The Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of the Ecuadorian Amazon (CONFENIAE), in light of the events that have occurred between our brothers of the Waorani Nationality and the Tagaeri and Taromenane Peoples, expresses its concern about the harassment that indigenous peoples suffer in the territory that gives us life and urges the Ecuadorian State to implement the necessary protection measures to protect Indigenous Peoples in Voluntary Isolation (PIAV) from the threat of oil companies and the activities and impacts derived from them.
The sad event that took place on March 5 and cost the lives of two Waorani in Yarentaro due to an encounter with a Taromenane group, is a result of the pressure to which they are being subjected as a result of the expansion of the oil frontier in this area of the Amazon. Worsening this conflict, indigenous leaders of the communities of Tigüino and Bataboro, in the province of Orellana, have been facing judicial proceedings since 2011 for protests against the transnational company Petrobell, a situation that requires responsible monitoring so that there is no attempt to intervene in justice - as is already customary - and sentence them for exercising their legitimate right to resist the non-compliance of the oil companies and the state, and the neglect of the local governments.
We demand that the Ecuadorian State comply with the Plan of Precautionary Measures requested by the IACHR, the National Policy Plan for the Protection of the PIAV, the United Nations Guidelines for the Protection of Isolated Indigenous Peoples and the Ecuadorian Constitution, which establishes in its art. 57, paragraph 21, that oil companies may not operate in territories with indications of Peoples in Voluntary Isolation, and that it is the State's obligation to protect these peoples from threats that could endanger their survival. We question the welfare policy practiced by the Ministry of the Interior, which reduces a fundamental problem to the simple provision of basic infrastructure and the application of developmental and clientelist measures, minimizing the structural causes that motivated these events and representing an irresponsible management of a problem that requires a profound national debate.
Measures such as housing offers and social containment policies are outrageous compared to the real dimension of the problem.
On the other hand, the Ecuadorian government must stop its accelerated oil exploitation policy, which violates the legitimate right of our Tagaeri and Taromenane brothers to self-determination. Furthermore, this aggressive extractive policy has already generated effects of destructuring and weakening of the organization, and a heightened conflict is foreseen in view of the firm position of the nationalities of the central-southern Amazon in rejecting the Eleventh Oil Round.
Any treatment that does not address this problem at its roots constitutes a peripheral analysis of the situation of peoples in Voluntary Isolation and Indigenous Peoples in general and, therefore, one more of the discourses removed from practice.
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