“We will not stop until we get back our dispossessed territories!” Statement by the Ethnic Council of the Kichwa Peoples of Amazonia about the Cordillera Azul National Park in Peru
A solidarity statement rejecting acts of criminalisation against the Indigenous community of Puerto Franco has been signed by 60 organisations.
The Cordillera Azul National Park was declared by the Peruvian government in 2001, without the free, prior and informed consent of the people living there.
The park is managed by a company called CIMA (Centro de Conservación, Investigación y Manejo de Áreas Naturales) and since 2008, the Cordillera Azul REDD project has operated in the area of the national park. The decision to sell carbon credits from the national park was made without the free, prior and informed consent of the communities living there.
The two largest buyers of carbon credits from the Cordillera Azul REDD project are fossil fuel corporations: Shell and Total Energies.
The Ethnic Council of the Kichwa Peoples of Amazonia (CEPKA) released a statement in June 2025 about the Cordillera Azul National Park in Peru.
The Kichwa communities living in and around the Cordillera Azul National Park have filed a series of lawsuits against the government and the exclusionary conservation model of the national park. In December 2024, the communities won an important legal victory when a court ruled in favour of the Kichwa’s rights to their territory.
CIMA appealed the court’s ruling. And just four days after the ruling, the National Service of Natural Protected Areas by the State (SERNANP) and CIMA gave “Entrepreneurs for Nature” awards to ten local organisations “in a ceremony that highlighted the collaborative work between local communities and the Peruvian State”.
Somos Kichwa recently put out a video about Puerto Franco and the community’s struggle for their rights to their territory. While the Kichwa’s livelihoods and rights are restricted, logging concessions have been awarded on their territory just a few kilometres from the national park. The court’s December 2024 ruling required the logging concessions that affect the Kichwa to be cancelled.
Here is CEPKA’s statement (also available in Spanish on Forest Peoples Programme’s website).
In addition, 60 organisations and 85 individuals have signed on to a solidarity statement rejecting acts of criminalisation against the Indigenous community of Puerto Franco. The solidarity statement is posted below CEPKA’s statement (also available in Spanish on Forest Peoples Programme’s website.)
CEPKA’s Statement
14 June 2025
In response to the recent criminalisation, smears and stigmatisation against the Native Communities of Puerto Franco and Anak Pillwana, and the Kichwa people and the Indigenous movement in the region of San Martin, who are fighting to recover their ancestral territories in the face of exclusionary conservation projects such as the Cordillera Azul National Park (PNCAZ) and the Cordillera Escalera Regional Conservation Area (ACR-CE) imposed on our territories without our consent, the Ethnic Council of the Kichwa Peoples of Amazonia (CEPKA) and its native base communities declare the following:
We reject the statement of the PNCAZ Management Committee (CGPNCAZ) published on social networks on 10 June, for stigmatising our historical struggle to recover our ancestral territories. The false narratives and information it contains are the same ones that the park administrators and SERNANP used in the hearings of the Puerto Franco case, which failed before the court of first instance, which found in our favour. We regret that these actors resort to these tactics to put pressure on the judges of the Mixed Court of Juanjuí.
We also regret that the regional press, such as the media outlet Radio Tropical, is waging a smear campaign and questioning the Indigenous legitimacy of our base community, the Anak Pillwana native community, even questioning its recognition as a community by the agrarian authorities.
We reaffirm that our property rights as Indigenous peoples existed prior to formal recognition as a native community or people by the State; it is their obligation to protect and title our territories even if they have not been formally recognised. No National Park or Regional Conservation Area came before us.
The Peruvian State had and has the obligation to consult us to obtain our free, prior and informed consent since 1995. The fact that a CEPKA community has not been recognised, or is not inscribed in the public registers, does not mean that the State is exempt from fulfilling its duty.
In relation to the PNCAZ, the fact that some Kichwa have participated in meetings and other activities organised by the PNCAZ does not imply that we have consented to their presence in our territory. Least of all that our territorial claims have been dismissed. They are wrong. And the narrative used by SERNANP, CIMA and the CGPNCAZ is perverse.
Their racist discourse that questions our Indigenous identity and customary rights seriously harms our communities and represents a form of discrimination that is inadmissible under Peruvian and international law.
These acts of stigmatisation are not isolated cases. There are criminalisation actions undertaken by the Public Prosecutor’s Office of San Martin against the Apu of Puerto Franco and his legal defence team, which is linked to a complaint by the Park’s Chief of Staff. With their denunciations they want to silence our territorial claim. We therefore reject these cruel tactics that legitimise violence against us.
