Enbridge Pipeline Road Blocked by Protesters in Burlington

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20th May 2014. A group of pro­test­ers has block­ad­ed the road to an exposed sec­tion of Enbridge’s Line 9 pipeline ear­ly this morn­ing in Burling­ton, Ont.

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20th May 2014. A group of pro­test­ers has block­ad­ed the road to an exposed sec­tion of Enbridge’s Line 9 pipeline ear­ly this morn­ing in Burling­ton, Ont.

The pro­test­ers say they plan to con­tin­ue the block­ade for at least 12 hours.

A news release says the 12-hour stay rep­re­sents 12,000 “anom­alies Enbridge has report­ed to exist on the line.”

 

“Enbridge calls these devel­op­ments integri­ty digs,” said Danielle Boissineau, one of the pro­test­ers, “but to any­one watch­ing the Line 9 issue, it’s clear Enbridge has no integri­ty. This work on the line is just a Band-Aid, a flim­sy patch over the most out­ra­geous flaws in the Line 9 plan.

“Line 9 has a lot of sim­i­lar­i­ties to Line 6B that erupt­ed in the Kala­ma­zoo Riv­er. The risk is just not worth it,” she said.

From July to Decem­ber of last year, there were 308 main­te­nance digs along Line 9 — and the vast major­i­ty were for cracks in the line. In July alone, Enbridge filed 105 main­te­nance notices for digs on the line, accord­ing to doc­u­ments filed with the Nation­al Ener­gy Board.

The group says its mem­bers include res­i­dents of Burling­ton who don’t want the pipeline run­ning through their city.

“Line 9 has near­ly 13,000 struc­tur­al weak­ness­es along its length” said Bri­an Suther­land, a Burling­ton res­i­dent. “And yet Enbridge is only doing a few hun­dred integri­ty digs.”

There were about 20 pro­test­ers at the site ear­ly Tues­day. As of 8:15 a.m., no police had arrived.

Last June, a group of pro­test­ers shut down con­struc­tion at an Enbridge pump sta­tion in rur­al Hamil­ton.

About 80 peo­ple inter­rupt­ed con­struc­tion at the North West­over site.

In March, the NEB approved a request from Enbridge to reverse the flow and increase the capac­i­ty of the con­tro­ver­sial Line 9 pipeline that has been run­ning between south­ern Ontario and Mon­tre­al for years.

Line 9 orig­i­nal­ly shut­tled oil from Sar­nia, Ont., to Mon­tre­al, but was reversed in the late 1990s in response to mar­ket con­di­tions to pump import­ed crude west­ward. Enbridge now wants to flow oil back east­wards to ser­vice refiner­ies in Ontario and Que­bec.

It plans to move 300,000 bar­rels of crude oil per day through the line, a rise from the cur­rent 240,000 bar­rels, with no increase in pres­sure.

Oppo­nents argue the Line 9 plan puts com­mu­ni­ties at risk, threat­ens water sup­plies and could endan­ger vul­ner­a­ble species in eco­log­i­cal­ly sen­si­tive areas.

Breaking: Blockade Launched Against Enbridge Line 9 Pipeline

Photo: CBC20th May 2014. A group of area res­i­dents have block­ad­ed the access road to an exposed sec­tion of Enbridge’s Line 9 pipeline, begin­ning at 7am this morn­ing.

Photo: CBC20th May 2014. A group of area res­i­dents have block­ad­ed the access road to an exposed sec­tion of Enbridge’s Line 9 pipeline, begin­ning at 7am this morn­ing. They say they will stay for at least twelve hours, one hour for every thou­sand anom­alies Enbridge has report­ed to exist on the line. These com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers turned away Enbridge employ­ees who were sched­uled to do work on Line 9 in prepa­ra­tion for it to car­ry tox­ic dilut­ed bitu­men from the Alber­ta Tar Sands. This par­tic­u­lar work site is adja­cent to the Bronte creek, a major water­way flow­ing to Lake Ontario, the water source for more than ten mil­lion peo­ple.

“Enbridge calls these devel­op­ments integri­ty digs,” said Danielle Boissineau, one of the block­aders, “but to any­one watch­ing the Line 9 issue, it’s clear Enbridge has no integri­ty. This work on the line is just a band-aid, a flim­sy patch over the most out­ra­geous flaws in the Line 9 plan.” [Danielle notes that a record of just some of Enbridge’s false or mis­lead­ing state­ments is avail­able on the Enbridge Lies face­book page

“Line 9 has near­ly 13,000 struc­tur­al weak­ness­es along its length” said Bri­an Suther­land, a Burling­ton res­i­dent. “And yet Enbridge is only doing a few hun­dred integri­ty digs. Enbridge has been deny­ing the prob­lems with the pipe for years, and they still refuse to do the hydro­sta­t­ic test­ing request­ed by the province. Are we real­ly sup­posed to trust Enbridge when they tell us that this time they’ll do it right?”

 

Many of the block­aders point to the dis­as­trous spill from Enbridge’s line 6b into the Kala­ma­zoo Riv­er in Michi­gan in 2010, where mil­lions of litres of oil spilled and have so far proven impos­si­ble to clean up. But many of them empha­size that their oppo­si­tion to Line 9 goes beyond safe­ty con­cerns.

