Communique to the international and national public: OXY invades Uwa territory; The army of Colombia with 5000 men at the service of the OXY

From the Colombian Labor Monitor,
Friday 21 January 2000

On the 19th of January 2000, more than 5000 heavily armed soldiers of the Colombian Army, invaded our traditional territory, exactly in Cedeno, where there is the oil drilling well—Gibraltar 1, of the Occidental, Oxy.

Facing the opposition of the Uwa people, headed by our representative the indigenous leader Roberto Cobaria Berito, the Armed forces stated that Over and above the indigenous Uwas, they had to exploit oil. At the same time Police forces move to the zone with the aim to protect the safety of the Occidental engineers.

Since the 15th of November 1999, more than 250 of our community stand in peaceful protest in the area of Cedeno, which is part of our ancestral territory, claiming resistance against oil exploitation by the OXY. Today we are being cordoned off by the Colombian Army and Police, putting at risk our physical integrity.

With this action, the Oxy and the Colombian army insist on ignoring our territorial rights, sacred for thousands of year and as the real owners of the land where the oil exploitation is going to take place. This series of events ignores our constitutional and legal rights, which state that the communal ethnic territories are inalienable, can not be seized and are imprescriptible, and that they are protected by the title deed of collective territory.

Likewise, the Colombian government, headed by the Minister of Mining and Energy with the complicity of INCORA (National institute for Agrarian Reform), pretend to declare the Uwa territory as an oil reserve, with the false argument that the national oil industry acquires by law a special status of public interest, with the true and only purpose of facilitating and allowing the oil exploitation on behalf of the Multinational Oxy.

We are urgently calling the attention of the national and international community and the NGO support groups to take action, speak up and move against this latest violation against the Uwa people, which is threatening our existence and culture.

THE UWAS WILL NOT GIVE UP OUR CULTURAL, HISTORICAL AND MILLENARY RIGHTS. WE RATHER PREFER A GENOCIDE SPONSORED BY THE COLOMBIAN GOVERNMENT BEFORE OUR MOTHER LAND IS DESTROYED BY THE OIL COMPANIES.