Two Kidnapped Over Peru Mine Project
Date: 29-Dec-04
Country: PERU
Author: Eduardo Orozco
In an apparent reprisal, his friends later abducted a local official who opposed mining, but no details of her fate were immediately available.
The kidnaps were the latest cases of mob justice in Peru. Police said locals fearing contamination from the British-run Rio Blanco mine project took journalist Duber Mauriola hostage Monday morning and marched him to a remote village.
"We're going out to rescue the journalist kidnapped by the mob which took him to a remote village 10 hours away on foot. They hit him and tied him up in the square," Praxedes Guerrero, police chief in the nearest town, Huancabamba, told Reuters.
Lobby group Reporters Without Borders urged swift action, saying the life of Mauriola, who runs a small local radio station, "is in great danger." Eight police tried to rescue him Monday but were outnumbered and forced to give up, it said.
Rio Blanco, on Peru's border with Ecuador, is owned by Britain's Monterrico Metals Plc which is investing $370 million and hopes it will become Peru's No. 2 copper mine.
SECOND KIDNAP
In an apparent reprisal for the kidnap of Maruiola, another mob took Josefa Adrianzen, a Huancabamba town official who worked on environmental issues, hostage Tuesday.
"She came out in defense of the environment in Huancabamba and has clashed with mining companies because she wants exploration to stop. Other peasants, friends of Mauriola, have kidnapped her and we can't rescue her," Julio Bazan, another town official, told RPP radio.
Several times this year, local communities in remote areas of Peru largely forgotten by the state have brutally taken the law into their own hands.
In April, the mayor of an Andean village near Bolivia was beaten to death by a mob accusing him of corruption.
Chilling TV pictures in October showed a mob setting fire to a man they accused of stealing a gas canister, and the same month peasants beat to death a man for stealing five hens.
There have been similar cases of vigilante justice in Lima, as well as in Bolivia and Mexico.
Protests against mining -- an industry dominated here by major international groups -- have also multiplied. Though mining is the backbone of Peru's economy, and many projects are in dirt-poor regions, locals increasingly fear their traditional farming livelihoods will be destroyed as a result.
Locals in a lush lime- and mango-producing valley claimed victory last year when the big Tambogrande mining project being developed by Canada's Manhattan Minerals Corp. was dropped after months of protests.
Protests also forced US-based Newmont Mining Corp. and Peru's Compania Minera Buenaventura to scrap gold exploration at their Cerro Quilish site last month.
Rio Blanco has itself also been targeted: around 1,000 peasants armed with shotguns, machetes and sticks marched on the project in April.
Monterrico spokesman Jose Arrieta said Monday's kidnapping appeared to be a personal settling of scores and "nothing to do with us."
