Rockbites: Witness posts alert on Columbian oil vs the U’wa people

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October 2000 • Rockbites Alternative Daily

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Witness posts alert on Columbian oil vs the U’wa people
25 October 2000

New York based human rights organization Witness, founded in 1992 by former Genesis vocalist Peter Gabriel, provides video equipment to activists worldwide to help them expose violations and attrocities.
    They’ve just posted a report—introduced by actress Susan Sarandon—exposing the ecological, cultural, and human rights disaster now taking place in the Columbian rain forest involving international oil, a civil war, and a peaceful native tribe caught in the crossfire.
    The situation is fueled (literally) by Los Angeles based Occidental Petroleum, endorsed by the Columbian government, and backed by Oxy shareholders including the Al Gore family who own an estimated US$500,000 worth of Oxy stock. US presidential candidate Gore has never taken a public position on the situation (now might be a good time to ask him about it).
    Anti-government guerillas have bombed an Oxy-owned oil pipeline more than 600 times in the last 13 years, spilling more than 1.5 million barrels of oil into an ecosystem with which the U’wa have lived in balance since before Europeans arrived in the Americas. The Columbian government earlier this year evicted the U’wa from portions of their land, with force, as part of their militarization of the region. U’wa have been injured, killed, and gone missing. | Witness | | Report (on Oddcast) | | Al Gore | | top of page |

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