[Excerpt translation from Spanish provided by Business and Human Rights Resource Centre]

In the wake of the Las Bambas case, the Observatorio para la Protección de Defensores de Derechos Humanos warned about irregularities and illegalities in the penal process against 19 community members from Cotabambas…these questions were detailed in the report “Criminalización de defensores territoriales por protestar contra proyecto minero Las Bambas” (Criminalization of land defenders for protesting against the Las Bambas mining project), created by the mentioned joint programme of the Organización Mundial Contra La Tortura (OMCT) (World Organization Against Torture) and the FIDH (International Federation of Human Rights)…This report is released in the context of the continuation of the oral judgement against 19 community members, the decision of which will be made this 22 of May, five years after the penal process started and two years after suspensions were declared…The episode occurred on the 28th of September, 2015, in the middle of a strong repression by police officers against the population protesting in front of the mining encampment…Said confrontation caused the detention of 21 protestors, 19 of which found themselves caught in a judicial process since then.