Colombia: Open Leter to Cerrejon Coal Company

November 17, 2006

Sr. Leon Teicher
President – Cerrejon coal mine company
Guajira, Colombia

cc- owners of Cerrejon company:

Anglo American plc
Edward Bickham, Corporate Responsibility 20 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5AN, United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0)20 7968 8888
Fax: +44 (0)20 7968 8637

Anglo American plc
Dr John Groom, Safety, Health and Environment 20 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5AN, United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0)20 7968 8550
Fax: +44 (0)20 7968 8560
Email: jgroom@angloamerican.co.uk

Anglo American plc
Dorian Emmett, Sustainable Development
20 Carlton House Terrace,
London SW1Y 5AN, United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0)20 7968 8888
Fax: +44 (0)20 7968 8500

BHP Billiton plc (United Kingdom)
Neathouse Place, Victoria
London, SW1V-1BH, United Kingdom
tel: (44 20) 7802 4000
Fax: (44 20) 7802 4111
businessconduct@bhpbilliton.com
investor.relations@bhpbilliton.com

Xstrata plc (United Kingdom)
4th Floor, Panton House
25 Haymarket
London SW1Y 4EN, United Kingdom
Tel: +44 20 7968 2800
Fax: +44 20 7968 2810
email: info@xstrata.com

Glencore International AG
Baarermattstrasse 3
CH-6340 Baar, Switzerland
Tel +41 41 709 2000
fax +41 41 709 3000
E-mail info@glencore.com

Dear Sir,

Thank you for meeting with the international commission in the Cerrejon company offices in La Guajira, Colombia on Tuesday, October 31, 2006. As you know, the meeting was part of a delegation to investigate human rights and environmental issues associated with the Cerrejon mine. We appreciated your frankness and the company’s willingness to dialogue on these issues.

SUMMARY CONCLUSIONS
After participating in the international delegation (October 29 – November 4, 2006), Rights Action concludes that the Cerrejon company is systematically violating many fundamental human rights of local indigenous Wayuu, Afro-descendant and campesino communities, in order to make way for the expansion of the open pit coal mine. We urgently request that the Cerrejon company:

* Immediately take the necessary steps (including providing adequate funds) to establish and participate in an independent and transparent collective negotiation table wherein the rights and needs of all the negatively affected communities – past, present and future - are properly presented and defended, leading to and guaranteeing just and fair relocation plans. The collective participation of all of the affected communities and their designated advisors must be ensured. Furthermore, observers from different sectors of Colombian society must be present as official observers and guarantors during the negotiation process. We applaud the efforts and initiatives of SINTRACARBON to support and accompany this process.

* Provide sufficient funds for the establishment of a completely independent commission to investigate and document all human rights violations and environmental, health, socio-economic and cultural harms caused by the mine – past and on-going - and provide an integral program for reparations and justice. Again, different sectors of Colombian society must be invited by the various parties involved (communities and their advisors, workers’ union, company) to conform and monitor this commission.

THE DELEGATION
From October 29 to November 4, 2006, Rights Action joined an international delegation coordinated and facilitated by the North Shore Colombia Solidarity Committee, the SINTRACARBON coal mine workers union and Yanama, an indigenous Wayuu NGO. Throughout our visit, we were also accompanied by community leaders from the evicted community of Tabaco.

We held interviews with representatives of the SINTRACARBON leadership; senior management of the Cerrejon company, including the President; lawyers who have tried, unsuccessfully, to defend the rights of the affected populations; community members from the evicted community of Tabaco; among others.

During daytime visits, we received testimonies from women and men, young and old, in the soon-to-be-disappeared communities of Patilla, Chancleta, Roche, Tamaquitos II and Los Remedios. We also visited the Provincial indigenous Wayuu reservation.

Along with other organizations that participated in the international delegation, Rights Action will continue to support the affected communities in their efforts for collective negotiations, integral relocation and just reparations.

