Explosive Evidence Suggests Energy Companies Helped Finance Colombia's Civil War
By Matthew Smith - May 27, 2023, 2:00 PM CDT
Colombia has been locked in a vicious multiparty civil war for control of the country’s vast natural wealth, including fertile agricultural land, fossil fuels, and gold, for over six decades. It is the strife-torn country’s substantial oil and coal resources that have been at the center of that bloody struggle after a series of major discoveries during the 1980s. Allegations of collusion between Colombia’s government, corporations, including mining as well as oil companies, and rightwing paramilitaries to suppress organized labor and opposition to energy projects have swirled for decades. This includes claims that Colombia’s armed forces trained and armed paramilitary units while corporations, including national oil company Ecopetrol, financed their campaigns of intimidation and murder. The explosive testimony of former senior paramilitary commander Salvatore Mancuso, who was second in command of the United Self-defense Forces of Colombia (AUC – Spanish initials), and statements from other fighters have once again put those allegations under the spotlight.
In Mancuso’s controversial testimony before the Special Jurisdiction for Peace he accuses major corporations, including Chiquita Brands, Coca Cola, Drummond, and Ecopetrol, of financing paramilitary groups. The JEP is a transitional justice mechanism established as part of the 2016 peace agreement with Colombia’s largest guerilla group the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC – Spanish initials). Former combatants from the FARC, Colombia’s armed forces, and third parties who have participated in Colombia’s bloody low-level asymmetric civil war, such as paramilitaries, are eligible to be investigated and tried by the tribunal. The JEP is a restorative justice mechanism designed to provide answers and where possible justice for victims of the conflict while imposing alternative penalties to prison for perpetrators.
Mancuso, who was once second in command of the AUC, revealed in his testimony how energy companies Drummond, a U.S. coal miner, and Ecopetrol maintained lengthy financial relationships with paramilitaries. This was done in exchange for the protection of their operations from attacks by leftist guerrillas. The former paramilitary commander went on to detail how security chiefs from those companies provided the names of unionists who were then murdered by paramilitary fighters. Mancuso further alleged paramilitary units were used to intimidate as well as even murder local community leaders, human rights defenders, lawyers, journalists, and environmental protectors opposed to energy projects. According to Mancuso, Colombia’s former internal security agency the Administrative Department of Security (DAS – Spanish initials), police and army, provided the AUC with lists containing the names of potential targets who were believed to be guerrilla sympathizers.
Mancuso is not the only former paramilitary to level accusations at Drummond and its involvement in financing what were essentially rightwing death squads operating extra-judicially with the backing of the Colombian state. Former paramilitary Jairo de Jesús Charris Castro, who is serving a 30-year sentence for homicide, testified to the JEP in April 2023 about the 2001 murder of three trade unionists from Sintraminergetica, Colombia’s mining union. Charris alleges those killings were conducted at the behest of U.S multinational coal miner Drummond, which since 1985 has been operating in Colombia. Drummond holds three mining concessions with two operational coal mines, Pribbenow and Descanso in Cesar department, along with another three operations in development.
More:
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Explosive-Testimony-Suggests-Energy-Companies-Helped-Finance-Colombias-Civil-Wa.html
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MAY 24, 2022
21 YEARS OF CORPORATE IMPUNITY - THE SYSTEMATIC ATTEMPT TO ELIMINATE A UNION’S LEADERSHIP IN COLOMBIA
Last month, the Comisión Colombiana de Juristas (CCJ) in alliance with PAX Colombia and the Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Industria Minera, Petroquímicas, Agrocombustibles y Energética (Sintramienergética) submitted a report entitled Drummond Ltda. Coal Mining: epicenter of persecutions, assassinations and violations to freedom of association to the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP, for its Spanish acronym). The report focuses on the violence suffered by the union Sintramienergetica, including the extermination of its leadership in 2001.
As background, March 2021 marked the 20th anniversary of the killings of union leaders Valmore Locarno and Victor Orcasita at the hands of Colombian paramilitary members from the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC), allegedly funded, in part, by Alabama-based coal company Drummond Company, Inc. and its Colombian subsidiary, Drummond, Ltd. At the time of the deaths, Valmore and Victor were President and Vice-President, respectively, of Sintramienergética, the union that represents hundreds of Drummond’s coal workers in Colombia. Gustavo Soler, who then replaced Valmore as the union’s President, was killed a few months later. As is clear in retrospect, the wave of killings actually began in February 2001, when Candido Mendez, a member of the union who had been actively engaged in organizing efforts, was executed in his home.
These systematic killings decapitated the union and silenced its membership, but Sintramienergética was nevertheless able to survive as one of the largest unions in Colombia. Sintra, as it is colloquially known as, continues its fight for truth and justice.
