What a man! This is religion not about believing, writing and saying good things but in doing good and living a good life. Peru tries to expel 'incendiary gringo priest' - Channel 4 NewsBrother Paul McAuley is a hero among the indigenous tribes ofthe Peruvian Amazon, but the 62-year-old missionary from Portsmouth has made such a nuisance of himself in his campaign for tribal rights that Peru's government has ordered his expulsion, writes Jonathan Rugman.
"If I have to go, I'll get carried out," he told me last week. "I won't resist because I respect Peruvian law, but I won’t have the energy to take any steps to walk. That would be to betray these people."...
...It was Brother Paul who in 2008 filmed video pictures of the River Tigre, blackened by clouds of billowing oil, and he has asked the Peruvian authorities to investigate.
And it was Brother Paul who in the same year obtained a chilling video – which he passed to Channel 4 News - of a man apparently tortured and killed after demonstrating for native rights.
"The death of the native has never been investigated," he said. "We have been going on for two years and we know nothing about how he died."
The Catholic missionary lists his main achievements as helping overturn possible 20 year jail sentences facing Indian protestors, and obliging the government to conduct environmental and social studies before forestry logging concessions are awarded; though he says Peru's President, Alan Garcia, has refused to sign that pledge into law.
The Peruvian press has called Brother Paul a "white terrorist", and an "incendiary gringo priest", and the campaigning charity that Brother Paul founded is certainly causing a rumble in the jungle...
