Ecobreves – PERU: Oil Firms Asked Not to Contact Isolated Tribes

By IPS Correspondents and - - Reprint | | Print |

LIMA, Jul 7 2007 (IPS) - The Inter-Ethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Jungle on Jul. 5 asked international oil companies to refrain from oil exploration in areas inhabited by indigenous tribes who live in isolation by choice. These tribes face extinction due to the petroleum boom that has opened up as much as 70 percent of the Peruvian Amazon to exploration, according to the association.

“We want you to understand the extreme vulnerability of those peoples, and the threats posed by contact if oil activities are carried out in their lands,” said the group in a letter to 14 foreign oil companies.

On Jul. 12, the state-run Perupetro company will auction 19 oil fields, seven of which are located in areas of the isolated tribes.

“Contacting these peoples is equivalent to destroying them,” Stephen Corry, director of the non-governmental tribal peoples campaign Survival International, said in a communiqué.