“This is not about pipelines ver­sus rail; it’s about the Tar Sands,” said Danielle Boissineau. “It’s the dirt­i­est oil in the world: it’s not worth the destruc­tion it takes to pro­duce, it’s not worth the risk to our water­sheds to trans­port, and we def­i­nite­ly can’t afford the car­bon in our atmos­phere when it’s burned. At every step of the process, the Tar Sands out­sources the risks onto our com­mu­ni­ties and poi­sons water­ways like the Athabas­ca Riv­er and the Bronte creek while com­pa­nies like Enbridge get rich.”

Call for Solidarity Actions Against Oil Trains

oil trains 19th May 2014. Maine Earth First!/350 Maine call for Sol­i­dar­i­ty Actions Sur­round­ing Supe­ri­or Court Hear­ing in Fracked Bakken Crude Oil Train Case

oil trains 19th May 2014. Maine Earth First!/350 Maine call for Sol­i­dar­i­ty Actions Sur­round­ing Supe­ri­or Court Hear­ing in Fracked Bakken Crude Oil Train Case

On May 22nd two of three peo­ple who block­ad­ed rail­road tracks in Auburn last August, Doug Bowen and Jessie Dowl­ing of Maine Earth First!, will have a hear­ing at the Androscog­gin Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court.

Last August, mem­bers of 350Maine and Maine Earth First! con­duct­ed a sit-in on the Pan Am rail­road tracks in the cen­ter of Auburn to call atten­tion to the ongo­ing dan­gers posed by the trans­porta­tion of Bakken crude oil by rail.

This was 7 weeks after a train­load of the same oil explod­ed in Lac Megan­tic, killing 47. Doug Bowen and Jessie Dowl­ing will face charges for this direct action and will present evi­dence for a com­pet­ing harms defense – that com­mit­ting a small­er harm was meant to pre­vent a larg­er one.

There have been at least 6 oth­er major train derail­ments involv­ing Bakken crude oil since Lac-Megan­tic. This train block­ade was one of two block­ades Maine Earth First! And 350 Maine took part in last sum­mer.

Trains run­ning through Maine car­ry crude from the Bakken oil fields of North Dako­ta, where it is “fracked” or extract­ed by blast­ing a high pres­sure tox­ic cock­tail deep into the ground to release oil from shale rock, pol­lut­ing air and water in sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties.

With hydraulic frac­tur­ing or “frack­ing” tech­nol­o­gy, oil that has long been impos­si­ble to extract is now the source of an explo­sive oil boom in the Mid­west. With­out enough pipelines to trans­port the Mid­west crude to dis­tant refiner­ies, there has been a surge in the use of trains. Inspec­tions of tracks are infre­quent due to lack of resources to over­see them and a lack of con­cern for local com­mu­ni­ties by giant corporations/government.

Maine EF!er being arrested after blockade

There have been many train derail­ments through-out the con­ti­nent over the last year and a half oth­er than Lac Megan­tic, includ­ing a 106-car-long oil train in Cas­sel­ton, North Dako­ta which caused sev­en oil cars to explode and also caused an evac­u­a­tion of 2,400 peo­ple, A CN freight train car­ry­ing crude oil in New Brunswick in Jan­u­ary,

A 120-car Nor­folk South­ern train car­ry­ing heavy Cana­di­an crude oil which derailed and spilled in west­ern Penn­syl­va­nia also in Jan­u­ary, and a CSX train that explod­ed in Lynch­burg, Vir­ginia car­ry­ing Bakken Crude Oil on May first, only to name a few.

In Jan­u­ary the U.S. Depart­ment of Transportation’s Pipeline and Haz­ardous Mate­ri­als Safe­ty Admin­is­tra­tion issued a Safe­ty Alert con­clud­ing Bakken crude is more flam­ma­ble than heav­ier oils. Hence the term “bomb trains.”

We are ask­ing indi­vid­u­als and groups to take part in a day of action to bring atten­tion to fracked oil, frack­ing in gen­er­al (if you can tie in into your cam­paigns), unsafe trains car­ry­ing fos­sil fuels (Bakken Crude or oth­er­wise), and/or any oth­er con­nec­tions you can make in your com­mu­ni­ty.

Pos­si­ble tar­gets: Irv­ing Oil, a cor­po­ra­tion that receives oil from the Bakken Crude fields, and the cor­po­ra­tion that was sup­posed to be the recip­i­ent of the oil that explod­ed in Lac Mac­gan­tic Cor­po­ra­tions involved in frack­ing in the North Dako­ta Bakken Shale: http://www.ugcenter.com/operators/Bakken/all Cen­tral Maine and Que­bec Rail­road if you are in Maine (or join us at the cour­t­house!) Places in your com­mu­ni­ty where trains are rolling through with crude oil or oth­er dan­ger­ous extreme ener­gy sub­stances.

Here is an exam­ple in Mon­tana: http://earthfirstjournal.org/newswire/2014/04/13/seven-arrests-in-montana-coal-train-protest/

Ports that are an end point of dan­ger­ous trains. Here is one exam­ple in Wash­ing­ton: http://earthfirstjournal.org/newswire/2014/02/15/crude-oil-terminal-planned-in-nw-portland/

Please keep us updat­ed on any sol­i­dar­i­ty actions you take!

