Biofuels Push Becomes Weapon in Colombia's War on Narco-Traffickers

http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2011/05/02/02greenwire-biofuels-push-becomes-weapon-in-colombias-war-94778.html?pagewanted=1

A farmer smiles as he surveys his 25-acre palm plantation in the steamy hill country near the Venezuelan border.

Government support for biodiesel has spurred a robust demand for palm oil that has put 50 percent more income into the pocket of farmer Misael Monsalve Moreno. He is almost finished replacing his family's cramped wooden shack with a new brick house.

It is hard to believe, he said, that just five years ago he and many of his neighbors were growing coca -- the main ingredient for cocaine -- for Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC), a narco-trafficking rebel group that then controlled this part of the Catatumbo region.

"Everybody was growing coca around this area," he said. "I have to say the truth. Everyone had to grow coke."

And here I thought they were progressive revolutionaries fighting the Bushwacks.

Push to Produce More Palm-Oil for Biodiesel Fuels Violence in Colombia
By Larry West, About.com Guide June 10, 2007

~snip~
According to aid organizations working in Colombia, paramilitary gangs are seizing land for biofuel conglomerates that are seeking “green” profits, and using threats and violence to evict the legitimate owners.

"The paramilitaries are not subtle when it comes to taking land," said Dominic Nutt of Christian Aid, in an interview with The Times of London. "They simply visit a community and tell landowners, 'If you don't sell to us, we will negotiate with your widow.'

Farmers Who Refuse to Sell to Biofuel Interests Pay with Their Lives
Some farmers who have refused to sell or surrender their land have been murdered. There are also stories of paramilitaries cutting off the arms of illiterate peasants and using fingerprints from the severed hands to create fraudulent documents that transfer land ownership.

Much of the land being targeted is collectively owned by indigenous people or Afro-Colombians and protected by federal laws, which the courts seem unable or unwilling to enforce.

More:
http://environment.about.com/b/2007/06/10/colombias-push-to-produce-more-palm-oil-for-biodiesel-fuels-violence-land-grabs.htm

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The Nation / By Teo Ballv�
The Dark Side of Plan Colombia: How the U.S. is Subsidizing Death and Drug Trafficking on Stolen Lands
As Congress prepares to debate new Plan Colombia funding, it's time to investigate how money for biofuels is linked to violence and bloodshed.
http://www.alternet.org/story/140408 /

~snip~
In addition to the $161,000 granted to Coproagrosur, USAID also awarded $650,000 to Gradesa, a palm company with two accused paramilitary-linked narco-traffickers on its board of directors. A third palm company, Urapalma, also accused of links with paramilitaries, nearly won approval for a grant before its application stalled because of missing paperwork. Critics say such grants defeat the antidrug mission of Plan Colombia.

"Plan Colombia is fighting against drugs militarily at the same time it gives money to support palm, which is used by paramilitary mafias to launder money," says Colombian Senator Gustavo Petro, an outspoken critic of the palm industry. "The United States is implicitly subsidizing drug traffickers."

~snip~
The damage may be just beginning. In 2005 Colombian President �lvaro Uribe, citing surging markets in food and biofuels, urged the country to increase palm production from 750,000 acres to 15 million acres -- an area the size of West Virginia. Critics point out that many of the new palm growing regions exhibit patterns of narco-trafficking and paramilitary violence similar to that in Choc�, including massacres and forced displacement. A report by the international organization Human Rights Everywhere found violent crimes related to palm cultivation in five separate regions -- all of which fall within Uribe's initiative. Almost all of these regions have also been targeted for palm cultivation support by USAID.

The US agency administers Plan Colombia's alternative development program from its headquarters in the massive bunkerlike compound of the US Embassy, on one of Bogot�'s busiest streets. Oil palm, or African palm, is one of the few aid-funded crops whose profits can match coca profits. Since 2003 USAID's alternative development contracts have provided nearly $20 million to oil palm agribusiness projects across the country.

More:
http://www.alternet.org/story/140408 /

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Colombia biofuel production linked to human rights violations

Submitted by WW4 Report on Thu, 06/04/2009 - 15:56. The Colombian government is in favor of national biofuel production and boasts that Colombia is the world's second biggest producer of biofuels (after Brazil). But human rights groups denounced the cultivation of biofuel crops such as palm tree oil in Colombia to BBC World June 3, charging their production is linked to land theft and atrocities by paramilitary groups.

