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Achuar Territory, Peru – In January, EarthRights International visited a remote area of the Peruvian Amazon to document the resistance of the Achuar people to oil development by California-based Occidental Petroleum. At an Assembly in the village of Wisum, on the Huitoyacu River, we interviewed, photographed and filmed leaders and members of the Achuar federations of ATI and ORACH, who reiterated unequivocally their official position rejecting oil development in their territory.

 

At least 70 workers on the Camisea natural gas pipeline in Ayacucho were kidnapped early Monday morning by unidentified assailants and held for a ransom of one million dollars and assorted communications equipment. On Tuesday the army led a raid on the kidnappers, freeing the captives. The whereabouts of the kidnappers are unknown. President Alejandro Toledo said afterward that he believed the kidnappers were remnants of the Maoist Shining Path, whose insurgency led to an extremely violent civil war that killed over 35,000 during the 1980s and early 1990s.

Have you ever thought about what your life would be like without your language? What about the fact that your children may not be able to speak your language when you are no longer alive?

Dr. Ronald Michael is a surgeon in Chicago, Illinois. He was born in Lebanon, grew up in Iraq and Lebanon, and moved to Chicago in 1967. All four of his grandparents are from what is now southeastern Turkey, along the border of northern Iraq. They fled there during the Assyrian Holocaust by Ottoman troops and Kurds during the waning years of Ottoman rule.

As complex and ancient as the Assyrian history is, can you give us some brief background?

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