[ Originally published on June 27th, 2014]
LISTEN TO THIS ARTICLE:
Despite
overwhelming international outrage, the resignation
of numerous ministers and condemnation by the United Nations and
international human rights organizations, the Peruvian government
recently approved the highly controversial expansion of the Camisea
Gas
Project.
The expansion will encroach onto the lands of numerous uncontacted
Amazon tribes
who rely on the forest for their survival, potentially taking away
their sustenance and exposing them to foreign bacteria and diseases,
which could prove to be a death sentence for the indigenous peoples.
Peru’s
Ministry of Culture, whose main task is protecting the country’s
indigenous population, has approved plans by oil and gas giants
Pluspetrol
[Argentina], Hunt
Oil [United States of America] and Repsol
[Spain] to detonate thousands of explosive charges, to drill
exploratory wells and to allow hundreds of foreign workers to flood
into the Nahua-Nanti
Reserve, located just 100 km [~ 62 miles]
from Machu Picchu.
The
expansion could decimate the uncontacted
tribes
who live in the reserve, as any contact between the workers and the
Indians is likely to result in the spread of diseases or epidemics to
which the Indians lack immunity.
Pluspetrol
recognizes and acknowledges the devastating impact that the expansion
could have on the environment and the people, but will willingly
proceed. In its supposed “Anthropological
Contingency Plan,” the company states that any diseases
transmitted by workers could cause:
“Prolonged
periods of illness, massive deaths and, in the best cases, long
periods of recovery.”
Stay
conscious my friends.
~
Merit
Freeman
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