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PERU: Congress Probes Massacre; Prime Minister to Quit

Ángel Páez

LIMA, Jun 16 2009 (IPS) - At the initiative of the opposition parties, the Peruvian parliament approved the creation of a committee to investigate the clash early this month between indigenous protesters and the police near the town of Bagua in the northern province of Amazonas, which according to official reports left a death toll of 34.

Among other things, the committee is to determine whether the police acted on their own or under orders from Interior Minister Mercedes Cabanillas, and if so, if she received the order from President Alan García.

In addition, Prime Minister Yehude Simon said Tuesday that he would step down in the next few weeks, once the situation has calmed down, and that the government would ask Congress to overturn the controversial decrees that opened up the rainforest to oil, mining and other interests and triggered the indigenous protests.

At a Jun. 3 cabinet meeting, two days before the tragic Jun. 5 incident, the president allegedly issued an order for the security forces to break up the roadblock that native demonstrators had held for 50 days along the Fernando Belaunde Terry highway, an important artery in the Amazon jungle.

Sources with the national police directorate told IPS that Cabanillas called together the police general staff that same day, Jun. 3, to begin planning the operation, which was to involve the use of force.

In the meeting, Cabanillas met with the national police chief, General José Sánchez Farfán, the head of special operations (DIROES), General Luis Muguruza, and the head of police operations (DIREOP), General Bernabé Garavito.

General Muguruza travelled to Bagua the next day to take command of the operation, which began at dawn on Jun. 5 at the spot on the highway known as the Curva del Diablo (Devil’s Curve), near the town of Bagua, where the protesters were manning the roadblock.

According to the sources at the national police directorate, the operation was carried out despite the fact that two local police chiefs had signed non-aggression pacts with the leaders of the protests.

General Javier Uribe, the police chief in the district where Bagua is located, and Miguel Montenegro, the head of the security forces guarding the Petroperu oil pumping station No. 6 had signed agreements with the native demonstrators so that in case the national government ordered the security forces to break up the traffic blockade, the protesters would be given time to peacefully pull out.

The leader of the protest, Awajún Indian Salomón Aguanash, told the reporter sent by IPS to Bagua that on Thursday, Jun. 4, General Uribe gave the demonstrators until 10:00 AM the next morning to clear out, which they were planning to do at 8:00 or 9:00 AM on Friday.

Nevertheless, Muguruza launched the attack at around 5:30 AM against the thousands of indigenous people who had flocked to Bagua from their remote jungle villages to demand that the García administration repeal the so-called “jungle laws” – decrees that open up native territories in the Amazon jungle to oil, mining, logging and agribusiness corporations.

At dawn that morning, 600 DINOES policemen, backed up by an Mi-17 helicopter and an armoured vehicle and carrying tear gas and AKM assault rifles, opened fire on the peaceful crowd of indigenous people, most of whom belong to the Awajún tribe, at the roadblock.

Police officers who survived an attack by indigenous people at the Petroperu oil pumping station No. 6 told IPS that the protesters killed their colleagues in reprisal for the security forces’ failure to respect the peace agreements.

When the first victims began to be shot down by the police at the Curva del Diablo, indigenous protesters took the 38 police at the pumping station hostage, and stripped them of their weapons.

When they heard that the police were killing their fellow protesters, breaking the peace agreement they had signed, the Awajún who had taken hostages proceeded to take vengeance by using their spears to kill 12 police, including the commander, Montenegro, at the pumping station.

Another 12 police officers were killed at Curva del Diablo in retaliation for the killings of demonstrators.

According to official reports, 10 civilians were killed, including indigenous demonstrators and local townspeople who later gathered at the police station in Bagua to angrily protest the killings.

But the demonstrators themselves say dozens of indigenous people may have been killed, and several eyewitnesses reported that bodies were thrown into a nearby river from a police helicopter. The native groups that organised the protest are drawing up lists of missing protesters and looking for bodies.

The parliamentary investigation committee will determine whether all of the police officers were killed by the protesters, or whether some were the victims of friendly fire from the security forces themselves.

“Our superiors abandoned us,” a police officer at the pumping station told IPS on condition of anonymity.

“They knew we had peace agreements with the apus (indigenous chiefs). We were never informed of the operation at Curva del Diablo. Commander Montenegro was in constant communication with the indigenous protesters. We even played football together, and shared food. We trusted each other. I don’t understand why we weren’t alerted about the operation,” he said.

“When the indigenous people heard over the radio receivers about what was happening at Curva del Diablo – which is just a few minutes away from pumping station No. 6 – they surrounded us, and there were thousands of them,” he said.

“Commander Montenegro ordered us to stay calm, because if we opened fire there would be a bloodbath. The apus told us we had betrayed them, but the commander explained to them that we didn’t know anything about the operation.

“To avoid problems, we handed over our weapons, and the Indians tied our feet and hands together,” he said.

“But when they heard that several indigenous people had been killed at Curva del Diablo, their mood changed and they took us to a community centre. There they received orders to kill us. I was luckily able to escape.

“The senior commanders forgot about us. If they had told us about the operation ahead of time, a lot of lives could have been saved,” he added.

Another police officer who survived the killings at pumping station No. 6, who also spoke to IPS on the condition that he would not be identified, said commander Montenegro tried to explain to the apus that the operation was being carried out without his knowledge, but they did not believe him.

“Besides, he couldn’t speak a single word of the Awajún language,” he said.

“Commander Montenegro tried to get the apus to respect the peace agreement, but they responded ‘what peace agreement, they’re killing our brothers and sisters at Curva del Diablo’,” said the policeman.

“I wanted to use my AKM rifle, but the commander said no, he said he would make them understand, that everything would be cleared up, but he ended up being murdered along with other colleagues.”

Major Felipe Bazán is still missing, and there are fears that he was also killed.

After the accounts of the policemen who survived the massacre in Bagua came out, Minister Cabanillas denied that she ordered the police operation at Curva del Diablo.

In an interview with the Lima daily La República, she said “I didn’t decide to launch the operation, it was a decision of the police commanders.”

Asked whether the orders came from President García or from her, she answered “neither.”

And when she was asked whether the police brass acted on their own, she said “yes.”

That is one of the reasons the opposition decided to investigate the circumstances surrounding the deaths of the police officers and protesters in the jungle region and to what extent García, Cabanillas and the police chiefs were responsible.

The massacre in Bagua has plunged the government into crisis. Prime Minister Simon traveled to Bagua on Monday and personally told the apus that the government would introduce a draft law Wednesday to get Congress to repeal the decrees that sparked the protests.

The local media, opposition parties and indigenous associations had all been calling for Simon’s resignation.