Rainforest Warriors: Human Rights on Trial

288 Pages·2012·4.064 MB·English

by  Richard Price

Rainforest Warriors
PENNSYLVANIA STUDIES IN HUMAN RIGHTS
Bert B. Lockwood, Jr., Series Editor
A complete list of books in the
series is available from the publisher.
Rainforest
Warriors
Human Rights on Trial
Richard Price
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS
PHILADELPHIA • OXFORD
Copyright ©  Richard Price
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or
scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means
without written permission from the publisher.
Published by
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania -
www.upenn.edu/pennpress
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
         
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Price, Richard, –
Rainforest warriors : human rights on trial / Richard Price.
p. cm. — (Pennsylvania studies in human rights)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN ---- (hardcover : acid-free paper)
. Saramacca (Surinamese people)—Civil rights. . Saramacca (Surinamese
people)—Legal status, laws, etc. . Human rights—Suriname. I. Title.
F.SP 
.—dc 
Contents
Preface vii
Africans Discover America 
Land, Spirits, Power 
Earth, Water, Sky 
The Dam at Afobaka 
Rockets at Kourou 
Sovereignty and Territory 
The Aloeboetoe Incursion 
The Moiwana Massacre 
Trees 
Resistance Redux 
Initial Protests 
The Depredations Continue 
Judgment Day 
Pre-Hearing Pleadings 
The Hearing 
The Judgment 
American Dreams 
Developments on the Ground 
Broader Implications 
vi Contents
Postface 
Notes 
References Cited 
Illustration Credits 
Acknowledgments 
Preface
Th is book is about a people, their threatened rainforest, and their success-
ful attempt to harness international human rights legislation in their fi ght to
protect their way of life. It is part of a larger story that is unfolding all over the
globe. It is meant to put on record a signal example, in the hope that it may
help those engaged in similar battles elsewhere. It is also intended to help
readers appreciate some of the oft en-hidden forces, and possibilities, shaping
today’s world.
A  news article outlines the situation in Latin America:
In Ecuador, the Shuar are blocking highways to defend their hunting
grounds. In Chile, the Mapuche are occupying ranches to pressure
for land, schools and clinics. In Bolivia, a new constitution gives the
country’s  indigenous peoples the right to self-rule. . . . Th e threats
to Indian land have grown in recent years. With shrinking global oil
reserves and growing demands for minerals and timber, oil and min-
ing concerns are joining loggers in encroaching on traditional Indian
lands.
Th e Indian “revolt,” continues the writer, is “rippling up and down the
Andes.” But that revolt—the insistence on long-ignored human rights—is
also ongoing among non-Indians facing similar threats.
Saramaka Maroons, the descendants of self-liberated African slaves who
live in the rainforest of the Republic of Suriname, have been leading their
own campaign for many years. In , when the Inter-American Court of
Human Rights delivered a landmark judgment in their favor, their eff orts
were thrust into the international spotlight. Two leaders of their struggle,
Saramaka Headcaptain Wazen Eduards and Saramaka law student Hugo
Jabini, were awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize (oft en referred to
as the environmental Nobel Prize), under the banner of “A New Precedent
viii Preface
for Indigenous and Tribal Peoples.” Th ey were cited for “having guaranteed
territorial rights not just for the Saramaka, but for all of the Maroons and
indigenous people. . . . In addition, because the case was settled by the bind-
ing Inter-American Court, Eduards and Jabini changed international juris-
prudence so that free, prior and informed consent will be required for major
development projects throughout the Americas. Th ey saved not only their
communities’ , square kilometers of forest, but strengthened the pos-
sibility of saving countless more.”
Suriname has the highest proportion of rainforest within its national ter-
ritory, and the most forest per person, of any country in the world. Th is book
tells the story of the Saramakas’ battle to retain control of their own piece of
that forest.
Africans Discover America