Peruvian police clash with protesting coca farmers

LIMA, Peru (Reuters) -- Police fired tear gas on Tuesday at hundreds of illegal coca growers protesting against government eradication of their crop -- the raw material for cocaine -- in one of the farmers' biggest protests in a decade.

At least eight people were injured after blocking a key highway from the main town in the Upper Huallaga valley, Tingo Maria, where 35,000 illegal coca growers have protested since Monday, farmers said.

The clashes came as President Alberto Fujimori faced his worst political crisis in 10 years after a corruption scandal over his former spy chief, Vladimiro Montesinos, led him to call early elections and left him battling Montesinos for power over the army.

"We are all ready for the fight," coca farmer leader Eliseo Ayala said on Tuesday. He said up to 20 people had been hurt.

Other advisers said eight farmers had been injured along the Upper Huallaga, a valley of rolling hills and thick jungle bush about the size of New Jersey. It is home to both drug traffickers and remnants of Maoist Shining Path rebel bands.

Police said there had been violent clashes with protesters but no injuries or detained farmers.

Peru is the second-biggest producer of coca after Colombia. Fujimori won praise for cutting coca crops by more than half since 1995 as a military air blockade guided by U.S. radar severed smuggling routes from Peru to Colombia.

Under pressure from the air force, many smugglers switched routes, hauling semiprocessed coca paste by mule through the jungle or ferrying it in boats along remote tributaries in the Peruvian Amazon, a dense rain forest about the size of Texas.

"The farmers say they will continue protests until the eradication is suspended," Ricardo Soberon, an expert on the coca trade who is advising farmers, told Reuters.

Government human rights monitors said the police and coca growers were in negotiations to end the blockade.

The protests echoed incidents this year in neighboring Bolivia, where a state eradication campaign ended in clashes with protesters and at least 10 deaths and over 100 injuries.

The government has carried out eradication of coca crops since 1998, mostly using police to pull roots out of the soil by hand. But farmers in the area have complained that the police have used chemicals, ruining their legal crops.

A fungus of uncertain origin has also destroyed thousands of acres of coca, turning the thick green bushes into brittle white branches and adding to the economic woes of coca farmers, many of whom have tried to switch to legal crops such as coffee.

Coca is still legally used by many Andean Indians for traditional and medicinal purposes like treating altitude sickness and the pangs of hunger and thirst.

Peru aims to eradicate some 22,000 acres (9,000 hectares) of coca by the end of the year, compared with 30,000 acres (12,300 hectares) in 1999 and 42,000 acres (17,000 hectares) in 1998.

In 1999, Peru had 96,000 acres (38,700 hectares) under coca production, one-third of the 286,000 acres (115,600 hectares) cultivated in 1995. Most of the change has been due to forced eradication by police, with only a small proportion the result of farmers' voluntary abandonment of coca growing.

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