Cubara, Colombia – Dangerously escalating an already tense situation, Colombian National Police today brutally attacked a group of 450 peaceful U’wa protesters on a road near Las Canoas, approximately 4 kilometers from Gibraltar 1, site of the Occidental Petroleum’s proposed oil well in Northeast Colombia. According to an urgent communiqué from the U’wa, this attack resulted in the death of three U’wa children. Many adults were also injured and several U’wa are now missing.
The U’wa report that at 8:15 am this morning, four helicopters arrived from Bogota carrying members of the Colombian National Police who then began to disperse a group of U’wa men, women, children, and medicine men and their supporters who have been peacefully blockading the Saravena – Pomplano road for the past week. Without warning, the police used tear gas and heavy machinery to charge the blockade, forcing the peaceful U’wa into the Cubujón River. The road blockades had been effectively stopping Oxy from moving in construction equipment to the drill site.
The U’wa are in engaged in a tense standoff with the Colombian Government and Oxy to prevent oil drilling on their sacred ancestral lands. Since January 19, the region including the site of the oil well have been heavily militarized. The U’wa also report that even the U’wa reservation has been militarized and the army is reportedly restricting travel to and from the reservation. On January 25, The Colombian soldiers reportedly used brutal methods to evict the nonviolent U’wa, airlifting the last 25 resisters by military helicopters.
International human rights groups are calling for an immediate suspension of all activity by Oxy at Gibraltar 1 pending a negotiated settlement with the U’wa and calling on President Pastrana to withdraw Colombian security forces from the U’wa Reserve and from the two farms owned by the U’wa at Gibraltar 1. Furthermore, Groups in the U.S. are calling on the Clinton Administration to use diplomatic pressures on the Colombian Government to ensure a peaceful resolution of this conflict.
“At a time when the US is about to vote for $2 million a day in military aid to the Colombian security forces, military maneuvers resulting in the death of innocent U’wa children cause serious alarm about how our tax dollars could fund more brutality and human rights abuses against innocent civilians in Colombia,” said Steve Kretzmann of Amazon Watch.
In the past week, protests were held in 34 cities in nine countries. These demonstrations have been targeting the two most important shareholders in Occidental – Fidelity Investments, which controls about 10 percent of Oxy stock, and US Vice President Al Gore, who holds up to a half million dollars in Oxy stock and who has enjoyed the sponsorship of Oxy throughout his political career. Yesterday, a protest was held outside the Gore 2000 campaign headquarters in Nashville, Tennessee.
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