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.
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Gold fever is sweeping across South America. Nowhere is it more lethal than in Colombia, where the gold rush has become a new axle in Colombia's civil war. Turf wars are erupting between paramilitaries, and leftist rebel groups fighting to take control of mining regions. It's fueling an old ideological conflict and has displacing hundreds of people.
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The price of gold is rising for the tenth consecutive year. As a result, more and more investors, financial market operators and central banks are turning to gold as a safe haven in the face of global economic instability. This has troubling consequences, because gold mining is one of the most destructive and polluting of all mining activities.
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Valledupar High Security Prison On the evening of June 11th security guards at the high security prison in Valledupar, known as ‘La Tramacua’, led by the prison director Leopoldo Lopez Pinzon, stormed several towers of the prison. These had been peacefully occupied by prisoners since May 2nd when they began a campaign of ‘peaceful disobedience’ to highlight the intolerable conditions they endure in the prison.
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According to reports from SER, the Risaralda teacher trade union, environmental campaigner and teacher Jorge Eliecer de los Rios was assassinated by gunmen on Wednesday 8th June. He was shot several times from a motorbike as he was going from one building to another of the Santa Sofia School, in Dosquebradas, in the city of Pereira, Risaralda where he taught social sciences.
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Our message is in memory of those who were victims of extrajudicial executions, torture and forced disappearances and those who have lived or are in condition of forced displacement, dispossession and violent prosecution, crimes that reflect a way of persecution and extermination which are being committed by state structures from the 70’s. Mister BAN KI-MOON, General Secretary of the United Nations Ref: Request for intervention on the law of victims and the right to peace
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Gold prices have surged in recent years. As a result of the 'investor friendly' climate promoted by the Colombian government’s 'democratic security' policies, multinationals have been awarded mining rights to extensive areas of the country. Many of these areas cover national parks, and lands inhabited by Indigenous, Afro-Colombian and peasant communities, who will be displaced to make way for the mining companies.
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PASC will be at the Montreal Anarchist Bookfair 2011 www.anarchistbookfair.ca MAY 21-22, 10am-5pm at the CEDA, 2515 rue Delisle (a short walk from Lionel-Groulx metro) FREE. Welcome to all! Bring your kids! For anarchists and people curious about anarchism.
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A large Canadian mining company has just released numbers for the amount of gold, silver and copper present underneath one of Colombia’s most fragile ecosystems. The study was made public after the Colombian Ministry of Mines and Energy denied the company, Greystar Resource Ltd., access to the Santurban region of the Colombian state Santander. But Greystar has not given up and is now fighting back with new mining plans and a brand new management.
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Information documenting human rights abuses was stolen from the home of Danilo Rueda, a Colombian human rights defender. He is a member of the organization Inter-Church Commission of Justice and Peace, whose members have previously received death threats. On 13 May, someone broke into the Bogotá home of Colombian human rights defender and member of the NGO Inter-Church Commission of Justice and Peace (Comisión Intereclesial de Justicia y Paz), Danilo Rueda. He returned to find books thrown on the floor, folders open and his computer running.
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