PERMANENT PEOPLES' TRIBUNAL, SESSION ON COLOMBIA ...

state-owned enterprises. They also reach agreements with international
organisations in order to clean up their image socially and environmentally.
Lastly, they create alliances with local mafias, the regular army, and paramilitary
forces -accused of murdering, torturing, persecuting, or disappearing community
leaders- in order to undertake their operations with total security.
These and other strategies allow them to act with an aura of supposed corporate
social responsibility and respect for human rights. However, public accusations
and evidence continually come to light, describing their direct responsibility for
environmental crimes in polluting land, rivers, and oceans; for the loss of forests
and biodiversity; for attacks on economic, social and cultural rights of the
population where operations are undertaken; for provoking displacement and
thousands of social and environmental refugees; and for destroying sources of
subsistence, affecting their food security, and putting at risk the survival of entire
cultures and peoples.
These oil enterprises violate fundamental, collective and environmental rights.
Furthermore, they become covert or overt assassins and act under a systematic
impunity by distorting the rule of law and benefiting from the armed conflict.
The governments of the countries where these oil enterprises are based are
equally responsible for allowing the impunity of these enterprises. These
governments are also responsible for encouraging the repression and
militarization of these oil rich areas and for creating conditions encouraging
ongoing fear, invasion and war against persons living in these areas or opposing
the resulting social and environmental impact.
In Colombia, transnational oil enterprises obtain real profits of over 80%. This is
only possible under the militarization of the production facilities. Even though
this hearing has focused only on the previously cited enterprises, all of the major
oil enterprises in the world currently operate in Colombia.