‘Two cases against social leaders in the Las Bambas case are dismissed, but they are still at risk for three more’, 11 March 2025
…Good news for the 17 leaders criminalised for legitimately protesting against the company MMG Las Bambas. Indeed, by Resolution No. 51, dated 31 January 2025, recently notified, the Criminal Appeals Chamber – Central Headquarters of the Superior Court of Justice of Apurímac, confirmed the dismissal of the criminal proceedings for the crimes of aggravated usurpation and illicit association to commit a crime (File No. 41-2016) against 17 indigenous community leaders who participated in protest actions against the mining company MMG Las Bambas in 2015.
These are two of the five crimes for which the environmental defenders of Apurímac are being investigated following the protests mentioned above…
In this regard, it should be recalled that these proceedings were initiated arbitrarily because at the end of September 2015, the different indigenous communities affected by the Las Bambas mining project (Apurímac region), in the legitimate exercise of their constitutional right to protest publicly and peacefully, initiated a series of public protest actions…
As a result of these legitimate protests, the police deployed indiscriminate repression against the members of the indigenous communities who were protesting at the time and, at the same time, the government and the company falsely accused the indigenous leaders of committing various crimes in their attempts to demobilise the protesting peasants by imprisoning their leaders….
Although this is good news in the long judicial process that the criminalised leaders are going through, a key judicial hearing is still awaited on 19 March. There, the Criminal Appeals Chamber of the Superior Court of Justice of Apurímac will have to decide on the other three crimes for which these leaders are being prosecuted…
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