The 20th anniversary commemoration saw an increase in efforts to hold those who played a role in these crimes accountable. Now, a year later, Sintramienergetica, NGOs, and victims have submitted multiple reports to Colombia’s transitional justice mechanisms, including the JEP, providing evidence with respect to the role that multinationals, including Drummond, had in the violence against union members and campesino communities in the late 1990s and early 2000s. During that time, while the armed conflict escalated and illegal paramilitary groups expanded, coal companies operating in Colombia saw their profits increase. The expansion of illegal paramilitary groups (particularly the AUC’s Juan Andres Alvarez front) can be associated, to some extent, with evidence of funding by corporate actors in the region. CAL also submitted a report to the JEP on this issue in March 2022.
https://corpaccountabilitylab.org/calblog/2022/5/24/21-years-of-corporate-impunity-the-systematic-attempt-to-eliminate-a-unions-leadership-in-colombia
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As background, the para assassins hired by Drummond had been terrorizing Drummond's union workers, and the leaders had begged Drummond to let them sleep on the floor on weeknights, rather than taking the buses back to their homes, and Drummond refused. Once paras stopped the bus some leaders were riding, shot some of them in their seats, and dragged one of them away where they tortured him and threw his body out on the ground. The intention was to end all union activity by people wanting humane salaries and working conditions, as there was real job scarcity and a captive labor pool.
Coca Cola was notorious for use of the right-wing paramilitaries, as well, by the way.
The paramilitaries also went into voting centers during elections, even standing in the booths with voters and telling them to vote for the one with the glasses (they had photos on the ballots, and right-wing President Uribe was the one with glasses) as well has doing intensive "social cleansing. " The AUC pretended to disarm at Uribe's demand, but merely separated into smaller groups with new names, the Aguilas Negras (Black Eagles) being a particularly vicious one known for extraordinary brutality, just as before.
Photo of one (center) of the Alabama-based Drummond (coal) brothers with former Colombian President Uribe, on the left.
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From Colombia: multinational mining company accused of hiring paramilitaries
Article written by my good friend, independent journalist Manuel Rueda
Over two hundred Colombians have placed a lawsuit at an Alabama district court against a Birmingham-based Drummond coal company for financing right wing death squads in Colombia.
Drummond runs an open pit coal mine in the northern Cesar department, where paramilitary groups assassinated hundreds of civilians from 2000 to 2006.
The lawyers who presented the lawsuit claim that between 2000 and 2006 Drummond paid paramilitary squads millions of dollars to protect its coal mine from attacks by left wing guerrillas. But according to them, the paramilitaries also used the money to wage a broader campaign against left wing guerrillas in the department.
A woman who did not want to be named for security reasons tells of how her brother was killed by the “paracos” – as such groups are known in Colombia.
“The paralimitaries abducted my brother around 7 pm… They tortured him and broke his arm. They took out one of his eyes and pulled out his nails before finishing him off with five shots”.
She says her brother was a taxi driver who had no connection to guerrilla groups. But according to her a few weeks before his death, her brother had a dispute with his former boss. She suspects this man accused her brother of having links with the FARC guerrillas.
. . .
“We have direct testimony from members in the paramilitary very high up in the rankings that they had directly received funding from members’ of Drummond´s upper management. They are saying that they received direct payment and that Drummond told them that they needed them as a private security force”.
Conrad and Scherer recently pressed similar charges against Dole, a US Banana company, at a US court. Another banana company, Chiquita, last year admitted at a Florida court that it paid paramilitaries to protect its banana plantations. And Colombian lawyers are also investigating energy companies like Occidental Oil for their alleged relationships with paramilitary groups.
More:
https://www.frontlineclub.com/from_colombia_multinational_mining_company_accused_of_hiring_paramilitaries/
AUC
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23 MAY 2023 BY SARA GARCIA
In a recent testimony before the Colombian transitional justice system, one of the most important commanders of the AUC outlined the former paramilitary group's ties to high-profile politicians, businesses, and military commanders.
Salvatore Mancuso Gómez, a former commander of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia - AUC), gave testimony via video call before the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (Jurisdicción Especial para la Paz - JEP) between May 11 and 16. The JEP investigates human rights violations during Colombia’s armed conflict, in which the AUC played a leading and violent role.
Mancuso was behind the expansion of paramilitary groups into northern Colombia between 1994 and 2004, and led several AUC blocs in the departments of Córdoba and Norte de Santander. In the early 2000s, the AUC reached a peace agreement with the Colombian government, although many refused to demobilize and formed new criminal groups. Mancuso was extradited along with other paramilitary leaders to the United States in 2008, where he was sentenced to nearly 16 years in prison for drug trafficking.
Below, InSight Crime presents the main elements of Mancuso’s account of the AUC’s expansive criminal network and its exponential growth in the early 2000s. If corroborated, the claims would illustrate the paramilitaries’ degree of influence and political connections.
More:
https://insightcrime.org/news/paramilitary-commander-salvatore-mancuso-reveals-aucs-connections-in-colombia/
Image of Salvatore Mancuso when he was still an AUC leader:
Overseeing the sham demobilization:
After being taken by the government:
