Human Rights: Colombia

Brendan O'Hara Excerpts

Wednesday 20th April 2022 Westminster Hall

[Brendan O'Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair for this hugely important debate, Ms McDonagh. I thank the hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Paula Barker) for securing it.

I thank the hon. Members for City of Chester (Christian Matheson) and for Strangford (Jim Shannon), my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady) and the hon. Members for Jarrow (Kate Osborne) and for Rochdale (Tony Lloyd) for their contributions. In particular, I thank the hon. Member for Belfast South (Claire Hanna) for her contribution. As she said, I spent the first week of Easter recess with her in Colombia, alongside Mr Gary Gannon, the TD for Dublin Central. We were there at the invitation of ABColombia, the advocacy project for a coalition of humanitarian organisations made up of Oxfam, the Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund, Christian Aid, Trócaire and CAFOD.

While we were in Colombia, we met a wide range of governmental, civic and international organisations, including CINEP, the peace and advocacy organisation. We met and discussed human rights and the peace process with the Irish ambassador and representatives of the UK embassy in Bogatá. We met the Colombian truth commission, the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, the Colombian Commission of Jurists and the director of the Government’s office of indigenous and minority rights. We even met the UN Security Council’s Verification Mission in Colombia, as well as several politicians from Colombia and representatives of the coalmining giant Cerrejón.

Most importantly, we met and listened to the indigenous people of the Sierra Nevada and La Guajira regions in the impoverished remote north-east of the country. Those indigenous communities—the Wayuu, the Kankuamo, the Kogi, the Wiwa and the Arawako—alongside their Afro-Colombian neighbours, are engaged in an existential battle with multinational coalmining companies and other mega power projects, as well as the Colombian Government, over access to their sacred traditional lands and the water on which they depend to survive. I will return to the issue of land and the human rights of those communities.

As we have heard from many speakers, Colombia is at a crossroads, and what happens in the next few weeks will have a long-lasting effect on the future of the country and its people. On 29 May Colombia will elect a new President, and just one week later the truth commission, the official body established to investigate human rights violations, war crimes and other serious abuses, will hand over its official report to the new President.

That report will be comprehensive and detailed and, given the history of Colombia over the past five decades, I think we can safely assume that an awful lot of people, on all sides of the conflict, will be very unhappy with what the truth commission reports. As the hon. Member for Rochdale said, our sincere hope is that the new President will accept the report in full and implement its findings. I would appreciate assurances from the Minister that, as penholder on the verification mission, the UK Government have a plan in place to support the truth commission when it reports.

All political analysts expect the presidential election to come down to a run-off between Gustavo Petro, the progressive, leftist candidate, and the right-wing candidate, Federico Gutiérrez. I think that, as well as the economy and the future of the peace agreement, one of the big issues that will dominate the campaign will be the human rights of indigenous and minority communities, their access to land and water, and what role multinational mining conglomerates will play in Colombia’s future.

One of the most intriguing aspects of the election is Petro’s choice of running mate—Francia Márquez, a remarkable young Afro-Colombian woman who has come to prominence as a human rights defender and environmental activist. She has bravely championed women’s rights and the rights of Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities, and in 2018 she was awarded the prestigious Goldman environmental prize. Now, remarkably, she is just six weeks away from potentially being vice-president of her country.

I am reminded that when Francia Márquez received her Goldman environmental prize, she said:

“Colombia is a country that has traditionally been run by wealthy families. When Black and Indigenous communities demand that large-scale mining be removed from our communities and we ask for protection under the rule of law, the ruling families say that we’re posing a hurdle to economic development. That’s when I ask, what kind of development are they referring to, especially when Indigenous and Black communities lack basic utilities? The community I live in has no drinking water, and our river has been polluted with chemicals used for illegal mining.”

Her story matches almost exactly those that I and the hon. Member for Belfast South heard time and again when we visited Sierra Nevada and La Guajira at the start of April. We heard multiple stories of violence, intimidation and murder being carried out, particularly against female community leaders who dare to stand up for human rights and the protection of their traditional lands.

La Guajira, close to the border with Venezuela, is home to the Wayuu people. However, it is also home to the largest open-cast coalmine in Latin America, Cerrejón, which is owned entirely by the Swiss mining giant Glencore. Cerrejón’s footprint stretches to a mind-boggling 70,000 hectares, or almost 300 square miles, of that incredibly beautiful, mountainous, densely forested area, with its remarkable biodiversity.

Apart from the very obvious damage that coal extraction does to the planet, mining requires water—lots and lots of water—and right now a battle is raging through the Colombian courts between the Cerrejón mining company and the indigenous people of La Guajira for access to that water. At the centre of the current dispute is the Arroyo Bruno, a river that the Wayuu people have relied on for centuries for drinking, washing and irrigation. It runs right through the centre of Cerrejón, and the company has decided to reroute the river to allow it to expand its coal extraction.

Two weeks ago, I walked along the dry bed of what was once a thriving, living river. I was amazed by what I can only describe as the circular insanity of allowing the destruction of one of the most beautiful, biodiverse places on the planet to access water that will allow further extraction of coal, the burning of which has contributed to rising global temperatures, which have directly contributed to the scarcity of water in the tropical forests of northern Colombia. As one Wayuu community leader told us:

“Mining in Colombia is destroying the land. It is destroying the people. It is destroying the future for us and our children…and ultimately it will destroy you too.”

The coal mined at Cerrejón is not for domestic consumption. The millions of tonnes taken from that vast open-cast mine are destined for Europe, which is increasingly turning to Colombia in the face of Russian sanctions. While the people of Europe know full well the enormous damage that burning coal does to the environment, I am sure they have no idea about the impact on the human rights of the indigenous Colombian people of every lump of coal that is taken from their land.

Before leaving Colombia, our delegation attended an historic meeting of the four peoples of the Sierra Nevada. It was historic because it was the first time that the four nations of the Sierra Nevada, which is known as the “heart of the world”, had agreed to work with the Wayuu and Afro-Colombian communities of La Guajira to speak with one unified voice against the mega energy projects and the complicity in the destruction of their land and culture. At that meeting, we agreed to be the voice of the communities of the heart of the world in Europe, and here we are today in this Parliament starting to fulfil that promise. In addition to speaking in this House and in the Dáil, we will be contacting the Colombian embassies in Dublin and London, and the Cerrejón coalmine’s parent company, Glencore in Switzerland, to raise our serious concerns.

Our final meeting before we returned home was with a group of Colombian senators, who just yesterday moved a motion in the Colombian Senate on the kidnapping of water by transnational companies. We have agreed to join forces and to invite politicians from other European countries to join us in shining a light on what is happening to the indigenous people and the Afro-Colombian communities in Colombia.

I will finish by echoing the words of the hon. Members for City of Chester and for Strangford. There cannot be justice without peace, and peace is fundamental to any progress in Colombia. I believe that with the support of the international community to implement the truth commission report, and with political leaders who will put human rights first, ahead of the interests of multinational corporations, there can and will be a bright, peaceful future for Colombia and all Colombians.