"Criminalisation of Protest: The Method to Silence Urinsaya Defenders" - 15 March 2022

BACKGROUND

On 11 December 2010, the native community of Urinsaya, located in the district of Coporaque, province of Espinar, department of Cusco, reached an agreement with the Xstrata Tintaya S.A. mining company (at that time owned by Las Bambas mining concession) to grant an easement for the passage of a pipeline (concentrate pipeline).

This channel would function as an ore conveyor belt that would occupy an area of 72.0193 hectares of their communal territory and cross the territories of other communities in the mining corridor until it reached the Las Bambas mining project in the Apurímac region. This agreement, between the community and the mining company, was registered in the public registry office of Espinar on 28 January 2011, under registration number 02009045...As the former president of this community, Isaías Kana Huillca, states, the road was only for the transfer of material and supplies during the mine construction phase. If the decision had been to avoid environmental contamination, the ore would have been transported by pipeline, an agreement that has not been fulfilled to this day. The nearly three hundred encapsulated ore trucks of the MMG Las Bambas mining company travel every day along the same unpaved road, transporting copper, producing vibrations, noise, and dust, not to mention the accidents that occur. .... The government, far from addressing the socio-environmental problem in Urinsaya, issued Ministerial Resolution n.° 054-2019-MTC, which reclassified the communal road from mining corridor to national road, violating the right of all affected communities to prior consultation, further exacerbating the conflict in Urinsaya initiated since 2017.

CRIMINALISATION BEGINS

The total disregard and lack of dialogue on the part of the government led the Urinsaya community to take a measure of struggle. On 10 January 2020, four members of the board of directors of this community were criminalised [subject to criminal charges] for the alleged crime of kidnapping and hindering the functioning of public services. Only for the fact of verifying within their communal territory an accident involving a mining truck belonging to the company Las Bambas, which was found to have lost its way with a possible mineral spill.... The further criminalisation of the defenders of Urinsaya began on 28 January 2020, when the community called an indefinite strike. In response, two days later, two community members and eight other community members were criminalised by the police and the Prosecutor's Office of Espinar for the alleged crime of kidnapping. On 31 January 2020, community members Abel Kana Quispe (lieutenant governor of Urinsaya) and Jorge Kana Taco (community prosecutor) were arrested and subjected to a pre-trial detention hearing. They were also transferred to the province of Canchis (outside the jurisdiction of the Espinar court where they were to be held) at the request of the Public Prosecutor's Office. However, the request for pre-trial detention was declared unfounded, then appealed by the Public Prosecutor's Office and the decision was confirmed in the second instance...