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BOLIVIA: farmers occupy oilfield

translation | 29.08.2004 13:25 | Globalisation | Social Struggles | World

Econoticiasbolivia.com (La Paz, 16th of august 2004) - In the early morning of 16th of august hundreds of farmers and communards of El Chore in the northeast of Bolivia occupied the facilities of the multinational company British Petroleum and paralyzed the oil production. The occupation of the oil field marks the beginning of a new wave of protests, which develop in the rural area of Bolivia: further actions are carried out in the south of the country, where the gas export to Argentina is threatened to get interrrupted, while marches to La Paz are prepared by landless farmers from different regions . after La Paz.

On monday 16th of august, at 4 o'clock in the morning, the farmers blocked the access road to the oil field Humberto Suárez Roca in the east of Bolivia and occupied quickly its installations. They demanded the immediate discontinuation of the work and explained that the occupation of the oil field was a direct action against the government for the acquisition of the just entitlements [ titulación ] to their properties.

Intimitated, the entrepreneurs of the company British Petroleum, which operates in Bolivia together with the Bolivian state via the financial company Chaco, issued orders, to stop "all work, to guarantee the security of the personnel and the farmers, who block the access road to the oil field”, as it says in a statement of the company.

The entrepreneurs assured, "that they would have no conflict with the municipalities, which are settled in the direct neighbourhood of their oil fields in the area Santa Rosa del Sara and that [the company] accomplished a successful program of social investments in health care and the maintenance of roads with an intended and firmly obligatory [? ] investment of 673,000 dollar."

The production in the region Humberto Suárez Roca, which includes also the oil fields Los Cusis and Patujusal, amounts to approximately 1,800 barrel oil, which is used on the Bolivian domestic market.

They threaten to stop oil exports to Argentina.

There are further mobilizations in the south of the country, nearly at the border to Argentina and Paraguay, where the inhabitants of the place Villamontes finished their sixth day of general strike this same monday. They demand that the government issues a regulation for building a road to connect them with Paraguay.

The protest action threatens to paralyze the gas export from the area to Argentina and Brazil as well as the transport of fossil fuels into the regions inside the country.


Guaraní ready for action

Protesting are also the farmers and indigenous Guaraní, who blocked the rural communication roads in the south of the section Chuquisaca for the past week. They demand the free issuance of identity papers.

"We fight for the right to identity", say the authors and threaten to expand the protests to the cities in the south of the country.


Further protests

In the west and in the Anden valleys more social classes have started to mobilize: the landless agricultural workers and owners of small land plots [minifundiarios],who prepare to march for La Paz, in order to demand the release of the leader of the landless workers movement (Movimiento Sin Tierra - MST), Gabriel Pinto. He has been arrested past wednesday and was jailed, because of being accused of having participated in the kidnapping, murder and burning of the mayor von Ayo Ayo on the 14th of June [ * ].

Pinto denied the accusations, the leaders of MST and the “unity trade union of the workers and farmer of Bolivia” (CSUTCB), like Felipe Quispe have confirmed that this arrest breaches the unions' special right to social protest, and therefore they would have decided to march to La Paz.

A further protest action of the landless is the occupation of unfarmed country estates and huge amounts of land. So far according to a report of the deputy Minister for landreform there are 28 properties occupied by landless farmers.


For the release of Pinto

The mobilization of the farmers and landless had been decided at the end of last week by the leaders of CSUTCB and MST, Felipe Quispe and Ángel Durán, who regarded the arrest of Pinto as an attack by the government. The statement says:


"We want to express that the arrest of our Compañero Gabriel Pinto means the following for us:

1.This is an attempt, to CRIMINALISE the social protest, which is under way since the mobilizations for the occupation of the Hazienda Collana by the inhabitants of the area and the brothers of the MST which clearly signalised, that it is now the time, to expropriate the powerful rich, who stole immeasurable land areas and territories in an illegal and corrupt way from their legal owners.

2.What happened in the municipality Ayo Ayo makes the practice of real justice against the white collar criminals, who destroyed and plundered the country, impossible.
The law apparatus was installed, formed and maintained in absolute subordination to the bosses of the party and the entrepreneur - Mafia by Gonismo [the regime of the fallen president Sánchez de Lozada] and the neoliberal parties,
To these belong Sánchez de Lozada and Kukoc, beside many others, who now run around freely on the streets or hold a post in the state apparatus or in a company and remain absolutely unpunished.

3. We assure that from now on we will fight with maximum exertion for a true LAW/JUSTICE, which should be basis democratic (COMUNITARIA). We promise to dismantle the corrupt law, which only locks up the poors and which favours the rich and powerful.