For more infor­ma­tion, inter­views, or to tell us about your action con­tact Chris­tine: blackbean@riseup.net, or 207.505.5114

Paramilitaries Shoot at Tribe Over “Forest Reserves” in Philippines

Tigwahanon Village in San Fernando, Bukidnon, Mindanao17th May 2014. The Asian Human Rights Com­mis­sion (AHRC) is deeply con­cerned, and demands an inves­ti­ga­tion into the actions of the secur

Tigwahanon Village in San Fernando, Bukidnon, Mindanao17th May 2014. The Asian Human Rights Com­mis­sion (AHRC) is deeply con­cerned, and demands an inves­ti­ga­tion into the actions of the secu­ri­ty guards and their employ­er land­lord for shoot­ing at, and hold­ing at gun­point, indige­nous peo­ple who were to occu­py their ances­tral land in Que­zon, Bukid­non.

In their mis­sion report, titled: “‘Pakighiusa’: Sol­i­dar­i­ty Mis­sion to Mem­bers of TINDOGA in Sup­port of Their Strug­gle for Land and Life,” pre­pared by Rur­al Mis­sion­ar­ies of the Philip­pines, North­ern Min­danao Sub-Region, it not­ed that the armed secu­ri­ty guards indis­crim­i­nate­ly shot at Manobo-Pulangi­hons tribes on April 23 pur­pose­ly to dri­ve them away from their land.

The indige­nous tribe, com­posed of 530 fam­i­lies are from four clans, are led by Datu San­tiano “Andong” Agda­han. They had already been rec­og­nized as the right­ful own­ers of the 623 hectares of land as part of their ances­tral domain. Datu Agda­han also heads the TINDOGA (Trib­al Indige­nous Oppressed Group Asso­ci­a­tion).

On April 23, in sup­port of their claim, the tribes were accom­pa­nied by offi­cials from the nation­al and local gov­ern­ment agen­cies, notably the Nation­al Com­mis­sion for the Indige­nous Peo­ple (NCIP), the munic­i­pal gov­ern­ment, and the police.

But at around 1pm, armed secu­ri­ty guards, report­ed­ly work­ing for Mr. Pablo “Pol­ing” Loren­zo III, who claims to be the own­er of Ran­cho Mon­tal­van, were deployed, and alleged­ly indis­crim­i­nate­ly shot at the group. They also held “12 indi­vid­u­als at gun point,” five of whom were women, and three were minors.

The armed men delib­er­ate­ly con­cealed their iden­ti­ties by not wear­ing their uni­forms. Most of them wore black long sleeves; their faces are either cov­ered with bal­a­clavas or shirts.

The AHRC is of the opin­ion that the use of force and intim­i­da­tion, by shoot­ing at the indige­nous peo­ple and hold­ing them at gun­point; was done pur­pose­ly to fright­en and intim­i­date this group of indige­nous peo­ple claim­ing their right to occu­py their ances­tral land.

It is report­ed that even though the NCIP has already declared the 623 hectares are the ances­tral domain of the Manobo-Pulangi­hons, “only 70 hectares were allot­ted for use of the claimants. The rest were clas­si­fied as for­est reserves. Inter­est­ing­ly, what is sup­posed to be for­est reserves are most­ly plant­ed with “sug­ar­cane and pineap­ple.”

The AHRC urges the gov­ern­ment to hold account­able Ma. Shir­lene D. Sario the provin­cial offi­cer of the NCIP, for alleged­ly fail­ing to ful­fil the oblig­a­tions required from her to ensure the indige­nous peo­ple are prop­er­ly install in their land.

The AHRC also express­es its dis­ap­point­ment at the lack of con­cern, notably by the local gov­ern­ment offi­cials in Que­zon, Bukid­non, to fail­ing to address the urgent needs of their own con­stituents.

The mis­sion report indi­cat­ed that “no gov­ern­ment offi­cial from Que­zon town to the Provin­cial gov­ern­ment even vis­it­ed the Manobo-Pulangi­hons.”

Construction Vehicles Targeted

one of the M6 link sites15
one of the M6 link sites15th May 2014. About a lit­tle over week ago we snuck into a con­do devel­op­ment in Seat­tle and poured a gal­lon of bleach into the gas tank of an exca­va­tor. This was a small but eas­i­ly repro­ducible attack against the expan­sion of gen­tri­fi­ca­tion in Seat­tle.

Con­struc­tion vehi­cles are being tar­get­ed at M6 link road sites near Lan­cast­er, Eng­land caus­ing thou­sands of pounds of dam­age.

In what appears to be an orches­trat­ed cam­paign, hydraulic hoses were cut on exca­va­tors and dumper trucks.

Oth­er inci­dents include:

*Sand being put into tanks to con­t­a­m­i­nate the fuel

*Tyres being let down

*Dam­age to a tem­po­rary jet­ty in the Riv­er Lune

Thou­sands of pounds worth of dam­age was caused at a site at Cross­gills Farm, Lan­cast­er.

Police said: “Eight vehi­cles, includ­ing exca­va­tors and dumper trucks, were dam­aged to the tune of thou­sands of pounds at the week­end.

