An environmental activist campaigning against the destruction of the Amazon was killed in the Peruvian jungle, local authorities announced on Sunday.
Hipolito Quishehuaman was killed on Saturday evening while he was driving along a section of the interocéanic highway in the southeast region of Madre de Dios, according to the local prosecutor’s office.
Quispehuaman had been a member of the management committee of the Tambopata National Reserve.
“This is a murder with a firearm from another defender of the region of Madre de Dios,” local prosecutor Karen Torres told journalists.
Torres added that the preliminary reason envisaged by the investigators was that the murder was in retaliation for the plea work he was doing.
“I ask for justice for the death of my brother. This kind of thing cannot happen,” the victim’s brother Angel Quispehuaman said to journalists.
The National Coordinator of Peru for Human Rights (CNDDHH) condemned the murder and demanded that “the Peruvian state takes urgent and effective measures to protect the life and work of defenders (rights)”.
“No more death! Enough with the murders of human rights defenders!” The CNDDHH said on X.
The Ministry of Justice is committed to “working on the legal defense of the victims, so that this crime is not unpunished,” wrote on X.
Attacks on environmental activists have increased in recent years in the Amazonian regions of Peru, where the presence of national authorities is rare.
In July 2024, the indigenous environmental activist Mariano Isacama was murdered in the Amazon region of Ucayali, about 308 miles east of the capital, Lima.
Aboriginal people face the growing presence of drug traffickers and illegal mining, which defy the Amazon region.
At least 54 land and environmental defenders have been murdered in Peru since 2012, more than half of which were indigenous peoples, according to the overall non -governmental organization Witness.
