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Consulta Previa en el Ecuador: Las Reglas del Juego

Versión en español al final del documento

Consultation and prior consent debated in the Constituent Assembly
By Mario Melo. Translated from Spanish by Martin Allen.

Alberto Acosta, es ministro de Energía y Minas y actual pdte. de la Asamblea Constituyente, da explicaciones a las salida del ministerio a los manifestantes en contra de las actividades mineras, Marzo 2007.

The Ecuadorian press takes note of the fierce debate under way in the National Constituent Assembly concerning rights to consultation and prior informed consent. According to the daily La Hora of 23rd April 2008 this debate, in which the Presidents of the Assembly and of the Republic would be on opposite sides, would take dramatic turns within Constituent Table 5 which deals with matters of the environment and natural resources.

That is as it should be. At these levels of the Assembly’s work, the basic matters, those affecting the interests of most concern to the pressure-groups seeking to influence national policy, are beginning to come to the surface. So after many of the discussions which have recently kept the Assembly members awake, a very active sector of the national oligarchy, allied to the extractive transnationals which have controlled policy and the national economy since the 1970s, is anxious for their privileges not to be withdrawn.

Exploitation in Ecuador of such resources as oil and timber has, for decades, been based on imposition. Imposed on the country is a vision of development based on the myth that increased exploitation of natural resources brings increased wealth. The crude reality is that oil activity, for example, has contributed only to the wealth of the oil transnationals and their allies within the nation. Ecuador as a producer of oil is poor, very poor and heavily in debt. Much poorer and much more indebted than it was before exploiting its oil. Oil activity is imposed on communities, their ancestral territories handed over to transnationals behind their backs, without informing them, without consulting them, indeed without asking for the consent of the legitimate owners. In return the oil companies have left them rubbish, contamination, cancer, violence, marginality and dependence.
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Check also this article fro The Gurdian: Biofuels Starving our People: Leaders tell UN.

A woman tends a plant in a jatropha plantation in Malegaon, about 162 miles (260 kilometers) northeast of Mumbai (Bombay), on October 9, 2006.
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=42196

RIGHTS: Native People Warn U.N. of Biofuels Disaster
By Haider Rizvi

UNITED NATIONS, Apr 30 (IPS) - Growing demand for biofuels by the world’s
rich nations is propelling attacks on indigenous people and destroying their
lands and forests, according to native leaders attending a three-week
international meeting here.

“[There are] increasing human rights violations, displacements and conflicts
due to expropriation of ancestral lands and forests for biofuels
plantations,” said Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, chairperson of the U.N. Permanent
Forum on Indigenous Issues.

Tauli-Corpus, one of the authors of a new report on the topic, warned that
if biofuels expansion continued at the current pace, it was likely that at
least 60 million native people would lose their lands and livelihood.

The warning comes amid growing global concern over the current food crisis
that has left millions of people across the global south to suffer hunger
and starvation.

Experts on agro-economics say biofuels production is largely responsible for
the current food shortages and soaring prices. The crisis, according to
them, is not going to end unless the rich countries change their energy
consumption patterns.

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Versión en español al final de la versión en inglés. Toda la verdad sobre la muerte de Raúl Reyes
Article translated from Spanish by Martin Allen

Posted by Lilly Avensur

Decio Machado
Rebelión

The investigations undertaken by the Ecuadorian authorities are throwing light on what really happened in the early morning of 1st March, when Colombian armed forces attacked between 20 and 22 guerillas on Ecuadorian territory. In hiding where the attack took place was Commandant Raúl Reyes, second in command of FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia).

The pictures, the testimony of local residents, the statements of three women guerrillas who survived, and the ballistic and Ecuadorian military intelligence reports, reveal the heap of lies told by the Colombian president, Álvaro Uribe, both to Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa and to the international community and the media.

The Colombian version.

According to the Colombian version, FARC Front 48 was being pursued on the basis of information that the guerrilla leader, Raúl Reyes, would be at a village called Granada, close to the border with Ecuador but still in Colombian territory.

The Colombian defence minister, Juan Manuel Santos, stated that, during the operation, Colombian armed forces had been attacked from a FARC encampment situated 1,800 metres from the border, inside Ecuadorian territory.

