An Ecuador activist from the contry’s indigenous Shuar community was found dead days before his planned attendance at a climate change conference in Lima, Peru.
The bound body of local Shuar leader José Isidro Tendetza Antún – who had been missing since November 28 – was found by his son on the banks of the Zamora in an unmarked grave, according to Ecuador’s La Republica newspaper.
“His body was beaten, bones were broken,” said Shuar leader Domingo Ankuash. “He had been tortured and he was thrown in the river. The mere fact that they buried him before telling us, the family, is suspicious.”
Community and family members are blaming the death on Tendetza’s environmental activist work. He was scheduled to speak at the Rights of Nature Tribunal at the just-concluded U.N. Climate Change Conference in Lima, Peru.
The activist was also a vocal critic of the Chinese-operated Mirador open-pit copper mine in Ecuador’s remote, hugely biodiverse region of Cordillera del Condor. Opponents of the mining project say it would devastate more than 450,000 acres of forest in the area.
“In Ecuador, multinational companies are invited by the government and get full state security from the police and the army,” Ankuash said. “The army and police don’t provide protection for the people; they don’t defend the Shuar people. They’ve been bought by the company.”
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