4.We declare war to the impunity, the unfairness, the fraud [? imposición ] and the
lack of comprehension and prepare, as in every war, for it, not only with ideas, not only with sticks and stones.


"To release our brother Gabriel Pinto means to free the voice of the people, the voice of the collective action for building up a new country with a new law", the Kommuniqué of MST and CSUTCB says.

 http://www.econoticiasbolivia.com/

__________

by Econoticiasbolivia.com, monday 16. Aug. 06:29 pm
econews (at) ceibo.entelnet.bo
 http://www.econoticasbolivia.com/
 http://colombia.indymedia.org/news/2004/08/15772.php

 http://www.translations.indymedia.org

Further coverage in German:
 http://germany.indymedia.org/2004/08/89719.shtml (translation of this article)

*  http://de.indymedia.org//2004/07/87401.shtml
(further reference about the situation in Boliva after the referendum about the gas resources)
See also:
 http://www.econoticasbolivia.com/
 http://colombia.indymedia.org/news/2004/08/15772.php

translation

Comments

Hide the following comment

the court change applies to bolivia

30.08.2004 18:18

THE COURT CHANGE IN 144 COUNTRIES: judges' decisions are no longer final.
This includes Bolivia. Every international aid organisation that has been ignoring this re any country is liable for worker's wrongs in Bolivia. During the Seattle campaign in 1999 the World Development Movemment actually called me despicable for leafletting on the court change, which it was ignoring, at its Edinburgh conference.
I have been lobbying people in a series of political situations throughout the last 3 years, Genoa, Australia, Israel etc, to spread knowledge of the court change, whose shifting of power in favour of ordinary people ensures that it has been under a media silence. Nevertheless, it's on publicly traceable record through petitions 730/99 in the European, PE6 and PE360 in the Scottish, parliaments. Since 7 July 1999 all court or other legal decisions are "open to open ended fault finding by all parties and recapitulation therupon" instead of final.
This follows from my European Court of Human Rights case 41597/98 on an insurance scam of evictions of unemployed people from hotels. This case referred to violation of civil status from 13 May 97, yet the admissibility decision claimed the last inland decision stage was on 4 Aug 95. ECHR has made itself illegal, by claiming finality in issuing a syntactically contradictory nonsense decision that reverses the physics of time. It violates every precedent of member countries' laws recognising the chronology of cause and effect, in evidence.
The European Convention's section on requiring a court to exist, now requires its member countries to create a new schismatic ECHR that removes the original's illegality, by its decisions not being final. It follows this requires inland courts to be compatible with open ended decisions and doing inland work connected to them. Hence inland decisions also cease to be final and become open ended, in the 44 Council of Europe countries.

World trade irreversibly means jurisdictions are not cocooned but have overlapping cases. When a case overlaps an affected and unaffected country, the unaffected country becomes affected, through having to deal with open ended case content open endedly, that can affect any number of other cases open endedly. Open endedness is created in its system.
The concept of "leave to appeal" is abolished and judges no longer have to be crawled to as authority figures. Every party in a case is automatically entitled to lodge a fault finding against any decision, stating reasons. These are further return faultable, including by the original fault finder, stating reasons. A case reaches its outcome when all fault findings have been answered or accepted.
Anyone can add to the list of countries outside the Council of Europe that could be court change if their people are interested in it as a democratic advance and want to take it up. It shows autocracies, pending their freer futures, as well as democracies. It starts with:


Israel and Lebanon through the case in Belgium on the Sabra-Chatila massacres.
America, Canada, Australia through my child brain research ethics dispute with Arizona university, stalled by an American government obstruction of justice. But obviously there will be many cases making these 3 countries court change, so I should not be seen as seeking the ego fantasy of taking personal credit for it through my case.

Rest of the list:

Yugoslavia through war crimes cases overlapping Bosnia.
Kosovo through war crimes cases overlapping Yugoslavia.
North Cyprus through Turkey's UN legal challenge against South Cyprus joining the EU.

Belarus through its election dispute with OSCE election monitoring.
Monaco through International Amateur Athletics Federation drug hearings there.

Vatican City through Sinead O'Connor's ordination as a Catholic priest.
Cuba through Elian Gonzalez.
Haiti through objecting to receiving petty crime deportations from America.
Antigua through its constitutional crisis on capital punishment.

Trinidad through its Privy Council case on capital punishment.
Jamaica through claims on both sides of American linked arms trade background to its violence.
Mexico through the Benjamin Felix drug mafia extradition to America.
Belize through Michael Ashcroft.
Guatemala through the child stealing and adoption scandal overlapping America.
Colombia through America's supposed human rights policy intervention in training Colombian police and military.

