ICEERS

Over the last 20 months 14 traditional healers, all from the Shawi Ethnic group, were murdered brutally in the Amazon region of Peru, allegedly at the behest of a local mayor.

No arrests have been made over the deaths, which took place in and around Balsapuerto, a small river port in Peru's vast Amazon region on its northern border with Ecuador, Colombia and Brazil. The prime suspects are the mayor of Balsapuerto, Alfredo Torres and his brother Augusto.

The two men were named in a report from the public prosecutor's office in the nearest town of Yurimaguas, which said seven of the victims had been shot, stabbed or hacked to death with machetes. Local people identified all of them as curanderos or native healers, said the vice-minister of intercultural affairs, Vicente Otta.

The Roman Catholic church in the area has reported the death of seven other shamans whose bodies have yet to be found, Otta said, adding that territorial disputes and political disagreements also pointed to the mayor being "one of the instigators of the slaughter". He said that the murder suspects had sought to "legitimise the killings " by blaming the victims for the high level of infant mortality in the area. 

Torres has denied the allegations in interviews with local media. Calls to his office went unanswered. The mayor, who is an evangelical Christian, ordered the killings on hearing that the shamans planned to form an association.