“You won’t live” was the death threat painted on Miguel Guimaraes’ fence

Miguel Guimaraes is the vice president of Peru’s Amazonian Indigenous organization AIDESEP. He runs their program to protect Indigenous leaders at risk of violent attacks for their peaceful and lawful work.

Two weeks ago, he received a death threat directed at him personally, the latest in a series over recent years. At that moment, the Shipibo Indigenous leader was traveling internationally to denounce threats to other Indigenous leaders and environmental defenders in Peru’s Amazon.

As soon as we learned about this threat, Amazon Watch and our allies initiated an emergency response. First we gathered funding to help Miguel’s family move to a secure location. Next we reached out to journalists, and a number of articles ran within hours, including in the Associated Press. And then we worked to obtain public, high-level political support for Miguel, to deter those who might try to act on this threat.

Within days, Miguel met with the U.S. Embassy and the U.N. human rights office in Lima. That afternoon, those offices issued a public statement of support. Now we need to spread that message far and wide!

If you use Twitter/X, you can take action in two ways:

1. Simply retweet the U.S. Embassy’s tweet, ensuring that it gets as much exposure as possible; and
2. Reply to the tweet, making a positive comment in solidarity with Miguel (this could be as simple as, “Solidarity with Miguel Guimaraes from [your country, state, or town]”).

If you don’t use Twitter, please share this action with your community.