WHAT WE DID NOT ADDRESS
Different levels of government have different responsibilities to respect and defend the human rights of all Colombian people. While in many cases we believe that the State is failing to comply with these responsibilities, we direct this letter to the company, addressing company policies, actions and responsibilities.

While in the Guajira, we did not formally investigate the situation of the rights and conditions of the Cerrejon workers; SINTRACARBON representatives told us that while they have on-going issues and health problems to be addressed with the company in their upcoming negotiations, they have healthy relations with management. We heard about but did not investigate social projects funded by the Cerrejon company, that have benefited sectors of the Guajira population.

While the international delegation met with and heard the testimonies of many of the forcibly evicted families from the community of Tabaco, we did not investigate the situation of the previously displaced communities of Oreganal, Saraita, El Espinal, Palmerito, Manantial and Caracoli. Nor did we address the environmental and social impacts on the (mainly indigenous Wayuu) communities affected by the company railway and Port Bolivar – both part of the Cerrejon complex – focusing instead specifically on the open pit coal mining.

The focus of this letter and urgent appeal is with respect to the communities we visited – all poor; all campesino; some indigenous Wayuu; some Afro-descendant – that have been or are in the process of being forcibly displaced.

LACK OF REAL NEGOTIATIONS FOR RELOCATION
We learned that in the past – and continuing today - the company expresses a desire to negotiate relocation with communities that need to be relocated to enable mine expansion, all the while engaging in practices that result in systematic violations of many rights of the affected populations, resulting in the effective forced relocation of the affected populations.

While discussions between Cerrejon and various communities have been taking place, we were informed that these discussions have focused primarily on certain social programs in certain communities – far from the formal collective negotiations the affected communities are requesting, with support from SINTRACARBON and international organizations.

Community leaders expressed their concerns about the informal discussions led by different lower-level company representatives. Various community representatives also testified that company representatives strongly discourage the involvement of the communities’ lawyers and advisors, explaining that the matters to be addressed are between the company (and presumably company lawyers and advisors, however) and the communities.

REMEMBERING TABACO
Much of the distrust of the communities now facing displacement stems from their awareness that there has been no justice for people such as Emilio Pérez, who required 50 stitches to his head due to brutal beating by police and soldiers during the eviction of the town of Tabaco: “I am 65 years old and everything I worked for in 60 years was lost in a single day. I have been waiting for 5 years – I want them to give me back by cattle, my lands, my animals. The same thing that happened to me happened to many others in the region.”

Communities whose lands have been bought up by the company have already lost lands and animals, just as in Tabaco. Similarly, the sometimes week-long shortages of water and electricity in Chancleta and Patilla – which had also occurred in Tabaco – were denounced by community members as part of company tactics to provoke despair. The experience of Tabaco – where the families that struggled for collective relocation and did not agree to the inadequate monetary compensation offered by Cerrejon were violently evicted and have yet to be relocated or receive reparations – weighs heavily in the collective consciousness of communities in the region.

The net effect of the human rights violations, in community after community, is that after a few years of the company buying up land all around the communities, of the open pit coal mine getting physically closer and closer, the poor-to-begin-with communities end up in such extreme conditions of poverty, vulnerability and desperation, that many community members are forced to leave their communities in search of work and education.

Furthermore, if and when the company finally arrives to offer to purchase the remaining territories – individually or collectively – those who remain are in such a desperate situation that they will accept any small amount of money offered.

In the community of Roche, a maze of painted wooden posts marks company lands within the community, leaving the houses of the inhabitants surrounded by mine property. We understand that discussions about relocation are more advanced in Roche and heard about the company-sponsored visit to a housing project in Villanueva, Medellín, Antioquia. However, we learned that Cerrejon only plans to provide 17 houses for the community, but that there are more than twice that many households in Roche.

A major concern expressed by community members in Roche is the fact that many of the ‘families’ are in fact multi-generational families composed of various households, with married children and their own families living in separate houses. Furthermore, due to the crisis provoked by the advance of the mine, many community members have been forced to leave the community in search of work to support their families and education for their children.

