Events

No! to Santos

siemprevivamos@gmail.com (Maggie) — Sun, 29 Oct 2017 11:26:41 +0000

No to Santos' Dirty War in Colombia! No to Mining Multinationals Destroying the Environment and Communities!

Yes to Real Human Rights for All! Yes to Peace with Social Justice!

The Colombia Solidarity Campaign has called a picket from 5.00pm on Thursday, 9th November outside Chatham House HQ at 10 St James Square, Piccadilly, London SW1Y 4LE

COME AND SUPPORT THIS PROTEST - OUR VOICES NEED TO BE HEARD

The official event is from 5:30 p.m. to 7:00 pm p.m. https://www.chathamhouse.org/event/chatham-house-prize-2017-president-juan-manuel-santos

Support the ‘red mantas’ march to save La Guajira’s children

richardsolly@gn.apc.org (Richard Solly) — Tue, 19 Jul 2016 17:10:48 +0000

Guest blog by Emma Banks, Vanderbilt University, USA. Colombia Solidarity Campaign is planning a solidarity action in London on 9 August.

The children of La Guajira, Colombia are dying of malnutrition. On August 9, civil society groups will come together in the “Marcha de Mantas Rojas” – a follow-up to the Mantas Negras protest and the May 1 March to demand that the Cerrejón mining corporation and the Colombian government stop exploiting their territory and water.

Over the last 8 years in La Guajira, Colombia, almost 5000 children have died from malnutrition. According to Colombia’s National Statistics Administration, almost 28% of children under 4 suffer from chronic malnutrition in La Guajira. Media portrayals of La Guajira focus on the poverty and misery of Wayuu children, blaming state corruption and abandonment.

Yet La Guajira did not always have a chronic malnutrition problem. Until the arrival of mining in the 1970s, La Guajira produced more food than it consumed. Peasant, indigenous, and Afro-Descendant communities hunted, fished, planted crops, and participated in commercial agriculture. Since 1984, the Cerrejón open pit coalmine has deforested 12, 000 hectares of land, displaced thousands of Afro-Colombian and indigenous people from their territories, and taken over traditional hunting and gathering lands. Now the mine plans to divert the Arroyo Bruno, a tributary stream that provides life-sustaining water to thousands of people, animals, and small farms.

On August 9, unionists, indigenous peoples, Afro-Colombians, peasants, and civil society groups will come to together to deliver the message: “ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.” They will march wearing red – the women in traditional “manta” dresses – to symbolize the connection between the death of Mother Earth and the death of Wayuu children from malnutrition. They will deliver a petition to the Colombian state and the Cerrejón mine demanding the end of childhood deaths caused by irresponsible use of their territory and water by mining. They are demanding an immediate halt to the Arroyo Bruno project, the creation of a development fund for La Guajira from mining profits, and a rural resettlement for displaced Afro-Colombian communities where they can become productive farmers once again.

Please consider donating to this important cause and sharing the information in your networks.

Public meeting with our invited guests.

siemprevivamos@gmail.com (Maggie) — Fri, 17 Apr 2015 09:08:49 +0000

Apologies that we have not updated our website for so long...

Wednesday 22 April: Coal, Miners and Communities in Colombia
6.30pm, Unite House, 128 Theobald's Road, Holborn, London, WC1X 8TN (near Holborn tube)
Speakers: Jairo Quiroz and Igor Diaz, president and education secretary of Sintracarbon, the mine workers' union at the Cerrejon coal mine, owned by Anglo American, BHP Billiton and Glencore
Organised by Colombia Solidarity Campaign

No a la Megaminería! Si a La Vida! SOLIDARITY PICKET COLOMBIAN EMBASSY

nate@colombiasolidarity.org.uk (Nate) — Sat, 31 May 2014 04:05:33 +0000

5 June, 4pm at 3 Hans Crescent London SW1X 0LN (back of Harrods - Knightsbridge tube)

On World Environment Day, for the last three years, tens of thousands of people, led by the youth, have held Carnivals for Life in Ibagué, which is the nearest city to the La Colosa mining project.

