Saturday 06 September
2008, San José, Costa Rica
COLOMBIA:
Oil Palms, Right Abuses
Hand in Hand in
Northwest
By Constanza Vieira
BOGOTA (IPS) - As of
this week, there is one
less human rights
defender in the
northwestern Colombian
region of Bajo Atrato.
Jimmy Jansasoy of the
Inter-Church Justice and
Peace Commission was
forced to flee the area,
where oil palm
plantations have
encroached on the
collectively-owned
jungle territories of
traditional black
communities.
On Aug. 29, Jansasoy
gave a workshop on
"biodiversity zones" in
a village on the
Curbaradó river, which
runs into the Atrato
river.
In that region, the
Colombian Inter-Church
Justice and Peace
Commission and
international human
rights groups like the
Canada-based Project
Accompaniment and
Solidarity Colombia (PASC)
and the UK-based Peace
Brigades International (PBI)
provide support to
"peace communities" that
have come under attack
from far-right
paramilitary groups.
As a result of e-mail
threats received by the
groups since Aug. 24,
two other members of the
Inter-Church Justice and
Peace Commission had
already fled the area.
On the afternoon of
Wednesday Sep. 3, in the
Bajo Atrato town of
Chigorodó in the
northwestern province of
Antioquia, four armed
men in civilian dress
forced Jansasoy at
gunpoint to get into
their double-cabin
pickup truck with tinted
windows, where they
questioned him for over
an hour.
Receiving orders by
cell-phone, one of the
men, wearing dark
glasses, reported to his
superiors that "he only
has a Bible, a notebook
and his personal
effects," as the men
searched Jansasoy’s
knapsack.
They told Jansasoy to
give them "the full
names" of all of those
who provide support to
the communities, "as
well as their addresses
and those of their
families."
When Jansasoy said he
did not have that
information, they warned
him: "We’ll give you
until Sunday."
When they released him,
they ordered him to go
to the "Andalucía Caño
Claro" Humanitarian Zone
and write down the names
and addresses of the
families of human rights
defenders working with
the community. They also
told him not to say
anything about his brief
detention.
"Because of this act of
illegal detention,
intimidation,
psychological pressure
and threat, Jansasoy was
forced to leave the
region," says a
communiqué issued by the
Inter-Church Justice and
Peace Commission.
There are no guarantees
"for the defence and
promotion of human
rights in the Bajo
Atrato area," it adds.
PEACE COMMUNITIES
The "humanitarian zones"
were created by local
peasant families in
response to the
atrocities and human
rights abuses committed
by the paramilitary
militias, which peaked
in the 1990s.
The communities emerged
in the northern part of
the province of
Antioquia and the
neighbouring province of
Chocó as a result of the
killings and forced
displacement of peasant
farmers that occurred
simultaneously with the
military’s Operation
Genesis, launched in the
area in 1997 by General
Rito Alejo del Río,
commander at the time of
the army’s 17th Brigade.
The general, now
retired, was arrested
Thursday on charges of
working with the
paramilitaries during
Operation Genesis,
against the
Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia (FARC)
guerrillas, which got
underway while current
President Álvaro Uribe
was governor of
Antioquia (1995-1997).
The humanitarian zones
were set up as
communities opposed to
the war, which defend
the distinction between
civilians and
combatants, as
established by
international
humanitarian law.
The victims of forced
displacement who have
returned to the area to
establish these peace
communities have
declared them off-limits
to the members of any
armed groups. But they
are not neutral, because
they consider themselves
victims of the violence
practiced by the
military and their
paramilitary allies.
Peasant farmers in the
humanitarian zones may
be practically
illiterate, but they
associate the terror and
rights abuses that they
have suffered with the
imposition of a
development model based
on agribusiness and
privately owned
monoculture initiatives
like the African palm
plantations, the oil of
which is used to produce
biodiesel.
The humanitarian zones
have adopted a model of
production that involves
traditional and
innovative small farming
techniques. In the
Curbaradó river basin,
with the support of the
Inter-Church Justice and
Peace Commission, the
communities have been
creating "natural
reserves and
biodiversity zones"
since 2006, where
subsistence farming is
practiced in harmony
with the surrounding
Chocó rainforest, one of
the most biodiverse
areas in the world.
