Ecuador promise to fight for mining new constitution
Published 02/Octubre/2008 | 15:41

Shuar indigenous people of southern Ecuador redoubled its campaign against multinational mining now that the new Constitution authorizes the exploitation of resources in their territories without their consent, "its leaders said today.

"We are making a joint resistance from the ground up to the leadership because the stocks are not going to accept the entry of mining, and if the government allows it is very likely to be a general uprising," said Raul Petsain, representative of the communities.

The Shuar have settlements in the Cordillera del Condor, on the border with Peru, where the largest copper reserves of the country and one of the largest in the continent, according to the Canadian company ECSA, which looks official permission to start operating.

"The new Constitution adopted in a referendum, left to the government, if not get the prior consent of the communities, the decision to launch a project to exploit natural resources," said Salvador Quishpe of Pachakutik.

As a result, the indigenous movement will meet on October 13 to prepare a "massive march against the activities of the oil and mining," according Quishpe.

The Canadian mining are convincing the indigenous people to invade land belonging to them by ancestral right, "and then buy them to stay with copper, said Angel Awak, president of the Shuar Federation of Zamora Chinchipe Nationality.

The Indian leadership expressed its opposition to the government for its refusal to accept that communities, through consultation, decide the future of the projects operating in their territories, which is described by President Rafael Correa as "a child environmentalism."

"I would say no to mining when Evo Morales, an indigenous president, banning mining in Bolivia. ¿Imagine what would happen in a country that lives off the exploitation of its resources," Correa said recently. (AFP)

GMT: 02/Octubre/2008 - 20:41