The UN has also requested the freezing of all investment in biofuels because it believes their production is contributing to the global food crisis by diverting lands from subsistence crops.
These concerns were dismissed by Colombian Agriculture Minister Andres Fern�ndez, who said it is a government objective that the industry "continue to grow." Asserting that food and biofuel crops do not "compete" for land in Colombia, Fern�ndez added: "I think that that is just a fallacy disseminated by people who don't believe in biofuels."

~snip~
"They used the argument that they were there to remove the guerrillas but we later realized that their objective was to kick us off our land," he said. "We resisted leaving but the army told us that they wouldn't help families who stayed."

According to Rivera more than 500 people fled the area. "When we tried to return to our land, it was full of palm trees," he said. "There has been no willingness on the part of government to ensure the return of our territories, because the paramilitaries are still there and they are in partnership with the business."

More:
http://ww4report.com/node/7405

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Palm Oil in Colombia: Biofuel or Bioterror?

Palm oil is, allegedly, big, bad business in parts of Colombia. Multinational companies that grow, process and sell the oil there are forcing peasant farmers off their lands through deceit, intimidation and even murder, according to Eustaquio Polo Rivera, a keynote speaker at the April 5, 2008, Food for Maine�s Future Local Foods Conference in Unity.

Molly Little, a former MOFGA apprentice and representative of Witness for Peace in Colombia, works with the Colombia Solidarity Network of Brown University and brought Polo to the Conference, with help from the American Friends Service Committee and the Center for Latin American Studies at Brown. Little explained that a 40-year-long civil war has been waged in Colombia between paramilitary groups that work closely with the Colombian government, and left-wing guerrillas who oppose the concentration of Colombian wealth among a few elite. The war has resulted in 4.2 million displaced people, the second largest displaced population internally in any country in the world (after Sudan). According to Amnesty International, said Little, 60% of these people have been displaced from resource-rich areas.

Colombia, continued Little, is the third largest recipient of U.S. military aid, receiving 5 to 6 billion U.S. taxpayer dollars since 2000, 80% spent on the military in a country with the worst human rights record in the Western Hemisphere.

The 39-year-old Polo is vice president of the board of the Major Council, an organization of 21 communities that owns 42,700 hectares in the Curvarad� river basin in Choc�, Colombia. He is an active leader in his community�s efforts to recuperate collectively titled lands that have been occupied since 1997 by multinational oil palm companies connected to Colombia�s paramilitary. He has been the target of death threats by palm oil companies, he said, as have the legal representative of Curvarad�'s Council, Ligia Maria Chaverra, and farmer Enrique Petro.

More:
http://www.mofga.org/Publications/MaineOrganicFarmerGardener/Summer2008/PalmOil/tabid/952/Default.aspx

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Colombia: Farmers demand right of return to lands taken for palm oil consortium

We, the community of The Farmers Association of Buenos Aires (ASOCAB), have been victims of forced displacement by paramilitary groups and alleged drug trafficker, Jesus Emilio Escobar, who was owner of the Las Pavas estate. Several years after Emilio Escobar left the farm and the community had already established food crops, he reappeared to remove us by force and sell the land to the Consortium Labrador. This consortium is comprised of the companies San Isidro SA Contributions and C.I. Tequendama SA, which is part of the DAABON group. They are dedicated to the implementation of extensive oil palm cultivation and caused our last displacement in 2009 with the consent of the municipal, regional and national government by using an illegal political process. They expelled us from Las Pavas with the assistance of the National Police, perpetrating the crime of forced displacement.

We declare before the local, regional, National and International communities that the Consortium Labrador has endangered the life and physical integrity of our community by spreading an announcement through the communications media. In this communication they accuse us of trying to illegally and clandestinely invade the Las Pavas estate, violating the rights of workers in the palm and peace in the region.

This statement is nothing more than a defamation and criminalization of ASOCAB and is just one of the strategies used by the Consortium to violate the rights of our community and prevent us from exercising our fundamental right to return to the land. We do not intend to invade private property or engage in violent or illegal acts. We are farmers, living a deep humanitarian crisis, exacerbated by food shortages due to the eviction forced on us by the palm companies, the state and armed groups, whom deny our rights acquired by long years of work on the farm. This Crisis has been aggravated by the total abandonment by the state and a rainy winter that lasted several months and destroyed the few crops we still had left.

