https://vimeo.com/142052671Video with subtite in english 

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Since the arrival of the oil industry in the Colombian Amazon, multinationals have been causing a rupture with the traditional ways of living of the Nasa indigenous. Nothing is different in the in the department of Putumayo, where hooded and armed men attacked the indigenous Community of Bellavista at the beginning of this month. The Canadian multinational Gran Tierra has been showing its interest in the local oil reserves.

 
Dear Mr. Roberts:
 

SINTRAPETROPUTUMAYO the Putumayo oil workers’ union has reported that on July 22^nd Yesid Calvache, the union’s President, was the target of an assassination attempt.

At 5.00am, unknown assailants tried to hurl a firebomb into his house in Villagarzon, Putumayo department. Fortunately the device did not manage to set fire to the building and Mr Calvache and his family escaped injury.

Colombian human rights organisations report that the leadership of the SINTRAPETROPUTUMAYO oil workers union and community leaders from around Miraflores have been on the receiving end of threats as a result of their protests to defend labour rights and community rights in Putumayo, one of Colombia’s most conflicted regions.

The fact that communities around the world protest oil exploitation for the damages it produces is nothing new. But through a grotesque misuse of power, the multinational corporation Emerald Energy has successfully dictated the overruling of a Security Council decision that led to the re-incarceration of several peaceful demonstrators. On October 18, 2010 a Security Council was held in Mocoa, Putumayo to determine the fate of six illegally detained and severely injured protestors, and the decision was made to set them free.

Since April 2010 the indigenous and peasant communities of this region have exercised our constitutional right to demonstrate and hold social protests against the grave impacts of the petroleum exploitation that has occurred between 1961 and today, leaving in its wake corruption, death and destitution for the Putumayo communities.