Fenacoka, the organisation representing the Kakataibo indigenous people, is demanding protection for communities and environmental defenders who are threatened by reprisals from drug traffickers for state coca eradication activities in their territories.

The indigenous leaders welcome the eradication of illegal coca cultivated by outsiders who have illegally invaded their territories. However, without complementary protection measures, the indigenous environmental defenders who denounce these illegal activities find themselves exposed to reprisals from drug traffickers.

Eradication operations on the frontier between Huánuco and Ucayali regions at the end of June have provoked reprisals. One member of an indigenous community was attacked by three armed men who demanded he reveal the whereabouts of the leaders who requested the eradication. Having received death threats, one of them was obliged to leave his community and seek refuge in a neighbouring town. Four Kakataibo leaders have been assassinated so far, presumably by drug traffickers.

The vulnerable situation in which indigenous peoples and their communities find themselves has been made worse by regional, local and other authorities favouring land grabbers in awarding land titles. Warnings by indigenous organisations that eradication must be accompanied by complementary measures have been ignored.

Specifically, Fenacoka is demanding the following:

  • That the Ministry of Agriculture and the Huánuco regional government immediately begin the titling of the Kakataibo indigenous communities.
  • That the Ministry of the Interior organise police operations in the communities of Unipacuyacu, Yamino, Mariscal Cáceres, Puerto Azul and Santa María to safeguard the lives of community members and to develop comprehensive security strategies to protect indigenous families threatened by violence.
  • That the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights convene an urgent meeting under the Intersectoral Mechanism for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders to deal with the risks to life arising from eradication operations. The leaders and their families need to be considered as defenders, as well as the Fenacoka as an organisation.
  • That the alternative development programmes conducted by Devida need to be redirected subject to prior agreement with the representative organisations of indigenous peoples.
  • That the Public Prosecutor’s office initiate an investigation to discover the intellectual authors of the threats, harassment and murders suffered by Kakataibo leaders.
  • That Devida must provide urgent remediation to the invasions by coca growers through legal reorganisation and greater state presence as part of its alternative development projects.
  • That the embassies of the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union, Norway, Germany and all cooperation agencies and international organisations seeking to combat drug trafficking and deforestation use their technical assistance programmes to guarantee the right to life through alternative development, territorial security and the fight against deforestation.