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Article

4 Aug 2017

Author:
Sian Cowman & Aldo Orellana López, Intercontinental Cry (USA)

Peru: Aymara community leader charged for role in protests against Santa Ana silver mine; Bear Creek Mining Corp. responds

[E]ighteen Aymara community leaders endured the final stages of a trial that had them facing up to 28 years in prison and massive fines for their alleged roles in the 2011 ‘Aymarazo’ protests against the Santa Ana silver mine...Seventeen...were acquitted of all charges; however...Walter Aduviri was sentenced to 7 years in prison and ordered to pay a 2 million sol fine (over $600,000)...for the charge of disturbing...peace...Aymara population...have struggled with a dominant...narrative stigmatizing [them] as alleged “criminals”... “anti-development”...[C]ommunities...found out about the mine through rumors in 2004...[in] 2007...government authorized the...mine...[In 2011, the government] rescinded the...Decree 083 that gave Bear Creek authorization to proceed...In 2014, the company responded...by filing a $1.2 billion case against Peru at [ICSID]... Bear Creek asserts that...protests were politically motivated... There has also been an increase in “… public policies that create new crimes against people who participate in social protests”...With the verdict in the ICSID case due in September [2017], and Aduviri’s harsh sentence, the situation is a confluence of the state's policy to criminalize...protests, and the...impacts of the tools of corporate power, like free trade agreements, when protests cause a mining project to be halted.