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CAMPAIGNERS URGE MORATORIUM ON CONTROVERSIAL BP PIPELINE

REPRESSION MAKES REAL CONSULTATION IMPOSSIBLE

FACT-FINDING MISSION DETAINED IN TURKEY

Campaigners have called for a moratorium on a controversial BP-led oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean. Visiting the Turkish section of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, they uncovered a pattern of constant surveillance, evident human rights abuses and manifest lack of freedom of expression.

A consortium led by the UK oil giant BP is expected to request almost half of the $3.3 billion required to complete the BTC project from public sources, as what BP CEO Lord John Browne has called "free public money". A Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) representing an international NGO coalition which has been instrumental in raising concerns about BTC [1] travelled the length of the Turkish section of the pipeline from Sivas to Posof.

It found evidence of detentions and arbitrary arrests and that tensions in the north-east region of Turkey have increased markedly over the last few months, including the proscription of local political parties. The FFM was itself detained twice in eastern Turkey and subjected to constant military harassment and intimidation.

The FFM was constantly followed by several vehicles wherever it went, making its task of interviewing local people affected by the BTC pipeline impossible. During a visit to a village near Ardahan, the FFM was stopped by the gendarmerie, the Turkish military police. Its passports were takenand it was detained for over an hour. No explanation was given for the detention, nor was any indication made of its likely duration. [2]

"What the FFM has experienced in the course of our visit has given us some small indication of what local people in the Kars and Ardahan regions suffer daily," said Miriam Carrion of the Bar Human Rights Committee. "It makes a mockery of BP's claims that there are no security problems along the Turkish section of the pipeline route. The obvious lack of freedom of expression calls the legitimacy of the whole process of consultation into serious question."

Because of constant surveillance by up to fifteen plainclothes security men and uniformed gendarmes, the FFM was unable to undertake further interviews. The FFM now has serious concerns as to the subsequent treatment of several of its interviewees, and will be making regular inquiries to check on their welfare.

"BP has promised us personally that the pipeline would not have a detrimental effect on the security situation in volatile areas of Turkey, yet everything we have seen indicates precisely the opposite. Repression of Kurds in the region is particularly pronounced, but the human rights of all in the region are not respected," said Anders Lustgarten of KHRP.

In addition to observing and experiencing violations of human rights along the pipeline route, the FFM also chronicled a wide array of problems associated with the implementation of the BTC project. These include flaws in both the consultation and compensation policies, failures to implement those policies appropriately, worries over the BTC project agreements and allegations of corruption in the awarding of pipeline sub-contracts.

"The litany of deficiencies in the BTC project when considered against the backdrop of the human rights violations we have seen and experienced leads us to conclude a moratorium on the project is essential," says Antonio Tricarico of the Rome-based Campaign to Reform the World Bank.

Members of the Fact Finding Mission will be attending a protest against the BTC pipeline in London on March 25th. The protest, organised by Friends of the Earth, starts outside the office of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (Bishopsgate) at 12.40pm and ends outside BP at 13.10pm.

[1] The members of the Fact-Finding Mission included representatives of the Corner House, the Kurdish Human Rights Project (KHRP), the Bar Human Rights Committee, Campagna per la Riforma della Banca Mondiale and Platform.

[2] After the FFM was released, it was followed for approximately half an hour before being pulled over and ordered to return to the gendarmerie station, where it was detained for a second time. On this occasion, a reason was proffered: the FFM's translator's maiden name did not match her married name on her identification cards. During the course of the second detention, the gendarmerie officers refused both to put the FFM in contact with a senior officer and to talk to a representative of the Italian Embassy who had called regarding the welfare of an Italian member of the FFM.

After a further half an hour, during which the FFM made additional contact with officials at the British Embassy and the Foreign Office, the group was released once more and followed back to its hotel, where it discovered that the luggage of all but one of its members had been searched while in locked rooms. The FFM is putting in a formal complaint to the Gendarmerie regarding its treatment.