Bogota, Colombia – Yesterday, 200 U’wa Indians, including women, children and tribal elders marched on the site of Occidental Petroleum’s planned oil well Gibraltar 1, establishing a permanent settlement to block the drilling slated to begin in the coming weeks. Hundreds of additional U’wa are expected to continue arriving to the settlement in upcoming days. Tribal leaders declared that this permanent settlement is necessary to block the drilling after legal battles and direct appeals to the company and government have failed to date.
Oxy’s entire oil block falls within the U’wa’s ancestral territory. The U’wa, a traditional tribe of some 5,000 people living in the cloudforests of northeastern Colombia have repeatedly declared their absolute opposition to Oxy’s oil project. The U’wa cannot allow drilling on their ancestral lands as they believe that oil is the blood of the Earth. The oil project is widely expected to escalate conflicts in the region among the armed factions, resulting in violence against the U’wa, as seen in other oil areas of Colombia. Despite this, in September the Colombian Minister of the Environment approved a drilling license for the first exploratory well.
“We are willing to have the government bomb us, but we will not abandon these ancestral lands because we must stop Oxy from drilling for oil, which is the blood of our Mother Earth,” declared U’wa international spokesperson Berito Kuwaru’wa, from the U’wa settlement at Gibraltar.
In the communiqué that follows, the U’wa make an urgent appeal to their supporters to join them in solidarity at the settlement during this non-violent stand to defend their culture, land and lives.
Today, in the Colombian capital of Bogota, 25 U’wa representatives including Tribal Council president Roberto Perez marched on the Ministry of the Environment, calling for Colombian and international support at this critical moment in their campaign.
For more information on the U’wa and their campaign please see: www.ran.org, www.amazonwatch.org, www.moles.org.
