[PEN-L:127] Protests by unions and displaced paralyze Colombia oil town

[Colombian Labor Monitor <xx738@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

                                =========================================
                                There were no reports of serious violence
                                from Thursday's mass street protests
                                involving up to 10,000 peasants who have
                                poured into the grimy, river-front oil
                                town of Barrancabermeja in recent weeks.
___________________________     =========================================
REUTERS

Thursday, 10 September 1998


                Protests by displaced paralyze Colombia oil town
                ------------------------------------------------


BOGOTA -- Thousands of people made homeless by Colombia's civil war
protested in its main oil town on Thursday, prompting oil workers to down
tools in solidarity and virtually shut it down.

There were no reports of serious violence from Thursday's mass street
protests involving up to 10,000 peasants who have poured into the grimy,
river-front oil town of Barrancabermeja in recent weeks.

But Cuban-inspired National Liberation Army (ELN) rebels ambushed a column
of armoured personnel carriers on the outskirts of the city on Wednesday
night.

The vehicles, several of which were damaged by explosives, were dispatched
from Bogota for crowd control in Barrancabermeja and were ferrying about
50 soldiers into the city at the time of the attack, military spokesmen
said.

ELN commandos have a strong presence in Barrancabermeja, which is on the
banks of the Magdalena River in northeast Santander province and has been
the site of escalating public order problems in recent months.

The peasants, who have taken refuge in growing numbers in Barrancabermeja
since late July, say they fled their homes to escape escalating and
increasingly brutal violence in the countryside.

Their leaders demanded the government immediately remove from active duty
a list of army officers they suspect of sponsoring right-wing paramilitary
groups and death squad activity around their rural homes.

But the government of President Andres Pastrana, who took office last
month, has signalled it has no intention of intervening in the matter, or
interfering in the army chain of command.

Colombia's powerful and fiercely nationalistic oil workers' union, USO,
launched a city-wide strike, backed by other labour groups and grass-roots
political movements, at dawn on Thursday to press for housing for
internally displaced and for government solutions to their demands.

But while the 24-hour strike halted most business and transportation in
the town, government officials said there was only a a slight drop in
output from the Barrancabermeja refinery, the country's leading source of
gasoline.

Oil installations in the city were hit by a string of sabotage attacks on
Wednesday, but spokesmen for the state oil company Ecopetrol said only
minor damage was caused.

A right-wing death squad massacred dozens of people in an attack in a
Barrancabermeja slum in May. But municipal officials said there was no
indication of another attack soon.

Pastrana campaigned on a pledge to seek a negotiated settlement of
Colombia's long-running guerrilla war, which has killed more than 30,000
people, mostly civilians, and made 1.3 million Colombians homeless over
the last decade.

But Amnesty International openly challenged Pastrana earlier this week to
act ``without further vacillation'' and end what it called Colombia's
``escalating human rights crisis.''

Among other measures, which it described as the first step toward any
lasting peace process, the London-based group urged Pastrana to dismantle
paramilitary groups, which it described as ``allies'' of the military, and
crack down on human rights abuses by the armed forces.

        Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited
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