The Indigenous populations of the Peruvian Amazonia started a general and peaceful strike for almost 60 days to protest against 10 legislative decrees promoted by the Peruvian Government in order to comply with the Free trade Agreement (FTA) with US that threatens their rights and their environment. More specifically, the FTA with the US permits oil and mining companies to enter 44 out of 75 million hectares of Amazonian forest, which are Indigenous territories, without any kind of agreement or even consultation.
Civil society organisations meeting in the People’s Social Summit in Lima denounce the recent decision of ETI and Telecom Italia this month to demand that the New York State Court freeze the accounts of the National Telecommunications Company (ENTEL) as part of a strategy of aggression against the government of Bolivia.
Telecom Italia's case against Bolivia at a secretive World Bank tribunal, ICSID, heralds an increasingly pro-corporate approach against southern countries under the aegis of the EU's Global Europe project.
The backlash from business and the opposition against Bolivia's trade policy with the EU was shrill enough to suggest that Bolivia had announced the end of external trade. Yet the Bolivian government's position is based on experience of the heavy costs of free trade for the majority of its citizens.
The structural adjustment policies of the Bretton Woods Institutions [the World Bank and the IMF] have for decades caused untold harm to people and nature. Their implicit or explicit cooperation with the TNCs cannot be denied. For all these reasons, we demand that European governments take responsibility for their corporations and cease their support for their predatory activities in Latin America.
Peoples' Permanent Tribunal uncovered overwhelming evidence of European TNCs' abuses of human, social, cultural and workers' rights in Latin America, aided and abetted by European governments and institutions.