The company is not including either of these groups of community residents in its minimal plan to relocate the rural community to an urban housing project.

In every case we learned of in the various communities, the people ended up in much worse conditions of life than before the advance of the mine, including those cases where some payments were actually made. There appears to be no real effort on the part of the company to approach the communities, years before any harms are being felt, and make them a dignified relocation offer with guarantees to move all of the families in each community to a place where they would be able to have equal or better living conditions, including housing, water, lands and access to public services such as health and education.

CUTTING OFF ACCESS TO LAND, WATER, WORK & BASIC SERVICES
Rather, starting years ahead, the company engages in a process of buying up lands around the communities – sometimes not informing the seller that the company is the purchaser. The result is that little by little, the slow death of the community and people begins (“killing us alive”, we heard over and over).

Access to land is the life-blood of these campesino communities in the region. They also get low-paid work, from time to time, as rural workers on neighboring farms; they feed their cattle and goats on the surrounding lands; the hunt iguana, rabbits and other animals for family consumption; they grow survival crops for consumption and exchange, such as corn, yuca, squash, beans, plantains, watermelon, etc.

As we traveled to the soon-to-be displaced communities, we witnessed how the company was buying up ALL the surrounding lands and fencing them off. The communities are no larger than the space that their humble homes occupy. Moreover, some of the roads in the region now ‘belong’ to the company, or the company has purchased lands where roads used to be, further isolating already-isolated communities.

A further devastating aspect of the company buying up and fencing off all land around the communities is completely cutting off access to rivers! For generations, these communities have survived off the water that comes from nearby rivers: for drinking; washing; fishing; bathing.

Over and over we heard similar testimonies in different communities: “It was a tradition to go to the Ranchería river on Sundays to fish. The women accompanied us to wash in the same river. Nowadays, we don’t even know what the river is like, how it is now. The company’s private security doesn’t let us pass. We’ve been left with nothing, because the river already belongs to the company.”

Cutting off access to land and water has had devastating yet predictable consequences.

NO WORK: All of the affected communities – campesino; indigenous; afro-descendant – depend on access to land and water for subsistence survival. The men also used to seek work on near-by farms to bring home some money. All local work has dried up; in some cases, large land-owners – that still have their farms and ranches – now refuse to hire community members that they previously hired. Most suspect that the wealthy land-owners have been pressured by the company to refuse work to local community members.

As one community leader explained: “On other farms where we used to work as well, now the Cerrejon company has instructed the owners not to give work to anyone in the community, instead to find workers from elsewhere… Furthermore, we are accused of belonging to the guerrilla. Because of this, no one hires us. This has also generated a lot of hostility from the army against members of our community, because they accuse us of knowing where the guerrilla is.”

(IN)SECURITY: In a number of communities, we received testimony that community members have been harassed by private Cerrejon security agents and illegally detained, intimidated and threatened by State security forces (military; police; DAS – Security Admin. Dept.) when found traveling on paths or roads to try and find work, or when fishing in the rivers, as they had done for generations. As a result, the men in the communities are now afraid to travel to find work, to fish in the rivers, hunt in their traditional hunting territory … furthering their situation of impoverishment and desperation.

We were made aware that Cerrejon has an established relationship with the army battalion in the region. In view of the testimonies we received concerning army abuses against community members in the company’s area of influence, we are clearly concerned about this relationship between the company and military forces and the lack of clarification on this issue.

HEALTH: These communities never received much in the way of public health services, but as long as there was water, and land to grow their basic foods on (including to feed their animals), then general health community levels were stable. With access to land, water and a healthy diet now all but gone, the health crisis in every community is spiraling.

The common issues that were increasing in all the communities were: respiratory diseases (especially in the dry season when the rains do not even partially clean out the constant flow of dust arising from the coal mine); intestinal diseases, especially amongst the young; ophtamological and auditory problems; and skin diseases. With limited and unreliable access to water in their communities, community members often have to sneak to the main rivers in the region (El Cerrejon and Rancheria) to bathe. The rivers are increasingly contaminated – due to the coal mining – and the results are increased skin diseases and sickness, especially in the dry season.

