ECUADOR : Salvar al Amazonas de la codicia de una compañía petrolera.
Indigenous Waorani elders, youth and leaders gathered in Puyo, Ecuador, on Feb. 27, to launch a lawsuit against the government's auctioning of their ancestral lands to the oil industry. Mitch Anderson / Amazon Frontlines
By Reynard LokiOn Feb. 27, hundreds of Indigenous Waorani elders, youth and leaders arrived in the city of Puyo, Ecuador. They left their homes deep in the Amazon rainforest to peacefully march through the streets, hold banners, sing songs and, most importantly, submit documents to the provincial Judicial Council to launch a lawsuit seeking to stop the government from auctioning off their ancestral lands in the Pastaza region to oil companies. An eastern jungle province whose eponymous river is one of the more than 1,000 tributaries that feed the mighty Amazon, Pastaza encompasses some of the world's most biodiverse regions.
Co-filed with the Coordinating Council of the Waorani Nationality of Ecuador–Pastaza (Pastaza CONCONAWEP), a political organization of the Waorani, and the Ecuadorian Human Rights Ombudsman against the Ecuadorian Ministry of Energy and Non-Renewable Natural Resources, the Secretary of Hydrocarbons and the Ministry of Environment, the lawsuit alleges that the Waorani's rights granted to them under the Ecuadorian constitution "were violated due to an improper consultation process prior to an oil auction which would offer up the Waorani's lands in the Pastaza region to the highest bidding oil company," according to Amazon Frontlines, a nonprofit advocacy group supporting the Indigenous peoples living in the Amazon rainforest. The government's auction, announced in February of last year, included 16 new oil concessions covering nearly seven million acres of roadless, primary Amazonian forest across southeast Ecuador.
A hearing to argue the lawsuit was held in Puyo on March 13, but according to Amazon Frontlines, the group of assembled Waorani women "broke into song in court and did not stop" until the judge, "unable to be heard over the songs of the Waorani women ... called the parties' lawyers to the bench and declared the suspension of the hearing until a translator was found." The Waorani said that, in keeping with Waorani tradition, they would only accept a translator approved by their elder leaders. "The Waorani have their own authorities and their own systems, which must be respected by the Western systems," Lina Maria Espinosa, attorney for the Waorani petitioners and a member of Amazon Frontlines' legal team, told the Independent Media Institute. "This case is an example of the country's obligation to apply intercultural justice."
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