Indigenous environmental defender shot dead in Peru

An Indigenous leader and environmental defender was shot dead while patrolling his native Amazonian territories in Peru, authorities reported Tuesday.

Scores of Indigenous activists across Latin America face threats for their environmental advocacy work, particularly when denouncing crimes such as deforestation.

Americo Pascuala Tomisha of the Asheninka community died on Sunday in the Ucayali region bordering Brazil, where other environmental defenders have been killed in the past.

Peru's culture ministry condemned his death in a statement, and national prosecutors have opened a murder investigation.

ORAU, a collective representing a handful of regional Indigenous groups, said the 57-year-old victim "was hit by gunfire" by "third parties" extracting copaiba oil from trees in the area.

Pascuala had been reporting the presence of these unknown "third parties" on his ancestral lands since 2020, it added.

"This cowardly murder is deplorable. What happens in our Amazon must not go unpunished," ORAU's vice president Herlin Odicio told a press conference.

On Monday, a Peruvian court convicted four people for the 2023 murder of Quinto Inuma, a prominent Kichwa leader from the Amazonian San Martin region.

At least 62 land and environmental defenders were killed in Peru between 2012 and 2024, according to the NGO Global Witness.

More than half of those victims belonged to Indigenous communities.