An attack by armed assailants on a patrol of a mission by the Indigenous Wampis guards last week in the Peruvian Amazon has again brought into focus the issue of illegal gold mining in the ancestral territory.
The 60-member mission was ambushed and shot at as they were patrolling near the Wampis community of Fortaleza on Saturday, just days after the Peruvian government’s sudden withdrawal from a planned joint enforcement operation to confront the illegal mining.