It is stated that the Colombian Airforce proceeded to locate and attack the guerrilla encampment, always taking into account the order not to violate Ecuadorian airspace; that the Colombian armed force then entered to secure the area, leaving Colombian police in charge of the attacked encampment until the arrival of the Ecuadorian army.

The truth of the matter.

The investigations being carried out on behalf of the Ecuadorian authorities show that there was no combat on the part of the FARC commando which was attacked. With the exception of three who were on guard duty, the 18 dead were asleep in their underwear, and none of the guerrilla commando had a chance to enter into combat or to surrender.

The weapons that were in the encampment were piled up; they had no chance to get to their rifles and grenades; they were massacred as they slept.

The testimony of local residents, together with the craters on the earth floor of the encampment, show that four bombs were fired from Colombian aircraft which encroached over Ecuadorian territory. According to military intelligence investigations, these were fired from south of the encampment, meaning that the aircraft had encroached more than ten kilometres into Ecuadorian territory when the attack was made.

After the release of bombs from these aircrafts there was an encroachment by several “Supertucan” helicopters belonging to the Colombian airforce. From these the attack on the FARC encampment in Ecuadorian territory continued. Special commandos descended from these helicopters and finished off the guerrillas who remained wounded in the encampment, as is shown by the bullets lodged in a large number of the guerrillas’ bodies, many of which were piled up in a particular area of the encampment and murdered from behind. Even the photographs exhibited by the Colombian government of Commandant Raúl Reyes’ body show that it has a bullet-wound in the left side of the face.

Information coming from Ecuadorian military intelligence indicates not only that Ecuadorian airspace was violated in the early hours of 1st March, but that in the early hours of March 2nd there was another penetration of helicopters with night visors to extract members of the armed forces and Colombian police who were still in Ecuadorian territory.

The positions of the trees knocked down in the bombardment and the many bullet-holes in the trees show, together with the positions of the dead, that while FARC was guarding the encampment at the north side, which faces towards the border with Colombia, the aerial invasion came over from the south, indicating that the Colombian airforce invaded Ecuadorian airspace without permission, without notice, and in contravention of every kind of international agreement.
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March 05, 2008

Australia’s Hidden Empire

By John Pilger

When the outside world thinks about Australia, it generally turns to venerable clichés of innocence - cricket, leaping marsupials, endless sunshine, no worries. Australian governments actively encourage this. Witness the recent “G’Day USA” campaign, in which Kylie Minogue and Nicole Kidman sought to persuade Americans that, unlike the empire’s problematic outposts, a gormless greeting awaited them Down Under. After all, George W Bush had ordained the previous Australian prime minister, John Howard, “sheriff of Asia”.

That Australia runs its own empire is unmentionable; yet it stretches from the Aboriginal slums of Sydney to the ancient hinterlands of the continent and across the Arafura Sea and the South Pacific. When the new prime minister, Kevin Rudd, apologised to the Aboriginal people on 13 February, he was acknowledging this. As for the apology itself, the Sydney Morning Herald accurately described it as a “piece of political wreckage” that “the Rudd government has moved quickly to clear away . . . in a way that responds to some of its own supporters’ emotional needs, yet changes nothing. It is a shrewd manoeuvre.”

Like the conquest of the Native Americans, the decimation of Aboriginal Australia laid the foundation of Australia’s empire. The land was taken and many of its people were removed and impoverished or wiped out. For their descendants, untouched by the tsunami of sentimentality that accompanied Rudd’s apology, little has changed. In the Northern Territory’s great expanse known as Utopia, people live without sanitation, running water, rubbish collection, decent housing and decent health. This is typical. In the community of Mulga Bore, the water fountains in the Aboriginal school have run dry and the only water left is contaminated. Throughout Aboriginal Australia, epidemics of gastroenteritis and rheumatic fever are as common as they were in the slums of 19th-century England. Aboriginal health, says the World Health Organisation, lags almost a hundred years behind that of white Australia. This is the only developed nation on a United Nations “shame list” of countries that have not eradicated trachoma, an entirely preventable disease that blinds Aboriginal children. Sri Lanka has beaten the disease, but not rich Australia. On 25 February, a coroner’s inquiry into the deaths in outback towns of 22 Aboriginal people, some of whom had hanged themselves, found they were trying to escape their “appalling lives”.
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Caracas, February 25, 2008, (YVKE Radio Mundial) -

President Hugo Chávez ordered quick and decisive action Sunday in order to liberate 200 Yaruro indigenous people who have been encircled by fences built by Agroflora, an affiliate of the British Vestey Group, according to denunciations filed by Representative Cristóbal Jiménez and ratified by the Minister of Agriculture and Land, Elias Jaua. Also, 800 other indigenous people remained outside of the fences. “The farm put up a fence around them and they can’t get out without permission from the farm owners,” Jiménez explained.

