Action Alert: Peru environmentalists at risk

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL USA


Dear --,

Environmental defenders in Peru need your urgent support.

In the Peruvian province of Cajamarca, rural community members are opposing expansion of the Yanacocha gold mine, a project led by a US corporation, after a mercury spill may have caused poisoning among residents. Community organizers have been harassed and threatened, in apparent retribution for their work for the Comprehensive Training for Sustainable Development Group (Grupo de Formación e Integración para el Desarrollo Sostenible, GRUFIDES), a human rights and environmental organization that is monitoring the environmental impacts of the mine and supporting local activism.

Over the past few months community organizers have been threatened, and two campesino leaders allegedly assassinated, in connection with their opposition to expansion of the gold mining project.
Organizers with GRUFIDES have received death threats and been followed and filmed; two vocal campesino opponents of the mine died under mysterious circumstances, one in August and one in November 2006. All of these incidents have been reported to the authorities but no action has been taken to investigate them, or to offer protection to those at risk.

Please take action now, expressing concern for the safety of all staff of GRUFIDES, asking the authorities to take steps to guarantee the safety of local opponents of the mining project, and urging officials to carry out an independent and impartial investigation of these incidents: http://www.kintera.org/TR.asp?ID=M7219551810620847538378165.

In Solidarity,

Amnesty International's Corporate Action Network (CAN)
corpaction@aiusa.org

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