An indigenous community in Peru has released more than a hundred people, including at least 17 foreigners, who had been on board a boat seized for a day in protest against the government over an oil spill, one of the passengers said on Friday. and a rights group.
“They have just released us all, we have boarded another boat and we are on our way to Iquitos,” he told Reuters Ángela Ramírez, a passenger on the ship held since Thursday on the edge of the Marañón River, in the community of Cuninico, in the Amazonian region of Loreto, which is located in northeastern Peru.
The leader of the Cuninico community, Watson Trujillo, had previously announced the release of the people held on the boat, after a dialogue with representatives of the Ombudsman’s Office, an autonomous public body.
“We are doing this because of the government’s neglect,” Trujillo said earlier, after learning about the retention of passengers. The leader added that approximately 150 people were on the boat, including between 17 and 23 “tourists of five nationalities.”
The oil spill occurred on September 16 due to a rupture in the oil pipeline of the state-owned Petroperú, after which this same community blocked the river Also as a protest. The pipeline, which transports crude oil from the Amazon to the coast to be refined, has suffered several spills in recent years due to “intentional cuts” outside the company, according to Petroperú.
Although the country’s Ministry of the Environment estimated the spill at 2,500 barrels, the oil company has not even given an estimate of the volume of the spill.
The boat was anchored with its passengers since Thursday at the edge of the Marañón River, in the community of Cuninico, in the Amazon region of Loreto located in northeastern Peru.
The oil spill in Cuninico is at least the second to occur in the country this year, after Spain’s Repsol REP.MC spilled more than 10,000 barrels into the Pacific in January from a tanker that was unloading at a refinery in the company near Peru’s capital, Lima.
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