A/HRC/4/32 page 14 55. Also victims of abuse and violations in Mexico are indigenous peasant farmers in the State of Guerrero who oppose the La Parota dam project in their territory, which the State insists on carrying out without the population’s free consent. A court has instructed the Government to desist from the construction of infrastructure works in this area until the conflict has been resolved through negotiation, but the authorities have ignored the injunction and are going ahead with road building as part of the dam project, to which many villagers are opposed. 56. In the Philippines there have been reports of numerous cases - still not clarified - of murders of human rights defenders, social activists and indigenous community leaders. In Guatemala, violence and insecurity in indigenous regions continue to cause concern to the human rights and international community. In Chile, Mapuche communities continue to have their houses searched and to be abused by the police. Similar reports are heard from the Chittagong region of Bangladesh and from countries in South-East Asia concerning persistent disputes between the State and the indigenous highlanders over ownership and control of natural resources. 57. These events illustrate once again the tendency of some governments to criminalize social protest in favour of the legitimate claims of the indigenous populations, a phenomenon the Special Rapporteur has already mentioned in many of his reports. The Special Rapporteur recommends that States should scrupulously respect the rights and guarantees of indigenous populations, as part of their international commitments, and that these people’s legitimate demands in respect of their legitimate rights should not be criminalized. H. Intellectual property rights 58. Indigenous people’s traditional knowledge, biological resources, innovations and practices have never been properly defined or protected at the national and international levels. A case in point is their traditional herbal lore, which is today being used by pharmaceutical companies to develop modern medicines, or their non-copyrighted indigenous music that is reproduced in the media without any recognition of their authors’ rights. Given the frequently collective and ancestral possession of traditional knowledge, the current legal intellectual property regime does not adequately protect indigenous populations. 59. The Convention on Biological Diversity contains several provisions that are important for indigenous people and refer to respect for and preservation of traditional lore and the indigenous populations’ innovations and practices for the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity. It also establishes that benefits deriving from the use of traditional knowledge must be shared with the indigenous communities. At the suggestion of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, there are plans to formulate the basic principles for a code of ethics and conduct for ensuring respect for the indigenous peoples’ cultural heritage for the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity. 60. There are 11 organizations of the United Nations system currently engaged in activities relating to the cultural heritage and traditional lore of the indigenous peoples in different international legal systems. These include the working groups on article 8 (j) of the Convention on Biological Diversity and on access and benefit-sharing in connection with the implementation of the Convention; the Intergovernmental Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic