Peru suspends civil liberties after anti-mining clash

LIMA, Peru (AP) - Peru's government suspended civil liberties Tuesday and mobilized the military in a highlands region after four people were killed and 22 injured in a clash between police and farmers over a Chinese-owned copper mining project.

The state of emergency is the second declared this year by Peru's government after fatalities in an anti-mining protest. It is to last 30 days.

Violence broke out Monday in the south-central town of Challhuahuacho after 2,000 people, mostly Quechua-speaking highlanders, mounted a protest against the La Bambas project.

They object to changes in the plant's environmental impact plan that would put a copper- and molybdenum-processing plant three miles from the mine's three open pits. The revised plan also calls for processed ore to be shipped to the Pacific coast by train and truck rather than pipeline, as originally planned. The protesters believe the district would suffer contamination.

Police opened fire Monday when some protesters encroached on terrain owned by the $7.4 billion project, Peru's largest.

The four fatalities were all local men, ages 23 to 36, and all died of gunshot wounds, Cuzco deputy regional health director Erwin Luna told The Associated Press by phone. Health officials said 14 injured civilians suffered gunshot wounds while eight police officers had contusions. Police Gen. Luis Pantoja told RPP radio that two police officers had cracked skulls.

Amnesty International's executive director in Peru, Marina Navarro, called the deaths "unacceptable" in an email sent to the AP.

"In the past four years alone, 40 people have been killed in circumstances in which police used excessive force, and the majority of these deaths have not been adequately investigated," the statement said. "The price of social protests should not be the death of any person."

The project is owned by a consortium led by China Minmetals Corp., which purchased it last year from the Swiss mining giant Glencore. It is to begin production in 2016.

Peru is the world's third-largest copper producer and derives 60 percent of its exports from mining. Its recent easing of environmental protections has angered people in many communities in the shadow of mining projects who fear contamination and the loss of irrigation water.

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Associated Press writer Frank Bajak contributed to this report.