We demand that the PNCAZ, its Management Committee and others who support the exclusionary conservation model that is being imposed on our territories stop disseminating misleading, racist and false statements that endanger our communities, leaders and defenders, as well as our allies who accompany us in our historic struggle.
We condemn the hypocrisy of SERNANP and CIMA, who claim to be very conservationist, but authorise and sell PNCAZ carbon credits to large oil companies such as Shell and Total Energies, companies that dispossess Indigenous peoples in other continents and whose extractive activities contribute further to climate change. In this way they finance their activities with money from polluting extractive industries.
Or that SERNANP recently signed a cooperation agreement with Pluspetrol, the cause of the most terrible oil spill in the country’s history, to strengthen its management of protected natural areas. While we Indigenous peoples question the exploration and exploitation of hydrocarbons in the forests, the institutions supposedly dedicated to conservation negotiate with extractive companies. This is the "Sacha Estado", giving biodiversity data to Pluspetrol for biopiracy business in bioprospecting, in exchange for fattening the payroll of SERNANP.
Finally, we express our solidarity with other Kichwa communities and federations, such as our brothers and sisters in Bajo Huallaga, who are also suffering from these attacks.
We will not stop until we get back our dispossessed territories!
With organised and titled native communities, there will always be forest for all!
No to the usurpation of Indigenous territory, titling now!
Kawsachun kichwa llaktakuna!
We reject acts of criminalisation by the Public Prosecutor’s Office against the Indigenous Community of Puerto Franco and its legal defence
The undersigned organisations publicly denounce the worrying criminalisation of the struggle of the Kichwa people in the region of San Martin, Peru, to reclaim their territorial rights in the face of exclusionary conservation projects that have been imposed on their territories without their consent.
In this specific case, the Peruvian government has taken steps to criminalise two human rights and environmental defenders linked to this emblematic struggle: Henry Fasabi, an authority of the Indigenous Kichwa Community of Puerto Franco, and the lawyer Cristina Gavancho, who represents the community, as well as other base communities affiliated with the Kichwa federations of San Martin in various legal cases brought to defend their ancestral territory.
Both have been arbitrarily investigated by the Public Prosecutor’s Office, specifically the Specialised Provincial Prosecutor’s Office for Environmental Matters of San Martín, Moyobamba, for the alleged crime of "obstruction of proceedings", without there being any factual or legal elements to support this.
We are alarmed that this persecution may be occurring in retaliation for the legal actions that the community and its technical defence have undertaken to assert their territorial rights in relation to the Cordillera Azul National Park (PNCAZ), imposed without consultation or their free, prior, and informed consent and which violates their fundamental rights.
The criminal investigation stems from a criminal complaint filed by PNCAZ leadership for alleged deforestation in an area of the Piquiyacu sector, in the park’s buffer zone, which overlaps with Puerto Franco’s ancestral territory. The buffer zone is not within the PNCAZ’s strict protection area, so the community’s customary activities and uses are permitted.
As a result of this complaint, the Public Prosecutor’s Office attempted to carry out visual inspections on 16 November 2023 and 25 April 2024. On both occasions, and in their legitimate right to control their territory, the community assembly decided to deny access to the authorities who came to verify. During these exchanges, the head of the community asked that these proceedings be rescheduled following an agreement with the assembly, and on a date when their legal and technical advisors could participate. However, far from respecting this decision, the Public Prosecutor's Office responded with a criminal complaint, opening a preliminary investigation against apu Henry Fasabi and the community’s lawyer on 17 July 2024.
Even more worrying is that on 28 May, the Prosecutor’s Office formalised the preparatory investigation without having collected testimonial evidence from the persons charged, or from the public officials present at the events. This omission violates fundamental principles of due process since the preliminary stage of an investigation is precisely when evidence is collected and assessed to determine whether it is appropriate to proceed with a criminal charge.
We are also concerned that, for years, Kichwa communities such as the one in Puerto Franco have been denouncing deforestation in their territory with the support of their lawyer, but these have not been diligently investigated and many have been closed. For this reason, the community is dismayed that when PNCAZ leadership files complaints against deforestation, they are investigated. The way in which the Public Prosecutor’s Office decided to formalise a criminal investigation for alleged “obstruction” against environmental defenders with a long history of denouncing deforestation in the same territory before the same prosecutor’s office is also alarming. We wonder if the PNCAZ, a park that covers four regions of the country and whose buffer zone covers 23,000 km² and is inhabited by more than 300,000 people in more than 443 population centres and communities, monitors, and intends to punish all these human settlements as diligently or whether this is an isolated attack against Puerto Franco in retaliation for their bravery in claiming usurped territorial rights.
