Ten years ago, four Indigenous Asháninka environmental defenders were murdered in the forests near their community of Saweto in Peru’s Amazon Ucayali region. In 2023, a court in Pucallpa found three loggers guilty of aggravated homicide against the leaders, sentencing them to 28 years and three months in prison. However, this case has since been appealed. Today, members of the Asháninka community say they continue to fear for their lives. “The problem is still there,” said the wife of one of the four leaders, who wished to remain anonymous for safety reasons. “I am in trouble and so is the community. For the loggers, this work is not finished. They keep cutting down the trees in the village, and they say if you come to bother us, you will be killed.” According to a new report by the Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP), the estimated 29 environmental defenders killed in the Peruvian Amazon between 2010 and 2022 may be connected to environment-related crimes, such as illegal mining, logging and coca cultivation. This is because many of the killings disproportionately occurred in geographic clusters that coincide with these activities. This violence has increased in recent years with almost half of the killings occurring since 2020. The wife of one of the Indigenous leaders killed in 2014 told Mongabay that she had to leave the community to seek safety in a nearby city. This has been a huge challenge, as she previously relied on the forest to sustain herself and…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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