“Tyres have also been let down and sand put into fuel tanks.
“

“We are keep­ing an open mind as to who is respon­si­ble, how­ev­er the van­dals have made a con­cert­ed effort to cause crim­i­nal dam­age by using bolt crop­pers to cut the rub­ber hoses.”

 

Local Protesters Are Killing Big Oil and Mining Projects Worldwide

we wont stop14th May 2014.

we wont stop14th May 2014. Multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions are infa­mous for push­ing native peo­ple off their land in order to open a new gold mine, extract oil, or oth­er­wise extract local resources. For decades, back­lash has been thought to be both lim­it­ed and inef­fec­tu­al, but new evi­dence sug­gests that protests from local peo­ple are effec­tive, extreme­ly cost­ly for the com­pa­nies, and often lead to sub­stan­tive changes to or total aban­don­ment of a project.

Researchers at the Cen­tre for Social Respon­si­bil­i­ty in Min­ing inter­viewed employ­ees at sev­er­al dozen major inter­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions who are involved with extrac­tive activ­i­ties, and found that com­pa­nies are increas­ing­ly hav­ing to deal with the social and envi­ron­men­tal impacts of their work, and that it’s hurt­ing them where it hurts most: their bot­tom lines.

The researchers, led by Daniel Franks, took a look at 50 planned major extrac­tive projects (oil drilling, new mine con­struc­tion, that sort of thing) and found that in ful­ly half of them, local peo­ple launched some sort of “project block­ade.” In 40 per­cent of the projects, some­one died as a result of a phys­i­cal protest, and 15 of the projects were sus­pend­ed or aban­doned alto­geth­er, accord­ing to Franks’ study, pub­lished in Pro­ceed­ings of the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences.

“There is a pop­u­lar mis­con­cep­tion that local com­mu­ni­ties are pow­er­less in the face of large cor­po­ra­tions and gov­ern­ments,” Franks said in a state­ment. “Our find­ings show that com­mu­ni­ty mobi­liza­tion can be very effec­tive at rais­ing the costs to com­pa­nies.”

The number of projects in the study sample affected by local action. Image: PNAS

The num­ber of projects in the study sam­ple affect­ed by local action. Image: PNAS

The rea­son these projects, such as the Minas Con­ga gold mine in north­ern Peruand Lan­ji­garh baux­ite min­ing project in Oris­sa, India, were aban­doned wasn’t borne out of some sense of social respon­si­bil­i­ty to not pol­lute the envi­ron­ment or to not push peo­ple off their land. It was because the protests and result­ing gov­ern­ment back­lash was so great that it became finan­cial­ly unvi­able to move for­ward.

Delays, even ear­ly in a project, can be extreme­ly costly—at a major min­ing project, $20 mil­lion per week in lost rev­enues and lost invest­ment isn’t uncom­mon. Accord­ing to the study’s respon­dents, a nine-month delay at a Latin Amer­i­can mine cost a com­pa­ny $750 mil­lion; protests that shut down pow­er lines at anoth­er oper­a­tion cost $750,000 a day. Even before drilling or extrac­tion has start­ed, lost wages and start­up delays can cost $50,000 a day when pro­grams are forced to a stand­still after they’ve start­ed.

Per­haps not sur­pris­ing­ly, protests were most suc­cess­ful when they took place ear­ly on, dur­ing fea­si­bil­i­ty and con­struc­tion phas­es of a project.

“This [is] in part because the project is small­er in scale and there­fore eas­i­er to con­test, but also because at lat­er stages of the project cycle, cap­i­tal has been sunk into an area, changes become cost­ly to retro­fit, rev­enues begin to be gen­er­at­ed, and there are increased incen­tives for com­pa­nies and gov­ern­ments to ‘defend’ their projects,” Franks wrote.

Social media and inter­net access are allow­ing indige­nous and local groups to orga­nize more quick­ly, to learn from oth­ers who have had suc­cess­ful protests, and to con­nect with non­prof­its and human­i­tar­i­an groups that can help push their sto­ries out to the entire world.

“There’s been a big change in the men­tal­i­ty of indige­nous people—things like Face­book are allow­ing them to not be as naive,” Kel­ly Swing, a Boston Uni­ver­si­ty researcher who works in an area of the Ecuado­ri­an Ama­zon that is cur­rent­ly fight­ing back against pro­posed oil projects, told me. “They look at what has hap­pened in, say, Peru, and see that their cul­ture has gone to hell in a hand­bas­ket. All of a sud­den, gifts the com­pa­nies offer, like boats and edu­ca­tion and mod­ern med­i­cine aren’t the panacea they used to seem.”

Com­pa­nies, for their part, are learn­ing how to antic­i­pate these sorts of hangups, and some of those inter­viewed (all iden­ti­ties and spe­cif­ic respons­es were kept con­fi­den­tial) said that local back­lash can be pre­dict­ed and quan­ti­fied before it hap­pens.

“Sev­er­al inter­vie­wees were strong­ly of the view that the trig­gers for and under­ly­ing caus­es of com­pa­ny-com­mu­ni­ty con­flict, and its costs, are pre­dictable, and that approach­es, pro­ce­dures, and stan­dards are avail­able to com­pa­nies to avoid con­flict and devel­op con­struc­tive rela­tion­ships with com­mu­ni­ty actors,” Franks wrote.

