'War on Terror' Has Indigenous People in Its Sights

Gustavo González, ZNet/ IPS News

The "war on terror", identified in Amnesty International's annual report as a new source of human rights abuses, is threatening to expand to Latin America, targeting indigenous movements that are demanding autonomy and protesting free-market policies and "neo-liberal" globalisation. In the United States "there is a perception of indigenous activists as destabilising elements and terrorists," and their demands and activism have begun to be cast in a criminal light, lawyer José Aylwin, with the Institute of Indigenous Studies, told IPS.

In the view of anthropologist Pedro Ciciliano at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, the NIC report (National Intelligence Council) is "exaggerated and fraught with errors typical of U.S. intelligence based on biased information." >> continue