LIMA – Peru’s Aprodeh human rights organization said that 61 people remain missing in the northern Amazon region following clashes between Indian protesters and security forces earlier this month that, according to the official death toll, left 24 police officers and nine civilians dead.

Attorney Juan Jose Quispe, a representative of Aprodeh, said that preliminary figure was arrived at following an investigation into a deadly clash on June 5, according to statements cited Friday by the CNR radio association.

“It’s a list of names we have following an initial probe,” said Quispe, who traveled to the northern jungle town of Bagua to research reports of deaths and human rights violations.

The clash occurred on a key highway near Bagua when police forcibly evicted road-blocking protesters. While authorities say the Indians fired on cops, indigenous leaders maintain the protesters were not armed and blame the bloodshed on police.

According to Quispe, relatives of the missing have been searching for their loved ones in nearby cities and military barracks “and do not find them.”

“These people are not on the lists of injured and displaced mentioned by the national Ombudsman’s Office,” said Quispe, who ruled out the possibility that they have gone into hiding for fear of repression by security forces.

A few days after the clash, the federal government in Lima put the death toll at 33 and has not budged from that figure, although relatives of the protesters and human rights groups say that dozens of Indians were killed in the clashes.

They claim that the bodies of victims have disappeared because they were incinerated or dumped in rivers, accusations that President Alan Garcia’s government vehemently denies.

Quispe, for his part, called attention to the “scant or complete lack of information that authorities have given to family members” of the missing.

The Aprodeh representative also said that during his tour of the area, he confirmed that human rights violations were committed and that the number arrested and injured totaled 133 and 189, respectively.

“The authorities are not carrying out a preliminary investigation because most of the detainees are Indians and they don’t have interpreters, so it’s difficult when they make statements,” he said.

He also said one group of people has been held at a military barracks in Bagua for a week without the proper arrest papers to support such a measure.

According to Quispe, in the aftermath of the clash, police, investigative and judicial authorities” have been guilty of “flagrant violations” of human rights, adding that most of the detainees at the police station in Bagua “were mistreated by police.”

“A request was made for a new medical examination. However, (a prosecutor in Bagua) did not accept that request, even though the name of a captain named Jimenez who allegedly committed the abuse was named,” he said.

Aprodeh gave this information at a press conference organized by human rights groups “acting in solidarity with the civilian and police victims of the conflict in the Amazon,” the CNR said.

The different human rights groups represented at the press conference all denounced the way in which the government has handled the conflict, “whose bad decisions placed Indians and police in mortal danger,” they said.

They also demanded “respect for the basic rights of Indians who are injured, missing or have suffered attacks on their freedoms.”

The executive secretary of the National Human Rights Coordinator, Ronald Gamarra, for his part, demanded that the government speed up its investigation into reports of people missing and ensure that all the injured have access to medical attention.

Gamarra also demanded that the government attend to the relatives of the officers who were slain and ensure they receive pension and social security payments.

Amazon Indians have carried out two months of protests against a law that gives the government power to grant mining, logging and drilling concessions on ancestral land without consulting residents.

Indians disrupted transport links and seized control of oil-industry installations, effectively shutting down a pipeline that carries crude oil from the Amazon interior to Peru’s northern coast.

The dispute turned violent on June 5, when police used force to evict the protesters from a key highway near Bagua.

Garcia’s government says 24 police and nine Indians died in the clash. Aidesep, the indigenous peoples’ association that organized the protests, puts the death toll among the protesters at between 30 and 40.

Tens of thousands of people took to the streets of Peruvian cities Thursday to show solidarity with the Indians.

Police in Lima used tear gas to keep marchers away from Congress, which voted earlier this to suspend two decrees affecting the Amazon region.

Protesters were not satisfied, however, and want the decrees – 1090, which would create an office within Peru’s Agriculture Ministry to oversee the use of forest resources in the Amazon, and another that would enable more private investment in that area of the country – scrapped entirely.

Garcia’s administration says the office was needed to satisfy the conditions of Peru’s trade accord with the United States, as Washington insisted on the need for an entity that could certify Peruvian wood exports are not the products of illegal logging.

But the Indians say the government’s failure to consult with indigenous people before imposing the new law constitutes a violation of International Labor Organization conventions signed and ratified by Peru.

Separately, the Peruvian government on Friday canceled the license of La Voz radio in Utcubamba, a district in the northern province of Amazonas, accusing it of inciting the violence in the Peruvian Amazon.

It also backtracked on an earlier decision to exclude Aidesep from planned talks aimed at resolving the crisis.