LIMA (Reuters) – The leader of an indigenous community in Peru asked for the government to declare a state of emergency on Monday and accused illegal miners of using children as “human shields” in the Amazon.
He will ask the Peruvian government to declare a state of emergency in the area to allow the eviction of illegal miners.
“They are using children between 5 and 10 years old as human shields when there is any action against illegal miners,” Teófilo Kukush, president of the Wampís community located in Amazonian regions on the border with Ecuador, told local radio station RPP.
Kukush said that the miners are “incentivizing” some local residents with payments and when authorities try to conduct armed raids, miners place children in front of the dredges they use to extract the gold from the river.
Government officials were not immediately available to comment on the complaint. There have been several clashes and attacks on established mines that have left at least thirty people dead in the past two years.
Last July, an indigenous land rights activist was found dead and indigenous leaders said dozens of community heads have been murdered due to conflicts with miners, loggers and drug traffickers.
According to the local financial regulator, the Superintendency of Banking, Insurance and Private Pensions, between January and October of last year, customs reported $1.096 billion in operations linked to illegal mining.
Peru produced 108 million grams of fine gold in 2024, 6.9% more than the previous year, with almost half supplied by small-scale miners, according to official data.
The government has 85,000 registered artisanal miners, most of them from poor and remote areas, but only 20% of these miners have formal permits according to government data.
The rest operate with suspended permits in areas belonging to formal companies, or illegally.
(Report by Marco Aquino; Writing by Alexander Villegas; Editing by Aurora Ellis)
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