“When the English company bought the Morichito farm from Vicente Pérez Soto, in the document the indigenous people were included,” Jiménez pointed out. Pérez Soto was a governor in the era of Juan Vicente Gómez, at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Jaua met with the president of Agroflora and informed her that nearly 10,000 acres will be confiscated by the state so that the indigenous peoples can move about freely.

President Orders Immediate Liberation of Indigenous Peoples

“This is a flagrant violation of indigenous rights,” the president said. He ordered that this Monday the National Guard, accompanied by a judge and a public prosecutor, shall demolish the fences, allowing the indigenous people to recuperate their right to move freely. “If they want to demand something from the State, then they shall demand it, but we cannot permit them to fence in an indigenous community,” Chávez proclaimed. (more…)

Verrsión en español más abajo.

THE CONFEDERATION OF ECUADORIAN INDIGENOUS NATIONS ACCUSES THE GOVERNMENT OF GENOCIDE IN FREE TERRITORIES OF ECUADORIAN AMAZONIA

CONAIE DENUNCIA AL GOBIERNO POR GENOCIDIOS EN TERRITORIOS LIBRES DE
LA AMAZONIA ECUATORIANA

Translated from Spanish by Martin Allen
PRESS RELEASE, Quito, 14 February 2008

Ministerial Agreement M.B.S. 01734 – 24 August 1989

The Confederation of Ecuadorian Indigenous Nations, the Confederation of Nations of Ecuadorian Amazonia and the Waorani Nation of Ecuador (NAWE), condemn before the Country, before public opinion, before international organizations and before the media of communication, the genocide which took place on 5 and 6 February 2008, when five Waorani brothers, among men, women, elders and children were brutally murdered by Colombian and Ecuadorian timber companies.  This genocide takes place in Amazonia continually, backed by the Ecuadorian State and caused by the policy of granting mineral, oil and timber concessions in our territories.

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Ecuador: CONAIE Will Demand Elimination of Mining Activities in Indigenous Lands

Created 2008-02-11 23:42

The new president of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), Marlon Santi, said on Friday that they would ask the Constituent Assembly to eliminate all mining activities in indigenous territories. He added that he will ask to meet with the Ecuadorian President, Rafael Correa, to discuss this and other issues related with the indigenous lands, natural resources and indigenous autonomous governments.

These matters are of great concern for the Ecuadorian indigenous movement, so CONAIE will mobilize -in late February or early March- to Montecristi town to submit proposals to the Constituent Assembly, while it is meeting to write a new Constitution for the country.

Santi told Radio Quito of Ecuador that the indigenous mobilization will take place and that they are open to talk with the government. But he said that if the indigenous peoples’ demands were not taken into account by Correa’s administration and the Assembly, CONAIE would consider organizing new demonstrations.

The leader also confirmed his commitment of strenghtening the indigenous movement and warned Pachakutik, CONAIE’s political arm, that unless it acts for the interests of the native peoples, there will be sanctions.

The Kichwa indigenous took office as CONAIE’s president on January 31st, replacing Luis Macas. He will hold that position until December of 2011.

In his inauguration ceremony held in Quito, the Ecuadorian capital, Santi said there will be a national demonstration of all the groups to defend land, the territory and the natural resources. He urged Correa’s government and the Constituent Assembly to prevent the transnational corporations from stealing water, oil, minerals and biodiversity from indigenous lands.

Santi demanded the immediate demilitarization of the indigenous lands and said: “We are watching the process to expel the US army from Manta base, as well as the intention of signing any international trade agreement without the people’s consent”.

