Peru: Victims In Protest Against Gas Pipeline Project In North
By MISNA
A 24 year-old man was killed and some twenty others injured in clashes with police yesterday in Sechura, in the Piura region (800km north-west of Lima), where hundreds of residents blocked a bridge in protest against a natural gas pipeline project along peru’s northern coast.
The police chief General Raul Salazar told the press that the police were forced to use their firearms when the crowd of protesters began hurling rocks at passing vehicles on the bridge, then attacking and damaging the police station. The circumstances of the man’s death however remain unclear.
The Defence Front of the Sechura Bay civil society group called for the annulment of the public hearing, in which the environmental impact of the project was formally presented in the absence of its members. The ‘Punta Lagunas’ project of the ‘Savia Perú’ oil company foresees the construction of three under-water natural gas pipelines. The Front fears that the project threatens fishing activities and breeding.
