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WRM ACTION
ALERTS
MAY 1999
| The U'wa of the Colombian
cloud forest are in a life-and-death struggle to protect their traditional culture and
sacred homeland from an oil project slated to begin on their land at anytime. The U'wa are
adamantly opposed to the drilling and warn that the project will lead to an increase in
violence as seen in other oil regions of Colombia. Despite this, Los Angeles-based
Occidental Petroleum and the Colombian government continue to move forward with plans to
drill. The U'wa have made a call for international support; now is the time for us to
answer. The U'wa's opposition to the oil project is so strong that they have vowed to commit collective suicide if Occidental Petroleum and the Colombian government proceed with the oil project on their ancestral lands. The U'wa, a traditional people some 5,000 members strong, explain they prefer a death by their own hand than the slow death to their environment and culture oil will bring. A core tenet of U'wa culture and spirituality is the belief that the land that has sustained them for centuries is sacred. They strongly believe that to permit oil exploration on these sacred lands would upset the balance of the world. In the words of the U'wa, "Oil is the blood of Mother Earth...to take the oil is, for us, worse than killing your own mother. If you kill the Earth, then no one will live." The U'wa people's struggle recently exploded into the public arena with the tragic March 5th murders in Colombia of three indigenous rights activists: Terence Freitas, Ingrid Washinawatok and Lahe'ane'e Gay. Terence had devoted the last two years of his life to supporting the U'wa in their campaign to stop Occidental's oil project, reclaim their ancestral homeland and protect their traditional culture. Ingrid and Lahe'ane'e were coordinating with the U'wa to launch an educational project designed to maintain and promote the U'wa's traditional way-of-life. The U'wa fear that the recent murders are but a harbinger of the wider physical violence the oil project bring to their people. Throughout Colombia, oil and violence are linked inextricably. Occidental's Cano Limon pipeline, just north of U'wa territory, has been attacked by leftist guerillas more than 500 times in its 12 years of existence, spilling some 1.7 million barrels of crude oil into the soil and rivers. The Colombian government has militarized oil production and pipeline zones, often persecuting local populations the government assumes are helping the guerrillas. Oil projects have already taken their toll on many other indigenous peoples of Colombia, including the Yarique, Kofan and Secoya. The current drilling plans threaten the survival of both the U'wa and their environment. The U'wa's cloud forest homeland in the Sierra Nevada de Cocuy mountains near the Venezuelan border is one of the most delicate, endangered forest ecosystems on the planet. It is an area rich in plant and animal life unique to the region, and the U'wa depend on the balance and bounty of the forest for their survival. Where oil companies have operated in other regions of the Amazon basin, cultural decay, toxic pollution, land invasions and massive deforestation have followed. Occidental first received an exploration license for the 2 billion barrels oil field the equivalent of three months of U.S. consumption-- in 1992. Since then, the U'wa have voiced their consistent opposition to the oil project. They have taken a variety of actions to halt the project including the filing of lawsuits against the government in Colombia, petitioning the Organization of American States to intervene, appealing directly with Occidental's top executives, and reaching out to company shareholders. Currently, Colombia's Ministry of the Environment is considering Occidental's application for a drilling license, the next hurdle the company must clear to proceed with the project. In the face of mounting violence in the region and Occidental's pressure on the government to approve the drilling permit, the urgency of the U'wa's struggle has never been so great. "We are seeking an explanation for this 'progress' that goes against life. We are demanding that this kind of progress stop, that oil exploitation in the heart of the Earth is halted, that the deliberate bleeding of the Earth stop." --Statement of the U'wa people, August, 1999 A number of actions are being organized by the U'wa Defense Working Group, whose members are: Amazon Coalition, Amazon Watch, Action Resource Center, Earthjustice Legal, Defense Fund, EarthWays Foundation, International Law Project for Human Environmental & Economic Defense, Project Underground, Rainforest Action Network, Sol Communications. Those interested in participating in these actions, please contact any of those organizations. Source: Rainforest Action Network U'wa Work. For additional information: email <HelpUwa@ran.org> or web page www. ran.org |
| Mexico: mangrove destruction by tourism and shrimp farming |
| The expansion of tourism has meant the increase of the possibility of enjoying leisure time for many people wordwide. Nevertheless, tourism usually brings negative social and environmental consequences with it and more so in the case of the fragile mangrove ecosystems. The mangroves and beaches off the Caribbean Coast of Mexico, known as the Maya Riviera, are being destroyed by more and more infrastructure for tourism built at a quick pace. Some people consider that this may benefit --at least temporally-- the local economy as this creates jobs and stimulates cash flow, but the long range results are devastating. In one weekend, working night and day, an entire building site can take over a healthy thriving mangrove. This aquatic forest ecosystem, vital to the life of the coast, reef, and food chain to so many mammals, is being sacrified for the benefit of investors in hotels, malls, golf courses, convention halls, and shopping centres that are being erected at the cost of one of the world's precious natural resources. Even if these developments were to be placed on the hard land, behind the mangrove wetlands, negative effects can be expected, due to the runoff downstream of chemical and pesticide effluents. The NGO People of the Mayan Cancun Corridor, with the support of Mangrove Action Project, are leading a campaign to halt the project to build a big hotel that will affect the Quintana Roo's mangroves in the Caribbean Coast. They are asking all interested people to address the following Mexican authorities expressing their concern for the fate of this fragile area: 1. President Ernesto Zedillo, Residencia Oficial de los
Pinos; Puerto Central, Primer Piso, Col. San Miguel; Chapultepec, CP11850, Mexico D.F.
