At least 70 workers on the Camisea natural gas pipeline in Ayacucho were kidnapped early Monday morning by unidentified assailants and held for a ransom of one million dollars and assorted communications equipment. On Tuesday the army led a raid on the kidnappers, freeing the captives. The whereabouts of the kidnappers are unknown. President Alejandro Toledo said afterward that he believed the kidnappers were remnants of the Maoist Shining Path, whose insurgency led to an extremely violent civil war that killed over 35,000 during the 1980s and early 1990s. Both the Shining Path and the Peruvian military targeted indigenous peoples, leading to untold numbers of massacres against the majority indigenous population. The Camisea natural gas project, the site of the kidnapping, has also had a disastrous impact on the 7,000 indigenous peoples living in the Peruvian Amazon, including the Machiguenga, Yine, Nahua (Yora), and Kanti (Kugapakori) peoples. For more on the effects of the project on indigenous peoples and the environment, see AmazonWatch’s coverage of the issue (http://amazonwatch.org/news/2003/0826-perus-camisea-project-tip-sheet-update-on-rainforest-destruction).
