In June, the 400,000 indigenous people of the Peruvian Amazon won a significant victory: after ten weeks of protests, strikes and bloodshed, they persuaded Peru's President and Congress to repeal laws that ignored their rights and threatened the Amazon rainforest.

The struggle cost scores of lives (the exact number is yet to be established).  The non-violent indigenous protesters gained broad support both nationally and internationally as military attacks on the protesters became more brutal and deadly.

Washington, D.C.—After two years of brutal government repression and destruction of their homeland, the Ngöbe Indians of western Panama won a major victory yesterday as the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights called on Panama to suspend all work on a hydroelectric dam that threatens the Ngöbe homeland. The Chan-75 Dam is being built across the Changuinola River by the government of Panama and a subsidiary of the Virginia-based energy giant AES Corporation.

Indigenous peoples of the Amazon continue their protests in spite of increasing police violence and repression. Their goal is to repeal a series of new decrees that open the Peruvian Amazon to multinational oil, gas, mining and logging companies, without consultation or consent of the indigenous rainforest inhabitants.   

If you have not yet sent a (hardcopy) letter to the President of Peru, please do so today. The situation is urgent to save lives of protesters and to support their demands for rainforest protection and the rights of indigenous communities.

The UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of Indigenous Peoples has issued a hard-hitting report on the hydroelectric dam being built across the Changuinola River in western Panama, which threatens the homelands of the Ngöbe people and which Cultural Survival has been working to stop since 2008.

/Naso villagers plead for help

On March 30, more than a hundred Panamanian police officers in riot gear leveled a Naso village in response to a peaceful protest by Naso and Ngöbe villagers who oppose hydroelectric dams that threaten their homelands. Hundreds of people were left homeless and destitute.

On January 23, members of the Patagonia Defense Council delivered international letters to Eleodoro Matte, urging the head of the Matte Group to withdraw from thel HidroAysen Project that would dam wild rivers in Patagonia. The internacional letters were sent by Global Response members in the US, England, Switzerland, Holland, Canada, Australia, Spain and New Zealand.

It’s been four years since Global Response began campaigning to protect the mangroves and marine ecosystem of Bimini Island in the Bahamas – and now we can celebrate a victory! 

The Bahamian government has officially established a Marine Protected Area (MPA) in North Bimini – as we urged them to do in several rounds of Global Response letters.

We are very happy to learn that the Penan communities of Sarawak's Upper Baram region have won the SUARAM Human Rights Award 2008. The Penan were chosne by the Malaysian human rights organisation Suara Rakyat Malaysia (SUARAM - www.suaram.net) among six nominees, together with the now-banned Hindu Rights Action Force (HINDRAF).

For more than two decades, traditional Penan indigenous communities have fought to prevent logging companies from destroying their rainforest world in Sarawak, Malaysia. Neither logging companies nor military nor government officials have been able to persuade or buy off the traditional leaders or headmen, who insist on their people’s “native customary rights” to live in and protect their forest.

KINSHASA (Reuters) - Congo, home to the world's second largest tropical forest, launched a review of all timber contracts on Wednesday in an effort to clean up a business rife with corruption and to recoup millions of dollars in lost taxes.