Colombia, a former Spanish colony in South America, has spent the last few decades in a state of semi civil war with leftist guerrilla groups. A major source of violence is the thriving cocaine trade which forms a key component of the national economy and employs powerful paramilitary death squads.
In 1996 British Petroleum (BP) and its partners last year signed a three year, US$60 million agreement with Colombia’s Ministry of Defense under which the army agreed to supply a battalion of 150 officers and 500 soldiers, including an elite mobile unit, to monitor construction of a 880 kilometre long pipeline to the Caribbean coast.
BP provided training for these security operations through a British mercenary firm called Defense Systems Limited (DSL), which has offices overlooking Buckingham Palace. Wearing Colombian police uniforms, a BP team of DSL soldiers taught a course that included counterguerrilla tactics, such as lethal weapons handling, sniper fire, and close quarter combat.
According to a recently surfaced report commissioned by the Colombian government, BP collaborated with local soldiers involved in kidnappings, torture, and murder. The unpublished document alleges that the oil company compiled intelligence including photos and video tapes of local people protesting oil activities, and passed the information on to the Colombian military which then arrested or kidnaped demonstrators as “subversives.”
Recently, the Colombian army introduced a US designed counterinsurgency strategy of dirty war, known locally as “quitarle agua al pez” or draining the fish tank. The phrase comes from the counterinsurgency strategy of draining the “sea” to kill the “fish.” Instead of fighting the guerrillas, then, the army and pro government paramilitary death squads target people they consider sympathizers. These same army officials are currently under investigation for human rights abuses and alleged involvement in the death of six peasant leaders who protested the oil giant.
Amnesty International’s Colombia researcher, Susan Lee charges that: “Given the well documented role of the police in human rights abuses and the lack of accountability and controls on the Colombian armed forces BP practices are extremely dangerous and certainly open to abuse.”
An Amnesty report also details environmental damage caused by BP. The company’s oil exploration has devastated a protected forest, polluted a river, and damaged several bridges and the only road local people can use to transport their products to market.
In the neighboring country of Venezuela indigenous Warao communities in the Orinoco River >Delta have also demanded that BP end oil exploration in three areas of their homelands. The Orinoco Delta, 40,000 square kilometers of waterways and sedimentary islands, is considered the last of the world’s great river deltas to enjoy unspoiled status. It is the ancestral home of the Warao – the “people of the canoe.” Some 25,000 surviving Warao still live a very natural existence, and consider the Orinoco River their “‘father god.”
In the past similar exploitation of the Orinocco region caused the death of 6,000 Warao when the Manamo, a Orinocco tributary, was suddenly closed off by the state-run Venezuelan Corporation of Guayana causing an epidemic of malaria to break out.
The Orinoco-Oilwatch, a Venezuelan national coalition of environmental and social groups, issued the following statement on February 2, 1997:
The former petroleum era is the best reference to understand how the overwhelming oil exploitation has affected the country. It brought about environmental devastation of Lake Maracaibo, uncontrolled and parasite urbanization resulting in sucking agriculture resources and destruction in traditional and self sustainable populations particularly affected were the native populations Bari,Wayuu and Yukpas, led to the rampant increase of imported goods consumption, generated corruption and easy way of life, and consequently contributed to moral and ethical relaxation of the population .This are just a few aspects of such regrettably legacy.
“This story is about to be repeated with the New Oil Opening Up. Moreover it will reach distant territories such as those of the Orinoco River Delta as well as areas inhabited by vulnerable indigenous ethnic such as the Warao, affecting important ecosystems containing invaluable biological resources (fauna, flora, and water). as well as important ancient cultures, some of these ecosystems contributing to the environment equilibrium along extensive areas of the country.
The onslaught of the “black gold fever” goes hand in hand with the overriding mining culture which is aiming at the taking over Guyana Shield and the Amazonian region. To us, it is clear that our valuable human and renewable natural resources are the basis for an authentic sustainable development of Venezuela, and thus are by far more important than petroleum. For this very reason, Venezuelans shouldn’t allow their destruction by the overwhelming petroleum onslaught which disregards the rights and heritage of all Venezuelans.”
