January 18, 2019

We, the undersigned, offer our solidarity to members of the community of Roche in La Guajira, Colombia, who have taken direct action to protest at their conditions after being forced off their ancestral land because of the expansion of Latin America’s largest open-cast coal mine, Cerrejón, owned by three of the world’s largest mining multinationals, Anglo American, BHP and Glencore – all listed on the London Stock Exchange…On Wednesday, 16 January 2019, around 50 community members entered a part of the 69,000 hectare mining lease and halted operations. The occupation was entirely non-violent. They demanded that the company actually address their demands rather than simply discussing them. They accuse the company of failing to keep the agreements it has made over, among other things, water quality in the new settlement, the repair of inadequately built houses and the provision of ways of making a living.