Download [1] (2:00 minutes, 1.37 MB)

Source URL:
http://www.radiomundoreal.fm/rmr/rmr/?q=en/node/24593
Links:
[1] http://www.radiomundoreal.fm/rmr/?q=en/audio/download/24593/1102-ej-ecuador-eng.mp3

Petroleo, Derrames, y Etnocidio en la Amazonía

Possible sanction against Repsol YPF (operating in Waorani territory) for spillage of crude still under consideration (versión en español más abajo)

Television donated to a Waorani community by Repsol YPF

Televisión donada a una comunidad Waorani por repsol YPF
The article below is another example of how the oil industry is contributing to the disappearance of the last originary people. Transnational corporations like Repsol YPF, operating in indigenous territory and in the border of natural reserves, claim their operations are cleaner than ever in this new era of high technology.

Please also check in the resistance section the speech by Ehuenguime Enkeri, leader and president of the Ecuadorian Waorani Nation, before the court of Disputes and Administration, referring to the constitutional support invoked by the Waorani Nation for lifting of the environmental licence issued to Petrobrás for beginning operations in Block 31 – Waorani territory.

Ecuador has an oil production rate of 400.000 barrels per day, each year more than 32.000 barrels are spilt into the river systems. This means that every 2 -3 years, a spill as big as the “Exxon Valdez” takes place in the Amazon. Not surprisingly, most part of these areas happen to be inhabited by indigenous people.

The lack of a previous and informed consultation regarding oil, coal, forest, environmental services, and conservation concessions in indigenous territory is one of the main complaints of indigenous organizations. According to ILO Convention 169, the State has the obligation to provide free and informed consent to indigenous people regarding any legislative or administrative measure that may affect them, this includes oil developments. But Convention 169 is not a binding document and, its text is not clear in many aspects. Therefore, signatory states create their own regulations with their own view of the process of consultation.

The State grants concessions of indigenous territories to oil trans-nationals and only informs the indigenous people once the contract with the company is signed, this is what the State calls consultation process, which in fact is just an information process where of course indigenous people have no veto control, even if they decide they do not want any oil exploration in their territory.

Having been in various of these consultation processes in Peru and Ecuador is striking to witness the level of coordination between the State and the oil-transnationals, where the State representatives almost act as a sort of advertising company for the oil transnational proclaiming the goodness of the industry and reminding the communities their responsibilities and role in the economic development of their country.

Since 2004 in some Latin America countries States have created regulations that enforce the companies to carry out pre-bidding consultations with the affected communities. Nevertheless, many communities have decided not to attend to this consultation processes as their last resource to stop oil activities in their territory. They claim there is no point in being consulted if they do not have veto control and by attending to the consultation and filling in the attendance form they help the companies and the State to fulfil the needed requisites to carry our their activities. In this case indigenous people are resisting the hegemony of the State by not using an instrument, such us the ILO Convention 169, which was created in the first place for their own interest.

Possible sanction against Repsol YPF for spillage of crude still under consideration

Ecuador inmediato, http://www.ecuadorinmediato.com/noticias/70491, 2008-02-02

Official of the Ministry of Mines and Oil states that 500 barrels of crude were spiltThe Government of Ecuador today insisted on applying possible sanctions against the Spanish-Argentine oil company Repsol YPF, for the spillage of crude which contaminated an area adjacent to an oilfield which that company administers in Ecuadorian Amazonia. (more…)

A Humanitarian Agreement is Urgently Needed to Respect Life and Dignity

Statement on 4 Feb Demonstrations against the FARC from the Colombia Solidarity Campaign.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez holds the granddaughter of former hostage Consuelo Gonzalez(left) during a welcome home celebration attended by Gonzales’ daughter, Maria Fernanda Perdomo (center). Chavez mediated the release of two FARC hostages

Social movements warn that 4 February demonstrations will polarise Colombia and “lead to prolonging the internal war in our country, and close off the possibility that the actors involved will humanise the armed conflict”.

The round of demonstrations against the FARC to be held in Colombia and abroad on 4 February are not simply a spontaneous initiative of ordinary citizens,  as they are disingenuously portrayed. 4 February has become the focus of an orchestrated campaign to manipulate international opinion away from backing a negotiated, humanitarian agreement as the most hopeful means towards a peaceful settlement to the country’s armed conflict. Rather than a celebration of citizen power 4 February is a tragedy in the making.

The Colombia Solidarity Campaign urges that attention be paid to the voice of the political opposition, to social movements and victim groups who consider that 4 February is a dangerous and polarising initiative that could wipe away the tentative steps towards a humanitarian agreement between the government and the FARC.

