 
fueling opposition.

Silencing the opposition

The most prominent cases relate to the accusation and illegal arrest of 
some of the most visible indigenous leaders in Ecuador - Pepe Acacho, 
Marlon Santi, Delfin Tenesaca and Marco Guatemal. The four heads of 
national indigenous organisations were accused of sabotage for 
participating in marches against laws to privatise water during a 2010 
summit of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas in the indigenous 
town of Otavalo, where leftist presidents discussed continental 
multiculturalism without inviting indigenous organisations.

All cases reveal a state-led effort to silence indigenous protest to 
protect access to clean water.

Using so-called "anti-terror" laws to silence indigenous struggles over 
natural resources is not a new strategy. Chile, for instance, has 
extensively used anti-terror laws created under the Pinochet regime to 
criminalise Mapuche protests over lumber. Canada has also responded to 
opposition against resource extraction on native land in Ontario by 
incarcerating the protesters.

What is news is that a leftist president - who has repeatedly fallen 
back on ethno-politics to increase his legitimacy - is using forms of 
martial law inherited from past military regimes to destroy indigenous 
calls for environmental justice.

The irony is that President Correa, a political ally of Evo Morales and 
Hugo Chavez against North American hegemony, maintains a strong 
discourse of environmental justice for the Global South. Not only has 
his administration pioneered international norms by granting new rights 
to nature in the 2008 Constitution, but it strongly supported the 
World's People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother 
Earth held in Bolivia in 2010.

Yet President Correa started using laws codified in the 1920s and 1970s, 
including the Doctrine of National Security designed by the military 
dictatorship, to persecute indigenous opposition. He created a state of 
emergency, calling upon the armed forces to intervene when internal 
security might be threatened, and he has already shown a willingness to 
use them.

Proposed legislation to increase jail time for stopping traffic is a 
direct attempt to disrupt traditional forms of indigenous protest, which 
often rely on marches and road-blocks.

Correa's government, which was elected under a mantle of social justice, 
has also silenced his opposition through legal and military violence and 
manipulating judicial mechanisms to repress dissidents. The most recent 
referendum expanded the executive grasp on the judicial apparatus, 
making it even more dangerous to oppose his neoliberal stance on natural 
resources.

Ecuador's indigenous movement, often described as the strongest in Latin 
America, has been strongly targeted as the main opposition to Correa's 
neoliberal agenda with regards to water.

Last year's proposed Water and Mining Laws to further privatise access 
to water and expand mining concessions was stopped only by indigenous 
mobilisation. Extractive policies are at a peak, with close to two 
thousand mining concessions, according to the Ministry of Energy and Mines.

Despite Correa's best efforts to silence indigenous claims, one cannot 
but recall Bolivia's water wars a decade ago. Multinational 
participation in the privatisation of water led to widespread street 
protests, and the more the government repressed protest the more 
tensions escalated until Cochabamba exploded in conflict.

Indigenous peoples have been struggling for survival on their lands for 
centuries - they are not about to let water go. Instead, the 
confrontation seems to be worsening.

As things intensify, the indigenous peoples of Ecuador will continue to 
take their protest to the streets. They will also focus on organising 
international pressure on their government. The Ethics Tribunal will not 
run out of work anytime soon.

Manuela Picq has just completed her time as a visiting professor and 
research fellow at Amherst College. She is returning to the Amazon this 
autumn to continue her research on indigenous peoples' rights.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not 
necessarily represent Al Jazeera's editorial policy.

Source: Al Jazeera