PBI-Canada continues to monitor the situation of eight community members criminalized for their opposition to Frontera Energy
Video still: A military helicopter takes Ferney Salcedo, Yulivel Leal and four other social leaders from the villages of Venturosa and Platanales following their arrest on November 27, 2018. Video by Prensa Libre Casanare.
Today is the 6th anniversary of the arrest of eight community members who were protesting the Canadian oil company Frontera Energy Ltd. in Colombia.
El Espectador has reported: “On November 27, 2018, at 2:45 in the morning, an operation of 200 men, between members of the Police and the National Army, who landed in two helicopters, captured them in San Luis de Palenque.”
Significantly, as has been highlighted at the United Nations by Special Rapporteur Michel Forst, just a few days before that operation, on November 16 and November 19, 2018, “Frontera Energy signed two agreements with the Ministry of Defence for a total of US$1,343,106 to secure army protection for its activities.”
Yulivel Leal shared on a webinar organized by PBI-Canada: “On November 27, 2018, I was captured in my home, the judge ordered house arrest. I lived under the control of an electronic device for 22 months.”
Photo: Yulivel Leal under house arrest and wearing an electronic monitoring device on her ankle, October 2019. Photo by Comité de Solidaridad Internacionalista de Zaragoza.
Her husband Ferney Salcedo was held in prison for 500 days without trial (first at a prison in Yopal then in La Picota almost 500 kilometres away after he demanded more dignified conditions for prisoners).
Forst has expressed concern “at the apparent connection between Frontera Energy, the army’s 16th brigade [a unit that protects oil operations] and the Attorney General’s Support Office in this criminalization and the possible impact of the agreement between Ecopetrol S.A. and the Attorney General’s Office on the situation.”
PBI-Canada met in-person with Ferney, Yulivel and other community members on July 1, 2022; organized a webinar with them on October 11, 2022; helped amplify video-messages to the Frontera virtual annual meeting of shareholders on May 18, 2023; organized meetings with Canadian civil society and a Member of Parliament; and have posted numerous articles and updates about their ongoing situation.
We have also been trying for more than a year to get the necessary visas to bring community members and their PBI-Colombia accompanied defenders to Canada to help share the story of their criminalization with Canadians.
As of July 2024, the judicial process against the community members was in the oral trial stage with six witnesses having testified and 40 more still pending. Of the more than 100 proposed pieces of evidence, only four had been incorporated. Six years after the arrests, the judicialization continues with no immediate end in sight.
We remain concerned about the past arbitrary detention of the community members and their prolonged judicialization, call on Canadian companies not to enter into “cooperation agreements” with Colombian security forces, support calls for domestic and international mechanisms that would mean greater accountability for transnational corporations to the communities they impact, and advocate for a credible Canadian Ombudsperson for Responsible Enterprise (CORE) that would have legally enforceable powers to compel evidence and testimony from corporations.
We will continue to follow this.
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