Colombian tribe scores ‘historic’ victory versus Big Gas
Colombian tribe scores ‘historic’ victory versus Big Gas
State company Ecopetrol pulls out of drilling site in territories belonging to the indigenous U’wa people
David Hill
Thursday 26 March 2015 10.31 EDT
The indigenous U’wa people living in north-east Colombia have won what observers call an “historic” and “decisive” victory after state oil and gas company Ecopetrol dismantled a gas drilling site in their territories.
The U’wa Association of Traditional Authorities and Councils (Asou’wa) reported in February last year the arrival of an “avalanche of heavy machinery” and increasing numbers of soldiers at the site, called Magallanes, where Ecopetrol intended to drill three wells. After statements fiercely opposing operations and a series of meetings with government and company representatives, Ecopetrol agreed to suspend operations last May and announced a decision in July to withdraw equipment - but only finished doing so in January this year.
“It’s a triumph,” Asou’wa vice-president Heber Tegria Uncaria told the Guardian. “It’s one more battle we’ve won over the last 20 to 30 years, and it’s thanks to the U’wa people themselves, national and international support, and the role of the media in drawing people’s attention to what is happening.”
“We feel extremely happy about the Magallanes victory and it gives us strength to continue fighting for our lives, for our rights and for Mother Earth,” says U’wa lawyer Aura Tegria Cristancho. “Ecopetrol’s decision was a very intelligent one. It knows the U’was and knew we wouldn’t stop fighting.”
More:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/andes-to-the-amazon/2015/mar/26/colombian-tribe-scores-historic-victory-versus-big-gas
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Will the U’was be forced to threaten to commit mass suicide again?
Gas company wants to drill on indigenous people's ancestral territory in Colombia
David Hill
Tuesday 17 June 2014 11.57 EDT
Say ‘Gibraltar’ to many people in the UK and the first thing they’ll think of is a ‘British Overseas Territory’ at the entrance to the Mediterranean. Say it to one of the 7,000 indigenous U’wa people in north-east Colombia and the reaction would be very different: Gibraltar is a well cluster in U’wa ancestral territory which became the focal point of their opposition to oil operations in the late 1990s and early 2000s involving, among other things, threatening to commit mass suicide and being clubbed, tear-gassed, threatened with rape, evicted, arrested and harassed by Colombian military and police.
The first reported suicide threat came in early 1995 when the operating company was Occidental, partnered by Shell and Colombia’s state oil and gas firm Ecopetrol. Repeated other threats were voiced – to the rest of Colombia, to the media, even to Occidental executives.
One such threat was made outside Occidental’s offices in Los Angeles in 1997. According to Oil Exploitation and Indigenous Rights: Global Regime Network Conflict in the Andes, an award-winning international relations PhD. thesis by American journalist and activist Leslie Wirpsa, who supported the U'was for 15 years:
. . . Flanked by a white, black and red banner blurting ‘Stop the Oxy-Cution of the U'wa’ [leader Berito] Kuwaru'wa reiterated to a group of journalists and a troupe of environmental activists that if Occidental insisted on exploiting oil in tribal territory, the community would commit collective suicide by leaping off a 15,000 foot cliff. He and a Colombian companion, an anthropologist, claimed drilling would damage the delicate cloud forest ecosystem sustaining the U’wa and that it would destroy the cultural and physical integrity of the community.
More:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/andes-to-the-amazon/2014/jun/17/will-uwas-forced-threaten-commit-mass-suicide-again