POSITION OF THE OPPOSITION AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

The opposition party Polo Democratico Alternativo and the CUT trade union federation will be holding their own demonstration on 4 February calling “For the Humanitarian Accord: No to war, No to kidnappings”. The Polo makes clear that its attitude cannot

“be assumed to be either supportive of the FARC, kidnappings or crimes against humanity or supportive of the government of Alvaro Uribe, which it opposes unequivocally for its authoritarian and regressive nature”. (The Polo’s full statement is attached.)

Diverse social movements in Colombia are refusing to participate. The Colombian University Students Association, ACEU states:

“we, [the] university students……  will not march for the war as we are convinced of [the viability of] a political and negotiated exit to the social and armed conflict.  As university students, we believe in the importance of debate,   discussion and the construction of alternatives to the present regime. We invite all Colombians not to play the game of these war propositions and still wait for calls to march by mass media and the national government to eradicate  poverty, the hunger that kills many children of Colombia,  illiteracy, etc.

The School Teachers Association of Antioquia – ADIDA –  “will not participate as the demonstration is about a false dilemma that the government is now posing to the Colombian people”.  The association explains that although ADIDA rejects the armed struggle,

“neither is it willing to yield in the confrontation with a war-like and clientelistic government  which is suspected of links with the paramilitaries. To the detriment of resources for education, health, sanitation and drinking water, today the regime maintains a budget which has the highest level of funds dedicated to war in the world – 6.3% of the GDP.”

Perhaps most tellingly of all, an array of organisations representing socially oppressed groups including the national indigenous movement ONIC, the popular women’s organisation OFP, the Process of Black Communities PCN and the CNA campesino alliance warn that the 4 February demonstrations

“will lead to prolonging the internal war in our country, and close off the possibility that the actors involved will humanise the armed conflict” (full statement attached).

There is grave concern that the 4 February demonstrations will be made use of to extinguish all hope of a humanitarian accord in the foreseeable future.

URIBE ATTEMPTS TO SCUPPER HUMANITARIAN AGREEMENT

It is important to locate the 4 February demonstrations in the context of the fast moving developments since August 2007 when Colombia’s President Uribe invited Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez in to mediate in the armed conflict. Working with the families and Senator Piedad Cordoba, Chávez was able to facilitate talks with the FARC that culminated on 10 January 2008 with the guerrilla group releasing Senator Consuelo González and Clara Rojas, aide to former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, into the custody of the International Red Cross and the Venezuelan authorities.  With goodwill from the principle actors, this initial success could have opened the way to a more comprehensive agreement covering the exchange of imprisoned guerrillas for kidnap victims.

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The Amazon Gets Less and Less Green
Friday, Jan. 25, 2008 By ANDREW DOWNIE/SAO PAULO

TIMES Magazine

Despite the alarms about global warming, the news concerning Brazil’s
crucial Amazon jungle is not good. Once again, satellites are showing
deforestation is on the rise. And once again the government has announced a
package of measures aimed at halting it. If you think you’ve heard this
story before, you’re not wrong. It’s depressingly familiar. “This is only a
surprise if you believe in Father Christmas,” said Roberto Smeraldi,
director of Friends of the Earth’s Brazil office.

The new statistics show that deforestation for the last five months of 2007
was 3,235 sq. kilometers (1,250 sq. miles or about the size of Rhode
Island), a rise from the previous year’s figure and alarming because
deforestation normally drops in the final rainy months of the year. In a
world panicked by its own carbon footprint, the forests of the Amazon are
the planet’s largest absorber of carbon dioxide.

Even more disturbing was an alert from another government agency warning the
true figure is closer to 7,000 sq. km. (2,700 sq. miles) “It is a completely
new and very worrying development,” Joao Paulo Capobianco,
executive-secretary at the Environment Ministry, admitted at a press
conference to announce the figures on Thursday. So worrying that President
Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva brought together several ministers to discuss
measures designed at halting the destruction.

Lula, elected with the support of green groups who later accused him of
kowtowing to Brazil’s powerful agribusiness lobby, called for a complete ban
on deforestation in the 36 worst-hit municipalities and said he would next
month send 800 federal police officers to ensure the moratorium is
respected. He also told landowners they would have to register their
properties and prove they comply with existing environmental legislation,
something very few currently do. Those not in compliance will be ineligible
for government credit or prohibited from selling their property. Measures
will also be introduced to stop non-compliant businesses from selling their
produce.

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