{"id":59519,"date":"2015-06-15T12:00:13","date_gmt":"2015-06-15T11:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=59519"},"modified":"2015-06-12T13:41:33","modified_gmt":"2015-06-12T12:41:33","slug":"bp-and-the-armed-suppression-of-dissent-in-colombia-big-oils-ethical-violence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/06\/bp-and-the-armed-suppression-of-dissent-in-colombia-big-oils-ethical-violence\/","title":{"rendered":"BP and the Armed Suppression of Dissent in Colombia: Big Oil\u2019s Ethical Violence"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jun 10 2015<\/em> – International attention has once again turned to the murky record of BP\u2019s oil operations in Colombia. The High Court in London is to hear a case against BP<\/a>, filed on behalf of Gilberto Torres, a former trade unionist who was kidnapped and tortured by state-linked<\/a> paramilitaries in\u00a02002. In a trial in Colombia, the kidnappers said that they took direct orders from pipeline operator Ocensa, in which BP had a\u00a015% stake.\u00a0 They stated that Ocensa paid them an extra\u00a0$40,000 for the job.<\/p>\n

Legal cases such as this are vital: they aim to hold corporations to account and to contest systematic impunity<\/a>. Torres\u2019s London-based lawyers hope the lawsuit will open the way to hundreds of other cases on behalf of community leaders, activists and trade unionists killed or \u2018disappeared\u2019. BP, which withdrew from the Casanare region of Colombia four years ago, denies any connection with paramilitary groups. It has said it will \u2018vigorously\u2019 defend the action and that Ocensa was not under its control when Torres was abducted.<\/p>\n

The case is particularly significant because Casanare can be considered the birthplace of big oil\u2019s concern with human rights. In the mid-1990s, BP faced extensive criticism<\/a> for its links with the Colombian army and \u2014 by extension \u2014 with paramilitaries accused of assassinating environmentalists, community activists and trade unionists. The company was quick to \u2018learn from mistakes\u2019<\/a> and was one of the first corporations to establish a dialogue with international development organisations. In\u00a01997, BP representatives sat down to discuss human rights with an \u2018Inter-Agency Group\u2019 comprising Oxfam, Save the Children, Cafod, Christian Aid and the Catholic Institute for International Relations.<\/p>\n

BP went on to become a frontrunner in the recognition of human rights as a matter of concern for corporations. It has set the agenda by promoting corporate responsibility as an integral part of companies\u2019 performance.\u00a0 In 2000, BP became one of the original group of signatories of the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights<\/a> for the extractive sector. The UN Special Representative on Business and Human Rights, John Ruggie, visited BP\u2019s human rights training facility for the Colombian army in January\u00a0007. He subsequently stated that the Voluntary Principles had been \u2018implemented most extensively at the country level in Colombia<\/a>\u2019, with a positive impact on the \u2018once notorious 16th Brigade\u2019<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, in Casanare, the 16th Brigade was continuing to ensure it\u2019s ongoing notoriety. According to a report by Colombian human rights organizations<\/a>, soldiers killed Angel Camacho, just by BP\u2019s Cupiagua oilfield, the very month of Ruggie\u2019s visit. The report recorded over 30\u00a0extrajudicial executions at the hands of the 16th Brigade over the course of\u00a02007 alone. I spent a year as a researcher and human rights volunteer in Casanare shortly after the UN Special Representative\u2019s brief visit and witnessed directly how the 16th Brigade continued to carry out illegal surveillance of community activities around the oilfields. I spoke to numerous people who told me of children, partners and neighbours killed by the Brigade\u2019s soldiers.<\/p>\n

Even suspicion of being left-wing was a death sentence. During one community human rights meeting that I attended, Sergeant \u00c1vila of 44th\u00a0Battalion stated that his battalion had killed several people in the vicinity.\u00a0 \u00c1vila claimed that fault lay with the victims\u2019 neighbours, who had \u2018told us that they were left-wing\u2019.<\/p>\n

In November 2002, just months after Torres was kidnapped, the El Morro Community Association coordinated a civic strike near the Cupiagua oilfield. Surviving members of the Association said they had wanted a response from BP for ongoing ecological devastation, precarious and underpaid employment and the company\u2019s continued failure to comply with agreements that it had reached with the community.<\/p>\n

