No to Santos’ Dirty War in Colombia! No to Mining Multinationals Destroying the Environment and Communities!
Yes to Real Human Rights for All! Yes to Peace with Social Justice!
The Colombia Solidarity Campaign has called a picket from 5.00pm on Thursday, 9th November outside Chatham House HQ at 10 St James Square, Piccadilly, London SW1Y 4LE
COME AND SUPPORT THIS PROTEST – OUR VOICES NEED TO BE HEARD
The official event is from 5:30 p.m. to 7:00 pm p.m. https://www.chathamhouse.org/event/chatham-house-prize-2017-president-juan-manuel-santos
In addition, Santos is invited by Kew Gardens on 10th November to receive a prize for the protection of biodiversity (!!)
https://www.kew.org/about-our-organisation/press-media/press-releases/colombian-president-awarded-kew-international
We are protesting because :
1. Peace is a lie given the Dirty War that has followed the Peace Agreement
There is a dirty war being conducted by the state and its paramilitary agents:
• against environmental activists, social activists and the cadres of the demobilized FARC and their families, 86 already killed in 2017.
• the massacre of Tumaco where the ESMAD ‘anti-mutiny’ police shot dead 11 campesino farmers
• there are many more disappearances and a hidden war in the poor neighbourhoods, against Afro-colombians and indigenous peoples
2. The government’s principal economic policy is to bend over backwards to attract the investment of multinational companies. Santos invites corporations to extract Colombia’s fantastic natural resources, with huge profits to them but at great cost to the communities who are criminalised if they oppose the projects and then violently displaced, and with devastating environmental consequences.
We condemn Santos mining locomotive which generates despoliation, destruction and displacement. Santos extractivist model is the main generator of conflict in Colombia today.
Colombia is not a functioning democracy, it is a country where the government, the state and the ruling establishment continue to conduct a dirty war against the majority of the people. For its own interests, the British establishment is promoting a cover up of Santos’s dirty war.
It is a disgrace that Santos has been awarded international prizes by Chatham House and Kew Gardens. On any objective evaluation of his human rights and environmental record Santos should be charged with crimes on both these fronts.
The award of these two prizes shows that the London establishment is more interested in benefiting from the exploitation of Colombia’s natural wealth and labour, than in truly respecting human rights and biodiversity.
We call on progressive opinion to join our call that both these prizes be withdrawn. We ask for solidarity with the Colombia people and demand an end to international impunity for crimes of the powerful.
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