Global Witness has welcomed the recent decision of Perú’s Superior Court of Justice of Ucayali to confirm the sentencing of four loggers found guilty in the historic Saweto case.
An earlier court decision had sentenced four loggers to 28 years and three months of imprisonment for the 2014 killings of indigenous leaders Edwin Chota Valera, Francisco Pinedo Ramírez, and Jorge Ríos Pérez y Leoncio Quintísima Meléndez.
The four indigenous leaders were killed on 1 September, 2014, near the Peruvian-Brazilian border where they were due to attend an assembly to discuss illegal logging in their communities.
For many years, the four environmental defenders had documented and denounced illegal logging in the Amazon’s Ucayali region, filing repeated complaints to both regional and national authorities about timber mafias encroaching on their lands.
Global Witness Senior US Policy Advisor Javier Garate said:
“We hope that this court ruling finally brings justice to the families of murdered Indigenous leaders Edwin Chota Valera, Francisco Pinedo Ramírez, and Jorge Ríos Pérez y Leoncio Quintísima Meléndez.
“Albeit a just ruling, it comes after almost 11 years of delays and emotional, security and financial hardships for the victims’ families.
“This remains a major step towards justice for the bereaved families, but we need to see more to ensure land and environmental defenders are protected from harm.
“Since 2012, Global Witness has documented 62 killings and disappearances of defenders in Peru, 35 of those were Indigenous defenders, showing the disproportionate risk of those at the frontlines of climate change. We are calling on the Peruvian State to ratify the Escazú Agreement, a crucial regional agreement that includes measures for the protection of environmental defenders.”