Outrage after the environmental activist shot at the Peruvian Amazon

An environmental activist who campaigns against the destruction of the Amazon was shot dead in the Peruvian jungle, local authorities said on Sunday.

Hipolito Quispehuaman was killed on Saturday night while driving along a section of the interoceanic highway in the southeast region of Madre de Dios, according to the office of the local prosecutor.

Quispehuaman had served as a member of the Management Committee of the Tamopata National Reserve.

“This is a murder with a firearm from another defender of the Madre de Dios region,” Karen Torres told local prosecutors to journalists.

Torres added that the preliminary reason that the investigators considered that the murder was in retaliation for the defense work he was doing.

“They demand justice for the death of my brother. This kind of thing cannot happen,” the victim’s brother, Angel Quispehuaman, told reporters.

The National Human Rights Coordinator of Peru (CNDDHH) condemned the murder and demanded that “the Peruvian State take urgent and effective measures to protect the lives and work of the (rights) defenders.”

“Not one more death! Enough with the murders of human rights defenders!” The CNDDHH said in X.

The Ministry of Justice promised to “work on the legal defense of the victims, so that this crime is not unpunished,” he wrote in X.

The attacks against environmental activists have increased in recent years in the Amazon areas of Peru, where the presence of national authorities is scarce.

In July 2024, the indigenous environmental activist Mariano Isacama was killed in the Amazon region of Ucayali, about 308 miles east of the capital, Lima.

Indigenous peoples face the growing presence of drug traffickers and illegal mining, which are deforesting the Amazon region.

At least 54 land and environmental defenders have been killed in Peru since 2012, more than half of which were indigenous people, according to the global non -governmental organization Witness.

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