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An indigenous environmental activist has been shot dead in Peru, authorities reported Wednesday, the latest in a long line of rights defenders to meet a violent end in the Andean country.
Ulises Rumiche, an indigenous leader and language teacher, was found dead hours after returning to his Amazon rainforest community from a meeting with Peru's deputy minister for vulnerable populations, the ministry said on Twitter.
He had been shot in the head and his body found next to a road in the Pangoa district some 300 kilometers (185 miles) east of the capital Lima.
Rumiche had served as a representative of the indigenous peoples of Pangoa since last year.
Peru's National Commission for Development and Life Without Drugs condemned the killing and said Rumiche had been "a fundamental ally" of its work to promote new, sustainable modes of income in the coca-growing valley formed by the Apur�mac, Ene and Mantaro rivers, known by the acronym VRAEM.
The valley has been under military guard since 2006 when the government said it hosted remnants of the Shining Path Maoist rebel group, which operated there in tandem with drug gangs.
In a report last year, Peru's National Coordinator for Human Rights (CNDDHH) and the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders said defense of human rights was a "high-risk activity" in Peru.
Since 2011, 220 human rights defenders have been murdered, it said, including land and environmental activists.
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