At many com­pa­nies, Franks wrote, the high­er ups who approve major projects are com­plete­ly obliv­i­ous that their work might have some sort of social or envi­ron­men­tal impact. To com­bat this, com­pa­nies hire “trans­la­tors” who are able to iden­ti­fy poten­tial social prob­lems and put them in a lan­guage exec­u­tives can under­stand: mon­ey.

“Trans­la­tion requires indi­vid­u­als with­in orga­ni­za­tions who can work across func­tion­al, orga­ni­za­tion­al, and con­cep­tu­al bound­aries, and who can work in more than one ‘lan­guage’ and inter­pret how social and envi­ron­men­tal risk is trans­lat­ing into costs for busi­ness. The need for inter­nal ‘trans­la­tors’ sug­gests that cor­po­rate deci­sion-mak­ers do not cur­rent­ly have the nec­es­sary mod­els to inter­nal­ize exter­nal­i­ties and trans­late social risk inward,” Franks wrote.

Franks wrote that there’s some evi­dence that com­pa­nies real­ly do want to make sure local peo­ple are treat­ed correctly—that, as he found, con­cerns such as drink­ing water con­t­a­m­i­na­tion, envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion, and pub­lic health risks, are not brushed aside. Then again, he not­ed that “some see stake­hold­er-relat­ed con­cerns as option­al ‘add-ons’ to broad­er reg­u­la­to­ry process­es for oper­at­ing projects.”

The chal­lenge for those “stake­hold­ers,” then, is mak­ing sure that, no mat­ter what, they make a project so dif­fi­cult to com­plete that those “add-ons” become so cost­ly that the project dies. It seems like, in an increas­ing num­ber of cas­es, that’s actu­al­ly hap­pen­ing.

Brutal Crackdown on Hangzhou Waste Incinerator Protest Leaves 3 Dead, Sparks Riot

BnSLJE7CcAAZOqf 12th May 2014 At least three peo­ple are report­ed dead with dozens more injured, hos­pi­tal­ized and arrest­ed after hun­dreds of police began a bru­tal repre

BnSLJE7CcAAZOqf 12th May 2014 At least three peo­ple are report­ed dead with dozens more injured, hos­pi­tal­ized and arrest­ed after hun­dreds of police began a bru­tal repres­sion with baton beat­ings, tasers and tear gas, in a move to clear out 1000′s of pro­posed waste incin­er­a­tor plant pro­test­ers in Hangzhou.

Social media accounts are report­ing that 2 men and a child were killed by police dur­ing the ini­tial crack­down. Peo­ple report that the inci­dent began with the police attack­ing the elder­ly peo­ple who were sit­ting as a bar­ri­er to the over­pass encamp­ment that has been on site in past weeks.

The police vio­lence sparked a vio­lent response from the thou­sands that were gath­ered to protest. At least 15 police vehi­cles, includ­ing bus­es were over­turned and some of them burned. The resis­tance to the police con­tin­ued in waves into the night.

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Sev­er­al peo­ple are report­ing that cell and inter­net ser­vice have been cut off. Chi­nese state run media has yet to report on the inci­dent.

Hun­dreds of police were sent out today to quell the protest.

Nembe Communities Occupy Shell Oil Facilities in Nigeria

Shell's environmental destruction of southern Nigeria is internationally condemned 12th May 2014

Shell's environmental destruction of southern Nigeria is internationally condemned 12th May 2014

Stake­hold­ers and indi­genes of Nem­be-Bas­sam­biri in Bayel­sa State last week­end besieged oil facil­i­ties oper­at­ed by the Shell Petro­le­um Devel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (SPDC) over it’s divest­ment plans and pro­posed sale of its Oil Min­ing Licens­es (OMLs).

The host to some of the SPDC’s instal­la­tions in Nem­be Local Gov­ern­ment Area of the state, were angry at the plan by Shell to sell OML 29 locat­ed in their domain with­out con­sult­ing them.

Shell has report­ed­ly placed its 45 per­cent stake in four oil wells includ­ing OML 29 for sale as part of the company’s divest­ment.

OML 29 is believed to have increased to 62,000 bpd of oil and 40 mil­lion stan­dard cubic feet of gas per day (mmscf/d). It also holds reserves of 2.2 bil­lion bar­rels of oil equiv­a­lent (boe).

The aggriev­ed pro­test­ers who stormed the company’s facil­i­ties on Sat­ur­day with diffrent  plac­ards asked Shell to stop pro­duc­tion for three days to address their demands.

Num­ber­ing over 100, the demon­stra­tors con­sist­ing of women, youths, chiefs, lead­ers and elders from the com­mu­ni­ty came on 15 speed­boats.

The pro­test­ers led by a mem­ber of the community’s Oil and Gas Com­mit­tee, Chief Brigi­di, took over the Nem­be-Brass water­ways, chant­i­ng sol­i­dar­i­ty songs as they sailed to SPDC’s major oil plat­forms in the area to reg­is­ter their griev­ances.

