Targeting Canadian Profiteers of the War in Colombia
We are joining voices with social organizations and communities in resistance in order to declare loud and strong: the conflict in Colombia is part of an imperialist war, financed and fuelled by the economic interests of the North.
On the one hand, the dynamics of capital, often presented as mechanisms for economic cooperation aimed at enabling development, are in reality policies to strengthen the power of Canadian companies to plunder Colombia's wealth. For example, at the end of the 1990s, the former Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) was directly involved in changing the legislative framework, particularly in the mining sector, in favour of foreign companies. These reforms enabled Canadian companies in Colombia to significantly increase their profits, thanks to the 2001 mining code, which was tailor-made for transnational companies. By the same token, Canadian agricultural production is sold at low prices, destroying the campesino economy. In 2008, Stephen Harper's Conservative government signed a free trade agreement that strengthened the rights of Canadian capital in Colombia and improved the image of Alvaro Uribe's government, which has been accused of having links with paramilitaries.
On the other hand, the security needs of Canadian companies are fuelling the conflict. Mining, oil and cannabis companies (since 2015 in the case of the cannabis industry) are demanding "security for their investments", which means military brigades to protect mines and pipelines, and paramilitary troops to displace the population through massacres and forced displacements. The military intelligence services that Canadian companies can contract with the army in Colombia have sometimes resulted in intelligence reports that have been used to imprison members of local communities fighting extractivist projects carried out on their land by Canadian companies. At the same time, contract killers who eliminate trade union organizations, etc., are being used to kill people.
The list includes Medoro Resources for its schemes to displace an entire village in order to build an open-cast mine (in the village of Marmato, Department of Caldas); Greystar for its extraction projects that contaminate the water table (new project in Santurban, Dep. Santander); Canadian oil companies such as Petrobank, Petrominerales and Grantierra for their colonization of the Amazon, causing environmental destruction and displacement of populations; Pacific Rubiales Energy, which operated oil fields in the Puerto Gaítan region between 2004 and 2016. Around 14,000 unionized workers were subcontracted to work in these fields, and suffered death threats, attacks and public defamation.
As Canadians, we can break the impunity with which these companies operate.
Let's target Canadian war profiteers!
There has been a campaign to denounce the company's financial involvement in the HidroItuango project.
Consult the brochure "Targeting Canadian profiteers of the war in Colombia" :