MEXICO 2. Julia Carabias, President of Semernap carabias@servidor.dgsca.unam.mx 3. Sr. Oscar Espinosa, Secretaria de Turismo; Avenida
Presidente Masarik, 4. Gobernador Hendricks; Calle 22 de Enero: s/n Palacio de Gobierno; Chetumal, Quintana Roo - 07000 MEXICO Mangroves at the Pacific coast are also menaced. The situation in San Blas Nayarit in the area of Marismas Nacionales (National Swamps) is continuing to be critical, partly as a consequence of the indifference shown by the authorities. The international agreements for the protection of this fragile area are not enforced. The Grupo Ecológico Manglar has denounced that in this case the direct responsible for destruction is the shrimp farming company Aquanova Farms. Only once -in October 1998- the authorities gave a response to the many complaints expressed by the environmentalists, and it consisted of a justification of the firm's activities, since it stated that the official investigation found insufficient proof that violations occurred, and for that reason the case was closed. Additionally the case was submitted to the Commission of Environmental Cooperation Canada-USA-Mexico, that committed itself to study it. Meanwhile a large area of mangroves is being lost every day because of the drying of waterways and lagoons caused by the expansion of Aquanova's shrimp cultivation ponds. Source: Late Friday News, 33rd Edition, 27/3/99 |
| Four thousand representatives of rural, poor and ethnic communities within the upper nine provinces of Northern Thailand rallied at the Provincial Office in Chiangmai early on the 25th of April. These representatives of the people have released the following statement: Stop the violation of community rights and
protect the dignity of human beings. Regarding the violation of the civil rights of all Thai people, there still exists the legal power to perpetrate these violations. A recent example can be found in the arrest of community members belonging to the Palong ethnic group in the community of Pang Daeng in Chaingdao District of Chiangmai Province. Fifty six members of this community were arrested without any statement of the reason for their arrest. Another instance is the continued practice of treating members of ethnic communities as separate from the Thai majority and using this as a pretence, or excuse, for the removal of their lands. The Northern Farmers Network in the name of
peoples networks to conserve the forest who face a violation of their rights resulting
from the declaration of protected forest areas which enclose areas traditionally used for
cultivation, and the Assembly of Ethnic Minorities, Northern Thai Section in the name of
peoples networks of ethnic minorities who face a violation of their human rights resulting
from discrimination by government officials have combined with a number of democratic
peoples organizations. These organizations combined to peacefully protest these violations
according to the Constitution of the Kingdom of Thailand, Article 44, and have the
following demands: A copy of any letters you might write should also be forwarded to the temporary coordinating office of the peoples' rally and the following cooperating organizations in order that they can be translated and shared with the people as a demonstration of international support. Please send your letters to: |
| On March 26th, the WRM sent the following letter to Venezuela's new President Hugo Chavez. Our Venezuelan friends request your support by adding your signature to the letter, which will be resent to the President followed by the signatures of all those who are willing to support it. Please include name, organization and country and send that data to: wrm@chasque.apc.org LETTER TO PRESIDENT CHAVEZ (translation of Spanish original) We would like to express our concern regarding an issue which we consider to be extremenly important, while at the same time we request you to personally intervene to find a solution to a conflict in the State of Portuguesa. For a long time, peasants from that State and specifically those from the villages of Morador and Tierra Buena have been in conflict with Smurfit Carton of Venezuela, a subsidiary of the Ireland-based transnational Jefferson Smurfit. Among the multiple problems generated by this corporation in that region, the more apparent are those related to the impacts of its extensive monoculture tree plantations on water, flora and wildlife, which result in serious problems for local peoples' livelihoods. Moreover, there is ample evidence that the company has been deforesting, both directly or though third party agents, the few remaining forests of this Venezuelan State, with the aim of supplying raw material to its pulp plant located in Yaracuy State (MOCARPEL). As a last resort to put a stop to this predatory activity, a group of over a hundred people blockaded a national highway in January this year to denounce this fact and the National Guard thereby detained a dozen of trucks loaded with tropical wood which were on their way to Smurfit's industrial plant. Even worse, the company is implementing plantations in clear violation of the legal regulations, because the authorization to occupy the territory provided to Smurfit by the Ministry of the Environment is illegal, given that it allows afforestation in areas of clear agricultural land use, thus violating the State of Portuguesa's Territorial Management Plan. In addition, the authorization was issued by government officials with no authority over the matter. Additionally, there is also a violation of the constitutional precept which bans the existence of large estates, given that the corporation currently owns 34,000 hectares of land in the States of Portuguesa, Lara and Cojedes. The purchase of the estate "La Portuguesa" (2,700 hectares) by Smurfit resulted in its peaceful occupation by local peasants on July 14 1997, with the aim of obtaining from the government the allocation of the land which they require for their survival. However, the response was a brutal repression from the National Guard and many of the consequences are still being suffered by those who participated in the action. All the above and much more has been duly investigated and documented by the Environment Committee of the Venezuelan Senate. In spite of this, a solution seems impossible, because the company and local people are in a situation of confrontation, while the State Government and the National Guard of Portuguesa seem to have taken a position in favour of the company, without taking into account the needs and rights of peasants or the environmental impacts of the company's activities. Consequently, if a solution is to be found, it appears to be necessary that the peasants' desire to be allocated land in "La Productora" estate is fulfilled --which we believe to be in accordance with the advanced agrarian legislation of Venezuela-- and that the agressions to the environment resulting from the activities of this company be halted. On the other hand, we feel that it is relevant to highlight that this problem is a consequence --common in many Southern countries-- of the large scale tree plantation model, which is everywhere creating problems similar to those which have occured in the State of Portuguesa, as well as similar confrontational situations. In accordance with the above, we are confident that the government which you preside will take matters into its hands and will be able to revert a situation which, in case of continuing in its current course, will only lead to confrontations which will benefit no-one. We look forward to hearing from you. Yours sincerely, |
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