Le compagnie straniere complici nei massacri e nelle deportazioni..... Sudan

["Yunan" <yunan@tiscalinet.it>]

Oil firms stoke up Sudan war

By Victoria Brittain and Terry Macalister
The Guardian
Thursday March 15, 2001

Christian Aid report accuses foreign companies of complicity in mass
displacement
and killing of thousands


Oil companies operating in Sudan are complicit in the systematic
depopulating of
large areas of the country and atrocities against civilians, tens of
thousands of whom
have been killed and displaced from the areas around the oil fields,
according to a
report to be published today.

Christian Aid, in a searing report on the consequences of Sudan's new oil
bonanza,
accuses the oil companies of deep involvement in the government's war
machine
against southern civilians.

The companies are protected by government forces and allow their airstrips
and roads
to be used by the military, while the revenues from oil are funding
expansion of the
war, the report says.

The report includes dozens of eyewitness accounts from villages where people
have
been driven out by bombing and ground attacks.

"Oil has brought death," said one Nuer chief, Malony Kolang. "When the
pumping
began, the war began. Antonovs and helicopter gunships began attacking the
villages.
All the farms have been destroyed, everything around the oil fields has been
destroyed."

Christian Aid's report calls on foreign oil companies - from Canada, Sweden,
China,
France and Austria - to suspend their operations in Sudan. It also calls for
BP and
Shell to divest their shares in firms whose parent company is involved.

The report accuses the oil companies of trying to distance themselves from
the
catastrophe of southern Sudan by claiming they are not responsible for the
behaviour
of companies in which they are shareholders.

BP said last night it had no intention of disposing of its interests in
PetroChina
"because there is no reason why we should". The Chinese company, in which BP
bought a $578m stake 12 months ago, is not active in Sudan, although its
parent
group, China National Petroleum Corporation, (CNPC) is.

Toby Odone, a spokesman for BP, insisted there was no operational connection
between PetroChina and CNPC. "When PetroChina did its IPO [listing on the US
stock market] it assured the Securities & Exchange Commission that it had no
interests in Sudan because of the sanctions issue," he explained.

A Shell spokesman said it had no exploration or production interests in
Sudan either
directly or through its Chinese partner Sinopec. Dave Stuart said: "Although
Sinopec
did at one stage control interests in Sudan as a result of the restructuring
of the
Chinese state oil industry, that stake was moved back to CNPC during 1999."

He said Shell would not agree to Christian Aid demands that it withdraw from
its
shareholding in Sinopec because there was no connection between Sinopec and
CNPC.

Rolls Royce admits it provided 34 diesel engines to help pump oil along a
1,000-mile
pipeline from Sudan's oil fields to an export terminal on the Red Sea.

Martin Brody, a Rolls Royce spokesman, said the company always took advice
from
the British government on where it could do business but also had its own
criteria. He
added: "As a supplier of equipment we always take a responsible view of our
actions.
We gave a lot of information to Christian Aid and will need to look at its
report in
more detail."

Glasgow-based Weir Group is also being criticised for a £20m contract to
provide
equipment for pumping stations on the same pipeline. Emrys Inker, a
spokesman for
Weir, confirmed its involvement in Sudan but said all the work had been done
with
the approval of the Department of Trade and Industry and the British
government.

Weir had no comment on accusations that it is complicit in human rights
abuses, or
on speculation that it is involved in a second contract to supply pumps.

The report gives harrowing details of the lives of refugees from the oil
areas who
have walked hundreds of miles to very precarious areas of southern Sudan,
already
wracked by decades of civil war.

"All the villages along the road have been burned," said John Wicjial Bayak,
a local
official driven from a village close to the main road built for access to
the oil fields.
"You cannot see a single hut. The government doesn't want people anywhere
near the
oil."

One man described fleeing the bombing with six of his grandchildren to hide
in a
forest. "We dug a hole for the children and put a blanket on top," he said.
"We stayed
20 days in the forest eating wild fruit."

Systematic attacks on the villages began in March 2000, according to village
chiefs.
One was bombed 10 times before government troops finally burned out the
residents.

Across southern Sudan life is on a knife-edge and the government's strategy
of
banning aid flights to Upper Nile is fanning fears of a new famine tragedy
similar to
that of 1998, in which tens of thousands died.