"Open Letter: AIDESEP repudiates Ocho Sur palm oil group intimidation, demands buyers step up to protect human rights and forests", 07 July 2022

...AIDESEP has issued a further public letter in response to an open letter published by the Ocho Sur palm oil group on 27 June 2022 via the website Agroperu.pe. Read AIDESEP’s original open letter, which demanded urgent actions from the Peruvian State, Ocho Sur's international palm oil buyers, the RSPO and international civil society, here.

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The Interethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Rainforest (AIDESEP), a national Indigenous organisation representing 9 regional organisations, 109 federations and 2439 native communities, categorically rejects the letter of the Ocho Sur oil palm business group...

...Intensive agricultural palm oil production is carried out in the so-called Fundo Tibecocha, of about 6,845.43 hectares, without having an environmental management instrument approved by the Ministry of Agrarian Development and Irrigation...Its agroindustrial operations lack any environmental viability as they have affected natural forest ecosystems in Nueva Requena...

..."The case of the company Ocho Sur P (formerly Plantaciones de Pucallpa) in Ucayali, in the district of Nueva Requena, is the most emblematic case of the connection between palm oil and land-trafficking. The form of access to land was a precursor to the widespread phenomenon of land-trafficking that exists today in Ucayali".

They have investors with a dark past for Amazonian forests. Anholt Services USA Inc and Amerra Capital financed Plantaciones de Pucallpa and Melka's operations for the deforestation of thousands of hectares of Amazonian forests and later became the controllers of Ocho Sur, through Peruvian Palm Holdings...

AIDESEP calls on Ocho Sur's international buyers to reiterate that you have an obligation to exercise due diligence before purchasing palm oil from this company, as the burden of proof is on you to demonstrate that your palm oil supply chain sources are not implicated in human rights abuses and the deforestation of tropical forests...