Ecuador’s leading environmental group fights to stop forced closure (David Hill/Andes to Amazon/The Guardian)

Members of one of Latin America’s most well-known environmental organisations, Acción Ecológica, are fighting for their survival against a controversial attempt by Ecuador’s government to shut them down.

The move by the government came six days after violence between soldiers, police and indigenous Shuar people opposed to a Chinese-run copper development, Panantza-San Carlos, in the Cordillera del Condor region, and just two days after Acción Ecológica had called for a Truth Commission to be set up to investigate events there. The attempt to close the organisation has sparked severe criticism from UN human rights experts and outrage from numerous civil society organisations in Latin America and elsewhere.

On 20 December the Vice-Minister for Internal Security, Diego Torres Saldaña, requested the Minister of Environment, Walter Garcia Cedeño, to begin the process to “immediately dissolve” the Quito-based organisation. According to Torres Saldaña, Acción Ecológica has been using social media to express support for violence by Shuar against soldiers and police, to claim that extractive operations will negatively affect the environment, and to allege “supposed human rights violations”, including “unjustified militarisation”, against the Shuars. Such behaviour has been “repeated”, Torres Saldaña wrote, and also included mobilising the public and organising demonstrations, making it clear that the NGO “rejects any kind of natural resource exploitation.”

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Lisez l'article de David Hill en entier:

 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/andes-to-the-amazon/2017/jan/07/ecuadors-leading-environmental-group-fights-forced-closure

Sur le même sujet et sur le même blog: http://pocombelles.over-blog.com/2014/03/henry-veltmeyer-james-petras-le-nouvel-extractivisme-un-modele-de-developpement-post-neoliberal-ou-l-imperialisme-du-xxie-siecle.htm