This year there will be similar carnivals and events in other regions, including Tasco (Boyacá), Cucutá (Norte de Santander), and Nariño, as part of the nationwide mobilisation to call for the protection of water and páramos.

Mining projects throughout Colombia pose a major threat to water sources, especially in the high mountain ecosystems known as páramos where plants convert water from clouds into stream sources. Gold processing on an industrial scale threatens water contamination on an industrial scale. Water is life. We say no to gold, yes to life!

A solidarity picket will also be held in Dublin, Ireland at Dáil in Kildare Street, on June 5th at 5pm.

Demo against Alvaro Uribe Velez's visit to London

siemprevivamos@gmail.com (Maggie) — Wed, 30 Oct 2013 22:12:49 +0000

DEMONSTRATION AGAINST

ALVARO URIBE VELEZ

An assassin comes to speak about ‘Peace in Colombia ’?

5 PM Thursday 31 October

MacMillan Hall, Senate House, Malet Street , London WC1E 7HU

NO INTERNATIONAL IMPUNITY FOR THIS CRIMINAL!

Called by PLATAFORMA 12 DE OCTUBRE with the support of: Movimiento Micaela Bastidas-UK, Marcha Patriótica-Británica, Polo Democrático-UK, Colombia Solidarity Campaign, Mesa Permanente por la Paz - Londres, MERU Verdadero, London México Group, Tawantinsuyu Nation, Enlace Mapuche Internacional, Independent Workers of Great Britain (IWGB), Hands Off Venezuela, PARCOE, with internationalist friends and independent individuals.

https://www.facebook.com/events/467871489995926/

BRING HALLOWEEN MASKS!

PETITION AGAINST URIBE

https://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/alvaro-uribe-is-not-welcome-in-the-uk-alvaro-uribe-no-es-bienvenido-en-el-reino-unido

12 October: No to Free Trade Agreements!

alan@aktivix.org (Alan) — Sun, 06 Oct 2013 19:43:29 +0000

Free Our America!

A day of protest, exchanges and celebration of Resistance.

12h00 – 14h00 Vigil in Trafalgar Square
15h00 – 18h00 Workshops SOAS*
19h00 – 23h00 Cultural Event SOAS

SOAS – Students Union, School of Oriental and African Studies, Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London WC1H 0XG

Solidarity notices

alan@aktivix.org (Alan) — Tue, 03 Sep 2013 09:51:36 +0000

Covid Colombia Fundraiser

Click below to find link - thank you!

https://chuffed.org/project/la-guajira-colombia-solidarity-in-times-of-emergency

Against the brutal Marikana massacre 1st Anniversary Demonstration

alan@aktivix.org (Alan) — Tue, 06 Aug 2013 14:41:32 +0000

South African embassy, Trafalgar square, London
4-7pm Friday 16th August 2013

Supporting Groups: Caribbean Labour Solidarity; PASCF, The Pan-Afrikan Voice, All Afrikan Peoples Revolutionary Party, London Miners Support Network, Pan-Afrikan Reparations Coalition in Europe (PARCOE), Global Justice Forum (GJF), Colombia Solidarity Campaign, Algeria Solidarity Campaign

The Marikana massacre was deliberate. S.A. Police killed 34 and injured 78 striking miners. Many were shot in the back &/or on the ground. Razor wire, sub-machine guns , armoured cars. Horses and helicopters were used. 270+ survivors were rounded up and charged with the killings. Witnesses are being regularly murdered as the whitewash official inquiry rolls on. The workers struggle for genuine social transformation continues.

Weekly picket, South African embassy, Trafalgar square, London
Thursday 8th August @ 5-7pm

Community meeting

On Azania South Africa beyond apartheid? Capitalist predation in a neo-colony
Film: Dear Mandela
@ Tuesday 10th Sept. Venue: to be announced

We invite joint solidarity action with all those interested in campaigning on Marikana and like mining atrocities and other forms of anti-people repression by Imperialism all over the World! For more information contact: 07597078221

AFTER APARTHEID? The Global Political Economy of the Marikana Massacre

The Marikana Massacre (16th August 2012) was the deliberate murder of striking miners (34 shot dead, 70+ injured) by the South Afrikan/Azanian state, run by the one-time liberation alliance, ANC-COSATU-SACP. The neo-colonial ANC state murdered in collusion with the UK-based multi-national company LONMIN: it, like others is gorging on Azania’s wealth extracted at a terrible social and economic cost to the workers who labour underground in notorious conditions for starvation wages while living in amenity-deficient shack townships.

