How does oil dependence impact human rights?
Oil exploration has led to human rights violations around the world. Human rights groups estimate that in the last 10 years military factions acting on behalf of multinational oil companies have killed more than 2,000 people in the Niger Delta. In the Indonesian province of Aceh, ExxonMobil has provided crucial logistical support to the Indonesian army, which has tortured, kidnapped and killed community activists on or near its drilling site. In Colombia, the U.S. government is paying $98 million to the Colombian military to guard an oil pipeline owned by Occidental Petroleum; the units charged with guarding the pipeline have participated in the killing of 18 innocent civilians, and have yet to be held accountable for those crimes. Ford will be complicit in these abuses until it helps us get the petroleum monkey off our backs.