The same day that
Jansasoy was held at
gunpoint, four experts
from Ecuador, Chile,
Uruguay and Mexico gave
conferences on
biodiversity,
sovereignty and food
security in a seminar at
the National University
of Colombia in Bogota.
They provided a detailed
map of a global model
arising in recent years,
in which each country
specialises in one
product: "Ecuador in
bananas, Colombia in
flowers, Argentina in
soy," as stated by
Elizabeth Bravo, an
activist with the
Ecuadorean environmental
group Acción Ecológica.
Former food exporting
countries have become
net importers of food
products, while
transnational
corporations that
produce fertilisers,
indispensable for
monoculture farming,
reap the benefits.
Fossil fuels are no
longer inexhaustible in
an economic system
addicted to energy, and
attempts are being made
to replace them with
biofuels partly obtained
from food crops like
corn. Land, and what is
grown on it, have become
strategic questions,
said the experts.
Meanwhile, the prices of
both fertilisers and
food continue to climb.
Bravo pointed out, for
example, that in the
last year, the price of
rice has gone up 90
percent, wheat 130
percent and corn 53
percent.
According to a
confidential internal
World Bank report that
was leaked to the press
in April, biofuels have
driven global food
prices up by 75 percent,
noted Silvia Ribeiro, a
Uruguayan expert with
the Action Group on
Erosion, Technology and
Concentration (ETC
Group), an international
organisation dedicated
to the conservation and
sustainable advancement
of cultural and
ecological diversity and
human rights.
Since 1950, statistics
have shown that
agribusiness and
monoculture based on
technologies that pose a
risk to the environment
and to health do not
produce more food, said
Ribeiro. The solution,
she said, is not to
continue with the same
old model, but to put
food production "in the
hands of the people
themselves, the world’s
small farmers."
The "Andalucía Caño
Claro" Humanitarian Zone
in the Curbaradó river
basin, 45 km southwest
of the town of Chigorodó,
is surrounded by oil
palm plantations guarded
by numerous police and
army control posts.
Since the demobilisation
of the paramilitary
United Self-Defence
Forces of Colombia (AUC)
as a result of
negotiations with the
rightwing Uribe
administration, these
groups no longer exist,
according to the
government.
But they continue to
swarm the region, under
a new name: "Águilas
Negras" (Black Eagles).
Behind their threats and
operations "are hidden
the business interests
that benefit from
paramilitarism," says
the Inter-Church Justice
and Peace Commission
statement.
But in this part of
Colombia in particular,
the paramilitaries
themselves "are
businessmen and
launderers of the assets
arising from drug
trafficking, who conceal
their criminal activity
under the guise of
progress in the oil palm
agribusiness, extensive
livestock raising and
intensive
deforestation," the
communiqué adds.
In the 1990s, the
paramilitaries forced
their way into the
Jiguamiandó, Curbaradó
and Domingodó river
basins, pushing out the
local rural communities,
with the argument that
they were eradicating
the leftist guerrillas,
who had been present in
the area since the
1980s.
But "there are signs
that these expulsions
were not so much the
result of an intention
to force out the
guerrillas, but to seize
lands that belong to the
local communities,"
Attorney General Mario
Iguarán said in a
December 2007 interview
with the Bogota daily El
Tiempo.
The attorney general’s
office has taken the
testimony of more than
100 people, carried out
judicial inspections of
oil palm plantations and
factories, as well as
banks and land registry
offices, and decided to
summon for questioning
26 oil palm growers and
ranchers in connection
with charges of forced
displacement, conspiracy
to commit crimes and
illegal land seizures.
However, the attorney
general’s office has not
yet reached any
decisions, and the
Inter-Church Justice and
Peace Commission
complains that the
investigations have been
neither effective nor
prompt nor timely.
Nor is there any
information on concrete
government measures to
"promote the restitution
of collectively-owned
land wrongfully occupied
by business interests
that benefit from
paramilitarism," says
the Commission’s
statement.
The proposal that the
Commission set forth to
the government on
Thursday, "to develop an
integral preventive
strategy involving the
environmental
authorities in order to
avoid the expansion of
oil palm cultivation,
ranching and intensive
deforestation" is now
awaiting a response. |
|
|
|
|
|