Some of the plac­ards dis­played by the pro­test­ers read: “the land is ours, the oil is ours, Shell can­not divest with­out us”;  “No, to Shell OML 29 sale”; “After pol­lut­ing our land and water, Shell wants to sell our land”.

Oth­ers are “No to fraud­u­lent sell of invest­ment”. “No to Shell fraud­u­lent divest­ment”;  “OML 29, OPU Nem­be demand jus­tice”; “Do not sell our oil wells to strangers” and “Include our com­pa­nies in OML divest­ment plans”.

A mem­ber of the Nem­be-Bas­sam­biri Coun­cil of Chiefs, Chief Bukunor Alfred, said mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty were angry at the plan of SPDC to sell oil blocks in the area with­out con­sult­ing them.

He said del­e­gates sent by the coun­cil of chiefs to dia­logue with SPDC on the devel­op­ment returned dis­ap­point­ed, say­ing, “Our plac­ards have shown that we are not hap­py with Shell. We are by this protest giv­ing Shell three days to shut down oper­a­tion and dia­logue with us or we will ensure that these facil­i­ties are per­ma­nent­ly closed.”

He said though SPDC had con­tributed in the devel­op­ment of the com­mu­ni­ty, the com­pa­ny was wrong to take a major deci­sion of divest­ing with­out con­sult­ing its land­lords.

“We are not against what they are doing. But we want to say that we are the land­lords and we are sup­posed to be noti­fied on what our ten­ants are doing,” he said.

Also, the Chair­man of Opu-Nem­be Improve­ment Union (ONIU), Mr. Ebinyo Robert, said the com­mu­ni­ty would not let the com­pa­ny to leave uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly after destroy­ing its envi­ron­ment through pol­lu­tion.

He insist­ed that the com­pa­ny must involve the com­mu­ni­ty in all the process­es involved in sell­ing OML 29.

He warned that indi­vid­u­als and com­pa­nies indi­cat­ing inter­est to buy the oil wells should desist or have the com­mu­ni­ty to con­tend with.

He said the com­mu­ni­ties have nom­i­nat­ed three com­pa­nies, Amot Oil E&P Lim­it­ed, A‑Abas Resources and Isea BMG, to par­tic­i­pate in the bid­ding process.

He said: “The place has been pol­lut­ed and our envi­ro­ment, our water our land, has been degrad­ed for a long time. We have not been reha­bil­i­tat­ed the way we real­ly want­ed it.

“By this demon­stra­tion, we are telling the par­ties to the sale includ­ing the bid­ders to desist from going ahead because if they do, of course, the land is ours, the water is ours and the oil is ours, they will have us to con­tend with and they may not like us in the man­ner in which they will meet us when they come to oper­ate.

“So, we are ask­ing the SPDC to stop the flow and all oper­a­tions for now and ensure that the com­mu­ni­ty is car­ried along because that is the only way we can have peace here.

“We are also say­ing that the com­mu­ni­ty has nom­i­nat­ed three com­pa­nies, Amot Oil E&P Lim­it­ed, A‑Abas Resources and Isea BMG, to par­tic­i­pate in the bid­ding process. So, SPDC should involve these com­pa­nies in the process.”

But the Oper­a­tions Team Lead San­ta Bar­bara Flow Sta­tion, Mr. Akpe Emmanuel, wel­comed the pro­test­ers on behalf of Shell.

He thanked them for the peace­ful man­ner in which they con­duct­ed the demon­stra­tion and promised to pass their griev­ances across the SPDC.

He said: “Once again, you are wel­come. I want to thank you for the man­ner in which you pre­sent­ed your case. I real­ly appre­ci­ate it on behalf of Shell.

“Like the com­mu­ni­ty has assigned you to rep­re­sent them, I am also here on behalf of Shell. I have heard all you have said. It is my duty to pass this mes­sage to my prin­ci­pal.”

Mass Trial of Indigenous Leaders Set to Begin this Week in Peru

"Photos from Bagua" by Ben Powless 12th May 2014 A mas­sive tri­al involv­ing 53 Indige­nous lead­ers and activists is set to begin this week, reviv­ing the trag­ic events that took place four years ago in the Ama­zonas Region

"Photos from Bagua" by Ben Powless 12th May 2014 A mas­sive tri­al involv­ing 53 Indige­nous lead­ers and activists is set to begin this week, reviv­ing the trag­ic events that took place four years ago in the Ama­zonas Region of Peru.

In April 2009, a nation­al indige­nous mobi­liza­tion was orga­nized to stop a plan by the Peru­vian gov­ern­ment to roll-back indige­nous land rights and make it eas­i­er for indus­try to exploit the Ama­zon rain­for­est.

The first month of the mobi­liza­tion, led by more than 1200 com­mu­ni­ties, was large­ly peace­ful. How­ev­er, that began to change on May 9, 2009, when the Peru­vian gov­ern­ment declared a state of emer­gency in the regions of Lore­to, Ama­zonas, Cus­co, and Ucayali–where thou­sands of Indige­nous Peo­ples were con­cen­trat­ing their efforts.

Once the state of emer­gency was declared, the num­ber of con­fronta­tions with police and mil­i­tary began to climb. Nev­er­the­less, the mobi­liza­tion pressed on, with Indige­nous Peo­ples car­ry­ing out dai­ly protest actions across the coun­try.

