“[We want] to draw the attention of the government with this action, there are foreigners and Peruvians, there are about 70 people,” Watson Trujillo, the leader of the Cuninico community, told RPP radio. French, Spanish and Swiss nationals are also among the arrested tourists, who were detained while traveling on a riverboat. Trujillo said his group took the “radical measure” in an effort to pressure the government to send a delegation to assess the environmental damage from the Sept. 16 spill of 2,500 tons of crude oil into the Cuninico River. The detainees would spend the night inside the boat while they waited for a resolution to the situation, he added. Trujillo said he would return to the boat on Friday to consider whether to release them. A Briton on board, Charlotte Wiltshire, sent a message to the BBC saying conditions were “starting to deteriorate” as they ran out of food and water. He called for “intervention” to rescue them, adding that the prisoners included pregnant women, the elderly and the sick. The government and police have not commented on the incident, which took place in a tributary of the Marañón River. Indigenous communities had already blocked the passage of all ships on the river in protest at the spill, which was caused by a rupture in the Norperuano oil pipeline. On September 27, the government declared a state of emergency for 90 days in the region, which is home to the communities of Cuninico and Urarinas and where about 2,500 indigenous people live. According to Petroperu, the leak was the result of a deliberate 21cm cut in the pipeline.