In the aftermath of the protest, Jorge Guzman, of BP\u2019s community affairs department, was reported to have said that he was \u2018tired\u2019 of the El Morro Community Association, because they did not \u2018let the company work\u2019. Over the weeks and months that followed, members of the Association began to receive threats, including \u2018stop fucking with BP\u2019. In September\u00a02004, on his return from a meeting with BP representatives, the Association\u2019s treasurer, Oswaldo Vargas, was shot dead. Five days later, another leading member of the Association, Fasio Holgu\u00edn survived an assassination attempt.<\/p>\n

Investigative journalist Gear\u00f3id \u00d3 Loingsigh interviewed the paramilitary commander Carlos Guzman Daza (alias Salom\u00f3n) in November\u00a02007. Salom\u00f3n stated that \u2018when peasants organized strikes or protested about any situation that they considered to be affected by oil companies, the paramilitaries went in to threaten the peasants\u2026. As I say, the paramilitaries never did anything for free.\u00a0 If they gave a service to someone, it is because this someone was financing or giving money or some bribe in exchange\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u00d3 Loingsigh was also passed an internal email from BP. In September\u00a01997, shortly before a visit of representatives of the Inter-Agency Group to Colombia, BP Policy Director David Rice wrote the following to a colleague who had been liaising with NGOs\u2019 in Colombia:<\/p>\n

\u2018Andres, Well done.\u00a0 I agree with your view that we would benefit by working more with Oxfam in Colombia.\u00a0 They have been a great heklp [sic] to us here and are getting closer to us all the time.\u00a0 Your visitors have a lot of influence in the development ngo community in the UK, and hence in how allegations against [us] are picked up or not.\u00a0 Good and closer relationships with Oxfam will be a significant factor in differentiating BP globally\u2019\u00a0(1<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, BP representatives, the British ambassador in Colombia and anonymous \u2018independent experts\u2019 were quoted in the media saying that criticism of BP was a \u2018smear campaign\u2019 orchestrated by National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrillas.<\/p>\n

Michael Gillard, the journalist who first broke the story of BP\u2019s links with the Colombian military, has said that he too was the target of this line of argument: \u2018For BP it was helpful to try and undermine my journalism by suggesting [that] one of Colombia\u2019s guerrilla groups was pulling my strings. I was first alerted to this smear campaign in\u00a01997 after talking to an oil journalist in Houston who\u2019d been briefed by Roddy Kennedy, [then BP CEO] John Browne\u2019s Chief Press Officer. I later heard through various sources that BP was smearing me as the ELN\u2019s man in Europe\u2019\u00a0(2<\/a>).<\/p>\n

\u2018In general, BP\u2019s was a classic strategy of creating a division between so-called \u201creasonable\u201d activists that they felt they could do business with and so-called \u201cunreasonable\u201d ones, who were subtly labelled as militants and guerrilla sympathisers, which in Colombia is a death sentence,\u2019 he added.<\/p>\n

Voluntary corporate responsibility is more than whitewash. It is a powerful means of disciplining dissent<\/a>.\u00a0 Unable to recognise the struggles of others who did not mirror their own understanding of \u2018civil society\u2019, the Inter-Agency Group unwittingly fed into a process of neutralising resistance. They encouraged BP to promote human rights, failing to apprehend how, for peasant organisations in Casanare, rights were demanded precisely to contest oil extraction and all its harmful consequences.<\/p>\n

During their dialogue with BP, the Inter-Agency Group refused to publish a report they commissioned from Colombian researcher Pedro Galindo. The report included a critique of how royalties on oil were calculated so as to ensure, in Galindo\u2019s words, \u2018maximum profits to the multinational and minimal benefits to the population\u2019. Galindo said his report aimed to \u2018show how oil exploration represented the imposition of a culturally and economically alien model \u2026 and to put forward the idea that people in Casanare should be allowed to take responsibility for finding solutions to their own problems\u2019\u00a0(3<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Voluntary codes of conduct purport to promote rights. What they actually do is reduce rights to precarious and private contract<\/a>. The holders of corporate-fostered \u2018rights\u2019 do not have those rights as citizens, still less because of their humanity (the basis of notions of universal rights). They possess rights only as \u2018stakeholders\u2019, a figure premised upon the process of capital accumulation in which they can have a \u2018stake\u2019.<\/p>\n

