(Lima) Two days after the release of around 100 tourists, indigenous residents of the Amazon region of Peru were holding up another boat with around 70 passengers on board to protest the lack of government aid after an oil spill, according to a local radio station on Sunday.
Posted at 1:31 p.m.
“We are around 70 passengers detained for no apparent reason. The natives are threatening us with their spears and arrows,” lawyer Luis Otazu told RPP radio, saying he was on board the boat.
“We have here 25 crying children, adults, mothers and pregnant women,” he continued.
the coquitocarrying goods and passengers, was intercepted on Saturday morning on the Marañón, a river facing the territory of the Cuninico community.
Indigenous groups have been blocking the passage of any type of boat on this river since Thursday to protest against the spill of crude caused on September 18 by a rupture of the Norperuano oil pipeline (ONP) in the wild region of Loreto, in the north of the country.
Friday, a hundred tourists taken hostage the day before by the same indigenous groups had been released.
According to another passenger coquitoScarlet Rodríguez, passengers were “totally sequestered” and other cargo vessels were held in the area.
The leader of the protest, Galo Vásquez, representative of the indigenous community of Cuninico, indicated that “the boat could not leave until a government delegation is sent to dialogue”.
Neither the police nor the authorities have yet commented on this new incident.
On September 27, the government declared a state of emergency for 90 days in the area affected by the oil spill in the territory of the Cuninico and Urarinas communities, where some 2,500 indigenous people live.
The Norperuano oil pipeline of the state company Petroperú, one of the largest structures in Peru, was built four decades ago to transport oil from the Amazon region to Piura, on the coast, some 800 km.