This is not an isolated case. In recent years, Peru has experienced a serious rollback in human rights, with the approval of regressive norms and the advance of official discourses that promote the criminalisation and stigmatisation of those who defend their territory, the environment and the rights of indigenous peoples.
We therefore demand that the Public Prosecutor’s Office immediately close this investigation, which has no legal basis, and respect the fundamental rights of apu Henry Fasabi, the lawyer Cristina Gavancho and the entire Indigenous Community of Puerto Franco. We also call on civil society, international organisations and citizens in general to be vigilant in the face of this new attack against those who defend the rights of indigenous peoples and their territorial struggles for eco-social justice. In a full democracy, defending the rights of vulnerable populations will never be a crime.
Tarapoto, 16 June 2025
Organisations
Acción Ecológica
African Resources Watch (AFREWATCH) / AfreWatch International
Asegis Community Network
Asociación Interamericana para la Defensa del Ambiente (AIDA)
Asociación Interétnica de Desarrollo de la Selva Peruana (AIDESEP)
Asociación pro Derechos Humanos
Asociación de Comuneros Cruz Blanca Piura
Benet Mosop Community Association (BMCA)
Colectivo Guardianes y Defensores de los Bosques Secos Guadalupes Zapata Sosa, Comunidad de Catacaos
Colegio de Sociólogos de Lima y Callao
Comisión de Defensa de la Comunidad de Catacaos Piura
Comisión de Derechos Humanos de Pucallpa - CODEH Pucallpa
Comunidad Campesina Muchik Santa Catalina de Chongoyape
Concejo Shipibo Conibo Xetebo – Coshicox
Consejo Étnico de los Pueblos Kichwa de la Amazonia (CEPKA)
CooperAcción
Coordinadora de Desarrollo y Defensa de los Pueblos Indígenas de la región San Martín (CODEPISAM)
Corporate Justice Coalition
Derecho Animal en Perú (DAP)
Derechos Humanos Sin Fronteras (DHSF)
Derechos Humanos y Medio Ambiente (DHUMA)
Earth Law Center (ELC)
European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights
FAPI - Federación por la Autodeterminación de los Pueblos Indígena, Paraguay
Federación de Comunidades Nativas de Ucayali y Afluentes (FECONAU)
Federación de Mujeres Kukama del Samiria y Marañón "Huaynakana Kamatahuara Kana"
Federación de Pueblos Indígenas Kechwas del Bajo Huallaga San Martín (FEPIKBHSAM)
Federación de Pueblos Indígenas Kechua Chazuta Amazonas (FEPIKECHA)
Forest Peoples Programme (FPP)
Frente de Defensa de Lambayeque (FEDEL)
Frente de Defensa Salvemos Chaparri
Fundación Ecuménica para el Desarrollo y la Paz (FEDEPAZ)
Front Line Defenders
Gobierno Territorial Autónomo Awajún (GTAA)
Gobierno Territorial Autónomo de la Nación Ese Eja, región Madre de Dios
Gobierno Territorial Autonomo de la Nación Wampís
Instituto de Defensa Legal (IDL)
Instituto de Derecho, Participación Social y Medio Ambiente (IDEPAM)
Junta Administradora del Servicio de Agua Potable de los Pueblos: Pueblo Nuevo Santa Rosa, Cristo Viene, Jesús de Nazareth, Nuevo Eleuterio Cisneros, San Martín, Túpac Amaru I, II y III, y Pueblos Vecinos del km 980 de la Comunidad San Juan Bautista de Catacao
Koibatek Ogiek Women and Youth Network
Lawyers’ Association for Human Rights of Nepalese Indigenous Peoples (LAHURNIP)
League of Volunteers Sacrifices for the Defense Human Rights and Environment (LISVDHE)
National Fisheries Solidarity Movement, Sri Lanka
Organización Apurimeña “Jóvenes a la Obra”
Organización de Desarrollo de las Comunidades Fronterizas del Cenepa (ODECOFROC)
Org. Juvenil - Jóvenes del Milenio Cajamarca
Pachamama Alliance Perú
Pedagogías Interculturales de la Oralidad (CPIO)
Peru Support Group
Proyecto sobre Organización, Desarrollo, Educación e Investigación (PODER)
Rainforest Foundation UK (RFUK)
Red de Mujeres Saramanta Warmikuna - Ecuador
Rettet den Regenwald
Rondas Campesinas de la Comunidad Campesina San Andrés de Negritos
Salva la Selva
Sengwer Embobut CBO (SEECBO)
Size of Wales
SOMO - Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations
The Indigenous Peoples Rights International (IPRI)
Turkana Indigenous People Action for Development (TIPD)