Ministers of the Colombian government and captains of British industry are meeting in London, under the title 'Why Colombia- Opportunities Behind the Image', at the Sheraton Park Lane Hotel, Piccadilly, today.
The EAIDSR (1) have released a CD ROM, 'Images behind the Opportunities', a detailed analysis of the impact of corporate investment and economic reforms being enforced in Colombia. The EAIDSR is opposed to this meeting.
As well as pickets outside the conference by various Latin American Support groups, actions in central London today mark the beginning of the UK part of a ongoing Europe wide campaign, working with a broad range of Colombian grassroots social movements who are struggling for social transformation from below.
In a country of 38 million, over 800 people have been massacred since January this year. Of the 2 million people who have been forcibly displaced from their homes and land, over half have been from the black communities(2) who mainly live along the rivers of the Pacific coast region. Many of the Indigenous peoples, such as the U'wa, are being hounded into oblivion, especially in areas rich in biological and mineral resources.(3)
The oil, mining, electrical and road building sectors are pushing people off the land, resulting in an agrarian counter-reform. Legal and illegal measures are used to expropriate peasant, Indigenous, and Afrocolombian communities who live around the megaprojects and near biological and genetic exploration areas in different regions of the country. Colombia suffers the worst kind of genocide: not only that people have been displaced by war, but more importantly, this war is being made specifically to displace people(4).
WHY INVEST IN COLOMBIA?
UK is the second largest investor in Colombia, after the US. Due to Colombia's immense wealth in biological and mineral resources, as well as the construction of a new interoceanic canal, Colombia is having an increasingly central geostrategic role in the global capitalist system. A key element in creating a positive business environment is minimising labour costs and controlling the workforce. In 1999 half the trade union leaders assassinated in the world were Colombians. Wider socio-political conditions favouring privatisation processes are assured by the consistent extermination of political organisers. Since 1987, five presidential candidates have been assassinated, as have 3500 opposition activists.(5) Investors in both agribusiness and megaprojects have vast swathes of land at their disposal which are free of their inhabitants who have been forcefully displaced by paramilitary terror.(6)
THE GLOBAL CONTEXT:
These investment conditions are being guaranteed and furthered by the international community. US led Plan Colombia is a $1.3 billion military intervention package in the name of the "war on drugs". This has been described as "gasoline poured on a fire that can ignite a huge war in South America."(7) There are indications that this plan will be expanded to the entire Andean region under the name of Plan Andina (8). In close partnership, the EU has recently allocated over 300 million Euros under the name of Friends of the Peace Process in Colombia(9). Although the EU part has been reclassed as "social investment", it has been rejected by large sections of Colombian grassroots Indigenous, peasant and Afro-Colombian movements, who view it simply as a continuation of existing genocidal policies, under a new name.(10+11)
1 Euro Andean Initiative for the Development of Sustainable Resistance
2 PCN (2000) The war in Colombia, killing and displacement of the black population
http://free.freespeech.org/agp/colombia/pcn.htm
3http://www.ran.org/ran_campaigns/beyond_oil/oxy/index.html
4 Hector Mondragon (2000): USA Fuelling the Fires in Colombia, http://free.freespeech.org/agp/colombia/mondrag1.htm
5,6,7 Ibid
8http://www.dc.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=8712&group=webcast
9 http://www.emcolbru.org/BIDfinal.doc
10http://colombia.indymedia.org/display.php3?article_id=294
11Independent News from Colombia http://www.colombiareport.org/
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