Colombian Indigenous Group Takes Protest Abroad
12/29/99
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Title: ENVIRONMENT-COLOMBIA: Indigenous Group Takes Protest Abroad
Source: InterPress Service
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: December 29, 1999
Byline: Mar-a Jos, Llanos
BOGOTA, Dec 29 (IPS) - Representatives of the Embera Katio indigenous
community in Colombia plan to travel to Canada, the United States and
Norway, which are financing the Urra dam, to demand that the flooding
of their land be stopped.
''The national government has failed us,'' and the only option left is
to urge officials in the countries taking part in the project to do
something to stop the filling of the dam, said Jimmy Pernia, spokesman
for the 170 indigenous men, women and children camping out on the
grounds of the Environment Ministry in protest since Dec 11.
''If we fail to obtain the hoped-for results'' from the Canadian, US
and Norwegian governments, the Embera Katio community will take the
case to the relevant international forums, he told IPS.
The filling of the Urra dam, which began in early November, has
''seriously'' affected the indigenous community, wiping out more than
7,000 hectares of bananas and other crops and flooding the group's
most fertile land, said Pernia, his community's adviser on land
questions in the region of Alto Sinu, in the northern department of
Cordoba.
Environment Minister Juan Mayr confirmed Wednesday that the filling of
the dam would go ahead, because ''the requirements of the
Constitutional Court ruling on the case have been observed.''
In 1998, the Constitutional Court ordered the company that built the
dam, Urra Multiproposito, to reach resettlement agreements with local
indigenous communities, peasant farmers and fisherfolk.
The court also specified that locally-affected residents were to
receive a share of the revenues arising from the dam.
The traditional territory of the Embera Katio Indians stretches over
some 460,000 hectares in the Nudo de Paramillo nature reserve and the
Sinu river basin.
According to Pernia, the Urra dam is ''an ecological crime'' and
''destroys cultural traditions like the conservation of sacred areas''
such as Indian cemeteries.
Mayr, meanwhile, said the government of Andr,s Pastrana planned to
grant the indigenous group more than 12,000 hectares in exchange for
the 400 to be flooded by the dam.
But Pernia replied that the area submerged would be much greater than
the minister claims, and that his community would be evicted from its
land - not just from the area flooded - meaning it would need to be
awarded ''33,000 hectares of arable land just to survive.''
The Embera Katio living in the area to be affected by the dam number
2,400. The area is also home to 25,000 peasant farmers and fisherfolk.
Guillermo Tasc>n, a representative of the Embera Katio in the
northwestern department of Antioquia, said his community's
perseverance ''is the only weapon it has'' to fight for the
preservation of a territorial and cultural space for itself.
The 170 indigenous protesters marched 1,000 kilometres to demonstrate
outside the Environment Ministry, where they have set up improvised
tents.
Pernia said the protesters would remain in the area as long as
necessary, ''even through Minister Mayr has ordered that our drinking
water supply be cut off.''
Mayr said the government was studying ''follow-up mechanisms'' for the
search for an agreement with the group. (END/IPS/tra-so/mjll/ff/sw/99)