This situation leaves us, the 600 people, who comprise ASOCAB, only one option for survival, to exercise our fundamental right to return to the land from where we have been displaced, as the Constitution and the law enables us to do. We have stated publicly on major national radio broadcast stations that we confirm that we are going to exercise the right of return and condemn what the Consortium Labrador is doing to try to smear the current government policy, which seeks restitution and return of the land for Colombian peasants who have been victims of displacement.

More:
http://www.wakeupfromyourslumber.com/blog/aletho-news/colombia-farmers-demand-right-return-lands-taken-palm-oil-consortium

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What Kind of Green? An Update on the Colombian Palm Oil Industry
by Margaree Little

~snip~
One such �green desert� of oil palm displaced Eustaquio Polo Rivera, a Choc� farmer who became an organizer after the theft of his community�s land. Polo came to New England last April and spoke at the Food for Maine�s Future conference in Unity. His talk detailed his displacement and his community�s struggle for justice and food security. (See the June-August 2008 MOF&G .)

Polo�s story is not unique. International Peace Service (IPS), a Human Rights monitoring group based in Bogot�, has reported that 285,000 hectares of African oil palm trees now grow in Colombia (the third-largest recipient of U.S. aid after Israel and Egypt). The IPS has also reported that President �lvaro Uribe, whose government has the worst human rights record in the Western Hemisphere according to Human Rights Watch, plans to increase that number to one million hectares in the next four years. Palm oil is also a leading agricultural commodity worldwide, and the World Rainforest Movement has documented palm oil plantations � and the devastation they have caused � in Colombia as well as in Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Ecuador, the Ivory Coast, the Congo, Papua New Guinea, Cameroon, Benin, Uganda and Nigeria.

Why is oil palm so appealing? The Center for Science in the Public Interest reports that after a 2006 FDA regulation required companies to list the amount of trans-fat (understood to cause heart disease) on labels of food products, many processors switched to other oils that don�t contain trans-fat. Palm oil is one such alternative, and major producers such as Keebler, Oreo, Mrs. Fields and Pepperidge Farm use it in their cookies. Palm oil is found increasingly in crackers and cereals, and has long been used in cosmetics. Apart from its uses in food and makeup, and importantly in the context of a growing rhetoric about �greening� our economy, oil palm also produces a biofuel that has been hailed as a cleaner alternative to petroleum.

But these �green� palm plantations are built on stolen land, land that communities like those in Choc� and farmers like Polo once cultivated for sustenance crops. According to an April 2007 investigation by the Colombian Ministry of Agriculture, says IPS, �at least 25,000 hectares suitable for the cultivation of oil palms � were acquired by private interests through illegitimate land titles.� The investigation admits, too, that this illegal land acquisition has coincided with the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of small farmers at the hands of paramilitary formations working with U.S. funding funneled through the Colombian government.

More:
http://www.mofga.org/Publications/MaineOrganicFarmerGardener/Summer2009/PalmOil/tabid/1208/Default.aspx

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SOA Watch in Colombia
Written by Liz Deligio and Charity Ryerson, SOA Watch Illinois

~snip~
In northern Antioquia, the African palm oil business has forcibly displaced thousands of mestizo, afro-descendiente, and indigenous families from their own lands. In concert with the police, military, paramilitaries, and local government offices, the palm oil companies have murdered and displaced community members and falsely claimed legal right to the territory.

In testimony before the Ethics Commission, community members expressed a high level of coordination between the 17th Brigade of the Colombian military and the Aguilas Negras paramilitary group. The complex system of control created between the armed actors, companies, and government offices has created significant legal and political isolation for the communities, leaving them exposed to further victimization. There is significant evidence that testimony given to the local prosecutor�s offices has been turned over to paramilitaries, often within hours. Unfortunately, this is a reality repeated throughout many regions of Colombia � the collusion of different forces of powers that legitimize their illegal actions and provide impunity for land theft, displacement, assassinations, kidnappings, and torture.

After ten years of displacement, the communities of the collective territories have made some attempts to return to the land. The construction of a Humanitarian Zone has created a more secure physical space, fortified by the presence of national and international human rights defenders. This is a step in creating a broader space for the affirmation of collective memory and the victims� right to define their terms of reparation.

On July 30, the communities took another step toward the reclamation of their land and dignity. With the support of internationals from Spain, Italy, and the United States as well as members of the Comisi�n Intereclesial Justicia y Paz from Bogot�, community members from different parts of the region gathered to begin a process of palm eradication.

More:
http://www.soaw.org/presente/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=76&Itemid=74

ETC.

how is their human rights record?