With the Indige­nous Peo­ples show­ing no signs of back­ing down, on May 20, Peru’s Con­gress took a pos­i­tive step for­ward by repeal­ing one of four laws that sparked the mobi­liza­tion: Leg­isla­tive Decree 1090, a new forestry law that removed the pro­tect­ed sta­tus of some 45 mil­lion hectares of rain­for­est. Six days lat­er, a sec­ond leg­isla­tive decree, aimed at pro­mot­ing pri­vate invest­ment in irri­ga­tion projects, was declared uncon­sti­tu­tion­al.

 

While there was enor­mous relief over the removal of the two decrees, two oth­ers remained:

  • Leg­isla­tive Decree 1064 removed a require­ment that oblig­ed com­pa­nies to come to an agree­ment with indige­nous com­mu­ni­ties over land com­pen­sa­tion and land use before enter­ing their lands (effec­tive­ly giv­ing min­ing, oil & gas, log­ging, and hydro com­pa­nies free access to enter any Indige­nous ter­ri­to­ry).
  • Leg­isla­tive Decree 1089, mean­while, gave unre­strict­ed pow­ers for land titling to COFOPRI, the gov­ern­ment body that spe­cial­izes in grant­i­ng indi­vid­ual land titles.

With both decrees pos­ing a sig­nif­i­cant threat to the secu­ri­ty of Indige­nous land rights, in addi­tion to the fact that the gov­ern­ment failed to car­ry out a process of con­sult­ing or seek­ing the con­sent of effect­ed Indige­nous Peoples–in vio­la­tion of ILO Con­ven­tion 169 and the Unit­ed Nations Dec­la­ra­tion on the Rights of Indige­nous Peoples–the mobi­liza­tion pressed on.

After a few more weeks of protest, it looked as if a res­o­lu­tion was at hand. Sev­er­al thou­sand Awa­jun and Wamp­is Peo­ples had set up a series of strate­gic block­ades on Fer­nan­do Belaúnde Ter­ry road in Bagua, Ama­zonas Region. Hav­ing so effec­tive­ly seized the impor­tant road, the gov­ern­ment sought to strike a deal with the Awa­jun and Wamp­is, ulti­mate­ly con­vinc­ing the Indige­nous Peo­ples to begin tak­ing down their block­ades. Many of the Awa­jun and Wamp­is were long gone by the time June 5 rolled around.

In the ear­ly morn­ing hours of June 5, the Peru­vian mil­i­tary police made their move.

When the dust final­ly set­tled, 38 peo­ple were dead and more than 200 were injured.

Two weeks after the bru­tal con­fronta­tion, Peru’s Con­gress over­whelm­ing­ly vot­ed to strike down both Leg­isla­tive Decree 1064 and 1089.

Fol­low­ing Con­gress’ vote, Daysi Zap­a­ta, vice pres­i­dent of the Intereth­nic Asso­ci­a­tion for Devel­op­ment of the Peru­vian Jun­gle (AIDESEP), the orga­ni­za­tion that start­ed the mobi­liza­tion, offi­cial­ly called for an end to all protests, stat­ing, “Today is an his­toric day, we are grate­ful that the will of indige­nous peo­ples has been heard, and only hope that in future, gov­ern­ments meet and lis­ten to the peo­ple, and not leg­is­late the laws back in.”

Four years lat­er, the decrees have remained off the books; the gov­ern­ment tak­ing judi­cial aim at many of the Indige­nous Peo­ples who took part (or alleged­ly took part) in the mobi­liza­tion. Since 2009, more 100 sep­a­rate law­suits have been filed involv­ing at least 350 Indige­nous men and women.

The upcom­ing law­suit, known as the “Cur­va del Dia­blo”, will be the largest of them all. In fact, with 53 indige­nous lead­ers fac­ing any­where between 35 years to life in prison, it is going to be the largest tri­al in Peru’s his­to­ry.

AIDESEP Pres­i­dent Alber­to Pizan­go, who is among the 53 named defen­dants, recent­ly com­ment­ed in an inter­nal AIDESEP inter­view:

There’s a “Before Bagua” and an “After Bagua”. A before in which the Peru­vian State didn’t want to and didn’t know how to lis­ten to the pro­pos­als of indige­nous peo­ples. This exac­er­bat­ed the sit­u­a­tion until things came to what hap­pened, which unfor­tu­nate­ly took so many lives unnec­es­sar­i­ly. I’d say an “After Bagua” because thanks to the Ama­zon­ian mobi­liza­tions I can say that today the indige­nous agen­da is not only insert­ed in the nation­al lev­el and with­in the State, but on the inter­na­tion­al lev­el.

Pizan­go con­tin­ues:

I’d just say to the indige­nous peo­ples and my indige­nous broth­ers who are being tried for these regret­table events that they should stay firm in con­tin­u­ing to lift up the voice of indige­nous peo­ples. All we have done is com­ply with our role as being the offi­cial spokes­peo­ple and work to insert in the nation­al pub­lic agen­da the dif­fer­ent claims as man­dat­ed to us by our peo­ples. I’d reit­er­ate to my broth­ers that they should stay firm in the sig­nif­i­cance of indige­nous peo­ples rights. We’re going to over­come these accu­sa­tions, we should be con­scious of the fact that we haven’t com­mit­ted any crimes. Per­haps our only crime was to car­ry the voice of the peo­ple, which is what we’ll be judged for start­ing May 14th….