In Los Remedios and Provincial, the huge layers of waste material have advanced right up to the edge of the communities. Similarly, the Cerrejon mining complex encloses Patilla, Chancleta and Roche. Winds carry and spread the hazardous coal particles and dust all over the area, causing serious health problems and contamination in all of the communities. However, as Tabaco community leader José Julio Pérez explained, there are efforts to deny the links between the coal exploitation and the health problems: “It’s no secret for anyone that the doctors in our region do not recognize the illnesses we are suffering from.”

BASIC SERVICES: In many of the affected communities we visited, there is
very limited access not only to medical attention, but also to education and other basic services. In many communities, we learned that the Cerrejon company was providing certain support (occasional health clinics, provision of water), but we learned that these programs were problematic for two main reasons: -1- they were not well planned or executed programs; -2- they were stop-gap measures that begged the question of the underlying problems – that the company’s policies and actions were worsening the health and water situations to begin with, and that the company was not negotiating collectively and in good faith to provide all community members the possibility of collective relocation in equal or better conditions to their original quality of life before the mine.

The company’s responsibility for eliminating access to basic services in the indigenous Wayuu community of Tamaquitos II could not be clearer. As a leader from the community explained: “Until 2001, the community of Tamaquitos II had access to public services in the [nearby] community of Tabaco: the health clinic (with a health promoter on staff and medicine for sale), the school, the market and the church… With the violent eviction of Tabaco in 2001-2, we lost access to all of these services.”

CONCLUSIONS: OVER-LAPPING SYSTEMATIC HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS
In each of the communities we visited – supported by testimonies we received from already displaced persons living generally in conditions of poverty on the edges of larger towns like Albania, we found all or most of the above human rights violations and abuses.

These violations and abuses are happening right now. People are living lives of desperation and great suffering, right now.

All of these violations and sufferings could have, we firmly believe, been easily avoided, given the huge resources that the company has. Compared with company profits from coal sales, the company could have easily relocated all the affected communities to dignified housing and productive lands – with year-round access to water and basic services – of equal or better conditions.

With the exception of representatives of the Provincial indigenous Wayuu reservation, no one we spoke with said they refused to move; given the situation, there is no other feasible option. All said that they are willing to move, collectively, as long as they ended up living on land with clear title to their new territories and that they received equally good lands, housing and access to rivers, potable water and services such as health and education.

For these reasons, we urge the Cerrejon mining company to:

* Immediately take the necessary steps (including adequate funds) to establish and participate in an independent and transparent collective negotiation table wherein the rights and needs of all the negatively affected communities – past, present and future - are properly presented and defended, leading to and guaranteeing just and fair relocation plans. The collective participation of all of the affected communities and their designated advisors must be ensured. Furthermore, observers from different sectors of Colombian society must be present as official observers and guarantors during the negotiation process. We applaud the efforts and initiatives of SINTRACARBON to support and accompany this process.
* Provide sufficient funds for the establishment of a completely independent commission to investigate and document all human rights violations and environmental, health, socio-economic and cultural harms caused by the mine – past and on-going - and provide an integral program for reparations and justice. Again, different sectors of Colombian society must be invited by the various parties involved (communities and their advisors, workers’ union, company) to conform and monitor this commission.

In our meeting on October 31, Cerrejon President Leon Tiecher admitted – in reference to the community of Tabaco – that “[m]istakes have been made. Mistakes have been corrected . . . mostly.” However, during our participation in the international delegation, again and again we heard testimonies about how the abuses and violations of the past are being repeated by the company on an ongoing basis.

The driving force for honest negotiations and for reparations for violations and harms must come from the Cerrejon company and its principal owners and investors. Your policies and actions have resulted in widespread and systemic violations and harms and you must account for them and make amends.

Thank you again for your time. We look forward to your response.

Sandra Cuffe and Grahame Russell, for Rights Action
info@rightsaction.org
Rights Action
B0x 50887
Washington DC, 20091, USA