Peru’s Vice-Ministry of Inter-Culturality (VMI) published a report late July highly critical of the plan to expand the Camisea gas project in the Amazon. The report was removed from the internet hours later, according to indigenous rights groups, and a few days later VMI head Paulo Vilca Arpasi resigned.
At least two other high-level officials in the ministry also resigned, reports Survival International.
Forest Peoples Programme and Survival International say the VMI report had highlighted concerns about indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation in the region where expanded gas industry development is planned.
The project encroaches on the Nahua-Nanti Reserve, and gas workers could drastically change the community’s way of life and livelihood, and could bring disease to the isolated people who have not built immunities to common illnesses, the VMI report said, according to the groups.
Four indigenous organizations in Peru have announced they will file a lawsuit against Pluspetrol to try and block the expansion, according to the Huffington Post.
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