Peru indigenous warn of 'ethnocide by inaction' as coronavirus hits Amazon tribes

FILE PHOTO - A member of an indigenous group from the Amazon region in Puerto Maldonado, Peru, January 19, 2018. REUTERS/Alessandro Bianchi

LIMA (Reuters) - Indigenous tribes in Peru's Amazon say the government has left them to fend for themselves against the coronavirus, risking "ethnocide by inaction," according to a letter from natives to the United Nations and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

The formal complaint asks the U.N. and international courts to force the government to take "concrete action" to ensure their survival, citing the 1948 U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.