Neo-colonialism names the link between ex-colonies and the White Supremacist world of capitalism-imperialism, now disguised as so called ‘globalisation’.

The Marikana Massacre confirms that the ANC is running the world’s latest Afrikan neo-colony. Neo-colonialism involving Afrikans began with Haiti after the Haitian Revolution. It spread in Latin America, following Spanish-Portuguese rule. Then to Africa: Liberia (1820s); Ethiopia (liberated from Italy in 1941); then came The Sudan (1956) and Ghana (1957), the “wind of change” swept in “flag-independent” neo-colonies; finally Azania/South Africa (1994). Ex-colonies involved in anti-capitalism-imperialism are not neo-colonies. All neo-colonies are defined by an internal class/social strata rabidly committed to ripping off and even killing the masses for itself and imperialism that maintains it in office/power. This class arose in South Africa largely after 1994, through “Black/ African Economic Empowerment” programme.

White Supremacy runs today’s neo-colonies through crazy neo-liberal finance capital, using the UN Security Council, and the Breton Woods set-up (World Bank, IMF+) as revised in the late 70s and 80s (Uruguay Round, WTO+). The neo-colonial class signed-up to the lie that this system is benevolent: made up of “aid donors”, the source of neutral, necessary foreign direct investment, protectors (from “terrorism”, “drugs cartels” and “destabilisation”), bringers of the “efficiencies” of the international “free market” of privitisation (only the polluted air remains free), where every country enjoys its own “beneficial, equitable competitive advantage”.

The 1st anniversary of Marikana Massacre should remind everyone of the murderous ruthlessness of imperialism and its servants & agents in the neo-colonies. LONMIN shows up an imperialism busy disembowelling our countries, and demolishing our mountains; driving our people from their lands, their water, their fishing grounds, leased out/privatised for pittances to all comers. Oil, gas, minerals are ripped-off in the same way, leaving behind ruined landscapes - as in the Niger Delta. Jamaica’s main watershed came close to being dug down for bauxite. Imperialism’s new technology-based MNCs have their hands almost directly in the pockets of poor people in the neo-colonies of Afrika, Asia and Latin America.

Nothing is more important now than a proper understanding of this system of world-wide oppression through imperialist neo-colonialism. Unreserved support must be given to those in the Global struggle against it. Above all, the way must be found to defeat a monstrous enemy with its deceptive new face.

El Cerrejon Mine in Colombia attacks communities ¡NO PASARAN!

alan@aktivix.org (Alan) — Tue, 06 Aug 2013 14:19:28 +0000

Scenes from Tabaco 2001. Stop this from happening again.

STOP THE FORCED EVICTION OF VILLAGERS TO MAKE WAY FOR A BRITISH-OWNED MINE

2pm Tuesday 27 August
Meet Green Park tube station, for flying picket of mining companies.

Support Colombian mine workers and farming communities impacted by British-based mining multinationals

nate@colombiasolidarity.org.uk (Nate) — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 14:45:27 +0000

Mine workers have recently finished a one month strike at the massive Cerrejón opencast coal mine, owned by three mining companies listed on the London Stock Exchange: Anglo American, BHP Billiton and Xstrata. Mine workers and farming communities being displaced by mine expansion have united in struggle against the Cerrejon mining company. The SINTRACARBON union has now signed an agreement with the company which makes progress in their fight for better health care and respect for the rights of local farming communities and against subcontracting and the company’s plans for diversion of the region’s only major river for mining.

In April, Colombia Solidarity Campaign and London Mining Network, with help from War on Want and World Development Movement, will be hosting a visit by Julio Gomez, President of FECODEMIGUA, the Federation of Communities Displaced by Mining in La Guajira. La Guajira is the northernmost province of Colombia. One of the multinational mining companies involved, Anglo American, will hold its Annual General Meeting for shareholders in London on Friday 19 April 2013.