Images reveal full
horror of 'Amazon's Tiananmen'
Friday, 19
June 2009
The bloodied face
of a protester as behind him fellow protestors are arrested by
police
First, the police
fire tear gas, then rubber bullets. As protesters flee, they move on to live
rounds. One man, wearing only a pair of shorts, stops to raise his hands in
surrender. He is knocked to the ground and given an extended beating by eight
policemen in black body-armour and helmets.
Demonstrators
getting worked-over by the rifle butts and truncheons of
The events of
Friday, 5 June, when armed police went to clear 2,000 Aguaruna and Wampi Indians
from a secluded highway near the town of
Yet until today,
details were shrouded in mystery. Now, pictures have emerged. They were taken at
the scene by two Belgian aid workers, Marijke Deleu and Thomas Quiryneen, and
provide compelling details of the chaotic confrontation that killed a reported
60 people, many of them unarmed, with vast numbers still unaccounted for.
"At first, we saw
police firing guns and tear gas at a mass of protesters," said Ms Deleu, who
reached the highway at 7am, an hour after heavily armed police arrived at the
location, 870 miles north of
A dossier of
photographs, many too graphic to be printed in this newspaper, will be shown to
MPs at the House of Commons on Monday by Ms Deleu and Mr Quiryneen, who are
volunteers for Catapa, a Flemish organisation supporting indigenous communities
in Peru, Bolivia and Guatemala.
Called Death at
Devil's
One series shows
police stopping a passing ambulance. They force four injured protesters out of
the vehicle, and beat them for several minutes, claiming, without any apparent
justification, that their vehicle was carrying concealed weapons. Another, taken
later in the day shows rows of wounded being treated in local hospitals.
Nineteen are at Bagua Grand; 47 in Bagua Chica. Many have heavy bruising, and
bandages covering bullet wounds.
"Several people
said they had been shot while they were fast asleep," said Ms Deleu. "They claim
the police woke them up by opening fire. One of the bodies had a bullet wound in
his shoulder, which suggested to me that he'd been shot while lying down."
Further pictures,
which will only fuel rumours of a government-orchestrated cover-up, show twisted
corpses of native Indians lying by the side of the road. When tribal leaders
tried to collect them, they came under fire and were refused access. By the next
day, the corpses had disappeared.
The Peruvian
President, Alan Garcia, has claimed 32 people were killed in the incident, of
which 23 were police officers. However human rights lawyers and news reports put
the number of confirmed deaths at closer to 60, and say hundreds are still
missing.
Until this week,
many international observers have been unable to visit the region because of a
curfew. Pressure groups have accused security forces of burying and burning
corpses to hide the extent of the death toll.
"There needs to be
an independent investigation to establish exactly what happened," said Jonathan
Mazower of Survival International, which will today publish Ms Deleu and
Mr Quiryneen's dossier on its website. "Our initial reaction to these dramatic
photographs is that they may provide the first impartial account of what
actually went on."
The pictures
emerged as Alberto Pizango, the head of Aidesep, the organisation representing
56 of
Meanwhile Mr Garcia
has been forced to suspend the introduction of laws allowing foreign companies
to exploit the rainforest. His Prime Minister Yehude Simon resigned on Monday,
joining populist minister Carmen Vildoso, who quit last week during a general
strike in protest at the incident.