Peru must act swiftly to protect isolated Amazonian tribes, Latin Americas top human rights body has ruled, BBC online reports Saturday.
Indigenous leaders say the tribes, among them the Mashco-Piro and Yora tribes, have already suffered untold deaths from enslavement, violence and diseases contracted from outsiders.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights judged the risk to these isolated communities so great that it bypassed all the usual procedures. Peru has been given two weeks to take steps to protect the isolated tribes. If it fails to do so it could ultimately be subject to economic sanctions.
The pan-American human rights body says that although Peru has created reserves for the indigenous communities who live in voluntary isolation, it does nothing to protect them from gangs of illegal loggers who are chopping down the mahogany-rich forests in which they live.
Most of the illegal tropical hardwoods are exported to the United States. The Democrat-controlled US Congress has said it cannot ratify a free trade agreement with Peru until makes certain changes, among them adopting and enforcing laws on logging mahogany.
Earlier this week, the Peruvian President Alan Garcia provoked criticism from environmentalists when he said the quantity of mahogany which left the country, legally or not, was insignificant.
To many human rights workers this confirmed their suspicion that there is little political will to tackle the illegal trade and the isolated peoples reserves might not be worth the paper they are written on.
