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CHICAGO: Tainted gifts returned to The Body Shop

CPTnet
9 January 2009

In a New Year’s morning action, fourteen Chicago area peacemakers raised concerns about 123 Colombian families forcibly displaced from their farmland in Las Pavas, Colombia by returning tainted gifts to a local Body Shop retail outlet.

Gifts boxes with “product tainted” return labels lined the sidewalk outside the downtown Chicago store, pronouncing the human and environmental abuses of the chain’s Colombian palm oil supplier, Daabon Organics.  “Threats, Corruption, Eviction, Environmental Damage, Unemployment, Poverty,” read the oversize tags.

Those returning the gifts contrasted the realities of Las Pavas–eviction and conversion of the land from biodiverse flora, fauna and food crops to oil palm monoculture for export–with statements from The Body Shop’s web site.

“You promised …protection of human rights, but this palm oil is tainted with armed threats; …to work against greed and dishonesty, but your palm oil is grown on land obtained through corruption; …to campaign against injustice, but your growers evicted farmers with a legitimate land claim; …protection of the earth, but this oil palm monocropping is devastating a rich and diverse ecosystem in Colombia; …sustainable income, but this palm oil took away farm jobs and caused unemployment.”

January 10, 2010 - Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism

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