BP is the biggest foreign investor in Colombia. Through its' management of the Casanare oilfields BP controls over half of the country's crude oil production. Its human rights and environmental impact has been disgraceful. There is no trade union organisation in BP's oilfield. BP uses a shadowy private security operator Defense Systems Limited, and it makes payments to the 16th Brigade of the Columbian army which has been involved in human rights abuses. Yet BP has refused to pay compensation to hundreds of peasants forced off their land by its OCENSA pipeline and who now live in complete destitution.

Occidental, Texaco and BP are members of the US Columbia Business Partnership a grouping which lobbied in Washington for Plan Colombia. Altogether BP and other oil companies have spent $25 million pushing for US military intervention to protect their investments. And now BP's interests have led the British government into backing Uribe and his crackdownon the Colombian people.

Last year 201 trade unionists were assinated or disappeared, 90% of all such killings worldwide. The rate has increased this year with 118 trade unionists murdered to the beginning of September. Amnesty International estimates that 20 people are killed every day due to political violence. The main perpertrators are right wing paramilitary death squads who are linked to the army and who carry out massacres and targetted assinations. There are over 2.5 million Colombiansdisplaced from their homesdue to violence.