Colombian Poor Occupy Lands Slated for Military Base

wYdfu2J12th May 2014 FORTUL, COLOMBIA–Holding down an occu­pa­tion for five months isn’t easy. Doing so in Colom­bia, even less so.

wYdfu2J12th May 2014 FORTUL, COLOMBIA–Holding down an occu­pa­tion for five months isn’t easy. Doing so in Colom­bia, even less so. But mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty of Héc­tor Alirio Martínez in the munic­i­pal­i­ty of For­tul, near the bor­der with Venezuela, have raised the stakes even high­er: they’re occu­py­ing land owned by the Min­istry of Defense. The 100 hectare ter­rain now spot­ted with wood and plas­tic homes was slat­ed to become a large mil­i­tary base.

Locals say the land orig­i­nal­ly was pur­chased by Occi­den­tal Petro­le­um in order to build a large new base to coor­di­nate pro­tec­tion of a new oil pipeline which pass­es less than a few hun­dred meters from the lot.

“This land belongs to the Min­istry of Defense, it was pur­chased and spon­sored by Oxy, so we as good peo­ple from Arau­ca said that the most viable thing is to take over this plan, and see if the Min­is­ter of Defense will give it to us over time, many peo­ple need­ed this land,” said Jhon Car­los Ariza Aguilar, the Vice-Pres­i­dent of the com­mu­ni­ty of over 2,000 fam­i­lies. They began the occu­pa­tion on Novem­ber 26, 2013.

I met with Jhon and oth­er mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty on a hot Feb­ru­ary after­noon, weeks after the com­mu­ni­ty was sup­posed to have been removed by force. On Jan­u­ary 20, the army entered the shack set­tle­ment with a tank, and an evic­tion was sched­uled for Feb­ru­ary 4, but that date came and went with com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers in an uneasy calm about what would take place next.

For­tul is a munic­i­pal­i­ty in the Colom­bian foothills, between the moun­tains and the wide open plains, and not far from the Arau­ca Riv­er, which marks the bor­der with Venezuela. This oil rich region is also deeply con­flict­ual, on the road over, sol­diers hung around a hand­ful of tanks, and army pres­ence is ubiq­ui­tous. ELN and FARC guer­ril­las also patrol the area and have car­ried out attacks on Caño Limon-Covenas pipeline which serves Occidental’s near­by Caño Limon field. Under the heavy after­noon sun, a group of men lounged under a hand­ful of trees, and women relaxed under a shel­ter beside them. Iden­ti­cal palm shacks pro­tect­ed by green cloth roofs dot­ted the area.

As we spoke, a taxi cab arrived, with a mat­tress strapped to the top and fur­ni­ture in the trunk, indi­cat­ing anoth­er fam­i­ly per­ma­nent­ly mov­ing into the area. Ariza Aguilar indi­cat­ed that about one in four mem­bers of the occu­pa­tion was an inter­nal­ly dis­placed per­son, forced out of their homes because of the ongo­ing con­flict.

“Oxy bought this land and they gave it to the Min­istry of Defense” in 2010, said Jhon­ny Alex­is Cas­tro, the For­tul rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Joel Sier­ra Human Rights Foun­da­tion. Oxy did not respond to a request for com­ment.

The Oleo­duc­to Bicen­te­nario, a meter wide oil pipeline that will even­tu­al­ly trav­el 960km from Casanare depart­ment to the port of Cov­eñas, is three min­utes from the occu­pa­tion by road, on the back end of the com­mu­ni­ty the under­ground pipeline is but a few hun­dred meters away. “That’s why they want­ed a bat­tal­ion here, but there is a school very close, hav­ing a bat­tal­ion here would mean hav­ing a check­point right in front of the school,” said Cas­tro.

Today, chil­dren from the set­tle­ment are already attend­ing the school. “What mat­ters is that the chil­dren go and study, it doesn’t mat­ter if we have elec­tric­i­ty or not, that [they study] is the impor­tant thing,” said Ariza Aguilar. He invit­ed me to swim in a riv­er near­by, which pro­vides those liv­ing in the com­mu­ni­ty with a place to gath­er water, wash cloth­ing, and bathe.

The com­mu­ni­ty of Héc­tor Alirio Martínez is the first per­ma­nent occu­pa­tion of land owned by the Min­istry of Defense in Colom­bia. The com­mu­ni­ty takes its name from a local peas­ant activist who was pulled from a house at dawn and shot to death by sol­diers along with two oth­ers on August 4, 2004. “The prob­lem is that Arau­ca is con­sid­ered a red zone in Colom­bia, and any leader who ori­ents peo­ple, who even just teach­es them how to go to city hall (to man­age their paper­work), that’s enough to say they’re a guer­ril­la and hunt them until they kill them,” said Ariza Aguilar.

Com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers know that tak­ing part in the occu­pa­tion is an extreme­ly risky activ­i­ty, but for many the need for hous­ing and the abil­i­ty to send their chil­dren to school out­weighs the risk.