From: First Peoples Human Rights
CoalitionSent: Monday, October 31, 2011 9:30 AM
To: 'First Peoples Human Rights
Coalition'
Subject: Bolivia cancels controversial Amazon
highway
From the article below: "Therefore, the
issue of the TIPNIS has been resolved," Morales said. "This is governing by
obeying the people."
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YAHOO! NEWS
Bolivia cancels controversial
Amazon highway
http://news.yahoo.com/bolivia-cancels-controversial-amazon-highway-160640378.html
By Gerardo Bustillos| AFP– 21 hrs ago
RELATED CONTENT
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Amazonian natives hold a vigil at the Plaza de Armas square in La Paz, city in
which …
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The president of the Isiboro Secure National Park and Indigenous Territory
(TIPNIS), …
Bolivian President Evo Morales announced Friday
he was scrapping a hugely controversial plan to build a highway through an
Amazon ecological
reserve that has triggered widespread protests.
Morales told reporters he had sent an amendment
to Congress, controlled by government supporters,
halting plans for the road through the Isiboro Secure National
Park and Indigenous Territory (TIPNIS).
"Therefore, the issue of the TIPNIS has been
resolved," Morales said. "This is governing by obeying the people."
Morales made the announcement just ahead of a
meeting with representatives of around 2,000 indigenous people who entered La
Paz on Wednesday after a two-month march from their homeland in the Amazon
lowlands to press him to cancel the highway.
The decision also "declares the TIPNIS an
untouchable zone," which strengthens protection against oil and gas mining and
logging in the area, and also allows police to remove any outsiders that may
enter the zone.
Amazon natives feared that landless Andean
Quechua and Aymara people -- Bolivia's main indigenous groups and Morales
supporters -- would flood into the road area and colonize their land.
The marchers, who set out in August and trekked
600 kilometers (370 miles) to the capital, were met as heroes as they entered
the city in the high Andes and made their way to camp out near the presidential
palace.
Protest
leaders however were cautious when they heard the news.
"We must first talk to the president, establish
the rules of the game to begin a dialog, and only then we will analyze"
Morales's proposal, said Fernando Vargas, one of
the leaders.
Therefore the 16 demands of the protesters
"remain in effect," he said. "For us, nothing has been resolved."
Other protester demands include an end to oil
and gas extraction and exploration in the Aguarague National Park, in southern
Bolivia, and the right to seek compensation for the negative effects of global
warming.
Government
officials have said that those demands will be rejected.
About 50,000 people from three different native
groups live in the remote territory in the humid Amazon lowlands.
The Brazil-financed road project was part of a
network linking land-locked Bolivia to both the Pacific through Chile and the
Atlantic through Brazil, key outlets for Bolivian exports.
The government has said it would be too
expensive to build the highway around the preserve.
Morales, the country's first indigenous
president, has come under tremendous popular pressure to end the project.
A police crackdown on a march against the
highway that left 74 people injured in late September triggered widespread
anger, a general strike, and the resignations of several top government
officials, including two ministers.
Government ombudsman Rolando Villena
congratulated Morales for having "taken such a wise decision, because that puts
an end" to months of protest marches.
Indigenous Amazon protesters gathered in the
city of Santa Cruz cheered, calling it "a defeat for Evo."
© 2011
AFP
Copyright ©
2011 Yahoo! Inc. All rights
reserved.
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