Colombian farmers evicted by British mining companies

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of African-Colom­bian and Indige­nous fam­i­lies evict­ed from their land in the province of La Gua­ji­ra, Colom­bia to make way for a mas­sive open­cast coal mine will speak in Lon­don on Mon­day 29th Jan­u­ary, 6.30pm‑8.30pm at The Human Rights Action Cen­tre, 17–25 New Inn Yard, Lon­don EC2.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of African-Colom­bian and Indige­nous fam­i­lies evict­ed from their land in the province of La Gua­ji­ra, Colom­bia to make way for a mas­sive open­cast coal mine will speak in Lon­don on Mon­day 29th Jan­u­ary, 6.30pm‑8.30pm at The Human Rights Action Cen­tre, 17–25 New Inn Yard, Lon­don EC2.

Many com­mu­ni­ties have been forced from their land since the mine opened in the 1970s. The vil­lage of Taba­co was demol­ished in 2001 just after British-based com­pa­nies bought into the project. Many inhab­i­tants accept­ed the inad­e­quate finan­cial com­pen­sa­tion on offer, oth­ers are still hold­ing out for com­mu­ni­ty relo­ca­tion so that they can con­tin­ue liv­ing as a com­mu­ni­ty and farm­ing the land as they did before.

The British-based com­pa­nies that now own the mine are Anglo Amer­i­can, BHP­Bil­li­ton and Xstra­ta. All raise mon­ey on the Lon­don Stock Exchange. Anglo Amer­i­can has its head office in Lon­don. Many pen­sion funds invest in these com­pa­nies. Many ordi­nary work­ing peo­ple in Britain, with­out know­ing it, are ben­e­fit­ing from the destruc­tion of farm­ing com­mu­ni­ties in Colom­bia by the world’s rich­est min­ing multi­na­tion­als. All three com­pa­nies have good rep­u­ta­tions as social­ly and envi­ron­men­tal­ly respon­si­ble enter­pris­es. The real­i­ty is very dif­fer­ent. Come and hear the com­mu­ni­ties’ side of the sto­ry

Loca­tion: The Audi­to­ri­um, Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al UK, The Human Rights Action Cen­tre, 17–25 New Inn Yard, Lon­don EC2
Con­tact:  info@colombiasolidarity.org.uk
(near­est tube Old Street)