BP has placed great emphasis upon its work with \u2018stakeholders\u2019 in the vicinity of its oilfields. In practice, however, the reach of its community investment has been sparse. \u2018We are of course very grateful to BP for giving us a ball for the children, but we would prefer genuine support\u2019, one community leader commented.<\/p>\n

In 1994, BP and other oil companies in Casanare established the Fundaci\u00f3n Amanecer.<\/em> This development NGO runs a series of projects in the immediate vicinity of the oilfields, fostering competitive agricultural production and an \u2018entrepreneurial culture\u2019 among the population. One farmer summed up how she perceived the effects of this: \u2018First BP destroyed the social fabric, now they are trying to build another one in their image.\u2019<\/p>\n

Where community organisations continued to mobilise around ongoing environmental damage, lack of social investment and the killing of their neighbours, representatives of the Fundaci\u00f3n <\/em>have turned up uninvited at their meetings and actively encouraged people to participate in their projectsinstead of protesting.<\/p>\n

Protest, meanwhile, continues to carry high risks, as is made clear by the cases of Gilberto Torres, Oswaldo Vargas and documented killings as recent as 2014.\u00a0 Outside the allocation of rights through corporate responsibility, the population has continued to be disposable. They can be killed with impunity \u2014 without anyone being held to account for a crime.<\/p>\n

If oil companies are implicated in human rights violations, this is not because they are bad examples of corporate responsibility. Corporate responsibility is the other side of the armed elimination of dissent. It works its own, ethical violence, erasing experiences and struggles of those around the oilfields. By substituting law, corporate codes of conduct reinforce impunity for abuses. Rights are promoted as abstract values, tacked on to the existing state of affairs. Companies can claim to have \u2018learnt from their mistakes\u2019, and their operations can be affirmed as ethical from hereon in\u00a0(4<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Legal cases such as that filed on behalf of Gilberto Torres defy this logic. To challenge impunity is not just to attempt to confine abuses to the past<\/a>. It serves to expose crimes committed, to preserve memory of the past within the present, and to highlight contradictions between corporate recognition of rights and an economic model that has implied the systematic violation and dispossession of workers and populations around the oilfields. It is part of a process of re-building communities and social organisations wiped out by the violence.<\/p>\n

Torres\u2019 London-based lawyers are crowd-funding his case<\/a>. They have teamed up with War on Want<\/a> and Cos-pacc<\/a>, an organisation established by displaced peasants from around BP\u2019s Colombian oilfields, to launch the Oil Justice<\/a> campaign.<\/p>\n

NOTES:<\/strong><\/p>\n

(1<\/a>) Rice, David P.\u00a0 Email sent on Thursday, 18\u00a0September 1997, 10:40am. Quoted in Ayala et al,\u00a0Por Dentro E\u2019Soga: Un Analysis de los Impactos de BP en Casanare,\u00a0<\/em>Desde Abajo, Bogot\u00e1, 2010.<\/p>\n

(2<\/a>) Personal interview with Michael Gillard, 24\u00a0December 2007.<\/p>\n

(3<\/a>) Personal interview with Pedro Galindo, 27\u00a0December 2007.<\/p>\n

(4<\/a>) For in-depth discussion, see Lara Montesinos Coleman, \u2018The making of docile dissent: neoliberalization and resistance in Colombia and beyond\u2019,\u00a0International Political Sociology,<\/em>\u00a09:2, 2013, and \u2018Struggles, over rights: humanism, ethical dispossession and resistance\u2019, in\u00a0Third World Quarterly,<\/em>\u00a036:6,\u00a02015.<\/p>\n

____________________________<\/p>\n

Lara Montesinos Coleman<\/em> is a lecturer in\u00a0International Relations at the\u00a0Centre for Global Political Economy at Sussex University.<\/em><\/p>\n

This article appears in the excellent <\/em>Le Monde Diplomatique, whose English language edition can be found at\u00a0mondediplo.com.<\/a>\u00a0This full text appears by agreement with <\/em>Le Monde Diplomatique. CounterPunch features two or three articles from LMD every month.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 counterpunch.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Legal cases such as this are vital: they aim to hold corporations to account and to contest systematic impunity. Hopefully the lawsuit will open the way to hundreds of other cases on behalf of community leaders, activists and trade unionists killed or \u2018disappeared\u2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latin-america-and-the-caribbean"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59519\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}