Guyana through the £12m debt claim dropped by Iceland (the shop).
Brazil through EU immigration unfairnesses to its football players, necessitating a mafia trade in false passports.
Argentina through its ECHR case on the General Belgrano.
Chile through General Pinochet.
Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay through Judge Garzon's citation of Henry Kissinger for the South American military conspiracy Operation Condor.
Chad and Senegal through a French action in Senegal obtaining Chad's former dictator Habre for trial under Pinochet's precedent.
Algeria through the Harkis' case from the Algerian war.
Liberia, Sierra Leone, Mali, Morocco through the Insight News case.
Ivory Coast through the chocolate slavery scandal.
Ghana through the World Bank's Dora slave scandal.
Togo through the Lome peace accords for Sierra Leone, and their breaking as an issue in factional arms supply to there.
Burkina Faso through an arms trade case of smuggling through it from Ukraine to civil war factions in Sierra Leone and Angola.
Niger and Rwanda through Oxfam's case of buying an arms trade "end user certificate" for Rwanda in Niger.
Burundi through the war crimes trial of Rwanda's 1994 head of state.
Tanzania and Japan through the 2000 G8 summit, because Tanzania Social and Economic Trust broadcast a contradiction in implementing both its wishes for economic advance and its debt relief terms.
Mozambique through its cashew nuts dispute with the World Bank.
South Africa and Lesotho through a WHO case against American pharmaceutical ethics there.
Nigeria through reported Nigerian drug mafia crime in South Africa.
Dahomey and Gabon through their slave trafficking scandals overlapping Nigeria and Togo.
Zimbabwe through its land finances dispute with Britain.

Equatorial Guinea through the charges in Zimbabwe of a coup conspiracy.
Zambia through Cafod's collection of objections to food supply and health violations in its IMF structural adjustment program.
Namibia through the Herero genocide case against Germany.
Angola, Congo Kinshasa, Ecuador through arms trade smuggling to them from Bulgaria and Slovakia.

Congo Brazzaville through the Jean-Francois Ndenge case in France.
Sudan through Al Shafi pharmaceutical factory suing America for bombing it.
Ethiopia through aid sector comment on its conditional debt relief.
Somaliland through its problem with Russian and South Korean coastal fishing.
Kenya through the Archer's Post munitions explosion case overlapping Britain.
Uganda through the Acholiland child slave crisis and Sudan's agreement to return children.
Mauritius through the Ilois rights judgment on the Chagos clearances.
Yemen through its problem with Spain over the missile shipment.
United Arab Emirates through Mohammed Lodi.
Saudi Arabia through the lawsuit by families of September 11 victims.
Qatar through the capture of Saddam Hussein.
Bahrain through the call for American witnesses in Richard Meakin's case.
Kuwait through the terrorism arrests in Saudi Arabia.
Iraq through the bogus weapons inspection dispute before the invasion. Iraqis who are anti-war and not backers of the West's claims have not been offended by applying the court chnage to Iraq on this basis.
Jordan through its threat of "unspecified measures" in its relations with Israel.

Egypt through its disputes with Tanzania and Kenya over use of Nile water.
Libya, Syria, Iran through the Lockerbie bomb trial.
Afghanistan through Ben Ladan.
Pakistan through a dispute between supporters of enslaved women and the British embassy for not helping them escape.
India, Bangladesh, China, Indonesia through the World Wildlife Fund's campaign for tiger conservation, conflicting western romanticism with local populations affected by the homicidal absurdity of conserving a human predator.
Nepal through the Gurkhas' lawsuit for equal pay and pensions.
Vietnam through a church publicised refugee dispute overlapping China.
Cambodia through its enactment for a trial of the Khmer Rouge Holocaust.
Laos through Peter Tatchell's application to arrest Henry Kissinger.
Thailand through Sandra Gregory.
Burma through the Los Angeles judgment on the Unocal oil pipeline.
Sri Lanka through its call for the Tamil Tigers' banning in Britain.
East Timor through public reaction to the judgment against trying Suharto.
Papua New Guinea through WWF's Kikori mangrove logging affair.
New Zealand through its ban on British blood donations.
Nauru through the Australian civil liberty challenge on the Tampa refugees.
Fiji through its land crisis's nonracial solubility by a Commonwealth constitutional question against rent and mortgages.
Tuvalu through environmentalist challenges to America's rejection of international agreements on global warming and sea level.
Marshall Islands through the Nuclear Claims Tribunal cases.
Philippines and Malaysia through the international police investigation
in the Jaybe Ofrasio trial in Northern Ireland.
South Korea through its jurisdiction dispute with the American army.
North Korea through its apology to Japan for abductions.

maurice frank
mail e-mail: info@spectrum-fairness.org.uk


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