3 bond between the Sarayaku Community and its territory; and, in consultation with the community and its representatives vis-à-vis the inter-American system for the protection of human rights, agree upon precautionary measures; i) when it requested the precautionary measures on May 5, 2003, the Commission gave the State a 15-day period in which to report on the measures adopted. On June 17, 2003, Ecuador reported that it had sent a number of communications to the appropriate authorities with instructions to comply with the precautionary measures, and that the armed forces were investigating the events that occurred on January 26, 2003; j) on July 18, 2003, the petitioners reported that the State was not complying with the precautionary measures; the memorandums sent to various authorities were all that had been done. They also reported that no one had contacted the leaders of the community to determine what type of protection the persons named in the order for precautionary measures would receive. In that same submission, the petitioners also stated that navigation on the Bobonaza River had been stopped, which meant that the Sarayaku people were unable to get to their own territory or to have contact with other villages; k) on August 5, 2003, the State sent the Commission a copy of a memorandum signed by the Deputy Secretary of Defense, in which he reported that as the oil exploration and drilling work was getting underway in the zone, the Sarayaku people had threatened neighboring communities and that Amazonas’ IV Command had allegedly launched a security operation to prevent “criminal activity” on the part of the indigenous peoples. The memorandum reported that on January 25, 2003, a patrol doing reconnaissance in the area “was taken by surprise by a band of 30 armed indigenous people.” The military personnel were stripped of their weapons. The note added the following: “the complaint that they [the petitioners] have filed with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights is not true; these things, like the military attack on the ‘TIUTIHUALLI PEACE AND LIFE CAMP’, which never happened, are “the comuneros’ exaggerations”; l) on September 27, 2003, the State submitted information on implementation of the measures and attached a memorandum from the Attorney General which read as follows: [t]he report prepared by the police reveals that arrest warrants had been issued for certain members of the Sarayaku Community because of complaints filed by the CGC Oil Company alleging acts of vandalism committed by the comuneros. The Ecuadorian State, through the Office of the Attorney General, has had to do a thorough investigation of the information received –information the petitioners did not reportso that the protection afforded by the Inter-American Commission would not become a vehicle that the above-named persons could used to circumvent their appearance in domestic courts to answer the charges filed.

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