[Excerpt translation from Spanish to English provided by Business & Human Rights Resource Centre]

Author: OCMAL, Published on: 26 February 2020

"States of emergency and the criminalization of protest" - February 26, 2020

For the fifth time, the Peruvian government has decreed a state of emergency in the Southern Mining Corridor, an area that has been convulsed for several years by the impacts and tensions with communities with large mining projects, such as those managed by the companies Glencore (Antapaccay) and MMG (Las Bambas)...The decree issued on February 8 applies to the sections between the districts of Coporaque (Espinar) and Ccapacmarca (Chumbivilcas) in the Cusco region…Cusco lawyer Ramiro Llatas points out that all the declarations of states of emergency have one thing in common: they are based on reports that are confidential and are issued by the Peruvian National Police... The Peruvian State confronts social demands and conflicts by criminalizing, rather than addressing the real causes that provoke them. On 3 February, the [UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders] issued a statement in which he expressed his concern about the deployment of the military to monitor demonstrations following the declarations of states of emergency and for the protection of oil, gas and mining installations.