By: Immediate Ecuador

For AUDIO click here.

Quito, July 9, 2011. The Ecuadorian State must repair the damage caused to the Quichua people, says the Amazonian leader. This week the Sarayaku community was surprised before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights to demand a conviction of the Ecuadorian State for human rights violations and for the concession to an Argentine oil company CGC on indigenous lands without prior consultation, Mario Santi, leader of the Sarayaku community He stated that it will be the Court who sentences and decides, "we are not asking for money, nor are we going to beg, but that the State of Ecuador repair those damages and publicly," he said.

"The struggle of the Sarayaku people has been going on for 30 years, we have resisted all the actions of the current presidents, who have carried out without the consultation of the peoples settled in this sector," said the indigenous leader, noting that Sarayacu is a territory where the legitimate inhabitants live, who have their own conceptions, their own development, their own laws and in their own freedom, where at the moment there are 1,200 Sarayacus according to the census that has been carried out in the sector.

“We respect the Constitution, the ordinary laws, they are compatible. When we talk about our laws, it is the organization system, the system of legislating and controlling our society, we are not opposed to the Ecuadorian State”, he pointed out.

He comments that the State conducts the hidden oil negotiations, “without consulting the legitimate owners who are the indigenous peoples. The State signed a contract in 1992 of the government of President Sixto Durán Ballén, tendered block 23, the Argentine oil company CGC won the tender.

"In 1998 and before the Constitution was recognized, (...) they already established constitutional norms at the international level, for example, the United Nations declarations that indigenous peoples should be consulted and informed." Ecuador had not signed, says Santi, and adds that they did have the right to have been consulted. The leader points out that they had established their system of prior consultation, "because we were the legitimate owners, but at that time the State did not understand the position of the indigenous peoples, the talks ran out."

“In this framework, Lucio Gutiérrez becomes president, who reviews the contracts, executes the execution of the seismic work and exploitation in the Sarayaku territory,” he said. “In 1998, a constitutional framework was established, collective rights already in article 84, in the paragraph
b, it was said that indigenous peoples have to be consulted”, he pointed out.

He also assured that the lawsuit is against human rights, the violation of health, integrity and the violation of an entire group of the Quechua Sarayaku people, and within that the violation of nature and the violation of all that is worldview.
Asked if respecting that, he is not opposed to the development of a nation, Mario Santi said in "El Poder de la Lengua" on Ecuadorinmediato.com/radio, that the Sarayaku people are not opposed to development, but they are opposed to destructive development. , a development that has completely contaminated Mother Nature.

“The opposition is to oil, but we do live off oil, we are already reaching 40, 50 years of exploitation to
base of a development, but what has happened”.

In addition, he declared that they are a free people, of peace, "nobody has disturbed us, we do respect Ecuadorian laws as Ecuadorians, and we also respect that development be for equity, but indigenous peoples have not been heard until today, we have been excluded. ”.
Mario Santi indicated that the request of the Sarayaku people is that they “repair the damage caused by all the atrocities that have been carried out in the territory, the human rights violations, the torture that existed, the rapes of the girls that the oil workers almost did. The environmental impact they made due to the heliports they cut down in the Sarayaku territory, the psychological problem, the abandonment of the children.”

He revealed that the community had an international agreement with a university with 40 students, "the project was paralyzed, it went bankrupt, an 800,000-dollar project managed by the community."

Asked how much they are asking for, Santi affirmed that they are not asking for amounts, “it will be the Court that sentences him and it will be the Court that decides, we are not asking for money, nor are we going to beg, but rather the State of the

The Sarayaku people are not opposed to development, they are opposed to development… http://www.ecuadorinmediato.com/index.php?module=Noticia…
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Ecuador repair these damages and publicly the State of Ecuador apologizes and apologizes to the Quichua people of Sarayaku”. (SOA)

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